Road Trip

We left the house at 4.00 am, bound for points north. We left at such an ungodly hour to try to beat the traffic through North Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

A short time after we left, we were headed northbound on I-95, around Allegheny Avenue. We were in the middle lane when a car passed us, in the left lane, headed in the wrong direction. That's right - some knucklehead was going southbound on northbound I-95. Fortunately, he missed us, and we did not die. It all went by so fast I didn't even have time to make a John Candy joke.

After that near-miss, the rest of the drive was a breeze; a little harmless traffic around the George Washington bridge seemed positively hilarious.

Now we're in a hotel in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, safe and sound, and will spend the rest of the week in Maine (the weather is glorious here; we had to put a long sleeve shirt on Maggie). We're going to enjoy our time here, and while we're gone, we will not particularly be missing Philadelphia. Cheers!

Derby Watch - April 17, 2006

We're three weeks out from the Derby, and here's my take on the contenders (these are listed in order of graded stakes earnings, according to Daily Racing Form):

I will be starting this list with the leaders, and updating this over the next few days, going through the contenders, in order of graded stakes money earned:


Discreet Cat: Brilliantly fast at 2; brilliantly fast at 3; eye-popping winner of big-money race in Dubai.
Comment: I hope he runs in the Derby, as he'll be a short-priced bet-against; no shot to win the race.

Brother Derek: Has just about everything you could want to see in a Kentucky Derby favorite. Is undefeated around two turns; has run fast; has beaten, repeatedly, in Southern California, what for now (with the exception of Stevie Wonderboy, whom he only beat once) looks like the best group of three-year-olds in the country. Solid favorite.
Comment: Certainly has earned where he is, and is a deserving Kentucky Derby favorite. Nonetheless, his running style - it seems that he has to be on the lead, or close to it; when Solis has tried to rate him, he's not run as well - might work against him. I think that he's a top-notch horse, but the running style of the Derby might work against him, and at 3-1 or so he's an underlay, and I'll be betting against him. Might be useful in the bottom half of exotics; could be like Afleet Alex last year, and good enough to hit the board after a tough trip, pace-wise.


Lawyer Ron: Has won six in a row going to Louisville; never lost on a true dirt track; can win from the catbird seat or the parking lot; the last horse to sweep the Southwest, Rebel, and Arkansas Derby was Smarty Jones.


Barbaro

Bob and John

Sinister Minister

Private Vow

A.P. Warrior

Sweetnorthernsaint

With A City

Sharp Humor

Bluegrass Cat

Steppenwolfer

Keyed Entry

Point Determined

Cause to Believe

Deputy Glitters

Storm Treasure

Jazil

Seaside Retreate

Hiatus

Regular readers, if any, are surely disappointed with the delay since my last post. I've got plenty of post-able material -- I had the thrill of playing, on Dubai World Cup Day, a very agressive $60 Pick 3 ticket that hit for a grand total of $88 -- but I've been too busy with other stuff to sit down and write a blog entry that I would want to read if I was on the other side. I'll be back soon, with various and sundry tales that will be enjoyed by all reading this, which is probably nobody....

The Risk

I'm sitting here on a bizarrely warm evening in early February, enjoying a beer and listening to Charlie Parker. It's probably because of that that I'm thinking back to Ken Burns' PBS series "Jazz," especially the episode that deals with the mess that was caused when so many great jazz musicians got hooked on smack in the 1950's. The episode was titled "Risk," and at the time I remember thinking how logical it was that these marvelous musicians and thinkers, who were so enthusiastically going beyond the borders of established music, decided to do the same with their bodies by using heroin. I don't know if Charlie Parker would have been the same person or musician without drugs -- it can be argued strongly that they held him back -- but it is impossible to assess his work now without taking them into account.

And sitting here, thinking about risk, my mind's eye is brough back to a a day a few years ago in Southern California. It was March 6, 2003 (I just looked up the date; I want to say it was the day of the Big 'Cap, but I'm not sure), and it was the day Laffit Pincay rode his last race ever. I was at the track that day, and I remember it vividly; it was a picture-postcard early spring Angeleno afternoon, and the turf course at Santa Anita shone like a freshly minted emerald in the glistening Southern California sun.

