Reality checks
Several readers wrote in to ask why the people trying to pick winners for the big races featured on national TV were having trouble hitting their backsides with a rolled up Racing Form. And the way reader-response seems to translate is that for every thoughtful and well-composed message that appears on the screen, 1.5 million more are probably thinking the same thing.
The recent soup at Saratoga caused many expert handicapper picks to come up short and drippy.
Here's why so many people are missing picks on TV.
It's hard.
It's easier to pick a 15-1 shot off camera, on a computer screen. On TV when your 15-1 selection runs eighth, you are unable to cuss, throw anything, or appear ill. When a nation comes back to you on TV, you have to sit there like a meteorologist who called for fairness and caught hail, smile politely, and move on down the road.
If you're going to miss picks on TV, please feel free to miss them all. The worst kind of national picking is where you occasionally hit a lousy favorite. By erasing chalk and long shots one and all, you're actually doing handicappers a favor by black-lining horses. I honestly wouldn't bet the picks of several national handicappers with your money. And I very much appreciate the consistency of their ways.
Some national pickers do seem to fall into bad habits by the very nature of their celebrity.
1. Forget the inside info.
Training and handicapping don't necessarily go together. If trainers were great handicappers, they wouldn't have had to start out training $5,000 claimers, would they.
What's a trainer supposed to tell an expert handicapper, we stink?
The best trainer information is silence from somebody who should be happier -- bad human body language is a tell worth considering.
2. Track bias is crazily underrated.
Had there been no rain at Saratoga last week, there would have been a different shuffle of winners and losers; and the orders will be wildly altered when next some of the same bunch run on a dry track.
Having to pick a winner well before the post is a major handicap.
In rotten weather, handicap a race in the betting line, see how that goes.
There are two vastly different kinds of horse race handicapping, elite and grubby. National TV handicappers can't pick and choose races that suit their picking styles. Picking a big TV race is like a blackjack expert having to play the first hand out of the shoe.
Handicapping cheap races is, in my opinion, much simpler than trying to pick between Greek gods. At the down-and-dusty racing levels, the handicapper gets to make frequent use of the most invaluable of wagering tools, gross or mass incompetence. Some claimer trainers wouldn't know what to feed Rachel Alexandra. Some senior jockeys have one basic game plan, stay on. Yet it's as though to some handicappers that 5-1 horses in full-field stakes races pay more than 5-1 horses in $7,500 claiming races with seven trying to locate the post. Favorites are harder to find down low. But who wants them anyway. Stakes races are road shows. Claiming races feature home cooking. This quick note: Flip up Remington Park for the results for the most recent Saturday, Aug. 29, and verify the numbers put up by one of my favorite female jockeys, Nena Matz, who is often overlooked by yahoos tubby and tubbier: $54.20 and $84, on two wins.
What we sometimes miss while skinning the fish out here in the heartland is the great grandness of the sport, the supreme physical specimens like Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta. The very real possibility exists that these may be two of the greatest race horses ever. That these two have not raced against one another is unseemly; that they might not compete nose to nose should be illegal. Look at the other rivalries we're stuck with, fields of dreamers -- Tiger versus the field, Federer the field.
As loads of appearance money is being thrown at the two female horses to make a game, they stare at each other from opposite coasts. Zenyatta has to be the one who blinks. Zenyatta is out west running, flittering around on the lint. It's time to get real. That means dirt.
Write to Jay at jaycronley@yahoo.com.
