Mr. Williams (@johnwilliamsnyt) is quite sensible about "gambling" and basically describes what I would call "recreational" gambling, gaming. John's Twitter profile tells us he's a Daily Book Editor and Staff Writer at the NYT. The guy's got a solid job. He probably even went to college and graduated.
Mr. Williams immediately sets the scene at a place I know well: the paddock area at Belmont Park. John finds himself there with his father who later in the day is going to be married for the second time. John is there with his father's friend, and they are conscious of the time so as not to be late for the services.
Just reading that part makes you realize you don't have to be at Belmont and making wagers to be taking a gamble. Getting married, for the first time, or the eighth time is a gamble. John's father apparently is only up to the second marriage.
But they're horse players, a breed of people I know quite well. Mr. Williams writes:
"You end up in some interesting places at interesting times when you know gamblers, and the gamblers themselves are often good company."
For myself, I am part of a group with three others who I've nicknamed The Assembled when we pick a date and descend on Aqueduct, or Belmont. Saratoga is in there as well, but that's only myself and one other of The Assembled, when we take an annual pilgrimage to Mecca in the Adirondacks and pray at the finish line.
Mr. Williams is so right when he says that "loss is also a counterintuitively alluring draw. It's a good idea to be on speaking terms with bad luck. Not to recklessly court it, but to inoculate yourself with it from time to time rather than avoid it altogether." Mr. Williams tells us it is the one place where Dostoyevsky and Damon Runyon make sense together.
In the recent obituary for Jack Welch there is a recounting of the story he tells of when he was playing ice hockey as a kid in New England and he was pouting and carrying on after the loss and threw his stick across the ice after losing a high school hockey game. His mother, who Jack credited with making him who he came to be, stormed into the boys' locker room and ripped him a new asshole, "You punk! If you don't know how to lose.you'll never know how to win." No wonder there is a Mother's Day.
I have to say I never realized that my attraction to making the occasional wager on horse racing has help build my character. When at 19 I started going to the track, my father thought it was a sure sign that dropping out of college (twice) and now going to Belmont was a certain sign of my descent toward degradation and eventually sleeping on the Bowery. Didn't happen, Dad.
And when in 1968 Stage Door Johnny won the Belmont Stakes and I broke my own maiden with a cold $2 Daily Double that paid $22, I was hooked. I loved reading the Morning Telegraph, (then 75¢) and still love reading the Racing Form.
I was never a gambler, and yet I've been going to the races now for 52 years. My wardrobe of now unused Brooks Brothers ties cost me more than I've ever lost at the races in a lifetime.
Gong to a ball game is nice. But that score board is not a tote board, and after nine innings, it doesn't pay off. Nine races might.
Mr. Williams has it right when he says "something for nothing is a thrill. Nothing for something is a test." In the movie "Color of Money," Paul Newman said it best: "Money won is twice as nice as money earned."
One of The Assembled (we all once worked for the same company) is a retired surgeon, now in his 80s with complete control of his faculties who could be a role model for gamers.
He's been organizing poker games ever since he was drafted into the Army and served as a junior officer at Fort Dix during the Vietnam era. He's the point man for the Tuesday game night that takes place at someone's home when they can get eight players, which is almost always, There are people who have been trying to get into the game for years. Ivy League admission might be easier.
I myself do not like cards, and have never played a game at a casino, but when Bobby G. tells us of his occasional appearance at a crap table I live vicariously through his tosses. He has had modest winnings, and certainly modest losses. I always tell myself that someday I'm going to watch a crap game. I know how to calculate the odds.
If there was no news of trainers and vets being indicted for doping this piece would end. But the events that became public yesterday cannot be ignored.
That there is chicanery at the racetrack comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the game. Yesterday, there were 27 people named in a federal Southern District Court of New York indictment on doping schemes and abuse of animals.
The story is in today's NYT bylined by Benjamin Weiser and Joe Drape. As much as racing can have household names, there are two well-known trainers named in the far-reaching indictment: Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro.
Jason Servis has risen to prominence in the last few years. His brother John Servis (not named at all) works the Pennsylvania circuit and notably trained Smarty Jones, who narrowly missed winning the 2004 Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown.
I remember Jason becoming a trainer to pay attention to a few years ago when his win percentage rose above 40%. A trainer's stats are a key ingredient in handicapping, and Jason's were being taken note of.
Assuredly, I've won races with Jason Servis as the trainer, and lost races to Jason Servis trained horses. Which ones were juiced I'll never know. There is no small "j" that appears in the past performances to tell you whose got the juice.
Lately, he's become a trainer of high-end horses, notably Maximum Security, who was disqualified from the 2019 Kentucky Derby and placed 17th, Completely out of any purse distribution.
Maximum Security went on to win several other races at various distances in 2019 and won the Eclipse award for outstanding 3-year-old. Even as a four-year-old his winning ways did not desert him, winning a thriller in Saudi Arabia in the $20 million Saudi cup. He was starting to remind me of the great Forego who won at various distances.
The owners of Maximum Security, Gary and Mary West, have moved the training of the horse to Bob Baffert's barn.
Jorge Navarro is basically a Monmouth New Jersey trainer, who has long been suspected of administrating PEDs, performance enhancing drugs. According to my friend Fourstardave (yes, there really is such a person) Navarro's style resembled that of the late Oscar Barrera who claimed a horse at a certain level, quickly moved them up to a much higher level than they ever competed in, and won. Barrera once won with the same horse six times in one month. Ungodly numbers.
Once the detection of drugs in Barrera's horses came out, his fabulous win percentage shrunk like an ice cube in the sun. When he passed away Andy Beyer, the racing columnist for The Washington Post said the secret of Barrera's success was buried with him.
Along with the doping schemes, the indictment outlines the disposal of dead horses whose health was compromised by the drugging and the training abuse. Wiretaps reveal conversations about disposal, as if you were watching "The Sopranos."
Today's NYT story reports that Jason Servis was worried about a positive test on Maximum Security after he was dosed with SFG-1000, a PED drug. The veterinarian Kristian Rhein assured Servis, "they don't even have a test for it. There's no test for it in America."
There is drug testing in racing. Winners are routinely tested, and others from the race might be selected at random. Poorly performing favorites always draw suspicion. So it is clear that the slogan that DuPont chemicals once used, "Better Living Through Chemistry" is a motto at the racetrack.
No wonder it's called gambling.
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Excellent post as always!
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