Equipoise, Valentine, Paul Revere

There is a new book out on horse racing, "I Got the Horse Right Here: Damon Runyon on Horse Racing." This is hardly earth-shattering news, since the followers and bettors of what's been called "The Sport of Kings" are not anywhere in abundance.

Add to this the fact that the book is a collection of racing columns written by Damon Runyon nearly 100 years ago when he worked for a newspaper, and you've got a product that will hardly put the capable editor of these columns, Jim Reisler, a communications manager for The New York Racing Association (NYRA), on the morning talk show book tour. Would be nice, though. A good PR team might accomplish it.

It's a substantial book with a great cover of Runyon as a rail bird, probably at Saratoga. He was a tall man, 6'2" and a natty dresser in the style of the day for men: suit, white collared dress shirt, pocket square, tie, tie pin, cuff links, pinkie ring, and of course a hat. Seen on the book's cover this way, he's holding what surely is the Morning Telegraph, the racing broadsheet of the era that was devoted to horses and their past performances. The Telegraph lives on today as The Racing Form. 

The Morning Telegraph was the East Coat publication, and the Racing Form was the West Coast publication, both from Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications, the people who also brought us TV Guide. Different owners now, same focus are poured into the Racing Form.

Runyon wasn't born on the East Coast and didn't come from the Lower East Side, or any other confines that produce New Yorkers of a certain character. He was born in Manhattan, Kansas, a birthplace name that proved magnificently prescient because after writing for the papers in the West, he came East and was a New York dandy about Broadway, writing for the Hearst newspaper, The New York American.

He covered baseball and boxing, but grew tired of it, and in 1922 changed his beat to horse racing. One hundred years ago this was not a marginal sport. After boxing and baseball, the country loved horse racing and devoured news of it.

One of Runyon's vignettes from 1933 that struck a particular chord with me revolves around Harry Stevens II, grandson of Harry M. Stevens,  the famous concessionaire. Now if the grandson is running around the place in 1933, grandpop obviously goes back further. And of course he does.

Reading a little more context surrounding Runyon's friendship with The Stevens family, it is thoroughly ironic that my posting of June 20 talks of the Harry M. Stevens Charm School because of the surliness of the counter staff and their general inability to pick up their feet and get anything done, Runyon writes of the grandson scooting around the race track, "he is on the job early and keeps moving, which is a Stevens' characteristic. No man that ever lived could move faster than Harry the First. [the grandfather] Too bad they had to hire people.

Another historical note is struck when the starting line, or barrier is described in those pre-starting gate days. An elastic line was stretched across the starting line, with the jockeys expected to keep their charges calm and facing forward. There were no assistant starters pushing rear ends into starting gate stalls.

When the starter felt reasonably confident that a fair start would occur he let the "barrier" snap back, and off they'd go. If you've ever seen a hurdle race you know that the horses approach the starting line trying to be made calm, yet alert, and wait for the flag man to drop the flag to signify the start.

When Runyon started going to the races in 1922, the starter at New York tracks was Marshall "Mars" Cassidy. Mars turned of to be the head of the dynastic Cassidy family that would follow him into the sport, in roles as starter, placing judge, patrol judge and steward. Racing was a family affair.

If a horse was a bad actor at the start he got the equivalent of a soccer referee's red card and had to go to starting school, "before the eyes of Professor Mars Cassidy...that horse is ordered to school for further instruction."

When I started going to the races, there was a descendent of Mars Cassidy who was the starter, George Casssidy, and eventually in the role of announcer there was Marshall Cassidy, a great-grandson of Mars.

Horse racing as experienced by Runyon is not vastly changed from the experience of today. However, there were no photos of the finish then in his era. The placing judges were in a stand at the finish, the Whitney Stand, a wooden tower that gave the judges a straight line view of the finish line, what today is called the "wire."

Racing has always offered the three basic bets: win, place and show. These days there are all sorts of multi-leg bets that were not even around when I started going to the races. The Daily Double was the only so called "exotic" bet in 1968, and that one had been around for quite a while. Exacta wagering started in the early '70s.

With regard to a need to call the finish, the first three places have always been important, but now there is a Superfecta wager that pays if the first four horses across the line are picked in the right order. Non-automated placing would have been further stretched if in Runyon's day they needed to call the fourth place as well. In one portion of Runyon's columns, he goes into the art of  keeping a straight line of sight on the finish line. He accords the placing judges a 95% accuracy rate, something that would not be acceptable today.

The term "wire" to denote the finish line was derived out of a physical wire that ran from the stands to a finish line pole and mirror. Nowadays, I think it's wireless. Photos still have to be viewed and ruled on, but there is no more Whitney stand. NYRA built a replica of it at Saratoga's Oklahoma training track that can be climbed.

The biggest change from Runyon's era was the transition from the so-called "hand book" bookie days, to pari-mutuel wagering.

Wagering was done by placing bets with the bookmaker of your choice at the track. And there were several that offered sometimes different odds on the same horse. It was possible to "shop" for odds. Europe still uses the "bookie" system.

Pari-mutuel wagering allowed the government to step in an take a share off the top. This is know as "takeout" Runyon writes of the advent of pari-mutuel wagering, which in effect collects the patron's bet and pools it, basically creating odds from one source. The public in effect in effect is betting with or against the other members of the public making wagers on the race. That's the "pari-mutuel" part of the name.

New York State  did not adopt pari-mutuel racing until 1940. Churchill Downs had it as early as 1908. Each state then, and now, creates its own rules governing gambling. The system originated in France and was popular with the bettors. In the 1930 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs Gallant Fox won and paid $4.38 to win, an amount today that would be rounded down based on something called "breakage," the amount of rounding down after the payout calculation that are further gravy for the tracks, in addition to the usual upfront takeout. With breakage, that $4.38 payout would decrease to $4.30, or even $4.20. Pennies add up.

