The flexible mettle of Shamrock’s Steele
In 1976, Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney sought a quarterback for his Carroll County, Md., farm. The guy he signed has become the consummate all-purpose player.
by Joe Clancy

Harry Harvey, main man to the Rooney family’s horse businesses, called his friend Joe Taylor at Gainesway Farm.

“ We need a farm manager over here at Shamrock Farm in Maryland,” Harvey said. “Three hundred acres, some mares?–? Standardbred and Thoroughbred?–?and we’d like to stand a stallion. But you know, Joe, we don’t want somebody who just knows horses. We grow crops, we’ve got some cattle. We need an all-arounder.”
Taylor knew just the guy, a stallion groom at Gainesway with a farming background, a college degree and aspirations to be a veterinarian. Thirty-two years later, Jim Steele still works at Shamrock.

Kentucky hard-boot turned Maryland horseman, Steele built a career, a family, a life at the Carroll County farm near Woodbine?–?all on the decision to interview with Harvey back in 1976.

“ When I came here, I was still going to go to vet school; I wasn’t going to stay forever,” Steele said in late March. “But now, this is home. When I get up in the middle of the night, I don’t need to turn the light on. I know where the bump is, where the doorway is. It’s home. It’s been a nice fit for me. I like agriculture. I like horses. I like the farming aspect. I like the cattle aspect.”
Steele met his wife, Christie, at Shamrock, and they raised five sons?–?Britt, Michael, Christopher, Jonathan and Timmy?–?in the house built for his predecessor and periodically visited by the farm’s founder (family patriarch Art Rooney, who died in 1988).

Rooney founded the Pitts­burgh Steelers with money he earned betting horses and became a legend in his hometown while spreading goodwill through a lifetime. He bought Shamrock, then a dairy farm, as a retreat/escape in 1948 and made it home base for an operation that included standout homebreds in Standardbred and Thoroughbred racing and evoked a “working-farm” mentality that pervades Shamrock still.

Now more than 600 acres, Shamrock houses stallions, mares, foals, yearlings, some layups, acres of hay, straw and soybeans and the Steele family. Farm equipment gets parked between the fence lines. Extra hay gets sold to local cattle farms. The fences get repaired during down time between busy seasons. The horses stay outside, weather permitting. When Christie isn’t at her desk as farm secretary, often because she stayed up late on a night-watch shift, Steele answers the phone with a simple “Shamrock” and uses old-school sayings like “Good enough” toward the end of the call.

The Steelers are known for generations of success, a no-nonsense approach to the business side of football and loyalty when it comes to coaches, players, fans and the city of Pittsburgh. If that combination helped lead to an unmatched six Super Bowl victories, so be it. The standard would have been the same, win or lose.
Shamrock has produced several Standardbred champions and sustained Thorough­bred success going back 60 years, through Maryland-bred champion Christopher R., longtime Delaware Park track record holder St. Bonaventure and stakes winners Reception Queen, Joan R., Good As Diamonds (Ire), Teeming Shore and Molly. On the Standard­bred side, the farm’s contributions include the amazing mare Lismore (whose 19 foals earned more than $4.5 million), Lisheen (a winner of $500,000), Super Bradshaw, B.G’s Bunny and more.

Shamrock also gets credit for giving Maryland Jim Steele. With the Rooneys’ leadership, Steele steered the farm through a variety of incarnations?–?Thor­oughbreds, Standard­breds, cattle, crops, semen collection for visiting Warmblood stallions?–? whatever was needed. No mere loss leader in a Rooney empire that includes Yonkers Raceway, Palm Beach Kennel Club Greyhound track and more, Shamrock pays its way and improves itself via economic success.
“ I was a Thoroughbred guy, and [former Shamrock farm manager] Arnold Shaw was a Standardbred guy, so the farm took on a Thoroughbred trend when I got here,” said Steele. “But a horse is a horse, and we’ve made it work. The farm has changed and evolved in all kinds of ways since I first came.”

So has Steele. In his 32 years as a Marylander, he has worked on more than Shamrock Farm. He is president of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association and chairman of the Maryland Horse Industry Board, has served Standardbred groups, state agriculture commissions and the Carroll County Farm Bureau, among others. He helped draft a state equine census to give the horse industry data to illustrate economic impact, and still supports the idea of a Maryland Horse Park. Above all, he has worked hard to link agriculture and horses?–? driving home the point that farmers and horse breeders are part of the same industry.

