Good morning!
My car needed an oil change and my wallet was empty, but in January I’d beg for a hot summer day like this, so I packed up the cooler and drove west to the Spa. It was late afternoon and the ticket booth hadn’t closed, but the kid at the re-entry window looked bored so I gave it a shot. He looked at my hand and said, “You’re all set.”
I walked past the tents and boutiques where vendors sold paintings and hats to where the horses were entering the track for the post parade. The previous night I’d printed out the late races and gleaned whatever information I could from the Saratoga Players Guide that handicapper Dave Gonzalez had forwarded to me.
I bet the eighth race and won, lost the ninth and 10th races, skipped the 11th race and hit the men’s room.
An attendant stood aside a table that held a tape deck and small wicker baskets filled with penny candies and dollar bills. He was playing a song by Sam Cooke. “Great music,” I said, and he handed me a paper towel. I thanked him, took a Tootsie Roll and left two bucks in the basket.
Outside in the picnic area, Sam the Bugler — aka Sam Grossman — was playing Taps to an appreciative group of young beer drinkers. When that song ended he played “Here Comes the Bride,” and then lowered his trumpet and said to a young groom-to-be, “I got a message from Julie. She said, ‘Don’t drink and don’t gamble.’”
Grossman’s white shirt and matted black hair were soaked with sweat. After 25 years of calling the horses to post, he announced last year that he was retiring. He changed his mind this spring, telling saratogaliving.com, “I started to desperately miss Saratoga.”
Before the 12th race I leaned against a picnic table and watched the horses be led into the paddock area. I didn’t have a program and wasn’t going to look at the tote board.
Across the world people were watching on TVs and video screens, but only a handful of us were close enough to see their frothing mouths and wild eyes.
At the far end of the saddling area, three grooms led the No. 2 horse around a large oak tree, and tried desperately to keep it from rearing.
“He’s either uncontrollable, or he wants to win,” said the guy on my left said.
“He could be jacked up, or he’s raring to go,” said another.
The trainer came over, tall and thin with sharp features, he grabbed the reins and took charge of the unruly beast. When he was finished, he sauntered over to a woman who’d been standing by herself on the fringe of the walking path. From my vantage, she appeared to be happy and at ease, with an elegant hat over her silver hair and her hands clasped on her small purse. She reminded me of Queen Elizabeth.
The jockeys came into the paddock area dressed in colorful racing silks, holding riding crops and knowing the drill — first meet the trainer, then the owner and then go to the horse. I wouldn’t know til later, but the horse’s jockey was Kendrick Carmouche, a native Louisianan who’d fractured his leg in a spill less than a year ago.
Carmouche has won over 3,000 races including last year’s Honorable Miss Handicap at the Spa. He knows how to comport himself, and he posed with the trainer and owner for a photographer who was loaded with camera gear.
Now came the hard part, getting on top of the 2,000-pound beast. “We’ve got the smallest grooms and the biggest horse,” joked the trainer.
“Yeah, I know,” said Carmouche.
They cautiously walked behind the horse until Carmouche took two strides and acrobatically jumped up and into the saddle. The horse was unperturbed, and Carmouche guided it past the crooning railbirds and out onto the racetrack.
Back under the grandstand, I handed my $22.50 credit voucher to the mutuels clerk and said, “Eleven dollars to win and eleven dollars to place on Number Two.”
I can’t stand still when there’s money on a race. In the final minutes until post, I started up the stairs to find Dave Gonzalez, then turned back because I didn’t have enough time.
“The horses are being loaded into the starting gate,” said track announcer Larry Collmus. By now I was pacing between a liquor bar and the betting windows. “They’re off!” he cried, and I ventured out to the track and saw the horses moving rhythmically on the other side of the course.
Collmus was calling out names that meant nothing to me and so I sought out the horse wearing the white blanket and saw it running next to last. There was nothing sleek or sexy about its running style. He was on the muscle, grinding and getting closer.
At the top of the stretch, it became a cavalry charge, backdropped by the din of bettors screaming, the thwack of whips against horseflesh and the percussive sound of hoofbeats on the turf.
Collmus shouted over the loudspeakers that it was too close to call. The stewards called for a photo, but the replay showed the No. 2 horse had won at the wire. “Up at last jump,” noted the chartwriter.
The horse’s name was Riendo, which is Spanish for “laughing.” His final head-bob had garnered a $46,200 winner’s share; second place netted $16,000.
The clerk at the parimutuels window ran my tickets through the machine and the amount totaled $103.60.
“Do you want a $100 bill?” she asked.
“No, just 20’s,” I said.
She counted out five $20 bills and three one dollar bills and handed me the change. I gave her a $1.60 tip and immediately felt like a cheapskate. “Thank you that’s very nice!” she exclaimed. “It’s my only tip today!”
I wouldn’t have bet on Riendo if I’d seen its racing lines — one win in 16 starts. He’s owned by Edition Farm of Hyde Park, N.Y., and trained by Richard Schosberg, who was raised in Westchester County and educated at Cornell University.
The silver-haired woman I saw was 86-year-old Vivien Malloy, who had founded Edition Farm with her late husband Harry Malloy in 1971 to help raise their family. “All our children learned the patience and energy required to care for our horses,” she wrote on the farm’s website. “In 1981, we purchased our first broodmare. She produced our first racehorse in 1984. The rest and best was yet to come.”
On the drive back to Northfield, I stopped for an ice cream cone at the Farmer’s Daughter Drive-In. Out beyond the picnic tables, acres of rolling cornfield were “high as an elephant’s eye” as Richard Rodgers wrote.
I took a picture, and thought how different it would look in January.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached by email at sports@recorder.com