Runyon weighed in on the advent of pari-mutuel racing often, changing his views, and ultimately thinking it was bad, since he saw it as catalyst for personal destructive betting by the public. He felt it was going to be the ruin of people.

The origin of the word "chalk" harkens back to the hand book days, when the odds were written in chalk onto a slate at the bookmakers stall. Heavy action on a horse would lead to the bookmaker erasing the quoted odds and rewriting them on the slate. Continued heavy action would lead to more erasures of the chalk, and more rewriting with the chalk. Favorites, with dropping odds, were referred to as "chalk."

Even today, without hand book betting the system reacts to changing amount bets. Continued placing of money on a horse will drop the odds. The difference with the hand book days and the pari-mutuel days is that in pari-mutuel wagering your odds are not finalized until the gates open. Hand-book betting you got the quoted odds when you made the bet. 

In hand book days, an early bet on a horse that gets bet heavy while waiting for the race is locked in for the bettor. If the horse was 5/2 when you bet, and it wins, you get 5/2, despite what might have been a drop in the odds due to heavy action that left the quoted odds dropping to maybe 9/5.  

Sports reporting is not all Runyon did. He wrote short stories, many of which were turned into movies. His character the Lemon Drop Kid became a movie for Bob Hope, and the name of the winner of the 1999 Belmont Stakes.

The owners of Lemon Drop Kid, Jeannie and Laddie Vance would have known Runyon, so naming a horse after one of his characters was a no brainer. Lemon Drop Kid is a fabulous sire, and guarantees a good turf pedigree.

Runyon wrote screen plays for movies based on his short stories, covered trials, saw a musical Guys and Dolls (still being produced) come to life based on characters in his short stories, covered trials, the Lindbergh trial in particular, and even received a gift from Poncho Villa. The guy got around.

I've seen Guys and Dolls several times, the last one starring Nathan Lane as Nathan Detroit. Notably, I first saw the musical as a teenager in the '60s when a revival was produced at New York's City Center, starring Vivian Blaine, as long-suffering, not married, Adelaide from the original production as, Jan Murray as Nathan, Hugh O'Brien as Sky Masterson, Stubby Kaye, also from the original production, and B.S. Pully, Big Jule, also from the original  production. 

Big Jule of course could never be beaten at craps, because when he was behind he insisted, at the point of his pistol, that his dice had to be used—dice with no "spots." He of course "remembered" where they used to be when he made a throw, always a winning win. Piece of cake.

Once I helped a female co-worker carry the three boxes of shoes she had just bought at a downtown store on our lunch hour. With the three boxes stacked, and me following her, I distinctly remember I was resembling a character in the Guys and Dolls musical at the opening overture, who is doing the same thing. The difference was, I didn't pay for her shoes.

Runyon himself owned horses, but none that excelled like Lemon Drop Kid. Runyon apparently was a teetotaller, after being a very heavy drinker before coming to New York. That almost belies the image of a man about the confines of partying and gambling Manhattan and Saratoga. He was a heavy smoker, and did pass away from throat cancer at the age of 66 in 1946.

Runyon's ashes were deposited on Broadway, dropped from a plane piloted by the WW I ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Runyon's friend Walter Winchell started the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund, raising millions for research. I once came across where that fund must have been, just west of Lexington Avenue, in a brownstone somewhere in the high '30s. There was a plaque, but it is no longer there.

Certainly a sports writer from 100 years ago is not on many people's minds. Runyon didn't even win a Pulitzer. But the editor Jim Reisler points out that all the works in the book are in the public domain. Imagine that. Just like Chaucer, someone can still market a book of your writings.

Not bad.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Now That's A Commute

I have to realize—but certainly not like—the fact that print media is in a death spiral. I started reading newspapers and periodicals in the back of the family flower shop when I was 11. NYT, Time Magazine, The Herald Tribune, The Daily News. We also got the The Long Island Star Journal at home in Flushing, delivered the very old fashioned way by a young boy on a bike with a canvas bag draped from the handlebars. He'd collect, like all newspaper boys of the '50s, based on what his green notebook said you owed. Not everyone paid on time. For some reason, I'm amazed that we did, because my father often let bills lapse to the point of termination of service.

Because of reading The L.I. Star Journal I know who Mike Lee was and why there is a New York Bred thoroughbred stakes race named after him. Mike was a sportswriter for the paper, and he picked horses, a pursuit of many. I was too young to act on his choices, but I did read them. My guess is not many people will ever be able to tell you who Mike was. Or why the prior home of the Mets was named Shea Stadium. I'm taking it with me.

Newspapers are not particularly cheap. You still get great value with the NYT for the $3.00 newsstand price, but $4.00 for the WSJ is ludicrous. And now they're going to cleave their New York Metro reporting. Jesus. What is NYC, a farming community with no one living there? Luckily, home delivery brings discounts, but they are eroding, like saving money on MetroCards. If Arthur Miller were alive today, the title of a famous play might be 'Death of a Newspaper."

At 72 I'm hardly discouraged though. I'm sticking it out till the end, which is more likely to me than all the newspapers there are. So there.

I just saw in today's NYT that Richard Stolley passed away at 92, founding editor of People Magazine. Most people likely don't realize that People is a Time publication and was an offshoot of a section of Time magazine that was a page of bold face names, ellipses, and light gossip. I loved it in the '60s. Apparently so did many others, because in 1974 they started a whole magazine from it that's still going strong, with many imitators.

