Day Of Reckoning

Two years later he slunk out of New York, broke and friendless, a bum in the ballpark. He had won some races at the New York tracks, but along the way he had alienated his agent, fought in the jockeys' room with Angel Cordero and Jorge Velasquez, and divorced his wife. He went to Miami. "I rode for maybe 10 days, but it just wasn't there," he says. "I turned my back on the racetrack." Day went on a drugs-and-drinking spree that left him "in a comatose state" for weeks on end, until a friend, Steve Rowan, "scraped me out of the gutter." During the winter of 1978, Rowan took him back to New Orleans and persuaded trainers to use him.

But Day didn't put away the drugs. "It's a vicious cycle," he says. "You do the cocaine through the day, then you start drinking and hitting with the coke. And by night you have to take something so you can come down. In the morning you're still feeling the effects of the downer, so you have to take something to get up." In 1978 in New Orleans, Day started dating Sheila Johnson, and they were married a short time later, but that didn't change him much. He would pick vicious fights with her; sometimes he would jump in his car and drive all night when he got high; eventually, he leaped off that balcony.

But when he hit the ground that day, he hadn't yet hit bottom. It was three more years, in January of 1984, Day says, before he stopped using drugs and alcohol. When he tells the story of what happened, he speaks with that disconcerting directness. "I flew into Miami for a race the next day at Hialeah," he says. "It was late at night, and I checked into the Howard Johnson's near the airport. When I got into the room and turned on the TV set, which is a habit, Jimmy Swaggart was having a televised crusade." Day wasn't interested and turned it off. "I got into bed and almost immediately I fell into a deep sleep, which was unusual for me in view of the fact that I hadn't had my daily dose of alcohol as a tranquilizer. I awoke at what I felt was a long time later, and I had the distinct feeling that I wasn't alone in the room. It was unnerving, because when you go to bed in a hotel near Miami International Airport and you think you're not by yourself, that's reason for concern." Day says he turned on the television again, saw that Swaggart's show was still on and realized that he hadn't slept long and that Jesus Christ was the presence in the room. "There was an immediate transformation within me. I fell on my face in front of the TV and wept," he says.

In sudden fashion Day replaced his devotion to cocaine with a dependence on God; and while religious conversions are not uncommon among the chemically dependent, those who knew Day were not immediately convinced. "His attitude was so different," Sheila says. "I thought they had switched guys on me." It was more than a year before she felt certain that Pat's transformation was permanent and for the better. Two years later they adopted Irene, and just a year ago they traded in the motor home they lived in while Day raced at various tracks in the Midwest and bought the house in Hot Springs.

About the only piece of racing hardware missing from the Days' living room is that Kentucky Derby trophy. In 1987 Pat had his best chance to win one, and what a fitting victory it would have been: His horse that day, the Derby favorite, was named Demons Begone. As the colt stood in the starting gate, everything felt right. But when the bell rang, Demons Begone's feet slipped, and after recovering, the colt didn't respond to Day's urging. Up the backstretch, as he slipped farther back in the pack, Day knew something was wrong. He started to pull up; it was then he saw the blood pouring from the colt's nostrils. The favorite left the track in an ambulance, and the cause of the sudden bleeding was never determined.

On May 6, barring unforeseen disaster, Day will be on the Kentucky Derby favorite again. He says, "If I let myself get overeager about the Derby, the disappointment—such as with Demons Begone—would be almost devastating." But after the Wood, Day let eagerness creep into his voice. "This looks like it could be the year," he said. "There's something this horse has—T can't put my hands on it. I've never found it with any other horse."

Is this the year? Real horseplayers, of course, disregard horses' names—handicapping is a science of numbers. But scribble this on your Daily Racing Form: In the past, besides Demons Begone, Day has lost the Derby on horses named Rampage and Irish Fighter. It might be time for the bull-riding, Jekyll-and-Hyde, bible-thumping Pat Day to win the big one on a colt whose handle isn't so apt. A horse named Easy Goer.