Prince Anthony

Yesterday was Wednesday. I don't know if Wednesday is still Prince Spaghetti Day in Boston's North End, a section that I'm sure is still filled with Italian families. Or, if really every day is Prince Spaghetti Day in Boston. Doesn't matter. They still make Prince spaghetti and other pastas, and I'm not aware that I ever had it. 

The reason of course for remembering Prince Spaghetti Day is that the young lad who races home for the family's pasta meal on Wednesday, Anthony Martignetti, playing himself, in what is really a famous commercial, has just passed away at 63, possibly from a severe form of sleep apnea.

The one minute commercial opens with Anthony's mother leaning out of the apartment window and calling his name twice, in a heavy, loud Italian accent. "An-tony...An-tony." Anthony, who is really not within earshot of his mother's voice, must still have the ears of a collie, or a clock in his head, because at he same time Mom's yelling his name, Anthony is running home like a guided missile, all skinny arms and legs churning in a sprint.

He races through the street market, past the bocce courts with the arguing men, and like a young colt bounds through the streets of Boston's North End and makes his way home and arrives out of breath at the top of the stairs, happy and hungry.

The commercial was set in 1969, and clearly shows that Moms had no cell phones to summon their young, and their young wandered far enough way from home to play and explore a distance that if it were to happen today would have the parent calling the police and reporting a missing person.

When I first spotted Mr. Martignetti's obit in the NYT, I wondered who on the paper could even still remember 1969? Then I saw the byline of Sam Roberts and knew that Mr. Roberts, who is as old as I am, or perhaps only slightly younger, remembers the same mayors and presidents that I do.

The genesis of the commercial is as interesting as it is familiar. Some advertising fellows scouted the area in hope of finding non-actors who could appear in a commercial for the Prince spaghetti company. They found Anthony and some of his friends, and with Anthony not giving them any lip about directions, they cast his as the youngster who races home for his meal.

When the commercial airs I always thought Anthony looked liked the Boston Bruin hockey player Phil Esposito. I still do. Phil of course came to the Bruins from the Chicago Black Hawks, and eventually wound up playing for the Rangers, in a still hard-to-fathom trade.

We used to play roller hockey in a school yard on 32nd street off Third Avenue in Manhattan on Sunday mornings. Oddly enough, the school yard was right next to the offices of New York magazine. We were a ragtag assembly of youngsters and young adults, ranging in age from perhaps 12-22. Five of the players were from the Burek family, and if they didn't show up not only was there no one to play goal, there weren't enough skaters to pass the puck (a roll of electrical tape) to. Thankfully, they usually all showed.

One Sunday a young women with a clip board wandered by the fence and started to chat us up while we took a break between periods—our own self-timed playing intervals.

She introduced herself as someone who wanted young subjects to make a Frito-Lay potato chip commercial. She didn't want the "older" ones of us; she wanted the youngsters, our Anthonys. She was legit, and soon after names were taken, permission slips signed, and a date was set, a scrum of the fellows gathered in a corner of the school yard, sticks and skates, dressed in their mis-matching hockey "uniforms" and were crunching on potato chips and telling the camera, "They're terrific."

I don't remember how much money was paid to the lads, but the commercial ran for a long time, long enough that Jimmy, Joey, Nicky and Paulie could look back at themselves and laugh.

Prince spaghetti is still around, and is part of a larger food conglomerate.  I've never seen it here in New York, being exposed to Ronzoni, and now Barilla and De Cecco. Growing up it was Mueller's elbow macaroni, a Long Island City company that I'm sure folded. As a young adult I bought some Mueller's hoping to remember childhood, and tasting it I can only wonder why they weren't an epidemic of deaths.

In the Prince commercial, the woman who played Anthony's mother was really his neighbor. I didn't grow up in an Italian neighborhood, and the only time I can remember my mother calling me was when she leaned out of the front door in 1955 and told me Dodgers had just beaten the Yankees in the World Series.

She was gloating, because she knew I liked the Yankees, but not enough to watch them on TV in the afternoon, as all Series games were played in the daytime then. I can still remember being in the neighbor's driveway with my friend Archie and hearing the news.

I really didn't care that much, and was too young to be affected by the Dodger/Yankee rivalry. But one thing was for sure that day. It was not Prince Spaghetti Day for Yankee fans.

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They're Calling My Class

I'm noticing I'm having a bit of a more visceral reaction to reading obituaries, particularly when they are someone who is around my age, or is someone I know something of that is not mentioned in the obit.

Because of my own health scare and the fact that I've crossed the Rubicon of being in my 70s, I pay particular attention to those that pass away who are around my age. They're calling my class.

Yesterday's paper featured three obits, all for people around my age, or even younger. Peter Tytell, 74, the typewriter repair expert and documentation analyst has passed away. Over the years there were stories about the repair shop of his parents, then his, and of his work reviewing the authenticity of typed documents for lawyers and law enforcement.

I distinctly remember the kerfuffle around the authenticity of the purported Air National Guard letter that was said to grant George W. Bush special treatment in the early '70s at the time of the Vietnam war. Doubts about the letter's authenticity began when it was pointed out that a typed letter of the 1972 era could not have produced a superscript "th" after a numeral. A superscript would be say a "th" elevated like an exponent after a number.

No typewriter of the era was capable of such a format. Word processing programs like Word and WordPerfect could produce text like that, but they came along quite  bit after 1972. The letter was a fake.

The controversy surrounding the letter was made prominent when CBS insisted a hole-through-a-pot that the letter clearly showed special treatment accorded to the man who was then president, George W. Bush. In particular, Dan Rather on the evening news would refer to the veracity of the letter often, even after it was pointed out that the use of a "th" rendered the letter a phony.

The role Mr. Tytell played in identifying the discrepancy is in the obit, along with the genesis of the story first getting aired in a "60 Minutes" segment on CBS. It is mentioned that CBS's review of the matter resulted in the firing of a producer and three executives for their role in perpetuating what would now be quickly called "fake news."

Unmentioned in the obit is the part Dan Rather played, and how it eventually led to his departure from the network evening news. He wouldn't let it go.

Of course the obit is about Mr. Tytell—whose name alone would seem to foretell his vocation—and not Mr. Rather, who is still with us at 88 years old. We'll just have to wait for the final words on his life.

Many crime stories, fiction and non-fiction, have a typewriter at their center, and how someone could, or could not have produced such a piece of text. Who typed the ransom letter is traced to who owned the unique machine whose keys would stick and mis-strike the ribbon, making a distinct impression on the page. Mr. Tytell was there to identify the machine that was used. Find the machine, find the perp.

