A Lovely Span of AAAs

It was quite a number of years ago when John Updike had a book of poems titled Verse. It was a naturally thin paperback of two of his published books of poems, The Carpentered Hen and Telephone Poles. It was 75 cents.

One of the poems goes on about an author's name, M. Anantanarayanan, and how it is a sumptuous span of "a's" and "n's" more lovely than "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan..."

Indeed it might be a sumptuous span, but it looks nearly unpronounceable. It seems like a name Murray would have purposely dug up to torture Ted Baxter on the evening news on the Mary Tyler Moore show.

Yet, something about the poem always stuck, and I became conscious of words that had strings of repeating letters. Like Canada. Always loved those hockey puck mints. And Saratoga. Always love going there. And this year was no exception.

There was a time I would have had absolutely no use for the place. It interrupted downstate racing. The month of August was spent upstate, and you couldn't reasonably get there and back by bus, or train in the same day. It just made for an extremely long day. At the start of every season, Frank Sullivan would publish some kind of ode to the place in the Sunday Times and I was further inflamed. In fact, Frank wrote so much about the place that there is a street bordering the track called Frank Sullivan Place. It only seemed like a place where the prices went up in August and the locals stiffed the downstaters. Or, at least that's what I believed when I read the cynical columnists who wrote downstate for papers that probably weren't sending them up there expenses paid.

Age changes attitudes, and now of course I love quoting Red Smith who wrote, "from New York City you drive north for about 175 miles, turn left on Union Avenue and go back 100 years." Red loved the place too, and probably would have even if his paper wasn't sending him up there with an expense account. They named a turf race after Red Smith. It's something they do.

So now it's a 6 week meet, when the downstate horse racing thoroughbred circus moves upstate, starting in late July and ending on Labor Day. So that means pretty much the same names are there: owners, jockeys, trainers and horses.

And one of those names is Patrick Kelly, a trainer from a family of trainers, but who is not known to many, certainly because he hardly wins. To be in the month of August and have been responsible for 3 winners is not a vote of confidence. But Kelly is patient, and makes good use of who he has under his wing. The trouble is, you need a lot of patience. Mr. Kelly seems to practice the craft of playing his cards close to his vest. You never really know when one of his charges is really ready to strike, or is just out there for exercise. He's called "crafty" if you're not cursing him. He's always a possible maybe. But with 3 winners and a percentage you find with a tweezer, you tend not to worry. But you should.

One of his notables is a horse named Naughty New Yorker. who has run nearly 50 races and who, up until Friday, had compiled earnings of just under $1,000,000. A tidy sum by horse racing standards. At least a second place finish in Friday's race will put him over the mark. For those involved, a nice club to be in.

Naughty New Yorker is a New York bred horse, which now means his mom (mare) was stabled in New York when he was conceived. Rules regarding breeding have changed a bit over the years, but there is still a cachet, and value to where you were born, and who had you. "Breed the best to the best and hope for the best" is the watch-word.

Now Naughty had won plenty of races. You can't get near a $1,000,000 without getting there first more than a few times. In his case, up to Friday, he'd started in 48 races and won 12 of them; finished second 6 times and third 7. A solid record.

But Naughty is now 7 and has not been doing well. At all. He's been 7th several times, and has been beaten by many lengths. He's 20-1, and deserves to be. But he's also at Saratoga, that lovely span of AAAs, where things go well for some. And this is no secret. His Saratoga record is in The Daily Racing Form for all to see: six starts, three wins and one second. He loves the place. This is called "horses for courses." Several years ago he won a stakes race at Saratoga when we were there. I congratulated the woman next to me who had him, because I certainly didn't.

No, he didn't win on Friday. But he did finish 2nd, and did go over the million mark. But most significantly, he nosed me out of my exacta (picking the first and second place horses) and a certain profit. It took me more of the afternoon to recover from that one.

Kelly was doing it to me again. He's a Naughty New Yorker.

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