The Gap Year

This is our gap year.

After 20 consecutive years of heading off to Saratoga in August for a week of eating out, wall-to-wall handicapping, and praying for a photo finish to go our way at the finish line, my friend Johnny M. and I will not be making the trip upstate this year.

Johnny M.'s been going to Saratoga as far back as when Lamb Chop ran in the Alabama, and Johnny D.'s been going there since the 1975 Travers when he went there for the first time, found himself parked on someone's lawn on Travers Day, had no seat inside the track, but did have a decent day when Wajima, ridden by Braulio Baeza, was backed in the Travers.

The broadcasters on America's Day at the Races have been yapping it up about their long looked-forward trip to Saratoga this year. Almost forgotten is that there will be no spectators, just like there have been no spectators at Belmont's recently completed meet.

What it will be like up there with the town in some phase of reopening due to the coronavirus pandemic is anyone's guess. Only trainers and jockeys, stablehands and broadcasters/media people have been allowed at the tracks so far. Now, now to eight owners can attend the races when their horse is entered.

Social distancing is observed, and face masks are the order of the day. But once you get past that, the telecasts have been first rate, the betting and payoffs the same, as if on-track wagers were driving the handle, and you almost don't even realize there's no one in the stands.

That doesn't mean as much downstate as it does upstate, when nearly 20,000 people a day on average attend the races. Belmont and Aqueduct, not so much. Relatively very few, actually.

With no guarantee of even getting in the track (even with a proposed lottery system) there is little purpose served by even trying to go and get lucky at the admission gate, as well as getting lucky at the windows. This has lead to necessity being the mother of all inventions: the Saratoga backyard.

Mr. Mark Struffolino of Rotterdam New York has recreated the Saratoga backyard into his own backyard. He has placed a picnic bench, a replica of the quarter pole, and most significantly a red and white canopy covering a flat panel TV screen mounted on a pole, just like the ones found all over the back of the track. Because if Saratoga is a racetrack first, it is a picnic ground second.

Mr. Struffolino's efforts have hardly escaped media attention. A local radio station did a story on him, as well as a segment of Saturday's America's Best Racing telecast that had Greg Wolfe interviewing Mr. Struffolino about his creation.

Mark said a group of his friends with construction skills got involved in the project. He had to get a permit from the town to erect the canopy. And now his wife is laying claim to the canopy's colors after the racing season. She wants them to be blue and white recognizing the New York Yankees. He likes Mike Repole, but his family is not a blue and orange Mets fan. Sorry Mike.

Mr. Struffolino's canopy is going to resemble the canoe in Saratoga's infield lake: getting painted the colors of the winning owner of the Travers each year. And since in a normal sporting year, baseball starts before the season at Saratoga, it is conceivable that his canopy will start the year blue and white, morph into red and white come mid-July, and then revert back to blue and white after Labor Day. Mr. Struffolino has created his own Empire State lighted tower, changing colors depending on what's going on. He better keep a supply of the right colors handy.

My own nod to creating a Saratoga atmosphere in the yard is hardly up to Mr. Struffolino's. Mine only consists of annually  planting red and white impatients flowers around the shed. This is the first year the small impatients have once again been available after the milkweed scourge. They don't look very good, but the intention is there to evoke an upstate atmosphere. I once thought of a minutes-to-post countdown clock, but abandoned the idea when it seemed too hard to find one.

So, given the first Saturday of the unusual 2020 Meet, Johnny D. and Johhny M. met at Johnny D's place to enjoy a "day at the races."

Two sets of classic past performances were download, along with a Closer Look, an analysis feature of the Daily Racing Form that has started to shrink as the publisher no longer contracts comments for all the races on the card. Perhaps half the card gets a printed analysis.

There is nothing like hitting your first wager, and hitting it square, $4 to win on the second race, returning $23.60. But the joy does evaporate, when the best you can subsequently do is to lose close photos and be on the end of split 1-3 exactas, sometimes by inches. The early profit disappeared like ice at a picnic.

As lousy as it is to lose, you can still enjoy a day at the races, even if you're not really at the races. The 10th race, the five horse Coaching Club American Oaks for 3-year-old fillies at a mile and an eighth, was a tantalizing race to handicap and play.

The West Coast trainer Bob Baffert shipped in a filly, Crystal Ball that had only two starts, a maiden special weight score in its second race, winning by six lengths. The Beyer speed rating was good, but winners of maiden races, no matter how well they do it, are hardly often entered in Grade I races for their next effort. It is just not done, expecting a maiden winner to take on other more experienced horses, at least one of whom has already won a Grade II stake race, Tonalist's Shape.

The betting public wasn't buying into Baffert's horse. Tonalist's Shape, the 9/5 morning line favorite stayed the favorite, while Bob's horse drifted up to an ultimate 4-1. I was salivating.

I didn't care that Bob Baffert was just handed a 15-day suspension for positive drug tests. If you win and fail the drug test later, they still pay the pari-mutuel side off first. A positive test and disqualification only affects the purse distribution and possible trainer fine and suspension after the race is made official. Shipping in from the West Coast with such a lightly raced horse showed confidence. And not reckless confidence coming from a trainer who historically does this sort of thing with great success. (See the Haskell results.)

When you bet, you have to put aside personal animus toward the human, and go with what you see as the horse's ability. And Crystal Ball was screaming confidence in their ability. They were a $750,000 auction purchase by WinStar Stablemates Racing; a Malibu Moon sire matched to a Giant's Causeway mare, Deja Vu. (Thus the clever name.)

With the odds going up on Crystal Ball, I stepped a bit out of my shoes with my win bet. Nothing huge, just a bit out of character for me. I was backing it up oddly enough with 10¢ boxed Supers leaving Velvet Crush out. And when Velvet Crush fell out of the starting gate, my Super was never in doubt. It was only how much it was going to pay given the order of finish.

Down the stretch they come! Not Tonalist's Shape, but Crystal Ball and Paris Lights, the other WinStar horse trained by Bill Mott. Tonalist's Shape was a disappointment and a puzzle, since he trainer opted to make an equipment change by putting blinkers on, even after the last race was a win with them off.

The trainer/broadcaster Tom Amoss explained that you usually need special permission to make such a change after a win. The trainer, Joseph Safie Jr., had their reasons, whatever they were.

Paris Lights and Crystal Ball dueled like Jaipur and Ridan. Forget who won? As my friend says, there is no race named Ridan.

In deep, deep stretch it looked like Paris Lights is going past Crystal Ball. There is no daylight between them. They are glued to each other and jostling as if they were in the subway. You couldn't squeeze a Post-It note between them. Crystal Ball comes back in front slightly, only to be headed by Paris Lights.

For me, I know I made the right bet, despite losing. Crystal Ball got a huge number on my rating system. The odds were going up. The numerical difference on my rating system was so far ahead of the second and third place horses (tied) that a win bet was for me the logical bet.

I didn't enjoy the result, but I enjoyed the stretch duel. Who came out ahead for the day? Johnny M. For some reason, he placed no bets. But he was very well read.

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