DEL MAR, Calif. -- Pick a horse, any horse. Honestly, that's all there is to it, right? Can you really handicap a horse?

You can pick a jockey (the wee man who weighs least), or a saddle-cloth color (shocking chartreuse), or heck, you can pick by name (Super Freaky). But do you really need the four-legged equivalent of Mel Kiper's scouting reports to throw down a few bills and hope to bring some back?

Sure, I can honestly say I had never bet one cent on a sporting event before Friday. But it was time. After spending my college years in upstate New York just minutes from Saratoga without ever making it to the track, I decided that as a San Diego resident, Del Mar would be my redemption.

I couldn't make it to Opening Day, but some locals told me that the one must-make midseason race was "The Classic" -- the track's premier annual event. It was with this in mind that I hopped in my car and headed up the coast to old Del Mar, where the turf meets the surf, to dive in to the wagering waters.

This year's Classic marked the Del Mar's largest crowd in more than five years. More than 35,000 people filled the grandstands for the 10-race card, and I was one of them. The crowd accounted for the highest-ever single-day handle in Del Mar history, with a mammoth $24,642,601 wagered. And I certainly accounted for more than one of those. (In case you couldn't get your mind around that number, that's almost 25 million dollars worth of bets.)

I went ready to play. First I attended a newcomers handicapping seminar that the track offers one hour before the first post on every race day. The tutorial promises to teach newbies everything they'll ever need to know about horseracing and handicapping, from soup to nuts … all in about 45 minutes.

That concise classroom session actually sounded plenty sufficient to me. After all, how much is there to learn about a horse trying to cross an imaginary line? While there are certainly variables that have to be accounted for, there is no menacing professional-athlete factor. Your horse is not going through a divorce or custody battle, it's not ticked at its coach about insufficient playing time, it doesn't face a pending lawsuit, it's not going to loaf on a turn because it thinks it should be making more cash, and it's not going to hold out and see how much more an agent can get before it jolts out of the gate.

It's a horse, not Brady Quinn.

Plus, beyond the human-imperfection discard, horse racing is also without sports quagmires like point spreads and restrictor plates. Horses are horses and -- for better or worse -- they do what their trainers teach them to do; unless, of course, they decide to do whatever they feel like doing (because they're horses and they can do that!). And that's not an equine jibe, it's just that, in the words of John Prine, "you are what you are, and you ain't what you ain't."

Believing this, it didn't make much sense for me to waste hours of my life trying to speculate which horse was going to bring its A-game on a given Sunday. But that wouldn't keep me and my now-diminished disposable income from trying, even if I didn't know my paddock from my superfecta.

So, while I may be a few days older and a few dollars shorter, I am certainly a little bit wiser for …

MY WEEKEND AT DEL MAR

Something to remember when you are bleeding money on Day 3 of a weekend at the track: A Del Mar polar fleece (no matter how fine a giveaway day promotion it might be) is insufficient consolation when you're a few hundo down on a Sunday afternoon. At 60-percent polyester, the freebee is hardly even a suitable tourniquet, so if you're down and out, know when to hop off.

Don't put your wallet before the cart, learn your trifectas from your exactas, and rolling doubles from partial wheels. Learn the lingo before you step to the window. The Newcomers Seminar is free. Take it.

A new horseracing habit, on the other hand, might cost you an arm and a leg. But don't worry, there's nothing a little Lasix can't fix. (I had no idea that just about every single horse who "runs for a living" is on Lasix. When a fellow newcomer asked what all the L's in the program were for, and we learned that every horse and their sire is taking Lasix these days, I couldn't help but be amazed. My mom is popping the same pills post-heart attack as Lava Man is on raceday, proving once again that the stakes are high.

Still, some bets always feel better across the board. For example, in horseracing as in football, Peyton is always a better bet than Vic. If you had put your money on Touchdown Peyton, who went off in Saratoga Springs on Saturday at 12-1 odds, you would have held a winning ticket in the fourth race. But if you looked to Pick Vic in the seventh at Del Mar, you best have accounted for his third-place showing. Never doubt anything named Peyton in horseshoes.

Pay no mind to expert picks. Though you will be tempted to know which horse the experts think is best suited for synthetic soil in August before 30,000 screaming Californians, abort the expert trap. Bundle up in ear muffs, blinkers and a nose roll, then forge your own path. The pick less traveled pays out.

Has that $25 million dollar one-day wager total sunk in yet? Are you sure that we are a nation that has grown tired of the track? Younger crowds are turning out, purses are swelling, handles are hefty and if you ask me, the people are there to play.

I talked to Chris Ello of San Diego's AM 1090 (Padres flagship) who used to cover the action at Del Mar as a writer for the L.A. Times. He offered me this rookie advice. "Look, I was in the press box for years. There's a window in there just for media to make picks. Don't do it. I knew every horse, every owner, and every trainer on the track, but I still got my ass kicked."