All of this is a long prelude to the value of print journalism when you can read a story like the one that appeared in yesterday's NYT Science Section about the woman who fell two miles to Earth from a plane that was crashing after being struck by lightening in 1971, who landed in the Amazon jungle, and then spent 11 days finding someone who could help her, which in part entailed having them pour gasoline into her wounds to help kill the maggots that were growing. She was 17 at the time, and is now

Juliane Returns to Crash Site

a retired zoologist, Dr. Juliane Diller.

She's the star of the long form story, but along the way we learned about vampire bats. Dr. Diller encountered all kinds of wildlife and fauna in her 11 days hike for help, and one occasion she was bitten by a vampire bat on her big toe.

Apparently, vampire bats do not usually go for humans (what a relief) but she explains, "vampire bats lap with their tongues, rather than suck. After they make a small incision with their teeth, protein in their saliva called Draculin acts as an anticoagulant which keeps the blood flowing when they feed." Holy shit. You mean the name Dracula is not some name made up by a science fiction writer? Those nasty blood suckers. (Despite similar properties, the makers of the anti-coagulant Brilinta avoid any reference to Dracula and bats. Bad for business.)

But the best part of the story, aside from reading about young Juliane's ordeal and her life afterward ,(she was the sole survivor, and her mother was killed in the crash) was reading about her father who took a job in South America and spent two years trying to get to his first day in the office. 

Now that's some commute! As bad as the LIRR was in the '70s, no one ever spent two years trying to reach Manhattan from Ronkonkoma.

Turns out, before Juliane was born, her father, Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, a German zoologist accepted a position at a natural history museum in Lima, Peru in 1948. Yeah, so. Get on a plane from Germany and fly there, right? Read on.

The reporter Franz Lidz tells us: "Getting there was not easy. Postwar travel in Europe was difficult enough, but particularly problematic for Germans. There were no passports, and visas were hard to come by."

So, if you weren't a fleeing Nazi, getting to South America for a respectable citizen was a bit of a hassle. Not the half of it.

To short circuit he paragraph on the trip, Dr. Koepcke arrived at a South American after getting to a German port, shipping out on a trans-Atlantic freighter, arriving in South America, but still not where he needed to be. No cabs in sight, and Uber's not been created yet, rentals are all gone, or non-existent, Wilhelm, being young and of a sound mind and body, sets out to walk to work. Think subway strike, and you've got part of the picture.

But this isn't a stroll waiting for lights to change green, he's got to cross a few mountain ranges, spend time in an Italian prison camp (hey, I'm a German in South America and the war's over, pisan...) after being arrested, then finally stowing away on a cargo ship bound for Uruguay hiding in a pile of rock salt. (Any story that involves you having anything to do with Uruguay certainly means a hardship was endured.)

Wilhelm finally arrives at work, two years after accepting the position and is told basically he's late, and they've filled the position. WTF!

Kinda hard to just turn around and catch the next ship back going in the other direction, ya think?  Wilhelm perseveres and accepts another position in the museum's ichthyology (fish) division. Thank God there was an opening, right?

Genetically, Wilhelm doesn't pass onto his daughter genes that specifically allow you to survive being burrowed in a pile of rock salt on a South American cargo ship bound for Uruguay, but you're that man's daughter, and when it's your time to fall out a plane and land in the Amazon jungle, you only need 11 days to reach help and have gasoline poured on your wounds to kill maggots. That younger generation. They can do anything.

What's my point? Without reading yesterday's paper you missed the story, that's what.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Step Dancer

Even vicarious ownership of a thoroughbred is frustrating.

Take The Assembled's connection to Step Dancer, owned by a friend of a member Bobby G. Richie has been in the game for decades and qualifies as someone who would understand you if you said a grumpy someone is from the "Harry M. Stevens Charm School." (More on that later.)

One of my favorite responses of all time was when I asked Bobby G. why didn't he own horses with Richie? They've been friends for decades, and their natural interest in racing would make them likely partners, Bobby G., a retired surgeon who can see things through the eyes of a medical man, replied, "It's bad enough one of us has the disease." Fair enough.

Step Dancer is a good horse, and represents a vast step up for Richie who has spent time in purgatory getting New York bred maidens to win, and then to possibly win their next race before showing inclinations of seeking farm life over starting gate life. 

Richie has bred his own horses, as well as taken part in some private purchases, which is how he's partners in Step Dancer's career.

With the decades of being in the game, Richie has passed through a succession of trainers, some of whom have retired. His current trainer, Barclay Tagg, at 80+ could retire, but has shown no inclination to do so. Barclay has been on the NYRA circuit for decades as well, and is a very good, under-the-radar trainer who enjoys enough success to keep eating.

He's trained Funny Cide, a Derby and Preakness winner, and Tiz the Law, a Belmont winner (2020 Covid year; mile and a eighth.) I've always paid special attention to Barclay's horses since the '80s. I think when Julie Krone rode five winners in a day at Saratoga (I was there) two of the horses were Barclay's. I had a good day that day as well.

Richie is pretty much a one-horse stable. It's easy to follow his horse du jour, which is what guys do who boast they know the owner of so-and-so. The longest prices I've ever hit have been Richie's horses. So now that he has a somewhat "good" horse the odds aren't so good. At least not after Step Dancer's box car first-time-out win of $50.50.

Step Dancer competes in ungraded stake races, New York Bred and otherwise, and is competitive. But he's only won twice in six starts. He's had various good jockeys on his back, but basically can't get out of the gate until the rest of the field has left the gate. He's not an early riser.  

If you've watched enough races, you will notice that there are those that go from that standing start to their near 40 miles an hour in a split second as soon as the gates open. And there are those in the field that seem to fall out of the gate, or are just bad at keeping up. They are pretty much doomed from the start. When you can't get on the highway like a Ferrari, you're going to sit in traffic. They are the equivalent of those who fall out of bed vs. those who hit he ground running. And when you're a race horse, running is what you have to do.

