By Mark Patterson
I didn’t realize I’d been set up until the fourth or fifth round of “Buzztime,” a then-popular trivia game at that ubiquitous wing joint where rivers of suds wash down dry rub and burgers no thicker than parchment.
Having embarked for Boardman-unquestionably the capital of chain restaurants-at the exact time dictated by my boss and opponent, we just “happened” to arrive right before a fresh set of questions popped on-screen. Briskly, Joe snaked through seated families, blue collar guys who had just knocked off for the day, and a few young couples on wet- napkin rendezvous.
“This one, ” he said, stopping at one of the brown laminate tables. “The waitress in this section is good.” So was the seat he took-directly facing the nearest monitor. Mine made it difficult to even read the questions. No matter, because by the time I’d fumbled through the log-in and chosen to play as “Cha Cha Charlie,” my foe had posted the 1,000 point max by fingering (literally, on the hand-held-controller) some dude named John Tyler as America’s 10th president.
“Speed matters,” he informed me (Joe, that is, not John Tyler). And the answer to the first question is usually A or B, so I positioned my thumb between those buttons.” It only got worse. “It’s all about the details,” he said, in summary of the bludgeoning.
That mantra well characterizes the extraordinary career of my friend, former supervisor, and mentor, Joe “the Kat” Narcavish, the Army veteran and perfectionist who molded a green, undisciplined, high school dropout into a more than sevicable horse racing official. Just as the New Cumberland native had pre-designed my Waterloo at Buffalo Wild Wings, so did his militaristic execution of job duties provide a template for my own advancement at Mountaineer.
When you worked with Joe, you wanted to match his example, one of perfection forged when racing officials still considered their license a sacred commitment, rather than some lesser of evils resorted to when cleaning the slots area sounded too strenuous. Back when placing judges wore ties and were referred to as “Mr,” Narcavish endured exile in Cleveland, St Louis, Louisiana, and other obscure stations of horseracing purgatory that pulled him far from his wife and two daughters, but methodically closer to a coveted position close to home.
His career took root in the early 70’s, a time of bell bottoms and collar-length hair, when a still thriving steel-industry meant that cars choked both parking lots at the track then known as Waterford Park, and dozens of tellers serviced betting lines 40 deep. A time when the aura of Bill Hartack, a five-time Ky Derby winning jockey who got his start here, and that of Rat Pack members who jetted in to play cards at the old Red Dog out on rt 30 still loomed palpably over the local gambing scene, somehow making racing more compelling, more authentic, than it seems now as most of the handle beams in from off-track, and a single concession stand suffices for Chernobyl-sized crowds.
That’s when a 20-something Joe Narcavish was just beginning to climb the ladder toward his legend. An actual one, rung by icy rung stretching impossibly high into a wind-battered crow’s nest from which the fledgling Patrol Judge filmed races for steward’s review. I used to stare at that rusted, repurposed water tower and marvel at the dedication required to scale its treacherous 50 feet in exchange for maybe four bucks an hour and your name in the program next to a title. Placing judge, paddock judge, identifier, oddsmaker, enroute to his magnum opus as Racing Secretary (the person who both designs and steers a racing program), The Kat would toil at every job in officialdom
That tower has been gone for years, and so have career officials like Joe Narcavish, replaced by transfers from other departments and generic job- seekers funneled down by an HR department with no idea what a morning clocker does. (Hint: It involves workouts and a stopwatch.) They draw pay and try to pretend they have clerical jobs, while obsessing on neat work-spaces and organizatonal skills in order to duck the formidable task of actually learning about horseracing, a self-contained world replete with complexities that three-dimensional chess might envy.
Nobody knows how the best racing official this region has ever seen acquired his nickname. And the taciturn “Kat,” a devout believer in the great Elton’s refrain from Philadelphia Freedom stating that “The less I say, the more my work gets done,” never told me. Somehow, though, it fits a man who spurned the big desk when the big job became his, instead bunkering in a tiny lair-he actually barricaded it with a huge printer and reams of copy-paper-to spy unobtrusively on his purview.
Surpassing his reputation as a consummate, but mere, technician, the profoundly respected Narcavish reimagined Mountaineer’s modest, widely maligned racing program when casino quarters began multiplying purses, and guided its abrupt rise to the top of the bustling mid-atlantic region.
Not bad for a former “River Rat.” That’s the blunt, if descriptive, term for not quite middle- class kids who played tackle football with no pads and learned to handle a pool cue while haunting the bleak streets of lower New Cumberland. When the moment came-for both him and the facility he loved-Joe Narcavish rose to meet it.
His apex- position, however, customarily entails more pontification than the notoriously non-communicative Kat was willing to, or could, expend. Joe was ALWAYS the smartest guy in the room, but took lumps (in abject silence) from horsemen-a perpetually aggrieved group-who liked some sugar with the often necessary word “no” and sometimes misinterpreted his economy of words as mental vacancy or dismissive contempt.
But he did care, maybe TOO much. I learned that while seated five feet from him for some three and a half decades, just as I learned his lingo- not so much the trade jargon that usually betrays a poser,-but a terse, calculatedly distant mode of communicating that kept people at arm’s length while, more importantly, clearing space to focus on the work. If brevity truly IS the “soul of wisdom,” Joe Narcavish could be Socrates.
When the Kat called you sir, you were never quite sure if it indicated mild disaproval or the respect he made you earn. His eyes, the ones incapable of committing or missing mistakes, told the difference. If you looked closely, that is. A slight twinkle conveyed the approval you lived for, while a flat stare-there is some shark in those eyes-meant you should have double checked your work, because he had, and was about to call you out for your errors. “You don’t want Joe Narvavish in you work,” he sometimes advised, the third-person reference belying a healthy and unshakeable ego.
Performing your own duties with accuracy might be the mission statement of a racing official, but spotting the potentially disatrous oversights of others distinguishes your work. Spot an ineligible horse that has somehow slipped past procedural checkpoints-the black hole event of horseracing- and you’re a hero. These corrections are called “catches.” Joe Narcavish made more snags, right at the centerfield wall, than Willie Mays.
This past June, at 73, the true guardian and heart of the irrepressible horse racing facility that has anchored this community since 1951 decided he had done enough. There would be little notice, no long farewells, and doubtful even a parting glance backward from the painfully introverted Narcavish. He just slipped silently into retirement. As silently as a Kat.
