The typical horse racing fan? There's no such thing
Who are those people being shown at the horse races on national television?
One has just spent hundred of thousands of dollars to buy a horse with the intent to race it and win millions.
One has trained big horses that are running here and there throughout the weekend.
One wears a suit that fits so well, it's as though a thin layer of air is suspended between the shirt and the jacket.
One wears, if not a designer original, a designer limited edition.
Diamonds are more obviously now than forever.
Nobody clutches betting tickets between shaking fingers.
Nobody has clenched teeth and knotted jaws.
The jockeys have tucked in their silks.
The horses are not taped to the hilt.
It looks like a presentation of Masterpiece Theater out front.
Meanwhile, underneath high society:
Somebody thinks he should have had another winning $5 place wager on a race just completed and sorts through many dozens of tickets in search of what he vaguely remembers having bet. When he cannot find on his person what he thought he had wagered, he gets down on all fours to see if he had dropped the ticket under his seat. Some of what's down there makes a movie theater floor seem halfway tidy by comparison.
Somebody else almost hit the Super for $12,000. This guy is almost always hitting something. There's the tendency to think that he's not really almost hitting something big, that saying he's coming close is his odd way of making friends. Who couldn't chat up a guy just missing with consistency. Gambling losses can make a hermit social. But this guy really is adept at near misses. He can put a $100 horse second, cold, in a dollar Tri and watch it win. Box them and it runs fourth. He has money. It's as though his divinely inspired talent at almost being brilliant is nearly reward enough.
Somebody else is looking to borrow $20. He says he will repay the $20 Monday noon, right hand to all that's good up there. What if he wins today? Wouldn't he pay back the $20 then? A momentary silence ensues. He hadn't considered winning. Of course he'd pay back the $20 five minutes after a victory.
Somebody else is looking through the garbage for a mistakenly discarded winning ticket. Running tickets with mustard on them through the betting machines is not that good an idea. Just one month ago, this guy found a $2 Tri ticket worth more than $1,000.
Somebody else sits at a laptop and then bets $100 Exactas based on expensive subscriber information from a picking service.
Somebody else has the habit of cheering for a horse, any horse, once it appears that it is going to win a race on the simulcast screen. Say the seven sweeps the field at the top of the stretch and begins to pull away. This guy will start screaming: Come on seven, come on seven, come on seven! Somebody new to the joint might look at him with admiration because the seven is an easy winner at 30-1. Thing is, he doesn't have money on any seven horse. He has been observed cheering wildly for a horse pulling away down the stretch, only to then get up and go home.
Somebody around 90 years of age bets the 4 and the 8 in most races.
Bets across the board increase according to the alcohol level in all the bloodstreams.
Even though there is an ATM machine right there, somebody leaves the building and gets in his car and drives to an automatic teller in another location just so he won't be seen getting cash a third or fourth time; then he returns.
Everybody knows there's one of every kind at the horse races, back and underneath.
What everybody might not know is that new kinds are sometimes identified here.
Write to Jay at jaycronley@yahoo.com