Consider Step Dancer two races back, a $85,000 Optional Allowance Claiming for New York Breds, NW two other than. There are 8 horse in the field and Step Dancer broke...eighth, and remained eighth until the half-mile mark of the mile and a sixteenth turf race. By the three-quarter mark Step Dancer has managed to pass one horse. Easy to spot a horse like that when you know the colors. They're back, back, back, there.

Step Dancer's finish was encouraging however, threading his way through traffic under Javier Castellano and finishing third in a blanket four-horse finish, a neck and a nose behind the winner. Oh, and they were favored.

With that performance, there then was no surprise that Step Dancer was favored in yesterday's New York Stallion Stakes race with a $150,000 purse. Eleven horses were set to go 7F on the Widener Turf course and Step Dancer drew the extreme outside, post position 11. The start? Last.

Progress through the field was a little better, since after a quarter mile he was 9th, then 6th, by the time they hit the stretch. Watching the race at that point was disappointing, since how was this horse then going to get in gear?

Well, he did, but then seemed to bobble a bit, weave his way through the field like a broken field runner, and mange to finish 2nd, one length back of the winner, Ocala Dream, the second choice. Step Dances was favored. Burning money at this point. 

The chart of the race again describes a bit of trouble at the start:

STEP DANCER broke in and bumped with a foe, settled on the far outside, tucked into the three path on the turn, raced off heels behind a steadying foe nearing the quarter pole [a quarter of a mile to go], was put to a drive in the upper stretch. moved out under the crop outside the furlong marker and finished with good energy to garner the place.

Yeah, thanks. Translation is the horse had a lousy start (again), worked their way through traffic, was stuck a bit behind a slow moving horse, then saw the daylight and got into it, finishing second. a half length ahead of a 52-1 shot that Jonathon Kichen, a TV handicapper, predicted would run better than their odds. Missing is that Step Dancer never threatened the winner and was favored. More money reduced to ash.

Again there was a different jockey on Step Dancer's back this time, the capable Dylan Davis, who has been riding well lately, especially on the turf, and who has ridden Step Dancer three times before, and for two of his victories. The time of the turf race was swift, as turf races generally are: 1:21.20.

Step Dancer is a good horse who can't seem to get out of bed. The good news is that he's a 3-year-old, is sound, and there's half a year left of racing, with Saratoga and its many turf races starting in mid-July. There will be other races, and the vicarious owners will be there. But the odds are going to be short.

Bobby G., Johnny M. and Johnny D. and Richie are old enough to understand what being from the Harry M. Stevens charm school means. Bob remembers Jamaica Race track in Queens, now a housing project. Richie might as well. 

The WSJ at the end of May in their weekend edition reviewed a book that is a collection of Damon Runyon columns on racing. Runyon was of course a famous sportswriter from the '20s, '30s and '40s whose style was his own. No one has ever come close to writing like he did.

The Broadway musical 'Guys and Dolls' is the product of some of this short stories. He was the Jimmy Breslin of his era. Breslin wrote a biography of Runyon, "Damon Runyon, A Life"

Reading the book review of  'I Got the Horse Right Here: Damon Runyon and Horse Racing,' edited by Jim Reisler I was floored by Max Watman's review that started off with a Runyon tale of the grandchild of Harry M. Stevens that Runyon wrote in 1923.

Anyone who has ever had a beer or a frank at a New York sports concession in decades past knows the cups say Harry M. Stevens on them.

I didn't know how far back Harry M. went, but apparently he had a hammer lock on sport concessions far longer than I ever realized. He was British, born 1856 and is credited with inventing the hot dog as something to eat at a sporting event as far back as a New York Giants baseball opening day in 1901.

Harry M's is not the ubiquitous presence  anymore, since it was sold to Aramark in 1995. Along the way they lost their rights to sell in Madison Square Garden, but at one point they were a limited partner in the ownership of the Boston Red Sox. They were everywhere.

The charm school reputation came from the surliness of their staff behind the counter. They moved at the speed of pregnant snails, and expected a tip. When a tip was handed over they plopped the change in a cup and announced to their co-workers, "subway," meaning someone gave them the equivalent of the fare at the time.

At least that was my experience, and others, with them at the race tracks. I started going in1968 and still have the distinct memory of the concessionaire somewhat holding my change in the air expecting me to tell him to keep it. Since I didn't like the guy at the start, and I was only about 19 at the time, I answered his "You want your change?" with a "Yeah, I got a piggy bank." No "subway" there. He was pissed.

Runyon's story of Harry M. Steven reveals that the founder apparently got a hefty financial start when he invested around $25,000 of his money with someone who had been the Secretary of the Navy under President Grover Cleveland, William C. Whitney, a financier, founder of the famous Whitney stable, and who was a descendent of John Whitney, an Englishman who settled in Massachusetts in 1635. This is as Patrician as you can get.

Apparently, Runyon's story tells us the $25,000 was turned into $215,000. And all before income tax. I suppose the beer and hot dogs came from that.

The headline for the WSJ book review on Runyon reads: Breaking Away From the Pack.

If only Barclay can get Step Dancer to do the same and get out of bed.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com 

Cosmic Coincidences

How's this for a coincidence?

On the day Brigitte Gerney's obituary appears in the NYT and we learn she was born in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein figures into the Final Jeopardy question. If you knew about Vaduz, the capital, you won.

Brigitte of course is the "Crane Lady" who survived having a 35-ton crane falling on her as she walked back from the dentist on NYC's Third Avenue in 1985. Brigitte recovered, learned to walk again, and still led an already eventful life when her fiancé doctor, who had been treating her, was killed by a NYC firefighter who was pissed at being denied disability benefits. Dr. Peter Rizzo was on the fire department's medical board that rejected the application for benefits. Brigitte did not pass away young. She was 85, and lived in Southampton, NY.

