A tribute to the underdog James Augustus Bachman: 1947-1991 Despite his humble beginnings, Jimmy Bachman came to excel at polo – the sport he loved with a passion and played entirely by his own rules, writes Marcus Rinehart
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recognise Bachman as a paragon of natural ability and work ethic in polo. If Braddock had an iron jaw and Aaron had home-run batting, then Bachman had innate horsemanship. Born in Hackettstown, New Jersey in 1947 and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia – where his father, Augustus, worked for the family of Hurlingham’s own Roderick Vere Nicoll – Bachman spent his childhood around horse farms and accordingly began riding at an early age. In his late teens, he pursued his growing interest in polo by way of a grooming job at the Farmington Hunt Club, where members would play chukkas in the newly renovated outdoor arena every Friday night. Bachman and his fellow grooms – among them, rising players Clarence Mundy and Danny Shifflett – sought compensation beyond the monetary, of course; their seemingly insatiable eagerness to play eventually gave rise to a tradition of clandestine ‘midnight polo’. On any given Friday, when the game and its after-party had ended,
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Young Jimmy’s eagerness to play gave rise to a tradition of clandestine ‘midnight polo’
Jimmy and co would patiently wait for the players and their guests to depart and that last set of headlights to vanish from the end of the driveway. The grooms would then re-tack the very horses they had just untacked, remove the mallets they had pre-emptively hidden in the stalls, and take to the arena. Such enthusiasm, determination and willingness to bend the ‘rules’ foreshadowed the professional careers some of these young men, especially Bachman, would go on to lead. After a year of service with the US 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam – for which he
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Though popularly regarded as ‘the sport of kings’, polo also has a strong tradition of success among underdogs. As in the case of boxing champion James J Braddock or baseball legend Hank Aaron, many professional polo players hail from working-class backgrounds and build their careers seemingly against all socio-economic odds. Most famously, Cecil Smith – perhaps the greatest American player in history – transformed himself from Texas cowboy into 10-goal international pro without any of the resources that benefited his contemporaries, such as Tommy Hitchcock. Nonetheless, Smith’s widespread reputation is something of a novelty among the majority of polo’s outliers, and not every story fits the fairy-tale stereotype – had Jimmy Bachman achieved a level of fame proportional to his achievements in the sport, then an article such this might have appeared in Sports Illustrated or The New York Times long ago. Regardless, any player worth his or her salt should
