Couple Finds Joy in Breeding Their Own Runners
Connie and Jerry Baker visit their homebred stakes winner Om N Joy
They have made a success of their partnership in the real estate sales business and in marriage. Now Connie and Jerry Baker have embarked on a new endeavor—breeding and racing their own Thoroughbreds.
The Glendora couple had a first real taste of success when a filly they bred, Om N Joy, dispatched her California-bred rivals to register a 2½-length victory for jockey Kent Desormeaux in the $126,000 Evening Jewel Stakes April 5 at Santa Anita. They’ve been flying high since.
“We always had a lot of confidence in her, that all she needed was time to mature into that big body,” Connie said of the winning daughter of the Harris Farms stallion Om who began her career with eight consecutive losses. “I laughed afterward when Kent called her a giraffe.”
“Fantastic, we love it,” Jerry said of their foray into the horse breeding business. “It’s been a hard grind. You can’t rush time. But we’ve taken things one step at a time. We banked a lot on it, and the experience has been life-changing.”
The journey began in April 2016, when trainer Thomas Ray Bell Jr. claimed a 5-year-old mare named Margie’s Minute on their behalf for $20,000 at Los Alamitos. By Hard Spun out of the winning Jolie’s Halo mare Halo Miss America, the bay was bred in Kentucky by John C. Oxley. She had been racing in California for Beau Greely.
Margie’s Minute was the first horse the Bakers owned. They were taken by her beauty and loved watching her run. In 10 races for them over the next year, she won twice and was in the money six more times.
“She had a little wear and tear on her by then, and we wanted to do what was best for her,” Connie said. “She’s a big, beautiful mare and so we thought we’d try to breed her.”
“We couldn’t let her go,” Jerry added. “We put a lot of faith in her.”
Though the Bakers are longtime racing fans, this was a first for them. They didn’t realize how complicated breeding a mare can be: where to keep her, which stallion to mate her with, the constant issues with vetting and care.
“It’s one thing to claim a horse and race it, but breeding one is incomparable,” Jerry said. “There are so many decisions to be made. It’s a long process.”
Margie’s Minute is the Bakers’ first runner and first broodmare
Margie’s Minute’s broodmare career started slowly. Her first foal in 2018, Sugar Kisses, a bay filly by Smiling Tiger, was not doing too well racing in Southern California. Her trainer, Carla Gaines, suggested they transfer her to the easier circuit in the north.
While Sugar Kisses, two for 23 in her career, didn’t improve much with the move, it led the Bakers to trainer Aggie Ordonez, who now conditions all their horses.
“We knew right away that it was going to be a wonderful relationship,” Jerry said of Ordonez, who celebrated the first stakes win of her career with Om N Joy.
“We have five horses in training with Aggie,” Connie noted. “It’s very exciting.”
Margie’s Minute’s second foal, Zzyzx (named for a road that intersects Interstate 15 on the way to Las Vegas), also did not accomplish much on the track. A three-time winner from 24 races, the chestnut filly by Spendthrift stallion Goldencents, sire of 2024 Kentucky Derby (G1) winner Mystik Dan, was claimed away from the Bakers.
Next came the late-running Om N Joy, who registered four third-place finishes before graduating in March. Her impressive follow-up victory in the Evening Jewel suggests that more is on the horizon. Jerry said that Ordonez plans to stretch Om N Joy out for the 1 1⁄16-mile Melair Stakes May 24 at Santa Anita.
Om N Joy gives the Bakers their biggest thrill by capturing the Evening Jewel Stakes
The Bakers have two partners in Om N Joy, Terry Scanlan, their accountant, and Scanlan’s buddy, Michael Golovko.
Jerry said Scanlan was part of MyRacehorse, the popular micro-share ownership group, but wanted more involvement in horse ownership, “so he has 10%. Then Michael said that if Terry was in, he wanted in, too, so he has 10%.”
The Baker broodmare band has expanded to three, including Sugar Kisses. They recently bred her to Om. They also have a Twirling Candy mare, Mint Julep Taffy. Her first foal, 3-year-old Knead the Dough, a filly by Smiling Tiger, is expected to begin her career later this year.
Jerry, who will be 75 in June, said he has been in the real estate business in the San Gabriel Valley for 43 years. Though he grew up in Monrovia, a couple of miles from Santa Anita, he had never been to the races until he met Connie’s father, Richard, a couple of years after Jerry left the military in 1974. He was quickly hooked by the sport.
Connie said she has been going to the races since she was a little girl. She also worked for a time at Santa Anita as a pari-mutuel clerk.
“My mom would ask me, ‘Would you like to go for a picnic?’ And for years that was what going for a picnic meant to me, spending the day on the infield at Santa Anita,” Connie said.
It was Richard who introduced Jerry to Connie, though both were married to others at the time. Many years later, after Connie’s first husband had died and Jerry was divorced, they got together. Eighteen years ago, they formed the real estate agency Baker & Snyder and remain quite active in the business. They were married 12 years ago.
“We’d both been around racing (as fans) for a long time, so getting into the business as an owner and breeder was kind of just natural,” Jerry said.
He credits Connie with managing the breeding part of their operation, studying pedigrees for the best matches, while he’s more involved with the financial end.
“It’s a Baker team effort,” he said.
What does it mean to have bred their first stakes winner?
“This thing started as a dream,” Jerry said. “And now it’s a dream come true. We had no idea if this was going to work out or not. But we took it one step at a time. It’s been very exciting.”