Vaduz is the capital of Liechtenstein, by itself would be an appropriate Final Jeopardy question/answer.  It's certainly obscure enough. But the folks at Jeopardy, those unseen, unheard of wonks who craft these clues, phrased yesterday's as: 

Countries of the World

On this country's national day, August 15, all 39,000 residents are invited to Vaduz castle for festivities and drinks.

The answer was Liechtenstein. Not only did two of the contestants get it right (as I did as well) but they spelled Liechtenstein correctly, something I know I wouldn't have been able to do unless I saw it in print first.

Jeopardy of course is filmed waaay in advance of its airings, so there was nothing planned about the final question/answer being Liechtenstein appearing on the same day Brigitte's obituary hit the news.

I love probabilities, but I know of no way to figure out what the odds of this happening are. Joseph Mazur, the writer of the book "Fluke: The Math and Myths of Coincidences" no doubt could weigh in and give us a logically conceived set of odds.

One thing I absorbed when reading that book is that while these coincidences might seem cosmically driven, they are in fact the product of a set of odds that have been going on without your realizing it. While we are marveling  at the "coincidence" we haven't taken into account all the negative times, or events when the coincidence didn't happen: how many Jeopardy questions have already been aired where the answer had nothing to do with he place of someone's birth that we've read about in that day's obituary. Lots. In other words: it had to happen some day.

As for the guest Jeopardy hosts who are in a bit of audition for the permanent replacement spot, I would put this cycle's Savannah Guthrie up there in ranked voting. I'd also add the lady whose name I don't remember, but she's a neuroscientist, as well as the fellow who wore thick glasses who I think had been a champion as decent prospects.

But perhaps getting back to Liechtenstein, inviting 39,000 people over for refreshments, even if they don't all come, tells us how homey Liechtenstein must be. Consider what they serve, and you don't even have to get a Covid shot.

On the country's national holiday all subjects are invited to the castle of the head of state. A significant portion of the population attends the national celebration at the castle where speeches are made and complimentary beer is served.

That's got to be a hoot. Free beer. I wonder what problems that creates. Our Capitol on January 6th had uninvited guests, no free beer, and it was a disaster for the ages. They haven't stopped showing the film footage yet. Maybe with a Coors Light offering things would have turned out different.

Since Liechtenstein is tiny, probably better behaved and only 62 square miles and looking like a European appendix, I'm sure a lot of the population can reach the castle via public transportation. Or have their chauffeurs drive them. The population's per capita GDP is $165,028, second only to Monaco's.

No drunk driving in Liechtenstein, but certainly bathroom availability needed for the trip home.

http://onofframp.blogspot.com

Lunch

I had a nice lunch today with my daughter Susan. We ate at a place of her choosing in Carle Place, near the Hicks nursery where we each bought a few more plants for our respective landscaping efforts. When it comes to landscaping, you can never really be finished.

My daughter ordered her meal, and I ordered mine, and when the meals arrived I announced I was not going to take any photos of the meal and email them to anyone. And I didn't.

But, when I finished my meal I did ask my daughter to take a photo of my now empty plate. I was going to send a photo of the plate to my friend Melissa, sort of as my way of telling her what I had for lunch. Readers of this blog will remember I made a recent posting of her sending me photos of what she and her boyfriend David had for lunch in Riverhead, NY last Saturday.

My email went as follows:

Attached is a photo of the empty plate from my lunch today with Susan. We ate at the West End Cafe in Carle Place, a table cloth restaurant that Susan chose. She was taking me out for half my Father's Day present.

 

On this plate, before I ate nearly everything on it, lay a Triple Blend medium hamburger, consisting of Kobe beef, Dry Aged Sirloin and some other part of a steer, that was served on a terrific bun with bacon and sautéed onions. I had a choice of two toppings, and chose those. I am not a cheese guy with hamburgers.

 

Along with this perfectly cooked hamburger, there was a slice of raw, red onion that I placed on top of the hamburger. There was also a slice of tomato and some lettuce, that in the days of eating at Greek lunch counters in the '60s would help make a "burger deluxe," for $1.25. No one orders those these days at any price.

 

Accompanying the burger on my plate were thin French fries, fried to a nice golden brown. There were two small deli pickle slices as well, plus of course the little metal cup of ketchup.

 

All this was, as you can see, delightfully consumed, and was followed by a pistachio ice cream parfait with chocolate "sauce." I guess they don't dare call it syrup anymore. No sprinkles. I declined the whipped cream topping.

 

There are no photos of what my meal looked like before I dug in, only this, the empty plate. I didn't eat the plate, something of course my wife is always amazed doesn't happen.

I have therefore still never emailed anyone a photo of what I was about to eat. But today I came close.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The Indomitable Mrs. Gerney

Not good news

It amazes me to think there are people who are in their 30s, contemplating shedding their work-from-home casual clothes for their business casual clothes as they plan to go back into the office as the restrictions from the Covid-19 pandemic are lifted who were born after 1985, the year Brigitte Gerney survived having a crane topple on her and crushing her legs as she walked home from a dental appointment on Third Avenue between 63rd and 64th Streets on May 30. Time does fly.

It was big news at the time, and remained big news as she recovered, only to further her streak of bad luck/good luck when the doctor she was engaged to who had been treating her was killed by a disgruntled fireman seeking disability benefits at a Fire Department pension office. Brigitte had numerous occasions of bad luck/tragedy, followed by the good luck to overcome them even before the crane incident.

If you think there are astronomical odds of someone having a crane fall on them—and surviving, even eventually walking!—think how much further out in space those odds are when the person who it happened to was born in Liechtenstein and was walking on New York's East Side.

