'All a sign.' For one group of Wisconsin friends, Mystik Dan's Kentucky Derby win was bigger than a horserace
If you’ve ever asked someone who cares even a little about horse racing how to bet, then you know there are many answers.
During a race like the Kentucky Derby, or the upcoming Preakness Stakes, the strategies could be countless.
It’d be hard to count all of the dollars won and lost and the screen time spent scouring the statistics or the final moments deciding if you want to go with the gray horse or the favorite or the long shot or the number or name you like the best or some version of all of them.
Every now and then, these synchronicities sync up. Sometimes, these turn into a win. And sometimes, it turns into something that really counts.
After all of the glitz came and left Churchill Downs, and eyes turned to the next thing, something about a grainy Facebook scene showing four men wearing t-shirts in a Wisconsin garage with beer growlers and video games in the background is still worth watching.
When you watch it, you relive the race with them. They clap, jump up and down and yell one chant over and over: “Let’s go, Mystik Dan!”
As the race goes on, the cheers crescendo, and the high fives are infectious. They look so excited, discouraged for a second, and then excited again.
And, well, you know how it ends.
Here’s what you don’t know.
Their excitement was not really about winning $400 split a few ways on a $20 bet split a few ways. And that bet was a lot for this crew, who rarely gamble more than $1 on the occasional NBA game and had never bet on the Kentucky Derby.
It wasn’t even about their friend, Dan, whose name, in part, inspired their choice, or this group of neighborhood friends in Green Bay and how they model friendship.
It was mostly about Mike.
You can see him in the middle. Mike Schmidt is the 40-something guy wearing a black T-shirt with a big smile. It looks like he’s cheering loudly along. He wants to, but he can’t.
That’s because of cancerous tumors pressing on his windpipe. He found out days prior about the diagnosis of Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a type of cancer. His voice has been dimmed down to a strained whisper that you wonder if it hurts for him to talk.
It doesn’t, he says to this Courier Journal reporter, so he keeps talking.
He wants to talk about why they picked that horse.
Mystik Dan wore No. 3, which coincides with his youngest daughter’s birthday on March 3.
When the group looked at the odds for Mystik Dan, they stood at 16-1. That would be a nod to Schmidt’s older daughter, Ave Rae, who passed away less than two years ago, due to severe and sudden complications with the flu. Her birthday was Feb. 16.
“It was all a sign,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt showed up on that first Saturday in May at Jose Mercado’s garage, where many hang-outs are held. They play darts there, drink beer, and talk about life.
They’ve had a lot to talk about. This is the same group of friends who take trips together and tailgate, as you’d expect from Green Bay boys, at Lambeau Field to watch the Packers. They all went to Ave Rae’s funeral in Dec. 2022 and used the hashtag #AveRae4Ever to keep her light alive. In the video, you can see one of them, Jimmy Levash, wearing a sweatshirt sporting her name, "Rae."
When these friends heard about Schmidt’s diagnosis, and maybe didn’t know what else to do, they showed up to help put his patio furniture together.
“They are just an amazing group of human beings,” Schmidt said.
A couple of weeks ago, in this same garage, Jose’s wife, a nurse practitioner named Kristin, was the one who felt the knot in Schmidt’s neck and told him it was worth checking out. “She was my angel on earth,” he says of Kristin.
By the time Derby Day rolled around, they knew why it had been worth checking out. They knew about the scary medical scans of Schmidt’s throat and chest.
Schmidt knew something, too, a lesson maybe you only learn from loss. His worst day was already behind him.
“I had to bury my 14-year-old daughter,” he said. “Any pain I feel is dull in comparison to that.”
So, he looks ahead. As a man of strong faith, he reminds himself “God tells us that things happen for a reason.”
It's like what happened in that garage when you watch them watch Mystik Dan win.
“It was legit two minutes of pure joy,” he said. “It was kind of a break from everything going on in my head. Two minutes of not worrying about it meant everything."
In his head, he wasn’t worried about the days-ago diagnosis or the chemo coming up. He’s happy because he’s around his friends.
“I think that's what showed in that video,” he said. “The love and friendship. No matter what it is, we’re going to be there for each other."
A new hashtag has already started: "#SchmidtyStrong" and some new merchandise dropped in honor of Schmidt's favorite phrase, "Giddy Up." A portion of sales will go to the Vince Lombardi Cancer Clinic at Aurora BayCare Medical Center. You can bet at least a few guys will buy those shirts.
They're the ones who hope to be together to watch the Preakness Stakes on May 18 and maybe bet another cool $20 on Mystik Dan, if the now-famous horse enters the race.
Maybe they’ll win again, but you never know how things are going to play out, especially a horse race.
When Schmidt watches the next race, he’ll cheer. But he won’t sweat it. Take it from him: These are some of the good moments. Don’t spend them worrying about what’s next.
Reach reporter Amanda Hancock at ahancock@courier-journal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Wisconsin friends' Kentucky Derby win on Mystik Dan bigger than a race
