Good morning!
Saratoga’s summer meet is six-and-a-half weeks of picnics, parties and ponies, and though the journey is for pleasure I never leave the pen at home. Last year I worked from the press box and it was a treat to meet the track’s beat writers like Tim Wilkin and Mike Jarboe of the Albany Times Union.
I wanted to congratulate Wilkin for scooping the news that an unnamed bettor had plunged $80,000 on Stradivari to win the 2016 Preakness Stakes. The bet skewed the odds down to 3-5 on the unknown colt until the wager was withdrawn. Stradivari wound up finishing fourth at 8-1 odds.
The publicity staffer who mailed me my press pass last year now works for the racing stewards. Her boss, John Durso Jr., left in March for a job at NBC in New York. The new PR chief is Patrick McKenna, who once worked for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. One of his assistants, Virginia Kellner, told me things had changed in the PR office.
She sent me an online application that required a downloaded photo of myself and a letter on Recorder stationary signed by sports editor Gary Sanderson.
“Once the application is complete, we are happy to review it,” she wrote.
What had been a simple process last year was now like applying to Harvard. The downloads failed to send so I emailed them directly to Kellner. “Please be advised,” she replied, “that we do not distribute credentials to members of the media who do not follow the prescribed procedure.”
After a few more back-and-forths I withdrew my request for a working credential; the hotel room would be my press box.
“I see you’ve signed up for our racing package,” said the desk clerk at the Holiday Inn Express.
I did? I shrugged and said nothing.
She gave me four complimentary clubhouse seats, two for each day, and pointed to the free shuttle service.
I acted grateful. “Thanks. No wonder you guys have a five-star rating.”
“We try,” she said, and gave me the pass code to the VIP room where I could get free water and trail mix.
The summer hotel rates aren’t cheap in the upper Hudson Valley. During the racing season rooms average around $400 a night in downtown Saratoga. Clifton Park is 15 miles south and the rate was $209 plus tax. My room over the lobby gave me a good view of two guys getting off Harley-Davidsons who both looked like Willie Nelson.
The WiFi on my laptop went to the hotel chain’s home page and a full screen photo of the Holiday Inn Express at Clifton Park. “Rooms as low as $191,” it said.
The pitter-patter of stockinged feet could be heard racing down the stairway back to the desk. “I didn’t sign up for the racing package. Here’s the four tickets. Give me the regular rate.”
The woman stared at her computer screen. “That rate is for our preferred guests.”
“I am a preferred guest. You said I could use the VIP room.”
She nodded and gave me the rate.
Life is a constant negotiation; win some, lose some.
The next morning a dozen guests were jostling for position at the breakfast bar. A gray-haired man with an unkempt beard stood in front of the utensil dispenser wearing brown shorts and black knee-high socks and holding a plastic knife. “Here,” his wife said, and she turned the dispenser 45 degrees to the spoons.
He sat hunched over his cereal reading the news on his computer tablet. “She compared him to Hitler!” he exclaimed, referring to you-know-who.
Stacks of USA Today, The Albany Times Union and The Saratogian were piled on the tables. Free newspapers are a favorite hotel comp. Sometimes I’ll pull into a hotel, pretend I’m a guest, grab a paper and leave. This time I grabbed copies of all three, pulled out the sports sections and left for the track.
Kids were standing on the corner of East Street and Union Avenue hawking water for a buck a bottle. People held coolers and foldout chairs and waited for the crossing signal. A few forked over $5 to the touts who were waving tip sheets but I saw no one take a leaflet from the animal rights protesters.
Across the road past the turnstiles, Paul Matteis was reading the Daily Racing Form. Soft spoken and easy going, I met Matteis at the Tri-County Fair in Northampton where he’d sit in the infield and bet the races with Florence native John Lenkowski. In January Matteis out-smarted 628 others at a Las Vegas handicapping contest and won $800,000. His brother Duke finished fourth and won $100,000.
Afterward he told the DRF: “Horseplayers always think they’re better and smarter than everybody else, so to beat all the smartest people in the world, what an honor.”
The Matteis brothers live near the track and each morning their crew spreads purple tablecloths over a half dozen picnic tables. They stay there throughout the day watching the races from under a carousel of television monitors. The paddock, beer tent, food stands and mutuel windows are all within easy walking distance.
“Busy?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m working on the Pick-5.”
I wished him luck and walked over to the Big Red Spring for a cup of mineral water and looked for my cousin Bob Weiss and Carol Bresciano. They were sitting at a picnic table with Jack and Lois Phelps, Jimmy and Sandy O’Sullivan, and Bobby and Sue Thompson. O’Sullivan pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. He had $15 to win and $10 to place on a 6-1 long shot from the last race. Thompson, who never goes home broke, hit the trifecta in the next race.
I hadn’t even bet yet and I was already losing.
It stayed that way until the eighth race when Bob and I wandered over to watch the horses being saddled. An inebriated man walked up beside me wearing tan slacks and an untucked white dress shirt. He leaned over the fence and hollered at the paddock judge who recognized him and invited him into the paddock.
