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About a week after John told me the story of the twin trifecta, we were sitting together in the grandstand at Sportsman's, watching the races from Hialeah Park, the track near Miami that holds its meeting after Gulfstream closes. After one wild affair in which long shots finished first and second, the TV screen flashed the payoff for the "superfecta," a bet that requires one to pick the top four finishers of a race in order. Hialeah offers a superfecta on every race, and this one paid the Christmas-in-March sum of $46,235.
"See, I want to hit something like that," John said. "I'm tired of grinding out the profits."
"So what would you do if you hit something that big?" I asked, as though we were a couple of stoop sitters talking about winning the lottery.
"Move. I'd move to Florida."
I looked back up at the TV screen: $46,235. Some lucky motherfucker was probably doing a victory dive into the flamingo pond at Hialeah, or running to the nearest real estate office to make a down payment on a beach house. Meanwhile we were at Sportsman's Park--which, instead of a flamingo pond, offers an outstanding view of Cicero's oil refineries--waiting to throw on our coats and run out to the bleachers so we could watch a herd of cheap horses run in 30-degree weather. I sighed, inhaling a lungful of cigarette smoke, the "eau de racetrack" that saturates the air at Sportsman's like mustard gas on the western front in World War I. When racetrack shill John Brokopp began his daily broadcast by crowing, "Welcome to beautiful Sportsman's Park!," there was only one way for the horseplayer of discernment to respond: by laughing his ass off.
I understood the hunger John felt as he stared at those numbers. It's frustrating, working hard at something and never knowing if you're going to make a decent living. I remembered something he'd told me one evening as I was giving him a lift home.
"When I was in high school, I was the man," he said. "I was cool. Now it seems like all the guys I hung out with in high school are, like, carpenters, or doing cable TV, or doing this. All the kids who were geeks are doctors and accountants and stuff, making all the money."
Maybe, I thought, that was the reason he spent so much time at the track: there, he was a winner. Within the gates of Sportsman's Park he was looked up to, revered. Guys twice his age wanted his opinion, asked him, "Who do you like in this race?" And he had the ego boost of succeeding at a game in which almost everybody fails.
"You see when you sit around me," he said, "everyone'll ask me, 'Find out how the three looks, find out how the four looks.'"
By mid-March, John's horse-playing skills were beginning to rub off on me. I was examining horses with a veterinarian's eye. I was taking notes on races. I was charting track biases. I was cutting out results charts from the Daily Racing Form and storing them in the bag I took to the track. My studiousness was rewarded when I hit a spectacular winning streak. In a single week I had winning days of $265, $200, and $165--the most I'd won since my magical first day at the track, when I picked a trifecta cold and went home with $150 in my pocket.
My streak started on a Friday afternoon in the fourth race, if you want to be specific. All the touts were pushing a horse named A New Way of Life, but a scan of his record convinced me that he couldn't win. A New Way of Life had finished second in several recent races but hadn't actually won since 1995. The Harold Stassen of horsedom. A contendah, but never a winner. I liked the number-seven horse, Bold Jonathan, who had won his last race while weaving through traffic with the skill of Jeff Gordon at Daytona.
When the odds came up on the tote board, I swear to God I thought it was Christmas. A New Way of Life was 1-2. This was an underlay of stupendous proportions. (An underlay is a horse whose chances of winning are less than his odds. It's similar to the Wall Street concept of an overvalued stock. Imagine someone tried to sell you stock in Hyundai for $500 a share. Would you buy it? I don't think so. That's how out of proportion A New Way of Life's chances were to his odds.) Meanwhile, Bold Jonathan was 11-1, while Oconto, another horse with a strong chance to win, was 6-1. I panted after those odds the way the hart panteth after the water brooks in the psalm. I ran to the window and bet $25 on Bold Jonathan and $15 on Oconto.
I've saved the chart of this race for inclusion in my posthumous papers. Here's what it says: "BOLD JONATHAN raced in good position from the start, was beginning his rally when he shied away from A NEW WAY OF LIFE in the stretch, exchanged bumps with that rival and was off strided while coming in a bit late then prevailed by a narrow margin."