It was a 6 1/2 furlong race down the hill, and I had a $10 win bet on Pincay's mount, Trampus Too. I don't remember why I thought the horse was going to win, but despite the fact that I've never put too much stock in jockeys, at least some of my thinking was because of Pincay.

I was still living on the East Coast when Pincay went through his hungry period in the mid-1990's, but I was there frequently as he went through his revival. My racetrack friends, who unlike me were grizzled railbird veterans, talked about it among themselves frequently, and the consensus in our down-at-heels group was that Pincay was as good as ever, and it was only the short-sightedness of trainers that had caused his slump. None of this really mattered by the time I realized what was going on, though, for by then Pincay had begun getting live mounts, and was winning races at a clip that brought back his 1970's glory days.

It is probably an exaggeration, but I like to think that my hadicapping graduation came on a day in the fall of 1998. I was working as a caddie then, and had caught an early Sunday loop, and headed to Santa Anita with a friend from the golf course. I don't remember exactly what day it was -- I went so frequently then that the days tend to get jumbled in my memory -- but I do remember that it was very crowded, and we got there late and couldn't get a seat, and so were forced to bum around the Club House looking for a good spot to handicap and watch the races.

Robert and I were standing at the bar right after a race had been run, and I casually turned the pages of the Form to the races from Northern California. The next race was the lone stakes on the card; I saw a horse I liked, noticed that he was being ridden by Pincay, turned back to the entries page, and saw that this was Pincay's only mount on the day. The horse was trained by the late Walter Greenman (I don't know how I remember these things). I turned to Robert.

"This horse figures in every way. And he's got Pincay. Pincay gave up probably five live mounts here today to fly up to San Francisco to ride this horse. He should be three-to-five. And he's five-to-two. What gives?"

"Well, the favorite is being ridden by Baze," Robert said. "They bet everything he rides up there." Pause. "But the Pincay horse is trained by Walter Greenman. He knows what he's doing." I looked again at the past performances. It was good to go to the track with people who knew what they were talking about, and whom you trusted.

"I have $100 in my pocket, Robert. I feel like betting every cent on this Pincay horse."

"I'd give you an A for guts for that. But for me to bet a week's worth of food and beer money on a horse... I just couldn't do it."

I told him that I reluctantly agreed with him, waited a few minutes, walked to the $50 window, and bet $60 on the Pincay horse. He won by open lengths at 2-1, and I can still see Robert's eyes pop out of his head when I showed him the ticket. The next day I was a minor celebrity in the caddyshack. "You graduated, Chrissy," Corso, my racetrack mentor, said to me. I suppose a normal person would think that he was nuts, but I knew exactly what he was talking about.

After that day, I rooted for Pincay regularly. I bet against him often, of course; then and now my play pays scant attention to jockeys. But when it came time for him to win another riding title, or to break Bill Shoemaker's record, I always rooted for Pincay. If a horseplayer can't believe in redemption, he's in the wrong game.

And so I was horrified when I saw Trampus Too go down that bright spring day at Santa Anita. I was heartened that Pincay got up, but when I read a few days later that he had fractured a bone in his neck, that his career was over, I was very sad. I maintained to that very day that he was as good as any rider on the circuit, even at 56, and I was sad to see his career end. Especially that way.

But sitting here tonight, realizing that Laffit Pincay's ascent from his personal nadir mirrored my education as a horselplayer, I realize that that day in March is a fitting illustration of what horseplayers go through. While our risks are obviously less drastic than what jockeys face, we confront uncertainty and doubt every day. Each Racing Form that we open could either be the ticket to vast riches or a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

And that's what I like about people connected to this great game in general, and about horseplayers in particular: they embrace the uncertainty of life. Talking about horse racing recently, someone told me that I "should cut that shit out" of my life. But that person, secure in the comfortable falsehood that his life is devoid of risk, misses the whole point: that by embracing uncertainty, we horseplayers are reducing its impact on our lives. It's one thing to sit idly by, wondering if you'll be killed in a car crash the next day; it's another to try to seize fate by trying to nail the late Pick 4 at Saratoga. It may be a pasttime that conventional society deems vulgar, and a waste, but I'll take it any day of the week. After all, the cognoscenti at the time thought Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were nuts. I may not be Charlie Parker, but I was there when Tiznow won the 2001 Santa Anita Handicap, and while I may indeed by nuts, a moment and a race like that are enough for me.

