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C ome on, baby. Come on, .little fat girl." "Come on, sweetie. Come here before I slap you down/' "Come on. Mind your manners, young lady. Don't get smart. Put that foot down before I knock the ears off you." It Is 6 in the morning at Barn 22C at Saratoga Raceway. The grooms are in the stalls talking to the horses, shaking out the straw. Spot, the old, subdued dog, sleeps on the dark, raked-earth floor. Toes and Calico and the other cats wait on Popeye to bring their breakfast of jelly doughnuts and chicken. A rooster crows, far off. Sparrows awake in the dim eaves. There is the fundamental sound of water slowly filling a pail. "I had a good time way down in Georgia," sings January. Large safety pins that had done up bandages are fastened to his trouser leg. Alston, a slender, amused man of some abandon whom they call January, is a groom. He does not know why he is called January. "They just call you anything when you come on the racetrack," he says. January, who is 63, came on the racetrack in 1934. He makes $550 a month, shipping money and, on occasion, stake money. January, like other stable grooms, works a 42 hour week oaring for ten horses and their stalls. He has four children. "That's why I ain't got no money," he says. "Only things I never had was no money and no car." January is leery of cars. Once, when he was 18, his employer sent him for the papers. He was reading the dope as he drove back. "I was sideswiped," he says, ruefully. "I was scared four or five days. I wasn't doing no betting then either." "This is a pretty good game," January says. "Nothing wrong with this job. Ain't nothing to it if you start on time. Everything all right. I've fooled around. Now this is a little easier than fooling with polo ponies, which I did. War shot that polo racket." January was born in Warren County, Va. "I don't know the town," he says. "They got counties there." He was raised in Red Bank, N.J. "I worked all kinds of farms in Jersey to make a little spending money. I worked in a defense plant. This here job is more exciting. It's not demeaning." "Only way to get along with a horse is find out if they mean or just roguish. That's the little secret. A horse like music, you know. Most generally a horse like the radio, This is a good game, a good game, real good game. A GOOD game." "Tell your ma and tell your pa. . .," sings January. B. B, washes luscious Newport's face with a damp rag. "This mare might win off her class," he says. "Off her class. Ain't nothing in there can beat her. You got nothing to worry about. All you got to dois get out there and run, Luscious, She'll win that little old race tonight." "Ain't got no boots," says Big One, who must weigh 250 pounds. "I'm gonna get a job as a ballboy. The New York Knicks. A good job." "How'd the Knicks do last night?" "They lost." "Morning, Richard. How you this morning?" "Still getting up." "Still make it. Richard had to decide between the ring and the racetrack. You heart beating, Richard? Can you see? You can still fight." Richard McKinney is 31 and once had visions of fighting professionally. He wasn't much as an amateur, however. He was born in Carver, Tenn., wears violet socks, has six children and is a hot walker, the humblest and most "A man can't really say the world has done him an injustice," Richard says. "A man is what he makes it. The world don't owe me anything. Just a small chance, I'll make it. I'm always looking for something else. One of the advantages the racing game has is the chance to do something else. You get around. Do you know a good job a man could latch on to?" It is 8:30 a.m. Frank Rodgers, the assistant trainer, goes down the row of stalls in his tweed cap, looking in at the quiet, mute horses; large, dusky, inviolable eyes they have. Some of the stalls are eerily lit by light bulbs. Don Hoover, the young trainer, high pants, container of coffee in his hand, rushes through to his office in a white house in the compound between Barns 22A and 22B. Zu Zu, a black cocker fat with age and in-