I always thought how much the story would have changed had the ransom note left by the alleged kidnapper of Joan Benet Ramsey been typed out, rather than handwritten. Someone would have been nailed. and Mr. Tytell probably would have been called in.

Peter Tytell's father was equally famous for identifying which typewriter created certain documents and was also called as an expert to either certify or debunk a document. When his father Martin passed away at 94 in 2008, he too rated a tribute obit in the NYT.

Another obit in yesterday's paper was for Ben Cross, 72 an Oscar-winning best actor for his role in Chariots of Fire, the story of Harold Abrahams and the 1924 Paris Olympics. The 1981 film featured great music from the Greek composer Vangelis, and won the Oscar for best picture.

The photo accompanying Mr. Cross's obit accompanied the review I read in the NYT when the movie first came out. I remember the theater on Main Street in Flushing, the Prospect, that was still there in 1981 where I saw the movie, pre-cable, pre-VCR days.

Another obit a few days ago was for Niels Lauersen, 84, a Manhattan ob-gyn doctor who was convicted of defrauding insurance companies by portraying non-covered in-vitro fertilization, IVF treatments as another payable surgery, securing insurance payments when contractually there should shouldn't have been any payment. The fraud was massive and long-standing.

I knew a great deal of the backstory of this individual since in my prior life I worked for one of the insurance companies that was defrauded, and gave testimony at the two trials for the prosecution.

I became aware first hand of the influence someone can exert in the media to get a favorable story out  there about themselves in the NYT and Time magazine, as Dr. Lauersen did before the trail. Constraints of the obituary naturally didn't allow for more of Dr. Lauersen's story to appear. And that's okay. Nothing can be served by revealing more than what made it into the obit.

In addition to the two Thursday obits for 74 and 72 year-old subjects, there is the one for Amer Fakhoury, 57, a detainee released from jail in Beirut. Someone quite younger than myself.

And the contemporary angle and even younger prevails today, Friday, when there are obits for  Christine Jahnke, 57, a speech coach for women in politics, and Ann Syrdal, 74,  a force behind female computer voice.

There are those who like to joke that when they open the paper and don't see their obituary they know they're still alive.

Who are they kidding? In all great likelihood when they leave us, no one is going to write about them anyway. And they won't even know about it.

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Left. Right. Left Right Left

Most of us have two feet. And at some point in our lives someone probably told us one of our feet is bigger than the other foot. It may have been that person fitting you for shoes with one of those gadgets they ask you to put your foot on, the black and silver measuring gauge with the sliding indicators that are pushed against your clodhoppers in order to determine your shoe size. This gauge has been around for decades. Maybe more than a century. Someone probably once had a patent on it.

And your arms. You might be aware that one arm is longer than the other, and causing the thumb to hang down lower on one side when you straighten your arms out.

This becomes apparent to men when they're being fitted for a sport coat, suit jacket or outerwear. When you stand up on one of those little platforms in front of the three-way mirror the tailor takes out his little ruler, asks you to relax your arms, and measures how long your thumb is from where the cuff is expected to start.

How many times have I heard..."eench, eench and a quarter" in an Italian accent. In my mind I always imagine the tailor telling someone, "des fucker, heeza lopsided." Of course he doesn't say that, at least not out loud.

I never knew until reading yesterday's NYT Science section that there are actually two standards for the length of a foot. There is the U.S. Foot, and the International Foot. Different measuring jurisdictions stand on different feet—at least until January 1, 2023, when everyone is expected to use the International Foot.

And who is everyone? Basically land surveyors. And what's the difference between the two standards. Infinitesimal.

In a story with graphics that make buying yesterday's paper well worth its $3.00 newsstand price, the article clearly shows what infinitesimal means. In this case, the difference between the two standards is that the U.S. Foot is longer, to the extent of two feet if you stretch out your measurement to a million feet. This doesn't seem like a difference you can eyeball.

I remember reading of story umpteen years ago that when The Donald was active in New York real estate and building buildings, he swore a hole through a pot that there was something wrong with the measurement of the height of a terrace.

Looking through his binoculars he went on a tirade (sound familiar?) that the construction of the building has gotten something seriously wrong. I don't remember any reference to a different standard of a foot, or how it was resolved, or if he was even right, only that the person he was yelling at probably didn't stay around long enough with his company for a 5-year Award.

Then there's the long ago, oft-repeated story of Bill Bradley warming up for the Knicks one night in the late '60s or early '70s who, as he was taking his practice shots from a favorite spot on the floor, insisted that the basket was not at the right height.

Since Bill was a graduate of Princeton he was taken seriously, and they brought the tall ladder out and measured. Sure enough, Bill was right. The basket's height was set incorrectly by a quarter of an inch. Bill knew.

One of my son-in-laws in a land surveyor, and I've yet to talk to him about what has been his experience with the two feet. Which foot does he stand on? Or, which foot is he required to stand on?

Apparently, there can be a difference so pronounced there is the story of the construction of a high-rise building near an international airport, in an unnamed city, that was delayed because the vertical measurement exceeded the approved plans. A redesign became necessary.

I always knew the standards used for measurement were quaint, and came from Europe and were introduced to the States as it was expanding. I didn't know some of the odd names however.

Apparently there is the British and Dutch ell, an ell being a measuring rod varying greatly depending on the country doing the measuring: England 45"; Scotland 37.2"; Low countries, such as Holland, 27". Buyer beware.

So, given the absolutely tiny difference between he U.S. Foot and the International Foot, getting off on the wrong foot might really not be so bad.

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A Lovely Span of As

My Saturday seating is easily reserved in the FourStarKitchen, where I plop my downloaded, scrawled upon Daily Racing Form down and watch the races coming from Saratoga. I'm always near refreshments, and I don't have to tip anyone. And after the races, I don't have to go out to dinner. My wife and I are eating in the dining room overlooking the backyard greensward right about the time of the last race. It's another virtual Saturday at the Spa.

Saratoga's feature yesterday was the Alabama, the race Johnny M. and I were at last year when the heavens opened up and the people from the picnic area rolled into the Fourstardave seating area with their mobile home coolers and overfed themselves gloriously.

It was also the Saturday that a dead heat was declared in the 9th race, the race before the featured Alabama. After many minutes of review, the placing judges tried to see who might have had a microscopic advantage in the dark. There are no lights at the Saratoga finish lines, and the coming storm turned the day sky into pitch darkness. With no reliable way to declare the winner, the stewards just finally gave up and declared a dead heat.

Saratoga has that lovely span of As, three of them, like Canada and four like Alabama. Every time I see the word Canada I think of the peppermints and wintergreen chalky mints that came in pink and green boxes in the '50s that were so great to eat. They were small hockey pucks, and I'm sure as a kid they were responsible for my cavities.

