AN EVEN BETTER SILVER CHARM?

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Usually when stars disappear for a few months, rumors rush in to fill the void. Have they been running with the wrong crowd? Are their faces under reconstruction?

Silver Charm was in some pretty fast company even before he faded from view in June after coming within a length of sweeping the Triple Crown races. And while he definitely has changed in looks over the past six months, there's no hint of scandal or surgery here.

The only thing Silver Charm is guilty of is filling out, adding a couple of hands and a hundred pounds to his frame. ``The Big Horse,'' as trainer Bob Baffert affectionately called the silver-gray colt during his exhilarating Triple Crown campaign, now is swallowing up huge chunks of ground with every supple stride.

After putting Silver Charm through his paces one morning recently, jockey Gary Stevens, who rode the horse to victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and to a second-place finish in the Belmont, gushed to owners Bob and Beverly Lewis: ``This is a different horse. This is even maybe more horse than we had before.''

You can see for yourself today when Silver Charm races in the season-opening Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita. The seven-furlong race is the horse's first competitive outing since his narrow loss to Touch Gold in the Belmont on June 7.

Silver Charm's bid to become the first winner of the Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978 elevated interest in horse racing to electrifying levels but flattened the animal's immune system. He developed a fever a few weeks after the Belmont, by which time Baffert already had told the Lewises that he planned to rest the horse until the Malibu Stakes.

Baffert's wish was the Lewises' command. They were a trainer's dream before Silver Charm's brush with history, and the colt's intoxicating success hasn't sent their heads spinning. The beer baron and his wife haven't become inebriated with their celebrity.

At their Lido Isle home in Orange County the other day, Bob sat entertaining a visitor while Beverly slipped in and out to make coffee and answer the telephone.

The latter rang off the hook during Silver Charm's remarkable run, as long lost friends reconnected with the Lewises.

Their postman also had his hands full, delivering as many as 50 letters a day, some of them from people the Lewises had fallen out of touch with after their college days at the University of Oregon.

Suddenly, anyone who had the Lewises' phone number had an opinion on how the owners should proceed with Silver Charm. Bob and Beverly graciously listened to everyone but paid attention only to Baffert.

``You don't really know if you have a great owner until you have a great horse,'' Baffert said the other day, after working out Silver Charm and a handful of other horses in his stable. ``At that point, the owner starts getting advice from everyone, but Bob has stuck to the game plan. He hasn't become a control freak, like some owners, including those in other sports.''

A week before Silver Charm's return to the track, it was tough to tell who was chomping harder at the bit, the colt or Bob Lewis. He returned home from a trip to clocker's corner raving about the horse's times. It was obvious to him why Baffert hadn't yet started to ``leak,'' the trainer's colloquialism for confidence loss.

``What I really took particular note of was the length of his stride as he came down the stretch in his workout,'' Bob Lewis said of Silver Charm. ``With his added size, his stride is enormous.''

Silver Charm's silken stride was what sold Baffert on the colt. He bought him for the Lewises for $85,000 off an auction block in Florida after viewing a videotape of the horse in action. Afterward, he told the Lewises he had found ``a ham sandwich'' (as opposed to prime rib).

Baffert got the ham part right in one respect. He and the Lewises both say the horse is a born performer. Baffert has noticed that Silver Charm plays shamelessly to the television cameras. Lewis recalled a day held in the horse's honor at Churchill Downs in June. As Silver Charm was paraded around the track, Lewis said the horse bowed his head to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd.

``We think he's right next door to being human,'' Bob Lewis said.

The Lewises usually spend Christmas with their three children and grandchildren in Sun Valley. But not this year. Afraid of getting stranded in their own private Idaho by inclement weather, the Lewis clan gathered in Arizona instead, within easy reach of Arcadia.

They wouldn't miss the $200,000 Malibu Stakes for the world because Silver Charm means the world to them. Indeed, when it came time to choose a photograph for the front of their Christmas card this year, there was little debate. Silver Charm nosed out the Lewises' golden anniversary celebration.

Fifty years of wedded bliss is exceptional, but Bob Lewis wasn't talking about his marriage when he said, ``I still to this day have to pinch myself. Who in the world are we to be so privileged?''

Bob Lewis has hit a heckuva trifecta, as he acknowledged after the first leg of the Kentucky Derby when he turned to Beverly and said, ``On my tombstone I want it to say, `Loving husband, adoring father and winner of the 123rd Kentucky Derby with Silver Charm.' ''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) Gary Stevens will be aboard Silver Charm again today in the Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita.

Associated Press

(2) Silver Charm's Preakness run in May was the last time the horse won a race.

File Photo