There are two principal owners of the winner of this year's Derby, Always Dreaming. It's as if George Steinbrenner came back to be described as the principal owner of the Yankees. If you made use of the Daily Racing Form's past performances you would have noted that the owner of the horse is listed as: MEBBklynTViolaStEliasSienaWPT. That is a scramble of upper and lower case letters befitting an unhackable password.
Parsing the ownership with Mr. Drape's story, you can see that the two principal owners, Anthony Bonomo and Vincent Viola, the two youngsters from Williamsburg Brooklyn who were taken to the racetrack by their fathers, you would understand the Bklyn part of the password. One of the two, Vincent Viola, went to West Point and was President Trump's designee for Secretary of the Army until he withdrew his name because he'd never be able to clear the conflict of interest hurdles his background would be subjected to. It seems the boy from Williamsburg became a Wall Street billionaire. Showtime's 'Billions' anyone?
The West Point attendance of Mr. Viola does not solve the WPT part of the stable's name. The WPT stands for West Point Thoroughbreds, run by Terry Finley, a stable of partnerships in itself. The rest remains unknown, at least to me. The former racetrack announcer Tom Durkin is said to own a piece of Always Deaming's tail. I can't tell if his association made it into the law firm's letterhead.
Anthony Bonomo is known for being the former Chairman of the New York Racing Association. (NYRA) He had to abandon that position when his insurance firm, Physicians' Reciprocal Insurers (PRI), was coming under heat during the federal corruption trial of former Majority Leader Dean Skelos. Mr. Bonomo was a witness at that trial. Mr. Skelos, was convicted, along with his son, and both are now getting their mail at a different home address. Along with visitors.
The insurance firm, PRI, was in financial straits before Mr. Bonomo resigned, having a negative rating with liabilities exceeding assets. He seems to have escaped the attention given to Paul Reddam,when I'll have Another won the 2012 Derby. Mr. Reddman's business dealings were front page NYT news. Mr. Bonomo seems to enjoy a bit of favorite son status.
The fifth member of our group, The Assembled, who is similarly Brooklyn born and raised, told me he might have had Always Dreaming if he knew about the Brooklyn connections of the owners. Whatever angle gives you a winner is a good angle.
The memory trigger in Mr. Drape's story is the reference to these gentlemen, as young boys, being taken to the track by their fathers. As for myself, my own first time at the track was not with my father. He didn't like anything to do with the racetrack and was convinced I was headed down a road to doom. It didn't happen, Dad.
Mr. Viola is quoted as saying, "Anthony and I...who went to the racetrack for the first time with their dads and were just astonished by the brilliance of these athletes, equine athletes," is basically full of horsefeathers. No dad ever went to the tack to admire athleticism. They went there to hit the Daily Double; to stand in line at the Sellers windows and hope the tickets (the pasteboards) they paid cash for would entitle them to go around to the other side of the bay of mutuel windows after the race was declared official and receive some Alexander Hamiltons, Andrew Jacksons, U.S. Grants and maybe even some Benjamins in return. The more the better.
A long-ago sports writer for the New York Post, Leonard Schechter, accurately pointed out that no one would go to the racetrack just to watch. If there was no wagering, there would be no attendance.
My own repeated attendance became solidified when on my first outing on Belmont Day in 1968 I hit the Daily Double--then the only exotic wager--cold, meaning I bet $2 on one horse in the first race, and coupled it with one horse in the second. And when Across the Sea and Metarie Padre each won their race and paid $22 for my $2, I knew I had found a place I wanted to be.
If you were aware of athleticism at all, all you ever had to witness was the mad dash some patrons would make if the subway was a bit late at Aqueduct, or the LIRR was a bit late at Belmont before the first race. Wagering for the Daily Double closed 10 minutes before the first race post time in those days, and any guy who felt he was not going to make it to the window in time to plunk down his sure things could be seen sprinting and knocking people over in an effort to clear admissions and get in line. Coaches with stop watches could have scouted NFL prospects if they stood by the turnstiles.
If you know anything about the show 'Billions' you know that Bobby Axelrod of Axe Capital, hedge fund owner extraodinaire, had working class beginnings and tells anyone who will listen how he went to Yonkers raceway (harness track) and watched the tote board and tried and figure out where the smart money was going as the odds flashed their updates. Figure this out, and you too could be a winner, if you could spot the winner by his bets.
So, who is Bobby Axelrod based on? Did Andrew Ross Sorkin, a co-creator of 'Billions' and a NYT business reporter, have Vinnie in mind when he created Axe?
Consider that Vincent Viola tells Mr. Drape that his father had him stand where he could watch the tote bard flash the latest odds and tell his father of sudden shifts that might indicate "late money" coming in. Late money was always considered to be "smart money" since anyone who had what they thought was "inside information" would purposely shove large amounts through the windows as close to post time as possible in order to prevent others from piling onto their information and driving the odds down even further.
In the era when I was the youngster at the track, the old guys who stood under the TVs watching the tote board and the races were always talking about baseball, the stock market, and racing.
I've met Mr. Drape at a book signing, and my educated guess is he's old enough to have witnessed what he wrote about the fathers of these two young fellows. He tells us of the custom of placing an unwanted part of your Morning Telegraph or Daily Racing Form on the seat, wedging it into the corner if it was a seat at Belmont, or wrapping it through the slats of Aqueduct's seats, to lay claim that that seat was your seat. It was part of the horseplayer code that you didn't try and sit in a seat that had someone else's newspaper on it.
And when there were nearly 40,000 people at the track on a Saturday, any Saturday, seats disappeared underneath those butts pretty quick. And they all had paper on them.
My friends and I would get there early enough to get the seats closest to the finish line without having to pay for a reserved seat. We claimed our seats in the usual fashion, only I brought along masking tape wrapped around a short pencil. I used the tape to make any removal of our paper a conscious act of aggression by the perpetrator, and therefore cause for a fight. We never had an incident. I still have the pencil. The tape on it is quite dried out.
On Belmont Day in 1973 my friends and I sprinted to the only section that was unreserved and taped three seats for ourselves. Of course this was when Secretariat won the Triple Crown in yet to be repeated style.
Nowadays, on just a regular day at the races, not Belmont Day, there is absolutely no need to put anything on your seat other than your butt. There is no one there to take your seat, or any other seat in the joint.
Saratoga is the exception. There is no need to place paper on your seat because every seat there is a reserved seat. Even the picnic tables
If you do find paper on your seat, you take it off because you're in the bathroom then. The only unreserved seats there are at Saratoga. For now.
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Great history here. One summer we had a rental cottage at the Jersey shore. My brother invited me to accompany him to Delaware Park. Unbeknownst to me he had a successful four horse parlay going and returning home stuffed the greenbacks under the mattress which when discovered by mother caused a bit of excitement. Just an average day at the track.
ReplyDeleteBeen to Delaware once, on a Sunday. They were the only track open a Sunday in the 70s. Always wanted to go back. Every day at the track should be hitting a four horse parlay.
ReplyDeleteRe "Spaldeens" - we used to cut them in half with a razor blade and play half ball in the street - they floated and kept you out of heavy traffic.
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