Before Saturday's card there was of course Friday's card, and while I didn't download the pps for Friday, I did pay attention to the telecast. AMAZINGLY, the 6th race on Friday, a $20,000 straight claimer, saw all eight horses claimed by different outfits.

I don't know if there are stats on such things, but to see all entered horses get claimed has to be a one-off. And there had to be "shakes" when multiple claims were put in for the same horse, with the eventual new owner decided by numbered cubes, or "pills" shaken from a tumbler.

What a boon to New York State sales tax! Unless things have changed, sales tax is collected on horse purchases. With eight horse changing hands from the same race, Governor Cuomo should pay a visit to the grounds and celebrate the windfall. Come on down.

It was way back in the late '60s or early '70s when Buddy Jacobson and his assistant Bobby Frankel lead a horseman's strike at the Aqueduct meet. A horseman's strike? Yes, the collective association of horsemen refused to enter any horses due to a dispute with NYRA. They effectively shut the track down and lead to several days of cancelled racing.

In that era, everyone in New York went on strike, and now even the trainers were walking around with signs. I remember reading that the ripple effect was that with no racing, no horses were being claimed and therefore sales tax was taking a hit. Who knew?

The other notable news from Friday's card was the $615,668 late Pick-5 payoff. The staggering amount of this payoff was driven by a $105.00 horse finishing first in the 9th race, impressively setting a course record for the 13/16 mile turfer, 1:512/5, going the mile split in a rapid 1:333/5.

A Tweet from DRF reporter David Grenning revealed that there was a single ticket that hit that Pick-5, and it belonged to a betting syndicate, Player Management Group (PMG) that wagered $2,940 on numerous permutations. They took the entire pool of $724,354 after NYRA kept its 15%. What their sequence of numbers and how many unique people were in on the wager is not disclosed, but I'm sure an ALL button crawled in there somewhere. And more than once. These heavy hitters are the so-called syndicates in racing.

Player Management Group (PMG) will cater to bettors who wager more than $1 million a year. XpressBet President Ron Luniewski said the players who currently bet with offshore sites and will attract them with lower takeout percentages and […]

These whales are undoubtedly responsible for the noticeable drop in odds after the gates open and there is a clear front runner who has a possibility of winning the race. It's been commented on before, and it happened again on Saturday when in the 4th race Farragut seemed to close at 4-1 odds. I had Farragut, and was rewarded at the wire after a gutsy ride that saw Farragut retake the lead in the stretch under Jose Lezcano and pay $6.90. I guess I paid the "whale surcharge."

When a horse wins and pays $105.00 it's called a "bomb." And oddly enough, there was another bomb closing out Saturday's card when Freedom and Whisky won by a head over the favorite Bricco, a horse I had. The only angle you could hope for in Whisky and Freedom was that the 5-year-old gelding, in a state bred $40,000 maiden claiming race, racing only for the fourth time, was in a new barn, previously trained by Henry Neville, but now under Chad Summers care.The prior three efforts, all at NYRA tracks, and all this year, were double digit beaten lengths that were 52, 14½ and 14½, all in state-bred Maiden Special Weight races. Saturday's race at a claiming level of $40,000 for state-bred maidens is pretty much the bottom of the ability in talent. And for a 5-year-old gelding to be racing for the first time ever in 2020 does not entice a bettor to take a chance. A morning line of 30-1 was not unwarranted.

Chad Summers is a low percentage trainer, and the jockey, Benjamin Hernandez Jr. is someone who was only getting their first win at the meet, and only their ninth win of the year. These journeymen jocks usually earn their living being exercise riders, only very rarely getting a mount in a race.

Freedom and Whisky paid $74.00 at 36-1 odds. Handicapping doesn't give you this horse, But the ALL button does. So of course the late Pick-5 was hit, but "only" for $17,584 for 50¢.

And while calling a long shot a bomb is acceptable language for a big payoff, there is a horse entered in today's Saratoga Oaks named Enola Gay, whose favoritism is headlined in the DRF as "Enola Gay Poised to Drop the Big One in Saratoga Oaks." Or at least was headlined that way until they changed it to just "Enola Gay Poised to Run Big in Saratoga Oaks."

Enola Gay is of course the name the pilot gave his plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. It was his mother's name. There is nothing in the sire or dame's names that would seem to produce the name Enola Gay. The horse is a filly though. The coincidence of running near the 75th anniversary of the bombing is not lost on some who've Tweeted about it.

Saturday's card produced two outstanding performance, the first was Calibrate's win in the 6th race, a Maiden Special Weight race that he won with ease in his first start, paying a very generous $6.00 for a horse that was probably touted all over the place as the next coming.

The Steve Asmussen entry for Winchell Thoroughbreds was impressive in just pulling away from the field in the stretch after being heavily challenged as the front runner. Ricardo Santana Jr. just aimed the Distorted Humor/ Glamour and Style, Dynaformer mare at the finish line and prevailed easily, (kicked away smartly) winning by 4½ lengths.

The trainer Tom Amoss, who doubles on the telecasts as an analyst, was in the paddock for his own entrant, Unitedandresolute, and commented on the air that he was going to ask to see Calibrate's driver's license, because he was a well-turned out 2-year-old who had all the appearance of a more developed 3-year-old. The horses in that 6th Race may go on to much better things. A key race.

Then there was the feature, the Alabama, a premier race for 3-year-old fillies at the classic 10 furlong distance of 1¼ miles. This was a "win-and-you're-in" the Breeders Cup race, that Swiss Skydiver was heavily expected to win.

And win she did, with ease, basically embarrassing the rest of the field with a 3½ length victory that was a canter in from the 16th pole home. The $4.30 payoff was a gift for a horse that spent most of the time on the board at 3/5.

Swiss Skydiver is more traveled than a vaudeville trunk, having raced at now seven different tracks in her seven 2020 starts. She'll be favored in the Kentucky Oaks, the day before the Derby in September, and, if hype turns way up, may even go in the Derby against the colts, something she's already done on the Blue Grass, finishing second to Art Collector, a likely Derby co-favorite. Wait and see.

But even a losing, virtual day at the races is better than no day at the races.

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The Weather Was Clear, The Track Was Fast and The Turf Was Firm

And once again I spent another Saturday at Saratoga. At least virtually.

The whole telecast crew was there. Maggie Wolfendale and Acacia Courtney, girls in their summer dresses. Gary Stevens plopped on his couch with a throw pillow stitched with the names of his significant winners, Ox Box, Point Given, Silver Charm, etc.

