By DRF.com
ARCADIA, Calif. (Feb. 7, 2024) — Jerry Antonucci, a public handicapper for Los Angeles-area newspaper for nearly four decades, died on Tuesday of cancer, his friends said.
Antonucci was 77.
From 1973 until his retirement in 2010, Antonucci was a fixture on the front row of press boxes at Fairplex Park, Hollywood Park, and Santa Anita.
Antonucci did selections and wrote articles for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner from 1973 until that paper folded in the autumn of 1989. Antonucci moved to the Orange County Register shortly thereafter and remained with the paper until his retirement.
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Through the 2010s and as recently as last fall, Antonucci was an occasional visitor to the races, and the press box, on Saturdays.
Antonucci’s career coincided with a time when newspaper handicappers developed a following among frequent racegoers. A person did not have to travel far in the grandstands or clubhouse to find racegoers who had clipped the racing page from local papers. The Herald Examiner, in particular, was a popular paper with racing fans.
The Los Angeles county fair meeting at Fairplex Park in Pomona, with its tight five-eighths mile racetrack, was an annual stop for Antonucci. With the open-air press box situated at the top of the grandstand, it was easy for racing fans to stop and ask questions of the press.
“The stands would be packed and fans would come by and talk with me from my seat,” Antonucci told the Daily Breeze newspaper in a recollection of racing in the 1970s.
“You got a sense of being at a racetrack more than you did at other tracks and you didn’t need binoculars to watch the races. At bigger tracks, horses seemed 100 miles way on the far turn, but at Fairplex you were right on the action.”
Antonucci’s selections focused on odds and short comments, which allowed for handicapping tidbits, often trip notes, and occasional glimpses of his wry humor. One horse in the 1990s was described as having raced as “wide as the Arboretum”, the lavish botanical garden on property outside of the final turn at Santa Anita.
Antonucci was treated for cancer in 2010. The illness recurred last year. He had been in hospice care in recent weeks.
Antonucci, who lived near Santa Anita, in Burbank, is survived by his wife, Bonnie. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
The family is planning a memorial service at a later date.