Horse sense

The lessons from a life at the track

By Jerry Fraser

Thoroughbred racing may be the sport of kings, but standardbred racing is the sport of Mainers. Harness racing drives attendance at most county fairs and is the backbone of the program at Scarborough Downs.

Scarborough also features "simulcasts" -- live satellite transmissions -- from tracks around the country. Got a hot horse at Santa Anita? A can't-miss dog at Revere? In the old days you'd have to go to a wire room or call a bookmaker if you wanted to get down, in either case a potential violation of the law, something all of us want to avoid.

Now you just motor over to Scabby. Your bet is perfectly legal, and you won't have to go to the Portland Public Library to find a newspaper from you-know-where, Egypt, to learn that your horse ran out of the money. And here's the best part: if you've got a Transpass, you don't have to hedge your bet to save money for the toll.

That's no joke, as any horseplayer can tell you. In the early 1970s I left the Downs via Route 1 so often I made a game of getting to Ogunquit without hitting a red light. The only bad part was not having enough money for a burger at Rapid Ray's in Biddeford.

(A good friend once had to drive Route 4 from Lewiston Raceway to Sanford after Fate failed to smile on him in the last race. He made it on an eighth of a tank of gas and a pint of Canadian Club.)

During its heyday in the 1980s and early '90s, Scarborough had a couple of restaurants, two or three bars and numerous concession stands, and there were enough horses around to card 10 or 12 races most nights. Labor Day weekends it hosted the President's Pace, which attracted some of the best horses in the country.

By the late 1980s some friends and I had a box on the finish line, but management let the windows in the upstairs grandstand become so streaked with pigeon droppings and pollen that we could hardly see the races, and eventually we bailed.

Visibility has also been an issue outside the grandstand: summer evenings fog creeps in from the marsh, obscuring the backstretch and piquing the suspicious nature of horseplayers. Legend has it that one night the fog was so thick that a substitute horse and jockey were attired in the colors of the longest shot on the board and stationed in the chute at the top of the stretch. When the field drew near, or so the story goes, the ringer thundered down the stretch to victory, the longshot slinked unseen into the paddock, and the suckers in the grandstand never knew what hit their wallets.

The apocryphal story is a racetrack tradition. So are tips.

One summer in the mid-1970s, a distant in-law -- let's call him Donna, after the woman who left him -- hit a hot streak at poker. A couple of horsemen got into him for more than they could afford, but instead of cash, Donna accepted information, some of which he shared with me, a fellow railbird. I did very well, for a small-time bettor, and can only imagine what Donna made.

Such is the nature of the gambling life, however, that by the time the snow flew Donna's run was over. He'd blown his winnings, lost his small car dealership Down East, and was selling pots and pans door to door. I hadn't flown as high, so I didn't have as far to fall. When Scabby closed for the season I resumed life as a student, at the University of Maine, Portland-Gorham, studying greyhound racing and drinking Tanqueray gin when I could afford it.

Of course, most tips don't come in. Back when Scarborough still offered thoroughbred racing, an ambulance driver from Sanford gave my future father-in-law a tip. He looked at the Daily Racing Form, then back at the ambulance driver in disbelief. "This horse hasn't got a prayer," he told him.

"He can't lose," the ambulance driver insisted.

It's almost impossible to pass up a tip, no matter how unlikely it sounds, because if the horse comes in and you don't have him you'll want to shoot yourself. My future father-in-law bet the horse, then strolled to the rail to watch the race. Sure enough, when the gate opened, the horse flashed to the front. But as the field raced past the grandstand my father-in-law-to-be began to suspect the animal was running on something other than oats. "He was shaking," he said. "You could see the horse trembling when he went by. I've never seen anything like it."

Still, the horse charged ahead of the field and halfway down the backstretch had what should have been an insurmountable lead. Alas! If only he hadn't dropped dead at the three-quarter pole.

"Well I'll be," the ambulance driver said.

"What'd I tell you?" my future father-in-law said.

The Maine Sunday Telegram and others will tell you that harness racing in this state has fallen victim to the same malaise that has befallen it elsewhere. My own belief is that the closing of Lewiston Raceway, unrelated to any malaise I am aware of, gave Scarborough a virtual monopoly that worked to its short-term advantage but which in the long run has been detrimental to Maine harness racing.

My father-in-law still goes to Scabby, but I think he enjoys the company of horseplayers he has known over the course of 40 years as much as he does the track.

He bets on races half a continent away, so I have no doubt that the simulcast is here to stay. That's too bad, because simulcasting is an unfortunate exception to the law of diminishing returns: eventually a handful of tracks will feed the world's horseplayers all the action they need.

I haven't been to Scarborough in ages, although in season I try to visit Windsor and Cumberland fairs. I enjoy afternoon racing and the fresh air, and the festive mood of fairgoers is preferable to the desperate air of gamblers trying to win the rent money back.

Besides, I would never have discovered harness racing if I hadn't gone to a fair and gotten myself thrown out of a girlie show.

Now there's a Maine tradition we really should have hung onto.

Jerry Fraser can be reached at cavu@cybertours.com.