Greg Wolf, Richard Migliore, Jonathon Kinchen, Laffit Pincay III, Tom Amoss and Andy Serling, who I even found less obnoxious than usual. He was almost entertaining. The telecast switch to the regular Fox network at 5:00 was  marred by a near 15 minute outage as they failed to bring a trackside picture starting at 5:00. I hustled to my XpressBets account with track video and audio to catch the running of the 9th race, the G3, 1½ mile Waya Stakes on the turf, won by my selection My Sister Nat, ridden by Jose Ortiz and trained by Chad Brown.

Chad might not be the leading trainer at this point, but it's hard to keep him off the board when it comes to turf. The $6.90 payoff as the second choice was a gift, considering how easily she won.

My attack on the 12-race card didn't get off to a roaring start. In fact, it was a complete dud, not hitting anything in the first four races. I wisely passed the next two, Maiden Special Weight races with unraced entrants.

Unraced horses are the greatest unknown at the races. Even with some detailed commentary and statistics about their pedigrees and quality of workouts, they are the original crap shoot. Spot something that no one else is onto, and an unraced winner can pay a nice price. Pile on with everyone else who's been fed the optimism, and you're usually faced with a prohibitive favorite. It's only good when you pick a winner who might beat the favorite.

The 7th race was the Grade 1 Ballerina, a 7 furlong dirt race for fillies and mares. There aren't many Grade 1 7 furlong races anywhere, and this one was enhanced by a "win-and-you're-in" prize to the  Breeders' Cup, with the winner guaranteed entry, plus some expenses, for the filly and mare sprint at 7f at Keeneland later this year.

All week Greg Wolf has been talking to Tom Amoss about his Serengeti Empress entered in the Ballerina. Amoss of course is a competent trainer, usually on the Oak Lawn Park, Fair Grounds circuit who is hitting winners at a very acceptable 21%.

Serengeti won the Kentucky Oaks the day before the Derby at Churchill in 2019. They love to show the video of someone giving Amoss a congratulatory slap on the back—perhaps a bit too hard—and seeing Amoss falling into his wife and sending both of them to the floor. Win a race like the Oaks and any celebration is a good welcome.

Serengeti is a quality 4-year-old filly who has already banked $1.7 million in earnings. Her last two races at a mile and a sixteenth however were abysmal. A mile and a sixteenth is the famous angle to set up a 7f race.

Seven furlongs to me might jut be the hardest race to win and the most fun to handicap. It is around one turn, is a sprint/near-route race, and requires great stamina to pull off the win from the front end. The winning times on the NYRA circuit can be in the 1:20, 1:21 range. They're moving.

I've always likened the 7f races to the 600 yard indoor track race, when there was indoor track in NYC at the Garden. And there was always one runner, Martin McGrady who was considered the "Chairman of the Boards" who had just the right mixture of speed and stamina to consistently win those races. The guy was a joy to watch run. If there were Beyer Speed Ratings for track athletes, his would have always been over 100.

Serengeti's principle opposition was Bellafina, an equally good four-year-old filly who Serengeti has  beaten in the past. Despite this, Bellafina was favored, and Serengeti was second choice, despite the lousy last two races.

For myself, I went with Letruska, who had won her first six races in Mexico City, and continued to win once coming to the States. She had top Beyer numbers and figured to go for the lead.  She was intriguing at 5-1.

But this was Serengeti's and Tom Amoss's day. Serengeti didn't break well, but still garnered the lead, and set fractions that usually cause a horse to back up and not be around at the finish: :213/5, an ungodly :433/5 and a decent 1:081/5, finishing in 1:213/5., while being pressured by Letruska, who folded.

There aren't many :43 halves run that see the same horse first at the wire, but today was Serengeti's day. In fact, there was one horse, Pure Sensation, in the next race, the G3 Troy at 5½f on the turf who had run in the same Troy race last year who sped through the quarter in :204/5 with a :43 half before folding. In a prior optional claimer at Gulfstream on April 12, 2019 Pure Sensation clocked a :424/5 on the turf, and won the 5f race in :543/5. They generally run faster on turf than dirt, but I can't remember ever seeing fractions like that in a past performance. Purse Sensation had nothing yesterday, and finished last in this year's Troy.

I must have popped out of a Trojan horse in the Troy, because it was there my day was made. I conquered.

Due to the disqualification of the winner Imprimis for interfering with Shekky Shebaz who finished third, my exacta of American Sailor and Shekky Shebaz moved up from 2-3 to 1-2. Imprimis was placed third, behind the horse he bothered.

Imprimis was ridden by Jose Ortiz, and the horse he bothered was ridden by Irad Ortiz, Jr., his brother. Whether this means Jose is not coming over for Thanksgiving, only the Ortiz brothers will know. In addition to the effect of the DQ giving me the exacta, my win bet on American Sailor was paid off, since American Sailor was moved up to first from second. I collected handsomely, my first cashed raced, and a portent of better things. The new result made up for last week's DQ, which didn't go my way. A win is a win, and you go with it, no matter how it happened.

The 9th race went my way, not the 10th, and then we had The Travers and Tiz the Law, who fought the law and The Law won. Big time.

I had already thought there might not be a full field of 20 in the Kentucky Derby no matter who has accumulated points. Because of the reshuffled schedule, Tiz the Law has shown he can do a 1 ¼. before the Derby, scheduled for the first Saturday in September, with the Preakness following in October.

Bob Baffert was so impressed with Tiz the Law and his burying the field along with Bob's Uncle Chuck, that he doesn't feel they're going to need the auxiliary gate in the Derby. With no parties and hats to wear, the Derby won't be the social, drinking whirl it usually is.

Barclay Tagg, the trainer of Tiz the Law and the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide in 2003, won the first race yesterday, his first at the meet, with a layoff horse Doswell, last seen at the races on September 2, 2019. Up till then, Boswell had raced four times, finishing second the first three times, then  finishing fourth after stumbling, each time going off at the favorite, twice odds on.

Whatever portent there was for Tagg winning the first race, when it happened I remember Nick Zito winning the first race when his Birdstone was going to later run on the Belmont Stakes card, upsetting Smarty Jones's Triple Crown bid. And Birdstone later won The Travers that year.

I distinctly remember this because that Saturday was my oldest daughter's wedding, and I was killing time before the big event, handicapping the card. A 4 o'clock wedding and an early first race post on Belmont Day lets you cram in lots of things. Hey, I only got to hear the call of the race on the car radio in the parking lot of the reception place, the Snuff Mill in the Bronx Botanical Gardens, because the stupid place had no television. Durkin's call was good enough. (I didn't have Birdstone, either. But it was a great wedding.)

A healthy Doswell again went off as the favorite, and romped home. I think I remember hearing it commented that the horse had throat surgery between his last 2019 start  and now. Tagg of course is once again in the spotlight as the trainer for Sackatoga Stable who raced Funny Cide and who now race Tiz the Law.