(I once sat next to a woman who was from Liechtenstein at a 'NYPL Live' presentation hosted by Paul Holdengräber with Rosanne Cash as his guest in 2016. I teased the woman that Liechtenstein is where all the real money is hidden. She said she knew nothing about that. It wasn't hers. New York is a crossroads.)

The afternoon of May 30th 1985 came back to me when I read Brigitte Gerney's obituary in today's NYT by Sam Roberts. I was working at 622 Third Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets at the time and witnessed the mammoth traffic jam that was building on Third Avenue as rescue vehicles and cranes were rushed to the scene of the crane's collapse in an attempt to free the woman trapped under the crane, Brigitte Gerney. And after six hours she was extricated and rushed to Bellevue.

You can follow the links from the obituary and the original news story to fill in all the details.

Whatever star Brigitte was born under it allowed for her to absorb and recover from the death of a child, injuries from a cable car collapse, lung cancer, the death of her husband from colon cancer, the collapse of the crane on her and then the death of her fiancé, a doctor who treated her and who was part of a medical review board who was murdered by a fireman whose disability benefits were being deferred. You either sought Brigitte out when buying a lottery ticket, or you stayed away from her.   

Through it all, Brigitte was never anything but thankful and gracious. She said "On one hand, only in a place like New York does a crane fall on you when you are walking home from the dentist. On the other hand, only in New York would they shut down half the city, have these crazy, brave people crawl under a teetering crane to save you, and then have the best doctors in the world somehow rebuild your smashed legs."

That I know of, there is no plaque on the long-ago completed 42-story apartment building on Third Avenue whose foundation was being dug when the crane collapsed on Mrs. Gerney. There are many plaques put up in the city, but it is doubtful the builders and owners would like people to be reminded that they had something to do with an unlicensed crane operator filling in at the controls when the load was too heavy, causing the crane to topple forward.

Probably no matter. Brigitte would tell people she never again walked on that side of the street past the building anyway.

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The Menu

A friend of mine I used to work with is several years younger than me, and so is decidedly prone to do what people who are younger than 72 and under 50 do: they use emojis; they use Twitter shorthand, even when not using Twitter, e.g. LOL, LMAO, ICYMI, FOMO. At the outset I had to Google some of these, but no longer. While I myself do not use these abbreviations, I've grown to know what they mean.

This friend of mine likes food, is a good cook, and is not shy about telling me what she's had to eat at the latest restaurant she and her boyfriend have visited. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, I get a menu's worth description of what they had to eat. 

Since she moved to the middle of Suffolk County I don't see her as often as I once did, but I do get emails. And usually any one email will tell me what Melissa and David ate over the weekend, and where. The latest dispatch arrived today and told me what was in store for them in Riverhead over the weekend.

"Last weekend Dave and I went out to the Country Farm Kitchen in Riverhead and it was amazing! They actually have you sit right along Riverhead river and the food was outrageous!! For appetizers we had  goat cheese with lavender on toast topped with fresh blackberries, blueberries and strawberries. It was AMAZING!! Crab cakes DELICIOUS!!! Dave had risotto with scallops and I had a chicken dish. Definitely rated as one of our favorite restaurants."

I'm not being mean, but my mouth didn't water at reading any of this. And I'm hungry right now. I haven't finished breakfast. "Goat cheese with lavender on toast" is beyond anything I can visualize, let along guess as to what it might taste like. I'm glad they liked it, and a trip to the E.R. didn't ensue.

As I read this and checked for attachments, I realized there were no photos of their repasts. This is unusual, because people their age tend to whip out the cell phone and snap images of what they're eating. I sometimes get them from my youngest daughter when she's about to dive into a plate of oysters. I like oysters, but images of them do nothing for my palate.

I didn't sarcastically write back and ask "where are the photos?" I didn't need do. Within a few minutes two photos arrived of the dishes they were consuming.

Aside from the mystery of lavender there was nothing that was described that didn't sound like something I'd eat myself. And the photos reinforced the appeal of the descriptions.

Taking photos of what I'm about to eat is not something I'd do. And I suspect most people of my vintage are not prone to do so either. I've never even found myself contemplating describing what I was about to eat in an email. I might mention I ate out, and where, and if it was good or not, but no more than that—if that.

But being an incontrovertible wise-ass, I'd love to be able to flash an image of my gastric intake—any gastric intake—as it clears the pyloric valve and heads for the small intestine. 

Unfortunately, this would entail a fluoroscopy, or portable x-ray, and likely a co-pay added to the check. Logistically, I can't see it happening.

But I'd still love to be able to do it.

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If You're in Kansas

The WSJ has a way of putting things in perspective by using numbers and references to years. I will never forget when Ronald Reagan was running for president in 1980 the Journal astutely pointed out that when Ronnie was born there were only 46 stars on the flag flying over the courthouse in Tampico, Illinois, where he was born (My mother and her brothers were born there as well. Another story.)

Since the 47th state admitted to the Union was New Mexico, and it didn't join the Union until 1912, Ronnie predated the 47th star. He was born in 1911. The intimation was of course was Ronald Reagan too old to be running for president at the age of 69? The flag then and now has 50 stars. Ronnie was ancient history. Or was he?

They've put things in historical perspective many times since then. Consider the latest when they tell us that the town Angelus, in a northwest corner of Kansas, now has more chickens in its old school building than there are children in the town, which now totals 9; there are 28 residents of all ages in town. If only the kids outnumbered the chickens, the building might still be a school.

It is certainly not an uncommon tale. A prairie town has steadily lost population and services like schools, that have been combined with surrounding towns that have also shrunk.

The picture above shows what the Angelus school looks like now. The red brick building has the look to me of a power station that was in my Flushing neighborhood that was alongside the LIRR tracks. A closer look does leave you with the impression that it might have been a Catholic school, which it was. Remove the goats, chickens and tires from the front and surround it with trees and grass, the building looks like it could be a Catholic elementary school in any of the boroughs of NYC, other than Manhattan.