As Bold Jonathan crossed the finish line I practically dissolved with ecstasy. "Yes! Yes!" I screeched. My skull filled with helium. Then the red neon INQUIRY sign on the tote board lit up. Mark Guidry, A New Way of Life's jockey, had complained about the bumping and demanded that Bold Jonathan be disqualified. No, I thought. Please, no. I ran inside to watch a replay of the stretch run. The two horses had collided several times, but it was hard to tell who'd started the shoving match. Since Guidry was the winningest rider at Sportsman's, I figured the stewards would take his side. A veteran gambler standing next to me agreed.
"Looks like that seven's coming down," he said.
If the seven did come down, I vowed to leave the track and never again play this rigged game. Possibly I would even exile myself and move to a country where the horse racing was honest. Australia, maybe, or Dubai. The stewards rewound the tape and played it again. And again. The numbers seven and four blinked on the tote board. My palms became clammy with sweat. A bell signaled that the result was official. I looked at the tote board: Bold Jonathan's number was still on top, and he was paying off at $27 for every $2 invested. I had never felt so blessed. I thanked God for creating this world and thanked him again for putting racetracks in it. When I presented my $25 ticket to the teller, he gave me back $337, my biggest score ever.
The next day was just as good. I couldn't make it to the track because I had tickets to a concert at Orchestra Hall, so I stopped in at the State and Lake OTB to place my bets. I was particularly excited about a horse named Bahala Na. He had finished strongly in his debut race, and I was certain he would win when he returned to the track. Every time I'd seen John recently, I'd told him, "Bet on Bahala Na. You gotta bet on Bahala Na." Now that the horse was finally entered, I wasn't going to blow a chance at a big score. I bet on three races, then went to Orchestra Hall, where I fidgeted through the concert; I kept imagining the track announcer shouting "Bahala Na has given this field the slip!" As soon as the concert ended I rushed back to the OTB and found someone who had seen the races at Sportsman's.
"Which races you interested in?" he asked.
I withdrew my tickets and rattled off the names of my horses.
"Chica Fina."
"Won."
"Highway Robber."
"Won."
"Bahala Na."
"Let's see--" The man searched his memory. You think waiting to hear the O.J. verdict was dramatic? You obviously didn't have Bahala Na in the fifth that day.
"Yeah," my informant said. "He won too."
Yes, yes, yes, oh yes. Say it over and over again, like the final sentence of Ulysses. I collected 200 bucks from the teller, then called John.
"Bahala Na!" he said proudly as soon as he heard my voice. "You're my main man right now. I got more faith in you than I got in anybody. You're smart, and you're willing to learn. You're gonna beat all these motherfuckers."
For the next week I thought I was the hottest prospect in American handicapping. I imagined I could be like Martin Ritt, the film director who made his living at the New York tracks when he was blacklisted during the 1950s. Betting on horses was going to be a part-time job, a sideline to my writing. Every afternoon when I shouldered my satchel for the trip to the track I thought, "It's time to go to work." My obsession with horses reached unnatural levels: when the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue came out, I flipped past the bikini shots, looking for articles about racing. Finding none, I put the magazine back on the shelf. At "please pay first" gas stations, when I asked for "ten dollars on number five," my tongue wanted to add "to win." In March I called my dad in Michigan and told him, "I'm coming home the weekend of the 29th. That's when they're having the Dubai World Cup," a lucrative international horse race.
"That's also Easter weekend," he reminded me.
"Is it? I didn't see anything about that in the Racing Form."
I was going to be smart and disciplined, not like those idiots who threw away their money on exactas and trifectas. I conceived a system that was sure to bring me a profit: bet $50 on horses that look like cinches and are going off at odds of 7-5 or better. The rest of the time, make piddling "fun" bets--maybe $5 or $10--or skip the race. At first it worked beautifully. That Wednesday I hit a horse named L'Eric, who paid off at 2-1, and on Friday I scored with a pair of 2-1 shots, Laugh Alot and She's Just Winking, putting me up over $700 since the beginning of my winning streak. This, I thought, is a great way to supplement my income.