Sackatoga is a partnership of upstate horse players who first got together with Funny Cide and arrived at the races in a school bus. They have proved to be a legacy bunch who still boast a few of the original partners. Jack Knowlton is the guiding domo, then and now. The stable only bids on New York breds. Funny Cide was the first New York bred to win a Kentucky Derby.

The name Tiz the Law is a derivative of its sire Constitution, out of a Tiznow mare Tizfiz. Tiznow provides the distance breeding. The Saratoga natives have so taken to Tiz the Law that they have added signs beneath their STOP signs that say TIZ THE LAW. The town has removed the signs, but I bet they might be going back up.

John Imbriale's call of yesterday's race ended with the exclamation, "here he is, Saratoga's hometown hero..." as Tiz cantered home ahead by 5½ length in the fourth fastest Travers ever, in 2:00.95.

The retired police commissioner of Saratoga Springs, a fifth generation native Greg Veitch, son of Mike Veitch a former DRF reporter, and a nephew of Sylvester Veitch, a one-time trainer for Calumet farm, has written two books about Saratoga's past and the historic association with horse racing, gamblers, gambling and gangsters. The first book was titled, "All the Law in the World Won't Stop Them."

And Tiz the Law just might not stop either.

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Pete Hamill

It is fair to start off that I really never read Pete Hamill. At least anything he wrote in the newspapers he worked for, The New York Post, The Daily News and New York Newsday. I didn't, and still don't read the first two papers (the third is gone) because anytime I'd come across those papers I always read them like they were in Hebrew or Chinese text. I'd start at the back page and make my way forward. That way I'd get all the sports stories first, and usually stop by the time I got to the center. It worked for me.

Of course I knew about Pete Hamill, and did read The Drinking Life, which I enjoyed. My own recovery from drinking was by then several years old—and continues— but I wanted to read someone's else's experience.

Perhaps oddly enough my memorable take aways from the book were not anything he wrote about alcoholism, but a few other things.

The dust jacket of the book was a great colorized photo of the high school boys in Brooklyn walking to what I'm sure was a Catholic High School, perhaps Bishop Ford. I'm sure it's a Catholic High School because they seemed dressed up a bit, carrying books. The great part of the picture is that they are passing one storefront after another that is a bar.

Bars in what the NYT calls "the outer boroughs" were omnipresent in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens in the '50s. Hamill was born in Brooklyn, and passed away in Brooklyn, in the same Methodist hospital his mother once worked in. Talk about a Möbius strip. In between the cradle and the grave he lived in Dublin, Barcelona, Mexico City, Saigon, San Juan, Rome and Tokyo.  The rooftop homing pigeon came back to the nest.

Pete Hamill was 85 when he passed away, meaning of course we was born in 1935, s hardscrabble time between the wars dominated by the Depression and the end of Prohibition. Brooklyn was and still is part of New York City, but was its own city up until 1898, when it was incorporated into the political aegis of New York City.

The Borough/city had everything. Racetracks, Coney Island beaches, amusement rides, huge parks, colleges, the famous Green-wood a warship shipyard, gangsters, solid homes, and of course a major league baseball team, the Dodgers, named for what they called people who quickly crossed a street trying to avoid getting hit by a trolley. Sometimes their can't-wait-habits proved fatal, and their fatality held everything up. There were "sick" passengers even before there were subway announcements.

In his autobiography "A Drinking Life" Hamill recounts the awe of going into Manhattan as a youngster. It was Oz. He looked at Manhattan (what a true New Yorker will always refer to as the "city") just as Frank Sinatra looked at it from the New Jersey side of the Hudson River in Hoboken, their destination in life. THe land to conquer. Fittingly, Hamill wrote a well-regarded piece on Sinatra, "Why Sinatra Matters" (1998).

One of the most enduring nuggets of reading "A Drinking Life" was the mention of his father who had a leg amputated after it was broken in a soccer match. His father waited for hours at Kings County hospital before they treated him, and by then, the leg needed to he amputated.

What struck me on reading that was what I didn't read. There was no mention made of suing the great city of New York for inadequate care. People were not litigious then.

I have a good friend who has a somewhat similar story of having his tonsils out. It was the 1950s, and tonsillectomies were as common as circumcisions. The adenoids were usually taken out as well. A T&A. It was rite of passage. There wasn't a kid I knew, male or female, in my grammar school classes who hadn't had their tonsils and adenoids out.

For some reason, despite having tonsillitis, my tonsils were never taken out. My appendix was however removed, and gave me better surgical bragging rights.

My friend was slated for just a tonsillectomy, no adenoid removal. Seems the surgeon blundered, went for the adenoids and nicked a vital blood vessel, causing major bleeding complications. My friend spent a week in the hospital having almost died from a simple tonsillectomy. No lawsuit for negligence was ever filed by his family.

One of the Tweets that have popped up about Hamill is that long ago he bought a plot in Brooklyn's famous Green-Wood Cemetery. Supposedly the plot is near where the famously corrupt NYC politician Boss Tweed is buried. Hamill liked the idea of being buried near a rogue. "I bought a plot in Green-Wood Cemetery right next to Boss Tweed. Because if there's an afterlife, who wants to be with a saint?"

Certainly saints are boring and too hard to write bout. Hamill, like Jimmy Breslin, liked to paint the images of characters who might be less than saintlike, but were infinitely more interesting. I remember seeing an interview with Breslin not too long before he passed away and he was saddened by the disappearance of the local bookies in the candy stores. "The crooks were always more interesting."

I never knew Hamill won a Grammy for writing liner notes to a Bob Dylan album. Didn't know they even had a Grammy for that. Just another of his many acknowledgements and awards added to the pile.

I saw Pete Hamill a few years ago when he was at a Barnes and Noble book store on Warren Street in Manhattan. He, and a group of other writers were there to discuss a new book that was a collection of stories about boxers. "At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (2104). On the stage set up in what is the children's section, where on any given day you'd find a slew of baby strollers parked there,  were Pete, Mike Lupica, Robert Lipsyte, Colum McCann, and George Kimball, a co-editor of the book. McCann was the only one who wasn't  newspaper writer, having just completed a novel "Let the Great World Spin." I think he wrote the introduction.

I remember Colum looked very literary with a scarf around his neck, and Mike Lupica is really short and comes from Canastoa, New York, home of the boxing Hall of Fame.

Pete remarked that Breslin was missing, someone who would tell you in a heartbeat that W.C. Heinz's "Brownsville Bum' about Al (Bummy) Davis was the best boxing story ever written. The story is in the collection. Pete also fondly remembered the smell of cigar smoke at the fights, when smoking was allowed indoors.