Certainly changes have come to Angelus, Kansas. Bob Dylan could have been singing about it. The building was once a school, housing nuns who lived above the classrooms. The building ceased to be a school in 1999.

It became the Ewers family residence in 2000, who raised their children and grandchildren there. Then it was owned by Travis Ryburn, who basically didn't use it. Mr. Rayburn, who still lives in town, runs a towing service, drives the school bus, and reports the rainfall in Angelus to the radio station KXXX, Farm-N Country 790 on the AM dial in Colby, sold it in 2015 to Josh Rumback, who has now been basically using the building as a barn. It is after all red.

The building, and its surroundings, by any standard, have to be considered an eyesore—at best. Josh Rumback admits its use as a barn has left people "butt sore."

Looking at the terrain from Google Earth, you can see the building just off the gravel road that is basically Main Street for Angelus. There is not much else around, but the church remains in its original splendor, if not filled anymore with parishioners.

The WSJ reports that Mr. Rumback, knowing the place is not what people like to see, has erected a wall in front of the building that somewhat blocks the view from the road. On the wall he has also put the sign:

"THIS PROPERTY IS PROTECTED BY GUNS AND GOD. ENTER UNINVITED AND YOU’LL MEET THEM BOTH!"

God is certainly involved, since the building is 100 years old. But if the chickens are armed, they might be too tough to eat.

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Deception and Horse Racing

I love deception. Before I retired 10 years ago I was paid money to detect fraud for a major New York health insurer, and then for a consulting company that had a client list of many health insurers from different parts of the country. Detection has funded my life.

I love race track stories of deception. Thus, I was taken when Joe Drape of the NYT wrote of when Kendrick Carmouche's jockey father Sylvester was hit with a ten-year suspension for deceptively making it appear that he and his horse had run the full course at Delta Downs in Louisiana, rather than just hanging out at the top of stretch, shrouded by nightfall and thick fog, and start to head to the finish line as the others were just starting to get close, but not too close, to them. He cut the course. He and his horse won by 24 lengths and paid a whopping mutuel from the 23-1 odds. But not for long.

I was again smitten with a story I did remember reading about from 1977, when there was a famous "ringer" case at Belmont, the substitution of a much faster horse for a slower horse. The slower horse is the one the public thinks is running, the one whose past performances, if even interpreted by a novice handicapper, show the horse has absolutely no chance of winning

Thus, the odds on the tote board point to despair, but the true odds of running a decent race, even a winning race, are terrific since the faster horse is going to actually run against far slower animals. Get on board.

Well, maybe not. Ringer cases are extremely rare, and rely on the perpetrator to engineer it with as much secrecy as possible. Think D-Day. If word were to spread that there is a faster horse running in place of the slower horse, there are enough people who will bet significant sums of money and drive the odds down, making it far less of a betting coup if the faster horse does win the race. (And they usually do.)

I was reminded of the 1977 ringer case when I was reading the obituary for the defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, famous for taking on what could be called celebrity clients, like Patty Hearst and O.J. Simpson. But he also did grunt work, and in this case he represented the veterinarian Mark Gerard, the brains, or perpetrator of the ringer case.

It's a long time ago, but there is plenty to read if you can access the Internet and the NYT archives online.

Many wrote about the case. Sports Illustrated eventually did a cover story on it. The NYT covered it from start to finish, with the legendary sportswriter Red Smith eventually telling his readers that the faster horse, Cinzano, was then, in 1980, running over jump races in Virginia, and further reminded us that Cinzano was substituted in the 9th race at Belmont, a turf affair, on September 23, 1977 for a plodder named Lebon, who Smith told us was "unable the beat a fat man from Gimbels to Macy's.

The stores then were one block apart, with a typical north/south NYC block pretty much one twentieth of a mile, 88 yards, significantly shorter than a furlong, which is 220 yards, an eighth of a mile. That would be a very slow horse.

When you dive into the story you appreciate how much of a secret Dr. Gerard kept the substitution. The jockey and the trainer of record, Jack Morgan, were not implicated in the scam. Larry Adams, a journeyman jockey of the era was quoted as saying "I thought he was just a horse that woke up on the grass...Once he got to the hedge, he ran a great race." 

He certainly did. He went off at 57-1 and won easily by four lengths, netting Dr. Gerard approximately a $77,000 betting profit. That is a betting coup.

In fact, the trainer Jack Morgan, was given the horse (Cinzano as Lebon) by Dr. Gerard to condition, and was entered in a dirt race on September 9th, finishing 11th in a 12 horse field. The betting on that race was suspicious because it was reported a mystery, attractive blonde placed a $10,000 bet on Lebon, driving the odds from 55-1 to 7-1.

The story went that she didn't know "Lebon" was again in play in the September 23rd race. She therefore had no bet on the race he did "win." A woman scorned is not a good thing, and the story went that she contacted a reporter who supposedly broke the story. The story has a lot of fathers. 

Bettors crave information, no matter what they're betting on. And horse racing has plenty of publically available information through the Daily Racing Form and their past performances, a highly reliable read of a horse's history.

If non-public information comes a bettor's way, it is always savored. It is rolled around in the mind and assessed for relevance and usefullness.

I remember one year sitting in someone's box at Saratoga when there was a friend of the friend whose box it was who was either a clocker himself, or knew the clockers and was quietly dispensing the information that so-and-so in the upcoming race had an unpublished workout that was lights out. 

There are instances of when a public address announcement is made that a certain horse doesn't show a certain workout in their past performances. Thus, the non-public omission is acknowledged, and becomes public. Case closed.

