The Sunshine of His Life

Merv Griffin says he is not superstitious. With one exception, perhaps.

Griffin, who has had lots of success in lots of areas, including entertainment and business, has worn a certain gold tie for each of Stevie Wonderboy’s wins.

He will wear it again today when Stevie Wonderboy, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, soon-to-be 2-year-old champion of 2005 and early favorite for the Kentucky Derby, makes his highly anticipated 3-year-old debut in the $150,000 San Rafael Stakes at Santa Anita.

“It’s been by accident that I’ve worn the tie every race,” Griffin said the other day. “But I will have it on again on Saturday.”

A lifelong racing fan, Griffin has been involved in thoroughbred ownership for about 25 years, but never before has he had a horse with the potential of Stevie Wonderboy.

Of course, the son of Stephen Got Even is more than mere promise. He has already given Griffin the thrill of a first Breeders’ Cup victory. And on Jan. 23 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, Griffin, a presenter at last year’s awards, will receive an Eclipse Award for Stevie Wonderboy’s magical year.

Griffin, 80, a hotelier, winner of numerous Emmy awards, successful in the music business, host of a long-running television talk show and creator of the popular game shows “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune,” is looking forward to the San Rafael.

“I’m very excited and nervous,” he said. “He’s never run around two turns before and he hasn’t run for 77 days [he won the BC Juvenile last Oct. 29 at Belmont Park], so I am a little edgy, but it could be an exciting 2006.”

Having a lot of time between races wasn’t a problem for Stevie Wonderboy last fall, when he had been off for 52 days before the Juvenile after having won the Del Mar Futurity.

The dream, obviously, for Griffin is for Stevie Wonderboy to reach Louisville, then win the Derby on May 6. No Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner has won the Kentucky Derby but Griffin pays that no heed.

After the colt’s come-from-behind victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Griffin serenaded those assembled in the interview room with a few bars of “My Old Kentucky Home.”

“I walked into the room and there was a solemn-looking group of about 50 or 60 writers sitting there and I said, ‘Welcome to the Merv Griffin Show,’ and that kind of loosened everybody up,” he said. “Then, I started with “ ‘The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home ... ‘ and everybody cracked up.

“Winning the Derby is everybody’s dream. You wouldn’t believe how many offers I’ve had from people -- and some of them are pretty brazen about it -- wanting to know if I would sell the horse. That’s not going to happen.”

A chestnut bred in Kentucky, Stevie Wonderboy, whose sire is a son of 1992 horse of the year A.P. Indy, was purchased for $100,000 nearly a year ago at a Fasig-Tipton sale in Florida.

Dennis O’Neill, older brother and advisor of Griffin’s trainer, Doug O’Neill, picked out the colt and immediately contacted Griffin.

“Dennis called me and said he couldn’t take his eyes off him,” Griffin recalled. “I said, ‘Buy him.’ He said he could go for $300,000 and I said, ‘Buy him.’ He called me back later and said he couldn’t believe it, but that we had gotten him for $100,000.”

Dennis O’Neill says he looks for big, good-looking horses with correct conformation and Stevie Wonderboy fits the bill. O’Neill also said he was impressed with the way the colt breezed at the sale.

“He had a stride and a half on him,” he said. “He was just cruising. I went back to the barn to see him and just fell in love with him. He didn’t breeze all that fast [11 seconds for an eighth of a mile], but I loved the way he did it and a lot of times when they don’t breeze fast at the sales, they don’t bring as much money.”

Not long after Stevie Wonderboy arrived at Doug O’Neill’s barn, the trainer called Griffin, effusive in his praise of the colt.

“Doug told me we really could have something special with this horse,” Griffin said. “He said his sense of racing was far beyond a 2-year-old and that he was so cool about everything.”

Griffin began his relationship with O’Neill after seeing an interview with the trainer on television a few years ago.

“I saw how much he cared about horses,” Griffin said. “I contacted him, he came in and we talked and I was impressed.”

Doug O’Neill, who is consistently among the leading trainers on the local circuit, says Griffin is deeply involved and understanding about the ups and downs of the sport.

“He’s very easy to deal with,” O’Neill said. “When I first met him, I tried not to be intimidated, but I was a little bit intimidated. I became very comfortable very quickly because he was such a genuine person who really just wanted to form a successful horse racing business.”

Griffin, who grew up in San Mateo, says his love for racing began as a youngster, after he’d seen Seabiscuit run twice in Northern California. He was involved with quarter horses and Arabians before investing in thoroughbreds.

The joy of watching Seabiscuit has remained with Griffin all these years but new thrills are being provided.

“I missed the Del Mar Futurity [Sept. 7] because I had the flu, so I went to my office to watch because we have a big-screen television there,” he said. “There were a lot of people there and everybody was screaming and pounding each other during the race. I just sat there with my mouth wide open.

“During the Breeders’ Cup, I couldn’t look at the end. I watched most of the race, but at the top of the stretch, when he started to take off, I couldn’t watch because I thought there was going to be a photo finish and I don’t like those. I’m too old to watch those crazy endings.

“I just put my head down and everybody started pounding me on the back at the finish and telling me he had won. The whole thing was certainly very exciting, the thrill of it all. It was a lot more fun than most awards.”

Best of all, no photo was needed. Stevie Wonderboy’s margin of victory was 1 1/4 lengths.

Griffin, who likes to include some portion of the sire or dam’s name when he names his horses, hasn’t heard from Stevie Wonderboy’s namesake or anybody associated with the singer-songwriter, so he doesn’t know if Stevie Wonder has any thoughts or reaction to the colt’s accomplishments.

“Stevie Wonder started on my show when he was 17,” said Griffin. “But when I name them, and I know this sounds dumb for an 80-year-old man to be doing, and I do it when I’m by myself, but I become [Santa Anita and Del Mar track announcer] Trevor Denman and I call the name I’m thinking of, calling the horse to see how it sounds when the horse will be coming down the stretch.

“At first, it was just Stevie because of Stephen Got Even, but that was too short, so I thought of Stevie Wonderboy and when I became Trevor again it sounded wonderful.”