Being a Brooklyn native, Hamill was a Brooklyn Dodger fan. He was 12 when Jackie Robinson came into the league. Pete was an Ebbets Field diehard, who like anyone else in Brooklyn was stricken sick when the owner Walter O'Malley heartlessly decided to move the team to Los Angeles, getting a sweetheart deal to build a stadium in Chavez Ravine. O'Malley convinced his friend Horace Stoneham, the owner of the Giants, to also move after the 1957 season so that Dodgers wouldn't be all alone on the West Coast. The Dodgers and the Giants were following the population that would see the Pacific West become the population center it is today. Major League Baseball was finally going to be west of St. Louis.

The Dodgers were named after what they called pedestrians who couldn't wait to cross the street, and therefore "dodged" trolley cars, not always successfully. There were fatalities, and even then there were "sick" passengers who caused system delays long before the subway announcements of today.

I had a manager who was born in Brooklyn whose father was a vice president at Chase Manhattan bank. The father always told his son that O'Malley wasn't heartless, because that would be an anatomical impossibility.

In a famous story, Hamill and another reporter Jack Newfield were once in a place selling alcohol who asked each other to write down on separate cocktail napkins the three most reviled men of the 20th Century. Without any talk amongst themselves, they each separately wrote: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Walter O'Malley. The votes were in.

Hamill was a man about town, dating A-List females like Jackie Kennedy, Shirley MacLaine and Linda Ronstadt. I don't know if he had a table at Rao's, but I'm sure he didn't have to wait at Elaine's or the TriBeCa Grill co-owned by Robert De Niro. Pete was a celebrity in his own right.

I remember reading his Op-Ed piece that was either in the NYT or the WSJ about why he wasn't going to be at the closing of the Red Lion, the Greenwich Village watering hole that is where The Clancy Brothers started.

Pete wrote he had given up drinking for several years ago, and that he wasn't going to go back to the scene of that past where he and his colleagues piled in after deadline from The New York Post on South Street. The Red Lion was their office.

He did fondly reminisce that he would never forget the time he was there and a man at a nearby table dropped dead of a heart attack, and another man at another table quickly told the waitress that he didn't want what he was having.

For someone who didn't read Pete Hamill I still felt he would be good to write to about the workplace shooting at Empire BlueCross and BlueShield that took place on September 16, 2002 when my vice president murdered two of my colleagues and then took his own life.

In 2004 I wrote a 9,000 word piece about the bloodbath, and what conditions might have driven someone to do something as heinous as a double murder, then suicide. I mailed the piece to his attention at his recent publisher, Little Brown, but never heard a word. Either he never got the piece, or he had no interest. Or, he was acting like Ulysses S. Grant who claimed he got less and less mail when he took to not answering it. I'll never know.

I've never even allowed more than a select handful of people to read the piece. It was my letter to James Wechsler, The New York Post editor Hamill wrote that led to his being hired as a young man just out of the Navy. I wasn't looking for a job, but rather hoping to reach an ear who might be interested in what might drive human behavior to such a horrible act.

Years ago Pete apparently bought a burial plot in Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn near where the infamously corrupt NYC politician Boss Tweed was buried. He offered his reasoning that if there's an afterlife, "who wants to be buried near a saint." The Irish/Catholics like Hamill always have an outlook toward death.

For myself, I can't boast the same lineage, but I've started to think about what instructions I might leave behind. I've flirted with two headstone inscriptions: "I Got Most Things Right" and "I'm Not Happy About This At All."

But lately I'm leaning toward something Pete wrote at the outset of an introduction for a collection of obituaries: "Life is the leading cause of death."

He is right about that.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

TP

In all these years of writing blog postings I've seldom written about members of my family, particularly my wife. She fully acknowledges she doesn't read anything I write, but I'm used to being ignored by people, even by my closest family member. Other people do read what I read, albeit, in tiny quantities.

I can't really explain her talent for reconstructing whole dialogues from years, perhaps even decades ago. My daughter Susan remarks how Mom can come up with the most trivial of remembrances years and years later, like where they ate after the older daughter Nancy's wedding shower 16 years ago.

It is remarkable considering my wife fails to remember the names of people she just heard about on television when trying to tell me what they said. "Oh, I forget. You know who." No I don't.

It's as if she could be a court reporter or stenographer and function without a pad or the machine. All husbands deny what they've said, but when my wife tells me that I once said I didn't "like Charmin toilet paper "I will believe her I must have said it, but do wonder in what context the utterance came up. 

I attribute her talent for remembered dialogue to years and years of watching soap operas, when there was a wide variety to choose from. Anyone who can follow those plot lines that take years to unravel has to have a good memory.

Her favorites were Guiding Light and Days of Our Lives. I mean you have to be able to remember things watching those shows because there is no action, only people floating around dressed to the nines wearing beautiful dresses and earrings at 2:00 in the afternoon, pouring a drink and moaning about their life.

And it's hardly only women who watch these shows. One of my male friends when he was over would go over the latest episodes of one of the shows with my wife to the point that when I overheard them talk, I thought they had just gotten back from a family reunion. "Who are you talking about?"

Now that my daughter Susan has joined a good part of the rest of world and bought a house with her husband, she finds herself at Home Depot as much as at the supermarket. And the other day I joined her. She needed things. I needed things, and for one of the very few times, I was there without my wife.

We have a side shed and store extra bales of toilet paper an paper towels there. The shed doesn't leak, and the goods don't spoil. My wife's not a hoarder per se, she just like to take advantage of a good price when it rolls around and "stock up."

I report on the inventory and lately told her we were down to two bales each of paper towels and toilet paper. Hardly an emergency, but I figured a reorder point. She told me I probably wouldn't find the paper towels at Home Depot. They'd be sold out. And they were.

The fact that you can but paper goods like that at a home improvement store shows you how great this country is. We genuinely live in the land of plenty.

But Home Depot did have one bale of Charmin toilet paper left, and I bought it along with the other few items on my list. I got home about 9:30 that evening and left the unloaded goods in the vestibule. The next morning the dialogue started:

Did you save your Home Depot receipts?
Sure, why do you ask?
We don't use Charmin toilet paper. We always use Scott's. I can take it back.
What? It's toilet paper. Who cares who makes it? Charmin is all they had.
You said years ago you don't like Charmin. It's too soft.
I said there's a toilet paper I don't like? I don't remember ever stating a preference. How could I tell you I don't like Charmin if you've always been bringing Scott's into the house? What, I went over to a neighbor's in time of need and came home and said I don't like their Charmin?
You did. You said you don't like Charmin.
I went over a neighbor's? There's people out there who might not be able to get toilet paper still. And here we've got a bale of Charmin and you're going to take it back? I'm not taking it back.
We'll see. Maybe I'll take it back Saturday.
Well, suit yourself. When you need toilet paper at that critical time it's always good to realize you have toilet paper, not who made it.

