Former Phillies star Jayson Werth fell in love with horse racing. Now he owns a Kentucky Derby favorite.

Jayson Werth played 15 big-league seasons, won a World Series with the Phillies, lost a World Series with the Phillies, made nine trips to the postseason, played in the All-Star Game, and experienced nearly every emotion a ballplayer can feel. Everything except for nervousness.

“Getting nervous is just not who I am,” Werth said. “Even in big games and big moments, I never felt pressure or worry. I didn’t have nerves or feel butterflies or whatever you want to call them.”

So this — the stomach-churning stress of a horse owner on race day — was something new. Werth retired in 2018, dabbled a few years later in horse racing, and has found quick success. But the way Werth used to deliver in October did nothing to prepare him earlier this month in Florida when two of his horses ran the biggest races of their careers.

Knowing he would nervously sweat through his dress shirt, Werth packed three shirts for his trip to Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla. He had a plan. One shirt to watch R Calli Kim, a 7-year-old mare who runs on turf. Another for Dornoch, a 3-year-old colt pointing toward the Kentucky Derby. And a last shirt to change into for dinner.

“I totally yard-sale’d it and left them at the hotel,” Werth said. “I was so scatterbrained. This sport makes me physically ill. From the beginning of the day, I’m just a wreck.”

Werth played professionally until he was 39, knew the end was near, but still wasn’t ready for life after baseball.

“It’s like, ‘Bang. It’s over.’ Now what?” said Werth, who walked away after playing 36 games in 2018 with Seattle’s triple-A team. “You try to figure out what’s next. I didn’t go to college. I didn’t have a degree. I didn’t even really have anything else that I was interested in for 22 years. I ate, slept, and drank baseball. I used to take just a month off after the season and then I started training again. That’s all I did.”

Werth played golf and tennis and invested in some business opportunities. But nothing could replace the competitiveness that fueled his baseball career.

A wrist injury nearly knocked Werth out of the game before he signed with the Phillies prior to the 2007 season. He became one of the most productive hitters in one of the franchise’s most productive eras. He then signed with the Nationals just as they were taking off. Werth made the playoffs in eight of his final 11 seasons. He missed the chase.

“There was nothing that really filled the void that was left by a 22-year professional baseball career, where every year that I played I felt like I was on teams that were supposed to play in October,” said Werth, who hit 95 homers over four seasons in Philly. “I expected to win a World Series every year. There’s not too many people who can say that. There’s not too many people who played on teams every year where the expectation was to win a World Series. That was why I did it. Once it was over, it was like, ‘Now what do we do?’”

Werth, 44, now makes his home near Tampa. He finished a round of golf at a Florida country club when a few other players gathered around TVs to watch horse racing. One golfer, Rich Averill, said he had a horse running.

“I was like, ‘You have a horse running? Like, you own the horse?’ ” Werth said.

Werth used to ride his bike as a kid to pick apples at a horse farm near his home in Illinois. He saw the horses, talked to the owner, and was soon learning how to clean the stalls. When the owner left town for a few days, Werth was in charge to feed the animals. They traveled once to a track in Chicago and Werth slipped the owner $5 to wager on the horse they were there to see.

“The horse won and he gave me like 25 bucks back,” Werth said. “A degenerate gambler for life, I guess.”

It was an introduction to horse racing but nothing more as Werth’s family soon moved away. He didn’t keep up with the sport as his baseball career took off, except for the Kentucky Derby pools they would organize every spring in big-league clubhouses. So he was a little surprised to learn that someone he golfed with also owned a horse. But Werth was also intrigued.

“I started picking his brain,” Werth said. “That was kind of my entry into horses.”

Werth purchased a few horses with Averill and invited all of his buddies from home in May 2022 to watch R Calli Kim run at Churchill Downs.

“These are guys who live in like Podunk, Illinois,” Werth said. “Towns of 50,000 people. Going to Churchill Downs is like going to Yankee Stadium. It was a really big deal.”

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One of Werth’s friends asked him before the race if they could join him in the winner’s circle if his horse won.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, that’s why we’re here. That’s why I brought you guys here,’ ” Werth said.

The horse won, the guys from Podunk went crazy, and everyone spilled into the winner’s circle. When they flashed the crew on TV, a graphic on the screen covered the friend who had asked Werth about coming onto the track.

“So he ended up not being in the picture,” Werth said. “We still laugh about it.”

The day with his buddies was fantastic thanks to R Calli Kim, but the horse suffered injures to two ankles that summer and required surgery. Her racing career was likely over, veterinarians told Werth. Werth and Averill sent her to a farm to rehab and held out hope.

“I went to go see her and she had mud all over her,” Werth said. “Her hair was long. She hadn’t been groomed in forever. I was like, ‘What has happened to you?’ She’s such a personable, sweet horse. She’ll run over to you and let you pet her. Most of these horses are psychotic and want to bite you. R Calli Kim is the sweetest horse in the world. She’s like a puppy. You can hug her and pet her. She’s great.”