The experts are always wrong … until they're right. I took my first Newcomers Seminar on Friday afternoon. It was the first day I had ever stepped toe on the turf. My Horseplay 101 session was taught by long-time ownder/breeder Greg Vela, who finished up by giving us the day's consensus picks and his personal favorites -- both of which I clung to like a 100-pound man holding a horse hurtling at 40 miles per hour. But the harder I hung on the professional picks, the heavier I dropped in the hole. I walked away from Day 1 down about 75 bucks, so when I happened to bump into Vela on Saturday morning, I gave him an earful. He wished me better luck on Day 2 and offered one rock-solid pick. "Rutherian," he said. "Rutherian in Race 8. They shipped her all the way here from the East Coast. That means they like her chances. I feel good about this one."

So although I woke up on Saturday swearing off the experts, I listened to Vela and took Rutherian at $4 across the board (a $12 investment total). Sure enough, Rutherian won one of the most exciting races of the weekend and I took home a solid chunk of change, but believe it or not, the cash didn't compare to the feeling of watching a horse come from behind while you cheer and clench a ticket with her name on it. Thanks to Greg Vela and Rutherian, I had tasted the elixir of this life one furlong at a time and suddenly it made sense.

Live and die by the long shot. The top three surprise finishers who rendered the even-money fan favorite Lava Man to a lowly sixth place in Sunday's big race were such underdogs that if you had bet just one dollar on the winning trifecta combination, you would have won more than 2,500 bucks.

If you had bet just one single George Washington on the two-horse exacta combination, you would have won almost $200.

Horses make big races (i.e. The Breeders Cup), just like small schools make the NCAA Tournament. If an athletic conference is designated as an automatic bid recipient, a school (any school, long shot or not) can win their conference tournament to earn a trip to the tourney. Similarly, if a horse wins a designated "win and you're in" race, they punch their ticket to the big-horse dance.

So if March Madness is the time for Cinderellas on the hardcourt, Anarchy in August means upsets on the Polytrack. This makes the late Bing Crosby smile, and we can prove it with Pop-Up-Video-full-circle-rationale. Ready? Along with actor Pat O'Brien and musician Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby was a major founder of the Del Mar Race Track. Bing was also a Gonzaga University alum. His Zags have become the archetype for "win and you're in" underdogs everywhere. The odds on Pacific Classic underdog winner Student Council were 23-to-1 going in. The longshot overwhelmed the field in true bracket-buster form and accordingly earned a Breeders Cup bid. We've just witnessed one shining moment in hoofed history, folks.

If you're fed up with horses but still want to come out, I've got the superfecta for you. In order -- Cake, Pete Yorn, Ziggy Marley and Angeles & Airwaves (the boys from Blink) -- are guaranteed to show on the stage at Del Mar this month. Four O'Clock Fridays means free concerts with your admission to the track (which is as little as $4, and only $10 max for the clubhouse). Seeing big-name bands for small bucks is summer's only safe bet, so parlay your friends and check out the tunes if you're into that sort of thing.

Learn your lessons. A newspaper and the daily expert picks cost $1.50 a day. Track parking costs $6. The ATM withdrawal fee inside is at least $4.75 per pin punch. Two Newcastle drafts will run you $16. The minimum quinella bet is $2. For another two bucks, you can be safe and box your picks. The underlying lesson: For the love of God, come with cash.

If you had wagered more than a few bones on the Pacific Classic, you may have taken home a sack full of cash, in which case you'd be a little closer to affording that Polytrack surface you've always wanted in your backyard. Around here, Polytrack is just a funny name for "Nine Million Dollar Dirt." In July of this year, Del Mar became the most recent track in the U.S. to install the super-special stuff. It looks sort of like sandy cookie dough, but I was told it's sand, synthetic fibers and recycled rubber coated with a "microcrystalline wax." About six inches of the mixture sits on top of a layer of asphalt, a layer of crushed rocks and a pretty intense drain-pipe system. The synthetic soil is supposed to be easier on the horses' hooves, plus more resilient to adverse weather conditions. But its coming is not without controversy. Still, premier parks like Arlington (Chicago), Keeneland (Kentucky) and Lingfield (U.K.) have all decided to poly-cise.

It's a good thing people are considering the shocks and struts of the horses, because not only do thoroughbreds get in their daily cardio on race day, but they're also weight training when on the track. I learned this weekend that, in handicapped races, faster horses actually must carry additional weight on their bod than the slower horses to keep things interesting. Plus, if an apprentice jockey has to step in for a seasoned vet on a horse, they cut the plebe a break by dropping a few pounds off his horse's load. So forget the freshman 15 or brutal initiation ceremonies, this sport nurtures their new guys.

Lava Man was more than an old hand with a target on his back, he was the famous favorite and defending Pacific Classic champion. This year he had already nabbed the Hollywood Gold Cup and Santa Anita Handicap, and was looking for a win at Del Mar to sweep Southern California's three major races for the second consecutive season. But he fell short.

Lava Man remains the wealthiest claiming horse in thoroughbred history, with over $5 million in take-home pay, but a lot of people lost big when Lava's riches stopped overflowing. So if you are one of the thousands of folks who fell hard at the horseshoes of Lava Man, I leave you with this -- Vegas is only a five-hour drive from Del Mar. Rider's up.

Mary Buckheit is a Page 2 columnist. She can be reached at marybuckheit@hotmail.com.