The fate of this bale of Charmin is still undecided. I have a feeling it's going to get to stay. Then someday when the time comes, I'll try and remember what I thought of using it. We'll then see if Charmin ever makes it back into the house.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Untouchables

If you are aware of current speech patterns, you'll recognize that "of a certain" age has come to be the euphemism for "older." An indeterminate older, but someone who is easily above 50.

I take in a little early morning TV news and of course hear all the commercials, most of which are pointed toward people of a certain age with compromised health or i need of money. There's one that touts, "if you're over 50, wouldn't you like to make one-third more in retirement money." It's an ad for an insurance company's annuities. I always talk back to the TV: "50? that shipped sailed for me quite a while ago."

Then there are the drug ads. Prior to my recent medical event from which I'm doing quite well, thank you, I used to feel left out of the pitch. Even at 71, I wasn't taking anything they were pushing. I just plain didn't have the ailments the drug companies had a treatment for.

The other night I was watching a Jeopardy episode, one of those throw-back replays where Alex seemed to wear better suits, and there it was, an ad for Brilinta. Hey, I take Brilinta. I feel I finally joined to club. I joked to the cardiologist that Brilinta sounds like Tom Brady's wife. Or at least should be Tom Brady's wife. (Maybe someday she will be.)

I do read books, but I read book reviews the most. I always like the book reviews in the WSJ, one because they are always in the same part of the paper Monday through Friday, and two, they're seldom about novels, but rather about finance, science, history and true crime. There's little that interests me less than a review about the psychological byplay of the latest novel that explores the depths of human emotion and the ironies of life. The NYT is great for those reviews.

I've long accepted that I'm of "a certain age." But according to Tom Nolan's review of Eliot Ness and the mad Butcher by Max Alan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz,  I'm of an "even earlier era" all because I remember The Untouchables starring Robert Stack as Eliot Ness in the TV series (1959-1963) and not just those "of a certain age" who remember the 1987 movie starring Kevin Costner that was stolen by Sean Connery's performance as a Irish Chicago cop who famously scoffs at someone who brings a "knife to a gunfight."

The implication is clear. If you remember a 1987 movie, you're headed for dotage. If you remember anything earlier, well, you're taking televised medication and belong to an era just after dinosaurs.

Anyway, yes, I do remember the TV series where Stack and his shoulder-holster crew are always going after Al Capone and Frank Niti, especially Frank Niti. As a growing lad I became fascinated with gangsters. I bought a pulp paperback about the famous criminals of the 1930s, the and jails they were sent to, and hid it under the mattress. When my parents found it they were greatly concerned about where I might be vocationally headed. Parents worry about everything.

I remember reading about the real life Eliot Ness and what he did after bringing down Capone and sending him to the Big Island, Alcatraz. The latest book about Eliot Ness picks up when he becomes the police chief in Cleveland and aids in bringing a halt to some gruesome killings by a serial killer who left headless torsos in the woods.

One almost wishes the killings were reported on by the New York Post. The headlines in 1938 would have been worthy of the Headline Hall of Fame. "Headless dead" lead off each reports of another body.

In Cleveland, Ness formed another hand-picked squad and became instrumental in getting the psychotic doctor, Francis Sweeney, who was performing his own version of unauthorized autopsies. Apparently, so pervasive and gruesome where the murders, the foreign press even  became aware of the story. Germany, of all countries, scolded the U.S. when the Nazi press made fun of our country's inability to bring the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" to justice. Imagine Nazis making fun of murders. Now there's an irony of life.

Regardless, Ness and his crew were able to get the sod committed to a mental institution. His guilt was inconvertible, but too circumstantial for a court conviction. Anyway, once Sweeney was institutionalized, the murders stopped.

Ness's Chicago crew became called The Untouchables because they were hand-picked and were outside corruption influences. They couldn't be bought. The book review is interesting in that I didn't know the Dick Tracy comic strip by Chester Gould was spawned by Ness's success. I distinctly remember the comic strip. It held price of place on the front page in the Sunday Daily News, in color, with crimestopper tips and always a reference to Tracy's "two-way wrist radio." Who didn't wish for one of those?

Another nugget is that when Ness passed away at 54 of a heart attack in 1957, he was $9,000 in debt. I don't know what that is today's dollars, but I'm sure it's relatively significant.

The Robert Stack series was immensely popular. I remember the Italian defamation people were getting pissed off that the thugs were always Italian. Their pleas for diversity in crime were successful because the show bowed to pressure and introduced Greek gangsters, an ethnic group who my family is part of on my father's side and who, to this day, do not possess a great deal of political clout. I've grown up always saying that in NYC it's best if you're Catholic or Jewish to help you enjoy being near the seats of influence.

Despite my parents concern for my new-found interest in gangsters, I remember  my father was at some dinner that Robert Stack was at. My father brought home a glossy of The Untouchables crew signed by Stack with a inscription to me. Sadly, I don't know what happened to it.

Untouchable certainly has  meaning beyond crime fighter. There is outcast caste in India that is referred to as the Untouchables. And then there are The Untouchables who browse at Barney's.

Huh? Well, as always, something always reminds me of something else, and in the late '60s or early '70s Barney's men's store at the very unfashionable location of 7th avenue and 17th Street started an advertising promotion where you could just come in and browse. I'd shopped at Barney's, and they always descended on you as soon as you walked in, made you wait a bit, then assigned you to a salesman based on what you were interested in. There was no free-range browsing.

The campaign they started was a "Just Looking" button that you asked for, pinned it to your jacket, then descended down the stairs to roam around on your own.

Myself and two other guys from the office made our way over to Barney's on lunch hour one day, asked for the "Just Looking" buttons and descended the staircase.

A salesman at the bottom of the stairs looked at us, and derisively said, "Oh, here come the Untouchables."

I wish I still had that button.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

A Day At the Spa

It was another nice day at Saratoga yesterday. And I wasn't there.

The pandemic lockdown continues. I was only there virtually through the benefit of the all day telecast brought to sports-starved fans through the TV stations FoxSports1&2, and MSG, sponsored thankfully by the sire prospects for the horse Run Happy, Claiborne Farm—where he proudly stands in the hallowed stall No. 1— and by Petaluma Farm Cheese. Thank God for sponsors.

At least NYRA doesn't see the hokey need to put cutouts of fans in the stands or leaning over the rail. There is no simulated sound and no there is no computerized CGI of someone ripping up a fistful of tickets.

In fact, ripping up tickets is pretty much a thing of the past considering the online betting and the use of vouchers and self-help betting machines. No one is going to drop their voucher on the floor after a losing race if there is still money on it.