How Will He Run Today?

It was the shank end of a gray winter afternoon - last Sunday, to be exact - and I was sitting on the couch and playing with the dog, watching TVG, when I looked up and saw the final odds for a race from Santa Anita. It wasn't a live race, of course - TVG can't show them, and don't get me started on how stupid that is - but was rather a replay of the previous day's Sunshine Millions Classic.

I had intended to play some of the Sunshine Millions races on Saturday - I had played a few small early Pick 3's at Santa Anita - but after the NBC telecast was delayed by hockey - ice hockey! - I bagged the whole thing and went for a bike ride with my wife. I didn't look at or call for results, but when I gave up on the races, I had a hunch that I should call in a $50 or $100 win bet on Lava Man and check in the morning. I ingored the impulse, and I remember thinking later that night that he'd probably won easily, and that I was a fool for passing the race.

Well, by the time I saw the replay, I had gotten over my remorse, and was instead watching to see how the race played out. And after seeing the result, and more important, the fractional times, I thought that there were two possible ways of looking at Lava Man's performance in the race, and both point to a fundamental issue facing handicappers.

Before the race, it was inarguable that Lava Man was the most accomplished horse in the race. The common wisdom - which this time happened to be correct - was that if Lava Man ran anything close to the three impressive races he put together in Southern California last year (wins in the Californian and Gold Cup at Hollywood Park, and a third in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar), he would be tough to beat. But since those races, he had thrown in a couple of clunkers, and the question was which horse would show up - the Southern California world-beater, or the traveling stiff?

Lava Man stalked the leaders, made a big move on the far turn, and won by open lengths. The SoCal champ had returned. Or had he?

One way to look at the race, as Mike Watchmaker pointed out in his column in tomorrow's Form, is that Lava Man beat a bunch of tomato cans, and was not all that impressive doing it. He ran a pedestrian Beyer speed figure - 98 - and he was all out to do so. If he replicates that the next time he's in a GI or GII race, this argument goes, he'll have no chance of winning.

But there is another way to look at the race, and it is one that disciples of pace surely noticed immediately. The early fractions of the race were 21 4/5, 44 4/5, and 1:08 3/5; for a nine-furlong race, even on the souped-up main track in Arcadia, this is madness. The horses who were 1-2-3 at the six-furlong mark finished seventh, tenth, and sixth, with the closest about nine lengths behind Lava Man. Lava Man was the only horse near the pace who was still around at the wire, and his 2-1/4 length win, and even the 98 Beyer, are impressive under the circumstances.

These conflicting interpretations bring to mind a fundamental handicapping question. All the methods one can use in plying this great game - I don't use the word "system," because systems, with their inherent rigidity, are destined for failure - fail in one crucial aspect: no matter how accurately they predict the quality of a horse's recent efforts (and there are hot debates about the relative merits of various methods), they cannot predict with 100% accuracy how a horse is going to run today. And what's confusing about this is that a failure in the method can be blamed on a thousand outside factors: bad luck, poor jockey decision, a bounce, an unfavoring track... the list is endless.

So how do I look at it? I am a believer in both speed figures and pace figures. I believe that both, when used in conjunction (with trip notes thrown in), are the most comprehensive and effective way to play the races. Handicappers who favor speed figures without taking pace into consideration, I believe, are destined for failure, as are those who blindly focus on pace. The two are inextricably related, and the horseplayer who doesn't realize this is up against it. The best plays are the horses who have an edge in both in speed and pace figures. This is true at every track, and at every distance.

And what of Lava Man? When he comes back in his next race - the Santa Anita Handicap, for example - the player can either take a stand against him and his 98 Beyer, or can single him enthusiastically, with the belief that his run in the Sunshine Millions Classic was much better than it appeared. But it's impossible to project how he's going to run without knowing who he's running against, not least because the makeup of the rest of the field is going to go a long way in determining his price. And price is another big factor in handicapping... but I'll save that for another post.

