Tony Salvaro was a funny guy. In the offseason, he'd sit in the booths at Maywood, making bookie bets on football and basketball. I remember one time going 'Where the fuck is Rice and why am I betting that game?'

One night we were allowed to go upstairs and see a race from the booth. I asked Tony how he remembers the names and he said, he didn't -> races didn't move fast enough that he couldn't look at the program and call the name. So we're watching some crappy claimer race and Claude Spann (who was a black man) and Tony goes You know who is going to the lead here - I responded with well, this horse here and Tony goes no way, Claude is going to leave hard in this race like he stole something.

Yes, it was a racist comment. No, Tony didn't care.

Gill was awesome....

Remember him singing Oh that Clancy Oh That Clancy

When Clancy lowers the BOOM!

I seem to remember Claude Spann with some ugly ass orange and green colors. He was I guy you wouldn't consider betting even if he was driving Niatross. But I did see Evan Coblentz win three races in one night at Maywood.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I look at cards now and don't see any drivers that excite me. Hard to believe we are not that far removed from a driver colony of Magee, Hostetler, Hiteman, Hamilton, Marsh, Anderson, Tetrick, etc...

Yeah, Dave is 60 years old and he's still probably the best driver in Chicago.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Sorry to interrupt, but from afar this is a fascinating discussion. So those two horses (trotters) combined earned like $1.1 mildo. Does any of that end up in your pocket?

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Soccer 1,2,3
Spanish Honor Society 1,2,3,4
Forensics 1,2,3,4

"Smiles with Nostrils"

"...no Hmong, go find some blacks"

Or is that the cost?

_________________
Soccer 1,2,3
Spanish Honor Society 1,2,3,4
Forensics 1,2,3,4

"Smiles with Nostrils"

"...no Hmong, go find some blacks"

They are pacers. Pacers move both legs on one side of the body at the same time. Trotters are diagonally gaited.

I owned 25% of each horse. So a quarter of that money went into my pocket. And then out again just as fast.

Roaring Good Time may not have gotten me to the altar, but she was in the wedding party. Probably the maid of honor.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I still remember the names of the 3 harness race horses I won money on in the summer of '89: Lil' Pol, Zester Jester, and Fox Valley Clipper. Button 48 please.

Cool. Everything I know about Harness Racing I learned from the film classic Easy Money. A relative of a friend of a friend owned a horse called Fox Valley Tribal. I heard they made a good load of dough off of it.

_________________
Soccer 1,2,3
Spanish Honor Society 1,2,3,4
Forensics 1,2,3,4

"Smiles with Nostrils"

"...no Hmong, go find some blacks"

Fox Valley Tribal. Is that Mark Devience or Rob Ritoff?

They guy dragging his feet in Easy Money is a real trainer/driver named Bill Popfinger. That didn't go over so well with a lot of people in the industry.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

F'n Tetrick. Never wins when I bet him and never loses when I bet against him.

_________________

Timmy was always a good kid. We used him to drive a horse we had named He's Awfully Good back when he was only 19 or 20 years old. He's pretty cocky these days, but I guess that comes with being arguably the greatest American race driver ever.

He got angry at Delaware, Ohio last year because they fined him for taking his feet out of the stirrups and kicking a horse. He ripped the judges. I thought it was funny because I don't care for Tim Schmitz. But Tetrick was wrong. A bunch of guys on Twitter have taken to calling him Boots Feetrick. Everyone is very sensitive about whipping and kicking because of PETA, but I've never heard a gambler begging a driver to stop hitting a horse in the stretch. And gamblers make the game.

In 2003 we raced a really good horse named My Fantasy in the Jugette. David Miller got her stuck on the rail. My friend Robbie had a horse named Odds On Charmaine in there and no offense to Robbie or her filly, but Odds On Charmaine couldn't eat out of My Fantasy's feed bucket. But Robbie had her extra good that day and she had brought Timmy in to drive her. They won the final heat of the Jugette, but Timmy came over and interfered with a horse as he brought her off the rail. Odds On Charmaine got disqualified. Timmy was almost in tears. My partner was consoling him, telling him he was going to win many of these races before he was done. I don't think any of us thought he would be as great as he turned out though.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

At least it was a horse and not his old lady like Mike Oosting. He's a piece of crap.

