The horse that fatally crushed Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige in a freak calf-roping accident was 'a good roping horse,' in the opinion of someone who knew the big gelding, Commerce Department spokesman B.J. Cooper said Sunday.
'They don't know what happened,' that caused the 1,200-pound sorrel gelding to rear up and then topple onto Baldrige, causing massive internal injuries and uncontrollable internal bleeding that proved fatal Saturday afternoon, said Cooper.
'The horse just bucked. He (Baldrige) yanked up on the reins and it flipped over,' said Cooper. 'And it was a good horse. The fellow I talked to said he was a good roping horse.'
But Jack Cook, an eyewitness, said Baldrige, who was practicing roping with a partner, had successfully lassoed a running calf's hind legs and had jumped from his horse to bind three of the animal's legs when 'something happened and the horse reared up and fell backwards on him.'
The horse belonged to Jack Roddy, a former world champion roper who frequently performed in tandem with Baldrige in team roping events. Roddy, a member of the Contra Costa County Fair board, owns the ranch where the accident took place. He was described by onlookers as 'very upset' by the accident.
On Friday, Baldrige failed to snare the steer's hind legs and when several people Saturday good-naturedly ribbed him, he joked, 'It's this horse that Roddy lent me,' the Contra Costa Times said in its Sunday edition.
At the barbecue for the Cattlemen's Association at Roddy's ranch, Baldrige was in high spirits and told the Valley Times he was glad to relax and be away 'from the pressures of Washington.'
After a spate of questions about the Iran-Contra hearings and other matters and just before the roping event, Baldrige called to his friend, 'Roddy, are we here to ride or what?'
Baldrige, an original member of President Reagan's Cabinet and champion rodeo cowboy, spoke off the cuff of his love for ranching. 'I would have been a rancher when I got out of the Army,' he told the newspaper, 'except I didn't have the money or the ranch.'
Despite an Ivy League education at Yale and immense business success, Baldrige, 64, was voted Professional Rodeo Man of the Year in 1980 and earned membership in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1984. He once was ranked among the top 10 calf ropers in the United States. He kept a saddle and bronze cowboy figures in the Frederic Remington style in his Commerce Department office.
'I'm not out wrestling the steer down,' Baldrige explained. 'With team roping, you stay on the horse. You have to rope the steer and dally around with the saddle horn. So, with a guy my age, if he can keep up his timing, he's ok.'
'It was the first calf of the day. His partner had roped the front legs and the secretary had just roped the hind legs when I heard somebody say 'Oh' and I looked up in time to see the horse come down on him,' Ray Whitt, the fairground publicity director and a friend of Roddy's, told the newspaper.
'I knew he was hurt,' Mel Lambert, a rodeo announcer, told the Times. 'I could tell by the way he came down.'
Bert Johnson of Los Gatos, Calif., a gynecologist at Stanford University medical center, assisted volunteer fireman Wally Partridge and others who had rushed to Baldrige's side. Johnson thought Baldrige was already dead, but kneeling beside him, found signs of life.
'By God, we got him going,' Johnson said as men held cowboy hats over the fallen Baldrige to keep him in shade. 'I thought he was dead! That's a boy, Mac, keep breathing. Take in all you can get, Mac!' the newspaper quoted the physician at the scene.
And Roddy, stricken by what had happened, stood over his friend, saying, 'Hang in there, Mac, hang in there.'
Except to say that the evening pre-rodeo barbecue for some 50 people at the ranch would go on as scheduled Saturday, Roddy declined further comment, the Times reported.
At the fairground Saturday night, in Antioch, Calif., the fallen Baldrige was given a cowboy's farewell: a black horse with an empty saddle was trotted around the rodeo ring by a horseback rider. The crowd, heads bowed, was silent.
Baldrige had been listed on the rodeo program as the evening's 'special, honored guest contestant.'
'He comes to you with clean hands and a clear eye,' Lambert, the rodeo's master of ceremonies, said in a brief memorial service before the subdued crowd of about 700 people.
'We lost one of our cowboys,' Lambert, of Salem, Ore., told the crowd. 'Many of you came here tonight to watch this cowboy rope.
'This afternoon there was a little practice session. He was first up and the horse fell on him. He was fatally injured.'
'We'll miss him.'
The crowd then sang 'God Bless America' and the National Anthem.
Said Cooper: 'He died doing what he wanted to do -- and he got both legs.'