Changing planes
Like a horse trying to get into a crowded maiden field, Steele wound up on the also-eligible list for Auburn University’s veterinary program. He worked at Gainesway and took graduate courses at Western Kentucky University and the University of Kentucky while eyeing the scratch board, then jumped at the chance to interview for the Shamrock job.

Perhaps Kentucky’s most respected farm manager, Taylor recommended Steele. The young man called Harvey and set up an interview and a tour of the farm. A novice regarding air travel and the Baltimore-Washington area, Steele booked a flight from Lexington to Baltimore with a layover in Washington, D.C., in December 1976.
“ I had been to Washington one time in my life, on a class trip as a 12-year-old or something,” he said. “How was I supposed to know you could drive to BWI in 30 minutes?”

No matter. Steele made good use of his time and saw the King Tut exhibit before catching the plane for Baltimore. He met Harvey, toured the farm and liked what he saw. Next came a trip to New York and an interview with Tim Rooney (Art’s son and Steele’s boss today) at Yonkers early in 1977.

Steele fit Shamrock’s job description. He’d learned farming from his father and grandfather. A groom for stallion Crimson Satan and others at Gainesway, Steele knew the breeding business. In addition, he had foxhunted, ridden show horses, owned a Tennessee Walking Horse and operated a small breaking and leg-up business.

“ I knew a little bit of everything, and that really helped,” he said. “I talked with Mr. Rooney, and we went through what he wanted and how it would work. A month later, I was offered the job.”

He started on April 1, 1977 (after a long ride with a U-Haul trailer) and never left. The first night included the drama of Christopher R.’s dam Rita Marie looking like she was ready to foal?–?though she gave her new farm manager a few days before actually delivering.

Tim Rooney knew he had made the right call with the young man from Kentucky.
Christopher R. stood his first season at Glade Valley Farms in Frederick, so Steele shuttled mares back and forth while learning on the fly, delivering foals and trying not to work days and nights.

Word was out about the new guy, and Shamrock hosted a steady stream of salesmen?–?feed, hay, straw, pesticides, supplies. Steele ran them all off until he finally heeded one man’s “but I’ve been selling to this farm for years” approach. Steele answered, “Fine, just send me whatever we ordered last year.” The 55-gallon drums of pesticide lasted years.

The highlight of the new job came on a 1979 Super Bowl trip with the Steelers. Steele flew on the team’s plane, stayed in the team’s hotel, signed autographs as he and future NFL Hall of Famer Jack Lambert and other stars sat at the owner’s table at a party after Pittsburgh defeated Dallas, 35-31.

“ It was culture shock for me, but the whole thing was an experience,” said Steele. “Mr. [Art] Rooney made me feel like a big guy, an important part of it all, and he was always like that. I used to think I was special because he treated me great. Over the years, I found out I wasn’t special. He treated everybody like that. God, what a great guy.”

Shifting winds
Home to a herd of Angus cattle and a majority of Standardbreds when Steele started, Shamrock shifted toward Thoroughbreds once Christopher R. moved to the farm for his second season at stud. A four-time Maryland champion, including Horse of the Year in 1975, Christopher R. won 22 races and more than $400,000 for Shamrock and trainer Tuffy Hacker. The horse serviced the Rooneys’ mares and lured outside clients, and the farm boomed with the rest of the industry, peaking at 120 foals per year.

Shamrock also stood Dancing Count, Thirty Eight Paces and others through the years. The Rooneys purchased two adjoining parcels, and Shamrock gradually added another mare/foaling barn in the mid-1980s, a bigger stallion barn and a nursery area for yearlings on the far side of the farm.

Along the way, Steele put his stamp on Shamrock. He built a wall of Kentucky limestone at the end of the driveway. He planted maple trees along the drive, expanded paddocks and fields, eventually stopped people from using roadside acreage as parkland. At its most successful, Shamrock was mentioned by many as second only to the legendary Windfields Farm in Chesapeake City among Maryland’s breeding-farm elite.

