Ben Agajanian is alive and kicking. OK, alive.
At 88 and living in Los Alamitos, the man who pioneered placekicking as a separate job in professional football, is walking around on two replaced hips and two replaced knees and getting to the racetrack to see and bet on his horses quite nicely, thank you.
Horse racing has been part of his life for about the last 50 years, but the only big-time run he had was with Alyrob, eighth in the Santa Anita Derby in 1996 and also eighth in the Kentucky Derby that year.
He had a horse named A.P. Charlie that was claimed from him Oct. 8. A few days later he claimed a 4-year-old filly named Lockitup. Lockitup is scheduled to run Friday at Santa Anita in one of the cheap races.
No matter to Ben, who just likes being in the game.
Always did, matter of fact.
His father was a sheepherder who came to this country from Armenia in 1913, soon ended up in Santa Ana with a garbage truck and a couple of pigs, built a farming and disposal business into a fortune and had sons named Ben and J.C.
J.C. was six years older, liked to tinker with cars and got into the field full throttle when a local promoter tried to run off with the bag of money that was the purse to pay the drivers. J.C. chased him down, got the money back and the other drivers decided he should be the promoter.
Eventually, he owned cars that won two Indianapolis 500s, one driven by Parnelli Jones and the other by Troy Ruttman.
J.C. Agajanian, a fixture for years at the Indy 500, riding around the pits in his huge cowboy hat and cowboy boots, died at 70 in 1984.
Ben was a football player of some local repute who went from Compton Junior College to the University of New Mexico, then had what would have been to most a career-ending injury. He was at a summer job and had the toes on his right foot crushed so badly in an elevator accident that he had to have them amputated.
Ben wrote the New Mexico coach a letter and said he wanted to come back, try to keep playing the defensive line, but mainly continue as a kicker.
"Didn't hear a thing," he says, "so when it was time for practice to start, I got in my car, drove to Albuquerque, walked into the middle of a coaches' meeting, sat down and waited for them to finish. After a while, the coach looks up and says, 'What are you sitting there for? Go get your uniform on.' "
So Bootin' Ben, the Toeless Wonder, was reborn.