The horse returned to the track a year later at Saratogain a $32,000 claiming race, meaning anyone could purchase the horse if they pledged $32,000 before the race began. Werth, who entered horse racing on a whim, found himself emotionally conflicted.

He asked Averill if he was sure they should risk losing the horse. No one is going to claim her, Averill said, as she was returning from injury. But if they did lose her, Averill told Werth that would be OK as they’d make a profit off a horse that might not even run.

“I’m like, this [stinks]. I’m sitting there all sad,” Werth said. “She wins, we’re all excited, and then we’re like, ‘Did she get claimed?’ ‘No, no claim.’ It was almost as exciting as winning.”

Werth kept his favorite horse and she ran again a month later in a $62,000 claiming race at Kentucky Downs.

“It’s almost like running at a county fair or something,” Werth said. “It’s the weirdest place. There’s like picnic tables and tents. No real grandstand. But they run for real money.”

Werth’s emotions at Kentucky Downs were just as heavy as they were at Saratoga. R Calli Kim won again as the horse that veterinarians thought wouldn’t run again charged back from a slow start to dramatically finish in first.

“We go to the winner’s circle and I’m like, ‘Did she get claimed? Did she get claimed?” Werth said. “It’s very, very casual at Kentucky Downs. It’s like no other track. The guy is like, ‘I don’t know if she got claimed.’ ‘Well, can you find out?’ ”

The worker called the claiming office and told Werth they were on a lunch break.

“I’m like, ‘They have cell phones. Call them. Someone has to know,’ ” Werth said.

The winner’s circle included a bar — “It’s really just a folding table with one of those old-school red and white plastic cloths,” Werth said — where they served bourbon. Werth patiently waited, holding out hope that R Calli Kim was still his.

“I had like six bourbons waiting to hear if this horse had been claimed,” Werth said. “They finally call down. ‘No claim.’ You would’ve thought we won the Kentucky Derby the way we acted. We freaked out.

“I played baseball for my whole life, and then you stop playing baseball and you don’t have much to get excited about. You start running horses and pretty soon you’re celebrating like you won the division over a $70,000 purse race in the middle of nowhere Kentucky. It’s crazy what this sport does to you. It’s so much fun.”

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Werth went in 2022 to Keeneland’s September yearling sale in Kentucky, one of the world’s biggest thoroughbred sales where horses can sell for millions of dollars. That’s how he found Dornoch, who has since become one of the early favorites to win the Kentucky Derby.

“I’m extremely lucky to be involved, and the way that I got in on Dornoch is a crazy story,” Werth said. “I went to the right side of the bar instead of the left side of the bar. I just happened to buy the right guy a drink and started talking to him.”

The other owner told Werth about Dornoch, who is the brother of 2023 Kentucky Derby winner Mage and has a pedigree that includes 2008 Derby and Preakness Stakes winner Big Brown. He persuaded Werth to invest in the horse, which sold for $325,000. Werth owns 10%. He bought stakes that day in five colts and two of them — Dornoch and Drip — were on track for the Kentucky Derby before Drip suffered a minor injury earlier this month.

“It’s wild to think about that we are even in this situation,” Werth said. “You buy these things when they’re 1 year old. Outside of pedigree and what they look like, you don’t know if they’ll be fast. These guys who are the big-time players, they spend millions of dollars every year trying to chase this dream. They call it the sport of kings. I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, the sport of kings. Whatever.’ Now I understand why it’s the sport of kings because you have to have the bank account of a king to compete.”

Dornoch won the Fountain of Youth Stakes earlier this month at Gulfstream Park. Four races earlier, R Calli Kim won as well. Everything was perfect, except for the sweaty shirt Werth wore since he left his change of clothes in the hotel.

Dornoch will race again in the Florida Derby on March 30 at Gulfstream Park or the Blue Grass Stakes on April 6 at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky. The colt’s next race is likely his final one before the Kentucky Derby. He has the second-highest total of Kentucky Derby points — which are accrued by a horse’s performance in Derby prep races — and some sportsbooks are giving Dornoch the second-best odds to win the first Triple Crown race. But Werth knows nothing is guaranteed.

“You have to be careful. It’ll bite you,” Werth said. “It’s just like baseball. You get hot in April and you’re going to the All-Star Game. Then you get away from yourself and you get ‘too big for your britches,’ as Charlie Manuel used to say. Next thing you know, you go 0-for-30 and they’re talking about releasing you. Drip was staring at the Kentucky Derby, takes a misstep getting on a van, and is on 60-day stall rest. Sports are very humbling. Horse racing has been the same. You have to keep things in perspective.”

If all goes well, Werth will take another horse to Churchill Downs, the same course where R Calli Kim gave the boys from Podunk a memory. The former baseball star has found a replacement for the trophy he used to chase every summer. This time, he’ll just have to remember an extra shirt.

“Win or lose, it’s like the biggest dopamine dump,” Werth said. “It’s just an emotional roller coaster. You’re totally wiped out and need a nap. It’s wild. I had no idea that this is what I was getting into. I thought it would just be something fun. This is the most underrated sport there is. People who know, know. The fun factor is off the charts.”