But then, just as night follows day, just as vultures follow lions, I started losing. Badly. I can trace this streak back to a specific race too. I was in Michigan for the weekend and wanted to show off my brilliant handicapping to my father and sister. So we drove to a small harness track outside Flint that simulcasted races from around the country. When the fourth race at Sportsman's approached I announced that a horse named Fortunate Wish was a lock and went to the windows to bet $50. I also bet $10 for my father, who believed the stories of my horse racing triumphs and trusted me to invest his cash.
Fortunate Wish finished third. My other surefire bet, Pappa Lee, came in sixth, so I was out $100 for the day. After that it got worse. Much worse.
At first my biggest problem was that I couldn't get decent odds on horses I liked. I'd spot a great-looking animal in the Form and gleefully tell myself, "This guy is going to run away with the race." But when I got to the track I found out that every other horseplayer in Chicago was thinking the same thing. Horses I loved were going off at even money, 4-5, and 3-5. Half the time they won, but if you're betting horses at 3-5, you have to win more than half the time to make a profit. Occasionally one of my handpicked winners went off at odds I could bet on. Invariably it lost. It was completely maddening: if I could bet on a horse it lost; if I couldn't it won. I got so fed up with this that I decided the next time I saw a can't-miss horse I was going to bet it, odds be damned. I needed a winner, as much to save my fraying mind as to fatten my shrinking bankroll.
The horse was Lord Byron, a cheap $4,000 claimer who had finished in the money in all his races this year but never won. He usually sprinted out to the lead, held on until the stretch, then faded to second or third. But on the day he was running, the track was favoring front-running horses. And Lord Byron's opponents looked like unspirited plugs who would have no interest in catching a runaway leader. I bet him at even money and relaxed as he carried a five-length lead into the stretch. Whew. Back to winning. A 16th of a mile from the wire he still had the lead, but he was beginning to slow down. As his stride became shorter and more clipped, a late-running long shot came tearing down the stretch. "Hang on, you sonofabitch!" I screamed. In the final 50 yards the long shot blew past and beat my 1-1 horse by a neck.
Now, losing streaks are part of playing the horses. Everyone has them, even the professionals. How you deal with the dry spells determines whether you'll be a winner or a loser in the long run. I dealt with my time in the desert by losing my mind, as well as most of my $1,000 bankroll. Once I started losing, I knew I should cut down my wagers, to $20 or even $10. But I couldn't stand the thought of missing out on the magic horse that would get me even. I'd bet $50 on a dubious 10-1 shot named Honest J, not so much because he was the best horse in the race but because if he won, I'd get $500. He finished next-to-last.
After about two weeks of this I was nearly deranged. I had lost all confidence in my ability to pick winners and was beginning to wonder whether I could make the correct decision about anything. The morning after the Honest J fiasco I stood in front of my closet, unable to choose a wardrobe. Why get dressed? I thought. I'll screw that up, too.
I vowed right then that I was going to quit the game forever, get a full-time job, get married, move to northern Michigan, miles from any racetrack or OTB, and take up a wholesome hobby, like woodworking or camping. Of course I had to get even first.
I was getting tension headaches every time I went to Sportsman's Park, having about as much fun as a dishwasher working a ten-hour shift in a 120-degree kitchen. Yet I never left the track without buying the next day's Form and searching it for the horse who would, as the saying goes, get me off the schneid. I wanted a magic insight, like the feverish boy in D.H. Lawrence's short story "The Rocking-Horse Winner," who changes his family's fortunes when he picks the winner of the Derby. "It's Malabar!" he cries, just before he dies. (This made him possibly the only horseplayer ever to be depicted as a Christ figure in a work of literature.)
