Jayson Werth enjoyed a 15-year career in major league baseball, becoming a World Series champion with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008 and a MLB All-Star the following year. Such accomplishments would seem difficult to top, but Werth says he has found something to match those highlights.

On June 8, the retired outfielder became a co-owner in a classic winner when he teamed with other partners to win the $2 million Belmont Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets with Dornoch before 50,000 fans at Saratoga Race Course.

“I’ll put this up there with anything I’ve ever done. This is the top of sports,” said the owner, whose stable name is Two Eight Racing. “Horse racing is the most underrated sport there is. This is as big as it gets. The emotions you feel when you play in a playoff game, when you win a World Series game, it is the top of sports, and this is where we’re at.”

“Nobody better wake me up. I’ll be damn mad. I’ll tell you right now – just let me keep dreaming,” said Randy Hill of R. A. Hill Stable, a partner with Werth.

Other owners in the Danny Gargan-trained Good Magic colt include West Paces Racing, Belmar Racing and Breeding, and Pine Racing Stables. Along with Hill and Werth, this group partnered in the $325,000 Oracle Bloodstock purchase.

Gargan was drawn to the Runnymede Farm-consigned colt at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale in 2022, and Werth recalled during the Belmont Stakes press conference running into Gargan at the bar at Keeneland during the sale after Werth had been buying fillies at the sale.

Gargan and others said, “You should get on in on this horse. It’s gonna be a Derby horse,” remembered Werth, who was new to the sport at the time.

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“I’m like, yeah,” Werth recalled, with a measure of disbelief.

“Right, Jayson. They always say that,” chimed in the more seasoned Hill.

Except it proved true. Dornoch made it to this year’s Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve, just as his full brother Mage did in winning the race a year earlier in 2023.

Dornoch would not have the same fortune, finishing 10^th after breaking poorly from the dreaded inside post at Churchill Downs. That race followed a disappointing Toyota Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland when he was fourth when rating tactics backfired.

He would have better luck in the Belmont, pressing the pace of Preakness Stakes winner Seize the Grey before taking over a mile into the race. Passed in early stretch by runner-up Mindframe, he battled back to defeat him by a half-length under Luis Saez. Dornoch proved a resilient winner, similar to his win in the 2023 Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct when he nipped Sierra Leone by a nose.

Sierra Leone ran third in the Belmont Stakes after a runner-up finish in the Kentucky Derby.

Werth celebrates at Saratoga. (Walter Wlodarczyk/NYRA)

“You want to see a great race? One of the greatest races I ever saw was when he won the Remsen,” Hill said. “And I knew we were going to win one of these big races.”

The owners credited Gargan and his team with working to overcome various small setbacks with Dornoch, including a quarter crack.

Werth compared the experience of horse ownership to rooting on a teammate in a key baseball game.

“You got guys on base, and somebody hits a double in the gap, and you’re cheering on your guy that’s trying to score from first. That’s kind of like what it’s like, but it’s like two minutes, not 10 seconds or four seconds, whatever.”

Werth said that while betting on horse racing is fun, ownership is “a game changer.”

“This sport is just scratching the surface of what it can be and where it can go, and we need to get more retired athletes in this game,” he said.