It was almost midnight at the Outrider. Only a few diehards were left, tearing up tickets, mumbling about crooked trainers, stupid jockeys, and blind stewards. I had my head on the table, thinking about my day. I’d done my best to be careful – handicapping like crazy, only betting on the horses I was reasonably sure would win, and none of them had.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and heard a voice I recognized as my Uncle Will. I rolled my head to look up at him and was once again pierced by his Byzantine blue x-ray eyes.
“Having a tough day, Billy boy?” His voice had no sympathy in it. Nor did his face.
“No,” I groaned. “I am not having a tough day. I am having a terribly bad, incredibly unlucky, pitiful day. It’s the Racing Gods. They hate me.”
My Uncle Will is 77 years old, wiry as a hairpin and so hard if you smacked him with a wrench he’d ring like a gong. He raised four fingers to Irish, the bartender, then sat down in the chair across from me. I was surprised I didn’t hear a clank when his rear end met the chair.
Neither of us spoke until Irish brought the Glenlivet. Four fingers for Uncle Will and a Fosters oil can for me. “Bless you,” my Uncle Will said reverently to the barkeep, taking a sip of the amber liquid and rolling it around on his tongue. Then he turned his attention back to me.
“So tell me, my unhappy nephew twice removed, why would the Racing Deities, who if they truly exist are ubiquitously involved with every racetrack and every punter on the planet, why would they choose you to hate?”
“I don’t know. I think they must hate everybody. Especially me.”
“I assume you have evidence of that fact from today’s racing experience?”
“From my life experience. But yes, from today, too. First of all, the 12-1 five horse squeaks by my horse in the last leg of my pick four. Then my three horse is accelerating like a BMW on the inside and — guess what – hits the rail and finishes third. Then my one-horse in the fourth at Los Al, which I handicapped for a full half hour, coming off a layoff with terrific works, in an 870, and who had never been more than two lengths behind in his entire life, goes off at fifteen to one and stands straight up when he comes out of the gate, losing about ten lengths. Made a nice little run at the end, but never had a chance. So phooey.”
I pulled my head off of the table and looked at the Racing Gods, somewhere up there above the acoustic tile ceiling of the Outrider.
“Bite me,” I commanded them.
“Billy, Billy, Billy,” my companion sighed, giving me one of those looks that says I’d rather be me than you. “And the pity is you were the only punter with bets on those races. The only one whose fortunes depended on the outcome. The only one…”
I interrupted him with what I hoped was an icy stare. “Okay, okay. I wasn’t the only one. But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be after me.”
“Billy, Billy. Here’s the thing. Horses aren’t machines. You can handicap them from here till Tuesday, and all you get is an idea of how they should run. Not how they will run. Could anyone have predicted that your three-horse would hit the rail on the backstretch? Or that your one-horse was going to start more slowly than at any other time in his existence? Or that the five-horse would…”
“Uh,” I interrupted, “actually I could have predicted that. The five was a BTL I should have considered, but I was in a hurry.”
“And the seven that he nosed out?”
“Well, I liked him pretty well, and the crowd loved him.”
“Aaach,” he grunted, looking like I had just thrown up on my laptop. “The crowd. Oh, yes, those folks who are right about thirty percent of the time. Wrong here, were they? What a shock.”
“Okay, okay. I surrender,” I sighed, knowing there was a lesson in here somewhere. “You’ve got a handicapping life lesson waiting for me. Want to share it?”
My Uncle Will pulled out his century old solid gold Waltham Hunter pocket watch and looked at it. “Past my bedtime,” he murmured, and looked back at me. “I’ve already shared it,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “But I will attempt to make it more clear.”
I crooked my fingers over the keyboard, ready to enter this impending jewel of wisdom.
“One,” he proclaimed, holding up a gnarled index finger, “no matter how good your handicapping is, it’s imperfect. Too many factors you know nothing about. Two, you are only making a guess – no matter how accurate – as to how the horses will run today, based on races at least two weeks old. Three, horses are horses, not machines. If you were handicapping robots, no problem. But you’re not. Four, you’re also handicapping jockeys, trainers, track consistency, weather, and a hundred other factors.”
He beckoned to Irish again, raising two fingers. “A nightcap, my good barkeep,” he intoned, and impaled me again with those penetrating blue eyes.
“It is a small miracle when you are right, and your horse wins. When it loses, learn from it, build those lessons into your handicapping, and bet only when you think the crowd has missed something.
Irish brought the Glenlivet, which Uncle Will tossed off in a gulp, setting the empty glass down on the table with a thump, a small smile curling his wizened visage.
“And tell the Racing Gods to bite you.”
