Rhymes with Horses' Tails

After my experience at the ’97 Belmont Stakes, I kept a passing interest in horse racing.  I would make a point to watch the Triple Crown races on TV, but not much more.  Sure, there was the occasional Preakness party hosted by a Baltimore friend, coupled with brief trips to an OTB, but no real investment in the sport until I met Jim. 

Jim is a fellow writer who started graduate school in Pittsburgh a year after I did, so we did not meet until the fall of 2004.  Over many beers these past 5+ years, Jim would regale me with tales of his father, which 85% of the time involved a horse.  More specifically, the shenanigans Jim, Sr. and his buddies would get into on the way to, at and on the way home from various horse races.  These stories are not mine to tell, and if I wrote them they would lack the style, charm and romance of the storyteller.  Also, you would not believe a word of it.  The “Horseshit Tales of Jim and Jim, Sr.” are so outrageous, so hilarious and so tragic, they put the Bible to shame.  And not unlike the Bible, the parishioner is not asked to test the limits of physical possibility, but rather to believe in something Greater.  It does not matter if our eyes have never seen a 100 year-old woman give birth, a sea split in two, or a man walk on water.  These things simply happened and there were witnesses to tell the tale afterwards.  It does no good to debate the truth, for doubt only ruins the story.  Instead, choose to believe and thy will be enlightened.  And so it is with the “Horseshit Tales.”  I love them and I believe them because they fulfill a missing part of my soul.  And because I am already damned to Hell for having listened to them.

After graduate school, I moved to New York.  After a year in the city, I met Andrea, the woman who would be my wife.  It would be three weeks between that meeting and our first date.  First, there would be Saratoga.  The day after meeting Andrea, I left to go on a family vacation to visit my sister in Portland and celebrate my father’s 60th birthday (and make a side road trip with my brother to Vancouver and Seattle).  A few days after my return, I was scheduled to pick up an award at a film festival on Cape Cod.  Sensing the geographical possibilities, I accepted an invitation from Jim to attend a couple of days of racing at Saratoga with his friend Perry before heading to Massachusetts.

Jim was driving from Pittsburgh to Perry’s house upstate and the two of them were to meet me at the train station in Albany, and then head over to our hotel to prepare to attend my First Communion at the Saratoga Cathedral.  Perry is a professional Native American storyteller and between the two of them, my ears were burning with the heat rising from the horseshit.  Or was it the actual 95-degree heat wave that flooded the Saratoga racetrack like a plague, thereby cancelling the day’s races for the first time in 130 years?  Stunned, Perry and Jim decided that the only plausible way to salvage the day was to spend it in the most depressing place on earth: the Albany OTB.

Having never previously been to Saratoga, I could not fully appreciate the stark contrast this dank pit of a bettor’s palace held.  Saratoga Race Course, for those who have not been, is the Garden of Eden.  Surrounded by lush green grass and tall oak trees shading communal picnic tables, the track itself is in marvelous shape, with an inviting apron from which to watch the action thundering mere yards away.  It was worthy of a stop on a road trip to Montreal with Andrea the following year.  The Albany OTB is where the next overzealous religious cult should hold its mass suicide.  Now, it could be that everyone in there that day was depressed that the Saratoga races had been cancelled, and were therefore forced to bet on harness racing at such luminous tracks as those in West Virginia, Delaware and New Jersey, but I’d be surprised if the mood changed much from day to day.  It’s actually quite a large venue, almost like a converted strip club, with dozens of 13-inch screens trained on various races, some of them not even live.  After a few miserable hours, we decided we’d be better off stripping naked and scraping our privates across the hot gravel of the parking lot, and then going back to our hotel room to drink, play cards and pray for cooler horses to prevail the next day. 

And it was evening and it was morning, a second day.  The weather cooled a bit and Saratoga rejoiced.  We arrived at the track just before the first races, lugging in a cooler filled with sausages, cheeses and, of course, beer.  Perry and Jim patiently refreshed my memory on how to read a Racing Form, while somewhat cheerfully bickering back and forth about which horses were going to win, a delightful ritual that continued throughout the day.  Meanwhile, I took in the gorgeousness of the track and the picnic area and the festivities that surrounded me, drinking beer, making several uneducated guesses as to which horse might win and which horse might win me a lot of money, nervously placing bets at the betting window and then wandering onto the apron to watch the race unfold exactly the opposite of how I predicted, and then repeated the entire procedure eight or nine more times until the last horse limped across the finish line and the crowds headed to the parking lot to continue their partying in the town of Saratoga Springs.  I have since returned twice to Saratoga, once with Jim and Perry and once with Andrea.  There are few summer days so glorious as one spent on the shaded grass of Saratoga.  From the tales I have been told, Louisville is a whole other animal.  I look forward to forging my own tales, with Perry, Jim and (if I am lucky) Jim, Sr. himself as witnesses.

