News stories about the book "Horseplayers"
Gambler's Life Means None Beyond the Track
Smarty money won't travel down Boss' Bellamy Road
Few joys, many woes of going pro
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Gambler’s Life Means None Beyond the Track
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Spend a day at Arlington Park and you're likely to be in the company of whales, bridge jumpers, chalk eaters and stoopers.
Former Chicago Reader reporter Ted McClelland took a $4,000 publisher's advance and spent a year getting to know the previously described and other assorted gamblers at Chicago's thoroughbred tracks while learning the game from them. His recently published book, "Horseplayers: Life at the Track," chronicles his attempts to stay solvent and captures the essence of life as a railbird.
It's hard not to describe a book loaded with characters called Bob the Brain, Blond Jimmy, David the Owl and the Stat Man as "Runyonesque," and McClelland admitted he finally read Damon Runyon's "Guys and Dolls" after enough reviewers used the term. Who knew one could find big city 1930s prototypes in 21st century Arlington Heights?
"If you can't find interesting folks at the racetrack, you should turn in your pen and your notebook," McClelland said. "You're not much of a reporter."
McClelland feels the bigger influence on his book was John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row," noting that "it's a collection of anecdotes about offbeat characters."
"I wanted it to be a book that somebody who didn't know anything about horse racing could enjoy," he said. "I tried to explain handicapping concepts sort of anecdotally, through stories about these characters or about my own gambling."
Most of the anecdotes show that a true horseplayer has no time for anything else but playing the ponies. It's a nerd's game, a bachelor's pastime. It's late nights handicapping the next day's races, poring over statistics, watching old races on track Web sites, sorting through clippings of race charts and reading how-to books. It's also for the antisocial.
"The only times when I could consistently win was when I would come here and sit by myself and not talk to anybody, and of course that didn't work very well in gathering information for the book," McClelland said.
Thanks to Chicago's racetracks and off-track betting sites it's possible to bet the horses 364 days a year, leaving only Christmas Day for hardcore gamblers to spend with their families.
"It's like being in the French Foreign Legion," McClelland said. "Half the guys are out here because they had some woman troubles or something ... the French Foreign Legion is not going to ask any questions."
Sweet Home Arlington
Although McClelland rhapsodizes about Arlington Park, saying in the book "there is no more pleasant place to spend a summer afternoon in Chicago," he grouses that it's too expensive and cuts into his profits.
"I figure I'm giving them enough of my money. Why should I pay $7 for a sandwich and $5 for admission?"
And because Illinois tracks have a "takeout" rate of 17% for win, place and show bets, but Hawthorne Race Course in Cicero offers bettors a 4% rebate program while Arlington gives less than 1% for its rebates, he complains even more.
"If you bet live on track at Hawthorne it's essentially 13% takeout because you have the 4% reward program," he said.
At the same time, he can laugh at himself. "I think that horseplayers are naturally disgruntled," he said. "Most of the time they're losing so they're going to come here (to Arlington) and they're going to be in a bad mood about it, even if it's as beautiful as this -- that's the irony."
The Professor
Professional handicapper Scott McMannis, "the Professor," figures prominently in McClelland's book and using the directions in chapter eight it's easy enough to track him down in the nook known as the Rebel Enclave at Arlington.
One of the funniest vignettes in the book features McMannis trying to tutor an impulsive student of gambling who constantly ignores the lessons he's learned.
"I remember that session distinctly," McMannis said. "That's exactly what I said."
McMannis applauds McClelland's accuracy and unflinching portrayal of the horseplayer's life, noting "in most cases he was spot on. He put what some writers would hesitate to put in ... some writers might soft-pedal it."
McClelland also imparts some racetrack truths: The nicer a guy, the worse the gambler; the less money a person bets on a race the louder they celebrate a win ("You ever hear a woman say, 'Aaahhhhhhhh!' you know she's got a $2 show ticket."); if gambling was too easy everyone would lose interest.
McClelland will soon start his next project, a book about the Great Lakes, and then specualtes he might want to settle down to a more conventional life, maybe with an office job instead of spending his days and nights with the Racing Form.
"But then I keep thinking to myself it's like that cliché in those blaxploitation movies -- you know, one more score and then I'm gonna get out of the game," he laughs.
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