Correction

I have to make a correction to my rant about Magna: the Sunshine Millions is indeed on NBC this year, as it's been every year since its inception. I could blame the Daily Racing Form's website, which didn't mention anything about NBC on their Televised races page, but I will take full responsibility myself. This doesn't change my point, but in the interest of fairness and accuracy, I'll eat a small wing of crow.

Origins

There's death in the air tonight. I can't explain why it seems that way; it just is. Sometimes you're just sitting there, enjoying a nice bit of sunshine or fresh air, or a $4,000 claiming race from Charles Town, and you feel it, and there it is: the feeling of death, on your shoulder like a gentle breeze on a soft May afternoon. Hello, my friend, it says, here I am, waiting for you...

If you're normal, you ignore those feelings... you go out for a walk, for a quick half-pint at the neighborhood pub, for some kind of activity that will shake the demons. If it weren't winter, I would go fishing, or at least think about fishing; that usually gets rid of my heebie-jeebies. But it's deep winter here, even if it doesn't feel like it, and there's nowhere to go, so tonight I'm left to sit here with death on my shoulder.

Maybe it's because I'm feeling particularly maudlin tonight, or maybe because I feel like I owe whatever readers are here (none, most likely) an explanation, but tonight I'm thinking back to how I became a fan of horse racing; tonight I'm thinking back to a night in the spring of 1998, and to my racetrack mentor, Jack Corso.

I moved to Los Angeles in November of 1997 because it seemed like the stupidest thing I could do. I looked for work, and bounced around a few places, until in March of the following year I talked my way into a job as a caddie at Wilshire Country Club, in Hancock Park. Needless to say, the caddie yard was filled with gamblers, and I think learned the layout of the turf course at Hollywood Park before I learned the sequence of holes.

All through that spring, Corso patiently took me to the track and taught me how things work there. To many people, I suppose, his efforts were at best corrupting, and at worst self-serving, but I think that I would have ended up at the racetrack anyway, and being with Corso - he was a racetrack lifer - shortened my learning curve considerably.

The night that I remember so vividly - to quote John Kerry, it's "seared in my memory" - was in May of 1998. Corso had patiently instructed me on the heiroglyphics of the Racing Form, to the point where I felt that making a bet was not a stab in the dark. It was a Friday night at Hollywood Park - how I miss, sitting here on a Tuesday night in Philadelphia, those Friday night cards at Hollywood Park - and I had cautiously placed $5 win bets on the first six races without cashing a ticket.

I had gone to the track with $150, and after buying beers and hot dogs, and paying for the losing tickets, I was down to about $60. The 7th race was a turf sprint, 5 1/2 furlongs on the sod, and I figured that if I was going to go broke at the racetrack, I might as well do go down in flames. I took a look at the form, decided that I liked the 3, who was 20-1.

I didn't say anything to Corso; I walked to the window, bet $20 to win and to place on the 3, and put the rest of my money - enough to get me home, I figured - into my pocket. We walked out onto the sloped blacktop in the grandstand of Hollywood Park. Corso was lighting a cigarette when he looked at me and said, "You bet anything in this race, Chrissy?" I told him what I had done - the 3 horse was now 19-1 - and he looked at me and shrugged.

"Jack," I said, "how much are you down tonight?"

"A hundred and a half."

"I'll tell you what, Jack. If the three wins this race, I'll get you back to even."

"Honest?"

"Sure."

"Come on the three!'

We stood there and watched as the three, Cuvee Brut - I'll never forget that name - shot to an early lead and held on to win. I still remember jumping up and down with Corso that night, hugging each other as Cuvee Brut hit the line first; I hope that someday I'll feel a sense of joy that pure. With horse racing, anyway.

Cuvee Brut paid $41.20 to win and $17.60 to place. My $40 ticket was worth almost $600.

I went to the window and cashed - as I look back on it now, I can see Corso's face watching me, and it's the face of a proud father - and we went back to our seats. I peeled off $150 worth of bills and laid them on the table. He looked at me funny. I told him that I meant what I said; that the dough was his. He took it, and... well, after that we went and played the last few races at Los Alamitos. We had a few more beers. And I was hooked on this great game.