Eventually I found my Malabar. Allens Alley was a horse who'd once stumbled coming out of the starting gate then rallied to finish second by a nose. I figured if he got a decent start in his next race he'd win easily. I was right. Allens Alley won by two lengths, at odds of 7-2. A handsome payoff--or it would have been, if I'd been at the track. But Allens Alley won on a day I had decided to stay home and take a break from this game that was tearing down the wall that separated me from madness. All that afternoon a voice inside me said, "Go for the ninth race. Just go to bet Allens Alley, then come home." But a stronger voice, a voice of discipline and reason, said, "No. He'll just break your heart, like all the other horses you've loved lately. He'll get blocked in traffic, or fade at the wire. Besides, there are other things in life besides horse racing. Go take a long walk."
The next morning, when I read about Allens Alley's victory in the paper, a much, much stronger voice, a voice of rage, of frustration, of an unquenchable yen for self-annihilation, screamed, "God damn it! The one day I don't go to the track, my horse wins! I haven't had a winner in a week-and-a-fucking-half, and now that I finally pick one I'm not there to bet him. How do you beat this game? How, how, how? Do you have to be there every day of your fucking life?"
The answer to that question, I realized, was yes. It may have been the most important revelation I've ever had about playing the horses.
The old guys, the retired boilermakers and bus drivers who shuffle around the track in adjustable baseball caps and snap-button windbreakers, who make $2 bets with money from their Social Security checks, will tell you the races can't be beaten. Most of them have been trying to win at the track for 50 years, since the days when Citation ruled the Thoroughbred world, and they've got nothing to show for it except shoe boxes full of losing tickets.
"You know the secret of playing the races?" a retiree once told me. "Don't bring a lot of money out here. If you want a good investment buy a bond. It only shits twice a year, and you don't have to clean up after it."
There's a lot of frustration at the racetrack. Shredded programs. Middle-aged guys screaming "Spic!" and "Cocksucker!" at losing jockeys. Twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year men who've failed at every other form of moneymaking and are finding out that the ponies aren't their golden ticket either, that the same lack of discipline and brains that made them C students is impoverishing them at the track too. One of the saddest things I've ever seen was a guy racing through the stands at Sportsman's Park after a tough loss, shouting, "I've never had any luck! Not once in 55 years!"
"A lot of people that have been coming for a long time, like the old-timers, they've tried all the systems and they can't win," John told me. "I really feel it's because they don't pay attention to lookin' at the horses and the condition of the races and all that. And most of the people I've run into at the track, they're not intelligent. You can just tell. Most of them haven't been to school. And the track, most people that have gone to the track over the last 30 or 40 years have just been known as bums, 'cause that's all they do. When you play the horses, you're following 'em every day. You've got to be there every day if you want to try to make money every day."
The races can be beaten, but only if you're willing to sacrifice everything most people associate with a stable, happy existence: a house, a reliable income, a pension plan, two days off every week. I don't know a single serious horseplayer who's married. I'm sure there are some, but I haven't met any. Charles Bukowski was right when he said that a man who can beat the horses should be painting or writing symphonies. A horseplayer has already made sacrifices that would horrify the most driven starving artist. That's why, nowadays, I only go to the track on weekends and never bring more than $40 with me. I'm not going to be the Vincent van Gogh of horse racing, living in madness and poverty so I can, maybe, catch a $5,000 trifecta someday.
It took John 19 years to join the elite 2 percent of horseplayers who make a steady profit. Sometimes he wonders if playing the horses is any way for a man to spend his life, but he doesn't want to quit. Not after working so hard to become a pro, to accomplish something that breaks almost everyone who attempts it.
"The old-timers all laugh at you when you tell 'em you make a profit," he told me. "There's one bartender at Balmoral, he thinks I'm a drug dealer. Every time I walk up there, he says, 'Here's Johnny, go get the drugs from him,' 'cause I'm there all the time and I don't work. Anybody who plays the horses can't see anybody makin' a living at it, because they can't win at it. If you tell them that the last five or six years you've showed a profit, enough to live on and buy the programs and the Form, they laugh at you. The old-timers, the horses ruined 'em, and they're ruining me, too. I see myself gettin' older and my life gettin' wasted away, even though I make money at it. For $10,000 a year you could be a gas station attendant or something. This ain't easy, this stuff. This is hard work, what I do."
Whoever said art is a jealous mistress has never been to the track.