Whatever Happened to....

Tweet Some light lifting after spending a quick 3 hours and 45 minutes at the Ralph today. Can't remember the last time I was home before 4:30pm on gameday. Thanks to the Browns coaching staff for running the ball 300 times today to keep the clock moving in that horrid weather. I took my dad to the game today and watching the Browns I started wondering....

Whatever Happened To (we'll alternate between sports/pop culture & horse racing)...

- Brian Sipe? The leader of the Comeback Kids of the 70s for the Browns...

- The NTRA Safety & Integrity Alliance? Crickets. Shouldn't we be getting the annual propaganda report right about now? Too busy milking that Zenyatta thing, I guess.

- The Monkees? Hey, hey we're the monkees. Yeah, those guys. Where are they now?

- The National Pick Four? In case ya missed the earlier post....

- The Vuvuzela? Has there ever been another instrument that's fallen from grace faster than the vuvuzela?

- The marketing for the Beulah Park Fortune Six? I totally forgot about the 25 cent wager that captured my fancy last winter...has the wager lost it's luster?

- Earl Weaver? I miss the Earl of Baltimore. Best sequence ever during one of his 97 career ejections as manager of the O's was yelling at an ump: "I'm going to check the rule-book on that" the umpire replied, "Here, use mine." Weaver countered, "That's no good - I can't read Braille."

- Charismatic's ESPN Movie? Tap, tap, tap. Still waiting World Wide Leader....

- Sports Challenge? Best. Game. Show. Ever. If you don't remember this show that aired in the 70s and pitted sports teams against each other in a trivia contest format with Dick Enberg hosting....you don't know what you missed.

- The Eclipse Award for Lifetime Achievement? Oh yeah, they don't have one of those.

That's all for now...the TBA 2010 Photo Contest is up and running and submissions will be accepted up through next Friday (the 17th), so send in your best photogs of 2010.

Put A Fork In It: Derby Weekend Nuggets

Tweet Heard one of my favorite sayings this morning on my drive to the office and it made me chuckle: "In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King."

Not sure it has anything to do with what we just experienced, but damn, that's funny. Speaking of funny, one of my annual visits post-Derby is to the Blonde Champagne site where the author posts a rather humorous live blog entry of the day's events, this year's edition is top shelf once again.

Oaks Day is one of the great racing days of the year. I remember experiencing it in 2006 for the first time and was overwhelmed by the experience. The nationally-televised Bravo telecast experienced positive numbers per The Street.com: "Last year, the Kentucky Oaks was broadcast on Bravo for the first time and the telecast saw an increase in the female portion of the viewing audience from 21 percent to 49 percent. This year's telecast featured exclusive, behind-the-scenes racing features, as well as the food, fashion and celebrity experience associated with Kentucky Oaks Day." The broadcast hasn't received the best reviews, but I agree with the R2 Collective perspective that the hardcore racing fan isn't the target audience: "The fly in that ointment is that we are not the market; we are going to watch it on Twinspires, or HRTV. This helps brand to a new audience." I imagine most peeps (horseplayers/fans) like me were at the kitchen table with the Form on our ADW account watching the odds (on the computer) and would watch the Bravo show starting with the post parade, when the fashion/food/celebrity stuff was long over and the racing was ready to roll (on HD!). I asked the Space Gal (cuz she watched and she has a MBA in Marketing) what she thought of the production and her reaction was that the gambling education piece was really "dumbed down." She thought they could have done a better job with projecting the atmosphere of Oaks Day with more random fashion interviews with people attending the event and more random shots of what people were wearing, etc. to capture the enormity and beauty of the event. Of course, she thought the survivor march was the best part of the telecast and what it's all about.

Are we ever going to have a better betting race than Saturday's Derby? It was amazing how close in odds these horses were on the tote board.

Mad props to my boy, Wack who posted the following in my friends and family blog: “With that said, my Derby exacta, will be Ice Box closing from waaay back and Super Saver, who has the pedigree to be close enough to the early lead and still hang at the wire.” I'm happy to report Wack and the Saratoga Resident nailed the tri together for a deuce - nice going!

Following up on my Exacta-ly post last week, tencentcielo chimed in with this yesterday: "The derby exacta name most (except you!) missed: The "Prevent Freezer Burn" exacta: Super Saver/Ice Box :-) " High comedy.

I'm looking forward to drinking one of these in 11 days for the first time...

Love him or hate him, Calvin Borel is now the face of racing. Out of the top 3 questions I received in the office today from the casual racing observer/employee (which is 95% of the office): 1 - How did you do? 2 - How about that Borel? and; 3 - Man, was that track a mess, or what?

