Dino called Miami. “I admit it. I’m too damn scared to go back to Agua Caliente. Especially if we are going back there to pick up $250,000 in cash. I’m afraid of the track’s owner, and his friends, the guards, everyone. Who can we trust there, man? They are shooting their machine guns out in the open. Maybe they pay us, and then five minutes later have someone rob us in the parking lot, or they kidnap us.”
Ever the optimist, Miami said, “I hope we have that problem to face, buddy.”
Chapter 7
Heaven
All racetracks are unusual places. On any given day, the turf club could be filled with some of the wealthiest people in the country watching their own personal horses compete. At England’s top track, Royal Ascot Racecourse, the Queen of England frequently attends to view her own horses run. English gentlemen will be found wearing top hats and tuxedoes, while the ladies sport elegant dresses, custom hats, and fine jewelry.
However, at the same tracks, on the same days, the grandstand is filled with people from all walks of life, some at the lowest economic levels, who survive on welfare and other forms of government assistance. In between the exclusive private spaces and the open-air seating is the clubhouse, filled with middle-class fans. It’s a truth that diverse groups love the sport of horse racing.
Miami understood it. He believed that to buy a betting ticket on a horse, for the minutes of that race, the gambler owns that horse’s performance as well as a potential to gain the joy of a profit or experience the sting of a loss. “Greatest game in the world!” he always said about it. Someday I’ll bring my sons here, he often thought. “Other dads will take their kids to the playground, but I’ll bring mine to Hollywood Park, and Santa Anita Park!”
All racetrack venues are not equal. Most tracks today show the evidence that they were built in a bygone era. In the late 1930s, over 40,000 fans would attend Seabiscuit’s workouts, and for his great match race against War Admiral, over 40 million people listened on the radio. The great tracks of Saratoga Race Course in New York, and Churchill Downs in Kentucky, were built in 1863 and 1875. A bit later, Belmont Park in New York was built in 1905, and Santa Anita Park, in Southern California, was constructed in 1934. These places were built in the era before televised Super Bowls, or March Madness college basketball playoffs. They were built when the two most popular US spectator sports were boxing and horseracing. These magnificent tracks were built when land was plentiful, and the track grounds could accommodate over 100,000 fans during the top races. Walking through these old racetracks is like walking through history, and, except for the fashions of the men and women in attendance, the grounds are not much different today than they were 100 years ago.
Miami believed that the track, Las Vegas casinos, and other forms of gambling were not intrinsically evil. Nor was drinking alcohol intrinsically evil...in his view. People go to a two-day Las Vegas getaway, lose their allocated $500 bankroll, and then go back to be a teacher, realtor, or an accountant the next Monday morning. In the same way, most people can drink a couple of beers or glasses of wine at happy hour, and report back to work the next day without any issues. For about five percent of the population, moderation is impossible and they drink or gamble to excess. Yet, there’s a perception that if you like to hang out at the track and take chances on a bet or two (or three), you’re seen as a social deviant. Some people talk about baseball’s Wrigley Field like it was a shrine or a museum, but they think of racetracks as one step above brothels.
For decades, horseracing and movie stars seem to have been attracted to one another on the big weekend stakes days. In contrast, the only celebrities that Miami and Dino saw with some regularity on weekdays at the track were Farah Fawcett, Walter Matthau, Don Adams, and comedian Tim Conway. Matthau basically lived at the track when not filming and often said, “The best thing in the world is winning at the racetrack. The second greatest thing in the world…is losing at the racetrack.” Fawcett loved riding horses and was a real race fan. Adams and Conway hung out at the track all the time and to Miami they were a real life “odd couple.”
Most horseplayers lose money at the track, but Conway found the humor in it. On one occasion, Miami, Dino, and Conway rode down the turf club elevator that was full of losing horseplayers at the end of the gambling day. Everyone was silent until Conway said, “Anyone want to buy a rental car?”
Once asked how he did at the track that day. Conway quipped, “I had a $300 hot dog.”
The Kentucky Derby, referred to as “The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports”, a race between 3-year-old horses, is one of the most celebrated sports events of all time. It is always run on the first Saturday in May and has been since 1875. In the 113 Derbies between 1875 and 1987, only two female horses won the race. The odds of a filly winning this race are astronomical. The Kentucky Derby is truly a once-in-a-lifetime shot for any 3-year-old horse with ability.
Now the 3-year-old filly Winning Colors was about to tackle the colts in one of the top qualifying races, the $500,000 purse Santa Anita Derby.
Because the backstretch at the track is a bastion of employment of males (95 percent of all trainers and jockeys are men), Winning Colors was being belittled for being female. The field of sports is a wonderful meritocracy, and gamblers and odds makers are the best evaluators of talent.
The day of the Santa Anita Derby, the track’s morning line odds maker had the gray Amazon filly not even listed