Then the industry changed, the farm’s stallions got old and the farm evolved again. At the end of the 1980s, Shamrock felt the pinch of fewer mares, fewer foals, fewer commercial successes. Unlike many horse farms, however, Shamrock adapted, making money from livestock, crops, Standardbreds, other breeds. When the Rooneys first expanded the farm, there was some rough land out back. Steele filled it with cattle.

“ I got up to 80 cows at one point, then got it back down to 40, then I got it down to 20,” he said. “Twenty was a great number, because I could feed them without doing anything extra. They ate hay that wasn’t suitable for the horses. When I got up to 80, I started growing silage just to feed them.”

As a cattle farm, Shamrock provided the cow exhibit for the Greater Westchester County Fair and Exposition at Yonkers Raceway. The fair hosted hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, and the attractions included Shamrock’s cows, calves, even a bull.

“ We sent a purebred Devon bull with a great big set of horns up there one year,” said Steele. “Well, some kids got to messing with him and were throwing darts at him. The bull got mad, busted out of the stall and started running through the midway. I got this 15-minute call screaming at me. They blamed it on the bull, but it could have been a cow; it could have been anything. If you’d have thrown darts at me, I would have broken loose and run through the midway.”

Steele never sent another bull, and the cow exhibit included a wall and a security guard the next year.

From the start, Shamrock grew more than horses and cows, and Steele’s job now includes caring for 60 acres of wheat straw, about 100 acres of hay and 40 acres of soybeans. While an outside farmer handles the soybeans and combines the wheat, the nine-member Shamrock crew bales the timothy and alfalfa each year. In good years, the farm grows enough to sell. In bad years, it buys a little.
In its latest state, Shamrock stands stallions Cherokee’s Boy, Greek Sun and Rock Slide for the Maryland Stallion Station, plus M Eighty and Purple Passion. Steele expects to foal about 50 mares, some owned by the Rooneys, others for outside clients.

Standardbred mares are treated much like Thor­ough­bred mares, and the yearling field might include both breeds turned out together. Shamrock recently trimmed the staff of 12 to nine when business slowed over the winter but may add more people as the work returns.

Leading by example
In his unique position as the manager of a Thoroughbred, Standardbred, crop and cattle farm, Steele put himself in line for any number of positions representing and leading those industries. First came posts with the Standardbred breeders, via the introductory work of Harvey, then with the Maryland Horse Breeders Association board of directors (he’s been the treasurer and plans to end a three-year stint as president this spring).

Outside of racing, he’s best known as president of the Maryland Horse Industry Board and the man behind the 2002 equine census that gathered crucial statistical information about the state’s industry.

Maryland Horse Industry Board executive director Rob Burk called Steele a key ingredient to the agency’s success.

“ He has done more for the recognition of the equine industry within the agricultural industry than any individual in the sport,” said Burk. “He can always present a reasonable voice for the industry to agriculture, to farmers, to politicians, to anyone.”

Burk and Steele both work to ensure a seat at the table for Maryland’s horses in any state agriculture issues – land preservation, nutrient management, etc. To go with his hands-on nature at Shamrock, Steele knows how to work a room.
“ The first time I met him. . . I remember thinking, ‘This guy? How can he help?’?” said Burk. “He’s got such an easygoing personality that you don’t give him credit. Now I realize he’s got lots of vision, and people look to him. When he makes a point about something, people listen.”

Facing pressure from a weak economy, competition from neighboring states, a bankrupt race track owner and a seemingly underproductive slots law, Maryland’s Thoroughbred industry has stagnated, feeding pessimism.

Not so fast, Steele says. He figures the slots will come and will support racing. The economy forced some bidders to propose fewer machines than were approved, but that won’t stop the creation of viable slot machine locations.

“ Think about it from a business sense: Who wants to take the maximum number of machines?” he asked. “In this economy? Why not start small and build from there? That will work, and it will help the industry, and we will see results.”
From a breeding standpoint, Steele sees a pending shift in the market. Breeders will need to consider racing their foals, planning matings accordingly. He would love to see a return to the days of race tracks forming a circuit of shorter meets.
Long-term health of the industry is the goal, and with it will come a preservation of the way of life.