A few years ago I sampled NYRA's creation of their Top of the Stretch section at Saratoga. It is a gussied up accommodation with nicer seats and food deliveries carved out of the unused seats at the very end of the track. It is hardly worth it.

I will always remember the poor teen-age girl sporting braces who found summer employment at Saratoga holding the long handled trash scooper and broom, stationed near the bathrooms, who had the boring job of sweeping up discarded tickets. She was there to keep the place clean.

She had nothing to do. I explained to her that no one drops anything on the floor these days, and that she was in for a long day of having little to do. I'm not sure I made her happy, but I did sympathize with her. At least she was getting paid.

Watching the telecasts from Saratoga I can only be frustrated. It's not enough that there are no plans to go there this year, it's that you can't go there. You're not allowed.

It is painful to look at the photos posted by the DRF photographer Barbara Livingston and turf journalist Teresa Genaro of scenes from the track. I know Ms. Livingston lives in a nearby town, and Ms. Genaro comes from Saratoga Springs and still has family in the area. It is home for them.

It's very odd to see Jose Ortiz take time after his race to lean over the rail and watch the replay, and then see him disappear under the stands to go back to the jocks room, unaccompanied. Saratoga's configuration requires the jocks to walk under the stands and travel a bit on the back apron to get back to the jock's room.

Security always bodyguards the jocks when they do this walk, but Saratoga fans hurl no insults their way. They want autographs. And the jocks quickly comply while walking back. There are even markings in the floor to guide the jockeys on the protected route to take. But no fans, no security needed. It's all very tame and very empty.

But, through the convenience of downloadable past performances and flat panel televisions, it is possible to at least be virtually at the track while sitting at home.

And Saturday was always my day to be there. Downstate there was one year when I first starting loving the game that I went to either Aqueduct or Belmont 31 times. And the season then only ran from March through mid-December. Saratoga's meet was only 24 days (6 days x 4 weeks) in the month of August. And back then I didn't go to Saratoga, and there was no TV coverage of a card like there is today. Sometimes things do get better.

No member of The Assembled was coming over yesterday. Johnny M. had other plans, and Bobby G. was at the beach house with the extended family with his toes in the sand. I did offer Bobby G. my handicapping numbers, but by the time he read the email most of the card was over. He had no betting interest anyway. He likes to be there. Jose I'm sure went to a Capital District OTB since he lives in Rockland. I'll hear from him eventually.

So, how did I do? In the old days there would never be 12 races on a card. And a Saturday wouldn't sport five maiden races. But you need maiden races to produce winners who can then qualify for the next level. And there were five stakes races, three of which were Grade 1s: The Personal Ensign, the Whitney and the fairly newly named H. Allen Jerkens that was formally The King's Bishop and usually part of the Travers card. But this is a unique year. So, there really were no complaints about "the card."

Midnight Bisou was the marquee entry of the day, and in the five horse Personal Ensign, the race that is really the Whitney for older mares, four and up. Racing loves symmetry.

Midnight Bisou is a formidable foe. She lost a close race in the Saudi Cup to Maximum Security, a male horse. All her wins have been in graded stake races. Her dollar odds are usually microscopic, and Saturday's 30¢ to the dollar was no exception. No show wagering. NYRA didn't want to risk the prospect of paying for a minus pool due to bridge jumpers putting so much money on her to show that they'd have to subsidize the pool to pay the $2.10 minimum required by law.

Our surely by now departed mentor, Les, "Mr. Pace" at whose knee we learned a great deal about the game ("pace makes the race." He said it so often we just called him Mr. Pace.) had a strong prejudice about the reliability of female horses to deliver when you wanted them do.

Les was older than us, and came from a strong prejudicial view of women and their abilities. So, he of course transferred that prejudice to animals. He pejoratively would just utter the word "fillies" as if he was spitting out the word "fuck."

He would forever tell us the story of Twilight Tear who lost her race in 1945 at 15¢ to the dollar—as part of an entry no less—who finished fourth at Laurel in a six horse field in the 16K Maryland Handicap, against males, on October 21, 1944, carrying 130 pounds over a muddy track, and the poor slob who then toppled off the roof (many tracks allowed viewing from the roof of the stands in those days) after a self-inflicted, well-placed gunshot wound to his head.

Twilight Tear was that era's Midnight Bisou, running 24 times with an 18-2-2 record. However, that day she was doing TWO things she had never done before: carry that much weight, and run on a gooey track labeled muddy. Pittsburgh Phil's rule would have kicked in and told any smart bettor to never bet on a horse trying to do something they've never done before. Pittsburgh Phil made a lot of money at the racetrack following his rules, posthumously published in 1908 and still worth absorbing today.

Twilight Tear was Les's proof that you can't trust a female. I've tried to verify Les's story about the guy topping himself, but could never find an account of it. No matter. It was urban legend for Les, and that's all the proof he needed.

So, how do I play the Personal Ensign, if I play it at all? I don't share Les's views on females, but I do know they usually all get beat, male and female. Saratoga didn't earn the nickname "Graveyard of Champion" for nothing.

I played some 50¢ tris that would yield some boxcar prices if Midnight ran out at 30¢ to the dollar, a thoroughly unlikely scenario since she was not really being asked to do anything she hadn't done before. She'd won at the distance, won at the track, and already carried the 124 pounds and won. She was a rocket launch waiting to happen. The paddock analyst Acacia Courtney described her in such glowing terms that she was Miss America, Ms Courtney herself once being Miss Connecticut.

But hey, they still have to run the race, and perhaps Midnight Bisou stumbles, or just plain doesn't have it today. I can't believe I thought along  the same lines as Andy Serling and made a cold exacta bet with Vexatious over Midnight Bisou. I was thinking of Les, just a bit. Andy never met Less. He had his own reasons.

My reward was a $42.20 $2 exacta with Vexatious over Midnight Bisou after a stirring stretch drive. It's only the fifth race and I'm on Cloud Nine. I've got to do well, right?

Racing will treat you the same way if you're there or not. I saw Tom's d'Etat fall out of the gate and lose all chance of giving me my boxed exacta. I always call a busted exacta a bowling 1-3 split.

Then there was the DQ in the 11th race when it was ruled Sadler's Joy interfered with horses in the stretch. Sadler won at 8/5 but was taken down and placed fourth. You win some inquiries and you lose some inquiries, and it's never fun to lose them.

I usually need to cash in on three races to have a winning day. A .300+ hitter in baseball can win a batting crown. A .300+ bettor can make money.

But a frustrating day at he race—or virtually at the races—never prevented people like myself from coming back. And remembering Les and what he thought about fillies and mares.

Losing only very little is right up there with a winning day.

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