In this instance, there is no announcement for some reason. The non-public information stays non-public. Is knowing it through this source useful? Sure, but not very useful when you look up and see that the horse he's talking about is 9-5, or less; the horse is certainly going to go off as the favorite.

Some secret piece of information. Either the bettors that help make the odds by their sums already know about the workout, or it just plain doesn't matter; the horse has enough going for it without knowing about the work that favoritism is a given. All information is not created equal.

There was a time years ago when I was in the Belmont paddock, invited by a friend to be with the party he was with. Another member of the party had a horse running in the race. The horse was trained by Colum O'Brien, a trainer of such poor numbers that their winning percentage could only have a 1 in it if you did the division and took the answer out to at least three decimal places; .001. That's a trainer who doesn't win races.

But everyone was polite and wished the owner well. I even put a $2 win bet on it in case there was a miracle, and the horse did win. It would be nice to be a winner with the other sorry optimists.

As the horses are being lead around there is someone called the Paddock Judge who looks at and examines each horse and makes sure they're wearing, or not wearing, the equipment the trainer said they'd be wearing, or not wearing. This is generally blinkers and front wraps.

Trainers will try different combinations of equipment, generally blinkers on, or blinkers off. The horse's aggressive running can be better controlled by the use, or non-use of blinkers. Or so it is believed. The only thing certain in horse racing is that there is no certainty. Accepting that will keep you in the game long enough to need bifocals to read the past performances and keep you going back over the years for stronger prescriptions. I just did.

Use or non-use of blinkers is public knowledge. It is noted in the programs and the past performances. The Paddock Judge makes sure the actual lines up with the intended. In the case of Colum O'Brien's horse, there was immediate evidence as to why he may not be a very successful trainer. (He's pretty much disappeared these days.) A public address announcement asked for Colum to please report to the paddock judge.

Apparently, Colum didn't inform the entry people that so-and-so was now going to race with, or without blinkers. There was an equipment change which should line up with the information presented in the program.

I seized on now knowing what was now non-public information. So-and-so had an equipment change that didn't show in the program, and wasn't being publically announced. Was it going to make a difference? 

One of the people in the party, Bobby G., almost yelled at me when I told him I bet on the horse out of politeness. "That horse doesn't have four legs!" (He did this outside of earshot of the owner.)

This particular horse had the look of Lebon's past performance. He seemed incapable of outrunning a fat man sprinting between Gimbels and Macy's on a hot day, even if it was downhill, which it isn't.

No matter. I put an extra $2 to win on the horse just in case the equipment change was the charm he needed to run like a race horse rather than a plough horse.

Did the change help him?

Absolutely not. 

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Red Smith and F. Lee Bailey

How great is it to be reminded of Red Smith when reading an obituary of F. Lee Bailey, the recently departed defense attorney who has just passed away at 87.

"Wait a minute. Red Smith is in F. Lee's NYT obituary?"

"You betcha. When you get an obit written by the inestimable Robert McFadden, you get a reunion of names.

"How is that possible considering how long ago Red Smith passed away. Where did their paths cross?"

"Whether their paths physically crossed or not, I do not know, but F. Lee represented a thoroughbred veterinarian Dr. Mark Gerard in 1977 over the case of his working a ringer into a race at Belmont and walking away (temporarily at least) with a betting score of $80,400 when he substituted a much faster horse for a decidedly slower horse.

"The veterinarian substituted a horse named Cinzano as Lebon, a thoroughbred so slow that Red Smith described him as being unable to 'beat a fat man from Gimbels to Macy's.'"

"That is slow. Those stores were only a block apart years ago."

"I know. The race was for cheap horses, and Lebon's past performances looked so bad that there was no confidence in his winning as measured by the betting public. He went off at 57-1. There are horses who get entered that show absolutely no chance based on their past performances of being able to finish in front of anyone in a race.

"It was reported Dr. Mark Gerard constructed a bet of $1,800; $1,200 to win and $600 to show, that netted him $80,440 at the window after the race was declared official. In racing parlance, that's known as a 'score.' Putting one over.

"But of course, Lebon is not Lebon, he's Cinzano, a decidedly faster horse that fooled the race identifiers who are supposed to prevent ringers from getting into the paddock. It was like substituting Usain Bolt for a high school runner in a track meet.

"Now Red Smith didn't know Cinzano was running as Lebon, but when writing of the story once the lid was blown off, he accurately described Lebon as a horse who couldn't beat a fat man running a block between two famous stores in NYC—hot day or not—uphill or down. Not happening."

"So, F. Lee got the vet off?"

"Not quite. But his sentence was not very onerous, and he was back in the barn within a few months, but not as a vet for thoroughbreds at New York tracks. 

"Red Smith wrote of Cinzano in a 'Sports of the Times' column that appeared on Sunday April 20, 1980 while Dr. Gerard was still free on the appeal of his one year sentence, a misdemeanor for "fraudulent practices in a contest of speed" coupled with a paltry $1,000 fine. There is no mention that he had to repay the mutuel winnings.

"But he did hire F. Lee Bailey, who for certain didn't come cheap. Dr. Gerard served only a few months in a Nassau County jail for his one-year sentence. The horse Cinzano fell into a bit of a no-man's land, lacking an identity of his own, since the horse Lebon was killed at Dr. Gerard's farm in Muttontown, with Cinzano then being portrayed as the registered Lebon, despite an age and coloring difference, not to mention a genital difference in gelded vs. not gelded. There was never a horse registered as Cinzano.

"Thus, Cinzano could never race as himself. He competed in point-to-point jump races with no betting and no purse. He was a horse who couldn't use his own name.

"Red Smith, cleverly points out at the close of his column that Dr. Mark Gerard got off easier than the horse. Dr. Gerard had F. Lee Bailey. Cinzano didn't."

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