The 25 cent Beulah Fortune 6 mandatory payout amounted to $3,750. Remnants from Saturday, Churchill's pick six carryover should exceed (queue Dr. Evil voice) one million dollars on Thursday.

If only Odysseus had made the gate and won the Derby, my one-eyed man Cycloptic reference would've been spot on....

The Terrible Twos

Tweet We turn two today at Camp EquiSpace and head into the Terrible Twos. We're still having a good time here in the interwebs, just wanted to say thanks to all who stop by for a chuckle or to be annoyed by me. Once in a while a blind squirrel finds a nut and that's what I'm all about, the search for that perfect nut.


I'm very appreciate to be a member of the TBA, it's really what made this small little dot on the world wide web visible to folks who love racing (and peeps other than the Space Gal or my immediate family). Mostly it's been great to meet a lot of you at the track during one of my visits or to interact with you over the past two years.

Special thanks to the Saratoga Resident for introducing me to this awesome sport and to the Space Gal who puts up with my shenanigans on a daily basis.


We'll be back to our regularly scheduled forum for bad handicapping, bad jokes and poor grammar tomorrow. Meanwhile, time to get kickin' on the Late Pick 4 at Keeneland or tomorrow's Fortune 6 carryover at Beulah (more on this in a future post).....thanks again for reading.

Stalled, Never Left Gate

Tweet ......is exactly what my chart notes would be for the last few weeks. Why you ask? What possibly could have me distracted from the racing blog I've maintained for the past two years (well, almost 2 years...next week). Well let me tell you why.....

- I'm running an NCAA Calcutta (complete with blog). A contest I run annually in which participants (same 8 squads for 12 straight years) select two teams per bracket in an auction bid draft night. Of course, I have never won said contest, but have always written a daily log of the results (we've moved from emails to blog). It's actually the reason I started the racing blog, as some of the guys enjoyed some of my banter about the teams, etc.

- Tax season is taking its toll. Three weeks to go. This year being my 25th busy season has been one of the hardest in recent memory. I thought it was supposed to get easier.

- I'm working on a double secret project (not really) with Thorofan, which we're hoping to roll out in the next week or so.

- My gamblers anonymous classes seem to be extending their meetings longer than usual (just kidding).

- I attended the NCAA first and second rounds which were held here in Buffalo last week. I experienced thorough enjoyment of the 'Cuse's play and the city's showing as throngs of hoops fans traipsed through our town. (Could also be the reason I'm behind at work). I also hosted my entire family from Syracuse who were up for the games and my daughter's birthday.

- The NTRA webcast came off smoothly (so they say) so no one to make fun of this week.

- I contributed to a 25 cent Pick 6 today that our group played for $36 at Beulah Park (I just contributed, no handicapping involved) and just checked the results. Knocked out in the second race. Though I find it cool that they have a quarter Pick 6 at Beulah. By the way, it paid about $2,100 beans.

- The Space Gal Stables is in 164th place in the Road to the Roses contest (out of 18,000 plus contestants). Lots of strutting here in the Space Station. I'm in about 4,000th place or something. She leads the HRF league and is in second in the TBA league. It could be a long spring.

Ok...hopefully we'll get out of the gate later this week...stay tuned. I'm usually better second time out.

O...H...Oh No!

Tweet As a big OSU-hater (no choice when married to a Penn Stater), today's an Ohio bashing day. Sorry any Ohio State marching band i-dotters, but you're in the news and I can't help myself today.

First off, we hear that the Ohio Racing Commission has 160 racing days less scheduled for 2009 as reported by Tom LaMarra's Blood-Horse article on Saturday. He states that:

"Winter racing at Beulah Park was plowed under and the spring/summer meet at River Downs went up in flames Nov. 21 when the Ohio State Racing Commission awarded 2009 dates that represent a loss of more than 160 days of Thoroughbred racing at the two tracks."

Wow, that sucks.

Then it's reported that the wrong horse started and won the 4th race at Beulah last Wednesday! How does this happen??? According to the DRF story:

"The horse who was entered in the race by trainer Enzo Canelo is named Valid Action. Another horse in Canelo's stable, however, Purdy Tricky, ran in the race and won it, paying $8.60. Beulah's track identifier failed to catch the mix-up before the race."

Holy Jim Marshall, Batman....

And last, but certainly not least, it's not only horse racing in Ohio that is bringing out their best, the next story emerges from the NBA and Cleveland, Ohio. There must be something in the water, as an Cleveland Cav fan/blogger called out a Yahoo! Sports basketball writer with a Neo-Nazi-type threat and the basketball writer actually called (yes, he dialed the dude up) and basically asked him to step outside. Hello rabbit ears (that used to drive the refs nuts btw). I guess us horse bloggers play nice in comparison to our hoops compadres...