Oh, yeah. What a little asshole he is. And dumb as a stump.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Okay, I’m going to do some evangelizing for my beloved sport of harness racing. The development of America and the horse are inextricably linked. That’s why we find the slaughter of horses for food to be so appalling. You won’t find a cheval steak on your plate in New York City the way you might in Paris. At one time stealing a horse was punishable by death. The horse made America as much as the man. And in many cases that horse was a standardbred or American trotter.

A lot of people hear the names “thoroughbred” and “standardbred” and surmise that the former is higher, better, or classier than the latter. That’s far from the case. A horse is a horse and going back far enough, all horses share the same ancestors. In Europe those ancestors eventually lead back to three specific animals: The Byerly Turk, The Darley Arabian, and the Godolphin Barb. Every horse that exists in the Western Hemisphere can trace its roots back to one or all of those three colts. And in America every horse- thoroughbred or standardbred can follow its lineage back to imported Messenger who came to this country in 1788.

The “standard” in standardbred simply refers to a time for the mile that made a horse eligible for inclusion of turf records. Originally that standard was 2 minutes 30 seconds. At one time that was a quick mile. In fact, you can find a reference to a trotter with “2:40 speed” in the song “Jingle Bells”, 2 minutes 40 seconds being a blazing mile time for a horse hauling a sleigh through ice and snow. We’re a long way from that now as the average mile on a Saturday night at the Meadowlands is now around 1:50.

The standardbred was the people’s horse. He could plow your field on Friday, race four heats at the county fair on Saturday, and take your family to church on Sunday. I would compare the standardbred to a stock car, the racing like NASCAR, while thoroughbreds are more like Indy racers.

I mentioned “Jingle Bells”, well the standardbred has been immortalized in song many times. For example, “the old grey mare” is Lady Suffolk. And “Camptown Races” refers to a multi-heat affair won by a bobtail nag.

Dan Patch was the first American sports hero, predating Babe Ruth, and sports marketing was invented around him. The horse was used to sell everything from baking powder to washing machines. Dan Patch was a pacer. In the early days of the American turf pacers were considered horses for hillbillies. Pulling up with a pacer would be like rolling up in what we might call a “jalopy” or a “hooptie” today. But they went fast, and soon they were racing at the same tracks as the refined trotters. And gamblers liked them because they didn’t go off-stride as much.

Historic Track in Goshen, New York was built because Main Street was getting too dangerous what with all kinds of guys racing their trotters up and down the road. It’s still there along with the Harness Racing Hall of Fame which is located in the former Good Time Stable. I would recommend a visit to anyone. You don’t even need to particularly care about racing. It’s pure Americana.

And if you like Americana, there is nothing better than the Little Brown Jug in Delaware, Ohio on the third Thursday after Labor Day. Fifty thousand race fans descend on a town of 35,000 residents to watch the best pacers in the business on the fastest half-mile oval in the world. There’s nothing quite like watching a $2 million stallion being walked through a crowd of drunks and past Weber grills loaded with burgers and sausages to get onto the track for his warmup miles.

Harness racing is a fantastic sport. It’s got history, quirky stories, great competition. And you can gamble on it!

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Fuck Harness

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.

Much as I want to like harness racing, I just can't get in to it. Maybe i could if was more like this:

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

The only time I do not like harness is when my horse leads by three lengths and breaks stride.

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Elections have consequences.

It's not really that much different. Especially if Gerry Longo is driving in the race.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Longo used to have the best whip in the game, pulling that son of a bitch over his head and WHAP!

I made a lot of money with Pig Whistlin' at Sportsman.

I could listen to JORR wax poetic about harness racing all day.

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