“ Racing was always a cycle, a circuit. There were a lot of tracks that ran short meetings, and you followed them,” Steele said. “You looked forward to it starting and ending; it had movement. It’s a lot like life on a farm?–?you can’t wait for the first foal, you can’t wait for the last foal, you can’t wait for the hay to be ready, you can’t wait for the seasons to change. You live for those things.”

Steele sees Maryland as the leader in the Mid-Atlantic, even as breeders, owners, stallions and farms turn to Pennsylvania and its slots-fueled breeders’ program. The progress over the border meant new farms, new stallions, new interest?–?often at the expense of similar development in Maryland.

To Pennsylvania’s new, Steele counters with Maryland’s old.

“ We have established farms with established horsemen [whom] people trust and who know what they’re doing,” Steele said. “Shamrock Farm today is not the one I came and saw back in the 1970s. It’s changed and evolved, and so have all the farms in Maryland. We’ve had a chance to make mistakes, change, adapt and ride the ebb and flow. We have the better stallions, the better farms, the better horsemen. Will the industry be what it ought to be? I don’t know; that depends on other things. But we’re a big factory that knows how to make things. We’re just waiting to go back to work.”

The family Steele
Back in the 1970s, when Jim Steele was running salespeople out of Shamrock Farm, he showed particular ambivalence toward a Purina Feed representative. She wanted to sell to Shamrock, but Steele wasn’t buying. Three times, she came to the farm. Three times, Steele sent her home. No sale.

When they crossed paths again, at a Fasig-Tipton sale in Timonium, things changed. They worked for neigh­boring consignors and struck up a conversation bet­ween visits from would-be buyers.
“ You don’t know who I am, do you?” the Purina rep finally said. “I’ve been trying to get on your farm to talk to you about using Purina feed, and you won’t even listen to me.”

Steele started listening, eventually, and that Purina Feed salesperson became his wife a short time later. He and Christie have five sons, the youngest a freshman at Frost­burg University, and have been together 28 years.

His life at Shamrock blossomed into their life at Sham­rock, as the house Art Rooney built for his previous farm manager overflows with Steele family memories. A wall of photos shows the typical family portraits at Olan Mills, a pony-race jockey, a sloppy cupcake eater, a flight of young surfers, a University of Maryland football player, a horse and buggy (Jim at the reins) clopping up the driveway, a collage from the boys’ trip to Europe (they visited everything from the Heineken brewery to the Leaning Tower of Pisa) and more.

Outside, the farm once hosted bonfires for the kids, staged impromptu go-cart races and included a riding ring for the ponies. Now, it’s quieter. The boys have grown; the bonfires have given way to a single golf hole (with another on the way); the go-carts have been traded for cars, the ponies with trips to Atlantic City.
Steele relishes that family life and can’t resist giving a little advice to parents. Boys will be boys, he says, but that doesn’t mean you stay out of their lives.
He took each of his sons, individually, on a trip to Eng­land. They drove, they talked, they ate, they chose bed and breakfasts (sometimes wisely, sometimes not) on the fly, they saw history. Mostly, they bonded.

“ It was great, and I would recommend that everyone do it,” said Steele. “One on one, we got a chance to talk, to be together without the other boys, without me thinking about the farm and without them thinking about school or something. It doesn’t have to be England, it could be anywhere, but going away really was worthwhile. We all got something out of it.”

Each Steele son has a photo album of “his” trip to England and, judging from father’s quick recall, the books frequently get pulled off the shelf.
There’s more to Jim Steele than Shamrock Farm. The would-be veterinarian and ex-Kentuckian talks about mares, foals, stallions, cattle, hay and straw because it’s his job. He discusses the Maryland equine industry and its place within the state’s agriculture community because it’s his passion.

But he would rather talk about his kids, his wife, his relationship with the Rooney family and how fortunate he feels. Thirty-two years ago, he left home a young man with his belongings in a U-Haul. Now, he presides over a farm, a family, a life.
“ It’s been rewarding to raise five sons here; I chose the job, and I love it,” he said. “Look what I’ve got. Look where I live. I love what I’m doing. I traded off a little of the money I might have made in another job for the life I have. I’m not the greatest horseman, not the greatest cattleman, not the greatest hay man. . . I’m more of a man for all seasons I guess.”

And just the man Harry Harvey was looking for.