“Nah, I’m going home, just saying goodbye,” he said.
“Where’s home?” I asked.
“Quincy. I lost … three thousand, four … five thousand. I’ll admit it. Everyone does it.”
“Who do you like this race?” I asked, handing him my program.
He held it a foot from his face and stared at it one-handed. An unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth and the sweltering sun had matted his unruly brown hair against his forehead. The winner, he proclaimed, would be the odds-on favorite Wavell Avenue. “Three-four exacta,” he said, pointing to a horse named Promise Me Silver.
I bet a $10 exacta on the 3-4, put $25 to win on Wavell Avenue and wagered $5 to win on a 26-1 long shot trained by Nick Zito. The good-natured Zito was on his way to the paddock and said, “She’s got a chance.”
It was in the stars.
Reality hit when the starting gate opened. Wavell Avenue won but Promise Me Silver finished last and Zito’s horse was fifth.
Race tracks affect the mind in strange ways. I’d taken the advice of someone who’d lost $5,000 and believed that a chance encounter with Nick Zito portended a win by his longshot mare.
A trainer once said that bringing a horse to Saratoga is like bringing a knife to a gun fight, and indeed some of the best conditioners in the world are firing blanks at the Spa. Going into Friday’s card, Leo O’Brien, Gary Sciacca, David Donk, Mark Hennig, Ken McPeek and Richard Violette had combined for zero wins in 118 starts at the Spa.
Zito is a Hall of Fame trainer yet has just one win in 32 starts. During our brief chat, I asked him if he was going to attend the upcoming ceremonies.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I might.”
“Seems I saw your name over there,” I said.
He looked at me and smiled, gave me pat on the shoulder and walked into the paddock to saddle his horse.
The next day someone put $20,000 on a horse named Joyful Hope. The horse finished last, a new car gone in two minutes.
In the fifth race, I boxed a trifecta and exacta using a longshot named Crystal Pier. Off at 9-to-1, jockey Jose Ortiz steered her up the rail and into a third-place finish. A steward’s inquiry moved her to second and I cashed in on the exacta but the ATM spit out the trifecta ticket. I’d played it straight, meaning I’d failed to hit the “box” button and cover all six combinations. My inattentiveness cost me $45 on a 50-cent ticket.
Between races, I ordered a $6 cup of Manhattan clam chowder at the Chowder Shack under the grandstand. The spicy tomato-based chowder is filled with sliced carrots, potatoes, onions and clams. I asked the cook how much he makes and he said one batch in the morning and adds throughout the day, mostly clams and clam juice.
I was pouring Tabasco sauce over crumbled saltines when I overheard a woman sputtering angrily to her friend. She rested her cane on her forearm and was clutching a big white pocket book emblazoned with gold stars. Her friend lifted a finger and interjected, “He might have $600 now, but $600 worth of s— is going to happen to him.”
On the track apron an usher saw me pull out a Camel and leaned in with a Zippo. “Need a light?” he asked.
“Thanks.”
Smoke-free zones are for schoolyards and libraries; here, old rules apply and tobacco and alcohol are ongoing pleasures.
A portly college-aged guy in front of me finished chugging a beer. His T-shirt read, “Exercise? I Thought You Said Extra Fries.”
The sun was backing off from the hot highs of midday and shadows had crept from over the grandstand and onto the track. After the last race, scavengers began pulling returnable cans from the trash and scooping handfuls of losing tickets for closer inspection.
Railbirds were lingering on the track apron watching grooms leading horses back to their stalls. A solitary piano note resonated over the area, the beginning of Billy Joel’s ode to his home state:
“Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood
But I’m takin’ a Greyhound on the Hudson River line
I’m in a New York state of mind.”
Roger Kahn’s 1972 book, “The Boys of Summer,” chronicles his days covering the Brooklyn Dodgers. He begins a chapter by describing the drive from New York into rural New England: “Turn right at a paint-flecked sign, proceed six miles and leave the present.”
When I first began my treks to Saratoga, two people told me about the same shortcut: drive over the state line and take a right at the first broken mailbox.
I never found that cryptic landmark, but did drive past Fort Hardy on Route 29. During the Revolutionary War, British Gen. John Burgoyne’s troops surrendered by stacking their weapons on the west bank of the Hudson River.
Back home I flipped open my MacBook and saw that Virginia Kellner had responded to my final email. I’d used the same tone as Washington Post sportswriter Thomas Boswell the time he barked, “You don’t own this place!”
Similarly, Kellner was pulling a power trip with her boss’ backing. Such types usually have master’s degrees and an inflated sense of self-importance and I told her as much.
“Thank you for your interest in my educational background. I do, indeed, possess a master’s degree. If you wish, I can contact our Human Resources Department and have them research as to whether “making Mr. Ainsworth’s job easier” was in fact among the requirements when I took the position some years back.
“P.S. I did check the official masthead on our daily program and you are most certainly correct: I do not own the racetrack.”
I may have burned the bridge, but I refuse to leave my pen on the west bank of the Hudson River. I’ll be back again next year, notebook in hand and ready to write another story.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.