Running For the Roses on Valentine's Day

My wife continues to amaze me.  In the past year, she has given birth, moved twice (once while pregnant and once with a 5 month-old), started a new job, and come through it all relatively intact.  Then, this past Valentine's Day, she went beyond the beyonds.  A gift no married man (let alone father) dare dream of, for fear of psychological institutionalization.  Yes, my wife gave me her unsolicited blessing and a plane ticket to attend the 2010 Kentucky Derby.  With two friends whose reputations for the perpetuation of general nonsense precede them.  On the weekend before our daughter's first birthday.  I don't know if I could have reacted more enthusiastically if she had told me that Gisele was going to use our apartment for a week-long lingerie fashion shoot.  I leaped up from the table at the restaurant and nearly knocked her over with my embrace.  This called for celebration.  This called for bourbon.

As the romantic dinner at our favorite intimate restaurant in Brooklyn Heights continued, and the glow showed no signs of wearing off, I began to wonder to myself: "Why am I so damn happy?"  I wouldn't call myself a hardcore horse racing fan by any means.  Yes, I have been to the track a handful of times in my life, and I know how to read a Racing Form, but it isn't something that I keep up with daily, like I do baseball and football, or even casually, like basketball and soccer.  I have never especially wanted to attend a Super Bowl, unless the Patriots were involved, and even then, I've had four chances in the past decade and I never once bothered to cruise eBay for tickets.  Sure, they would have been out of my price range, but I was a dumb 26 year-old when they won Super Bowl 36 in 2002 in New Orleans, where my parents live and am generally allowed to stay free of charge.  Surely, if there is any time to toss away $500-$1000 on a Super Bowl ticket, it's then.  "Eh," I reasoned, "The seats will probably suck.  Better to watch on TV."  A World Series game?  Sure, if the Red Sox are involved.  Did I bother in 2004 or 2007?  No.  So, what is it about watching 20 or so horses I've never heard of race for two minutes that has me so pumped?  For one thing, Touch Gold.

In 1997, I took a summer job in New York before my senior year of college at Washington University.  I was crashing on the futon in my brother Adam's one-bedroom walk-up apartment in the East Village and ready for my first 21 summer in the city.  My brother's friend is a bit of horse aficianado and they invited me to attend the Belmont Stakes.  I had never been to a horse race before and now I was going to a Triple Crown race.  Not only that, the city was abuzz about Silver Charm, who had won the Derby and the Preakness and was the favorite to take the first Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978.  We took a train to Belmont Park, which I had no idea was near the city, let alone virtually in Queens.  Until this point, I had refrained from raising one of my main concerns for fear of seeming uncool: "How much am I going to have to pay to get into the Belmont Stakes?"  Surely, Adam's friend had gotten us tickets in advance and I would have to come up with the cash eventually, somehow, but how much?  I mean, it's a Triple Crown race!  With an actual Triple Crown at stake.  Could it be $100?  $200?  $500?  We get to the ticket booth and the moment of truth arrives.  The ticket man says "Two dollars."  Excuse me?  Two bucks to get into the biggest sporting event the entire world is talking about?  God bless horse racing!  God bless America!

We get in and I am stunned to learn that the Belmont Stakes will not take place for another 6 hours.  What am I to do in the meantime?  Learn to bet the ponies, of course.  Adam and his friend try to teach me the racing form, but like any natural gambler, I am only interested in the big payoff.  Who cares if a particular horse is favored to win me $3 if I bet $2?  I want the horse that will set me for life if it wins!  50-1 odds?  Come on down!

By the time the showcase race rolled around, I had wised up a bit, but I still wasn't onboard with betting Silver Charm and his paltry payout.  I was conflicted because wouldn't it be more fun to bet on the horse that could make history, the one everyone was here to see?  Instead, I bet Touch Gold, who was among the favorites, but promised a bigger payday than Silver Charm.  Little did I know that I had made the best choice of all.  Not just because Touch Gold won, spoiling the Triple Crown bid, but because "Touch Gold" is so much more fun to say roughly 156 times in succession as he's turning into the homestretch with a two dollar ticket in your hand.  Caught up in the excitement of the moment, surrounded by thousands of people, the only natural thing to do is repeat the name of the horse over and over again throughout the race.  It was then that I was hooked.  But, that is only a small part of why this year's Kentucky Derby race excites me so much.  The other part belongs to my friend Jim, who I will be going with, along with another friend, Perry.  The story of Jim deserves its own blog post, coming soon.