Way of Life: From Picking Winners to Breeding Champions

By Bob Marks

Way of Life chronicles Bob Marks’ journey from high school horseplayer at Roosevelt and Yonkers to the co-author of books on Meadow Skipper and Murray Brown. He came of age during the heyday of harness racing in New York. It was pre-OTB and the stands were packed every night as the likes of Adios Butler, Bye Bye Byrd and Overtrick dominated. While friends went off to college, he learned the finer points of betting; figured out how to use the money he carried to the track for others for his own benefit; became adept at clocking warmups; and cleaned up betting on photos.

By the mid-60s he was submitting articles to Wally Rottkamp’s Top Trotter magazine and eventually took over the handicapping role there. While riding the subway to and from his day job his nose was buried in Doc Robbins Tomorrow Trots, not the New York Times.

A subsequent job at Boardwalk Associates allowed him to use his public relations skills and gave him an opportunity to strut his stuff as the self-made pedigree Maven he had put so much time and effort into becoming. All of a sudden he was dealing with giants like Delmonica Hanover, Misty Raquel and Davidia Hanover. He worked on the ground breaking Inside Boardwalk newsletter, an opinion shaper as well as an ideal vehicle for advertising the syndicate’s yearlings. It was an early progenitor of HRU. And the No Nukes video he worked on was something new and different in the industry.

Meanwhile Marks’ yearling prognostications and imagined races involving the best of the best from different decades were a big hit in Hub Rail.

The Perretti years when Marks managed the bookings of the stallions and mares, advertised and promoted the stock for sale and wrote the newsletter. This section is a fount of information and opinions on a score of horses the farm owned, managed, and sought but didn’t get.

This book is aimed at those who are seasoned harness racing fans. It is not a primer for the uninitiated, though it provides a glimpse into the world of horse racing. This is a behind the curtain look at the horses and personalities who have fascinated us over the past six decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781546279389

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© 2019 Bob Marks. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  03/06/2019

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7939-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7937-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7938-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019901385

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Prologue

Way Of Life

Basic Training

Tools Of The Trade

Learning The Ropes

The Arena

Opm

Action

The Clock

Sweeping The Card

Mud Blood

The Twin Double

The Riots

Top Trotter And Trotter Weekly

Top Trotters Weekly Letter And Otb

The Meadowlands

Races Of The Decade

Prognistications

The Superfecta

A Tv Star??

The Boardwalk Years

Naming

Camelot Storms

The Perretti Years

The Early Crops

Naming

The Stallions

Near Miss Stalions

The Original Mares

Back In The Trotting Business

The Red Mile Years

Those Videos

The Ads

Stalling

A Few Good Sales

More Purchases And Back In The Pacing Business

Flops

The Fire

A Cottage Industry

The Dispersals

Final Acts

A Few Thoughts

The Books

Epilogue

About the Author

PROLOGUE

Initially, I didn’t think this was important but after having Ron The Guru Gurfein review the manuscript, I figured I best take his advice and write something about my earlier years.

I was born and raised in Manhattan before moving out to Long Beach Long Island. There I developed my love of body surfing which I still do at the age of 76 though the waves in Palm Beach County are hardly commensurate with those of Long Island and/or the Jersey shore.

The Jewish part of me comes from my father whom I met but one time at age 23 during a surprise visit to his mother’s (my grandmother’s) house.

Basically, I was kind of an innocuous kid who was just kind of there and didn’t stand out in anything.

I loved playing Sports but at 5'6" and 125 pounds when I got my driver’s license at age 16, I was too small to be adept at too much although I could run pretty fast and was elusive. I was not a good fielder although I could hit a little bit so in softball I was generally placed in right field.

I was a good running back-receiver and could really hold on to a football but the coaches decided I was too small following sophomore football.

I never developed a decent shot until my 30’s and at my height was not much of a rebounder although in my early 20’s I could occasionally touch the rim of the basket.

In school, I was the proverbial schmuck. I never really studied and failed just about every English test I ever took until miraculously passing the regents exam probably on the strength of a book report that never existed as I made up the story.

I didn’t know it then, but my father came from super achievers. My father was one of three brothers- two Doctors and an Economics Professor whose obituary was over a half page in the New York Times.

Their mother, my grandmother, used to write Yiddish Theatre on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as I eventually learned. I didn’t know her husband, my grandfather, as he passed on due to a stroke when I was still a toddler. He must have been quite successful as their apartment on Riverside Drive was palatial.

My mother was from primarily German stock and I believe her mother my other grandmother was of Protestant and Catholic denomination although religion was never a factor in the household.

I kind of identified with being Jewish as I liked the word better than Catholic. Regardless, I had no training and never attended temple or church.

Ironically through the works of the legendary author Leon Uris whose books I devoured, I probably know more about what happened in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago than most.

While I was hardly a scholar, I got through school primarily due to a near photographic memory and graduated High School on time although I did have to make up a class in Summer School. Most likely it was English, as I was terrible at grammar and punctuation. Little did I know how much I would need those lessons down the road as writing became a way of life.

In short, to quote from Neil Diamond’s obviously autobiographical Crunchy Granola Suite there was nobody knowing what I was growing especially me.

I liked History, Geography, and Science but hated math although I did stumble past Algebra and Geometry- probably by remembering the patterns and theorems.

I was creative and started writing songs and poems in my teens but was always too shy to show them to anyone. In these my bucket years, I’ve had some of them set to music and recorded. Not thrilled with some of the vocalizing but some of them are pretty damn good-if I say so myself.

Though I wasn’t good enough to play competitive sports, at a high level, I watched constantly and developed a pretty good opinion as to who the top football, baseball, and basketball teams happened to be. I actually did play a lot of beach football in my 20’s having grown some and even held my own with a couple of semi-pro guys.

I can still see Mantle, Mays, Bobby Layne, and Y.A. Title doing their respective stuff and grimaced when Alan Ameche scored that overtime touchdown in the Colts-Giants game that defined professional football.

I attended Rider College for two semesters but was FAR too immature to take advantage of it. Needless to say, I was not invited back for a sophomore year. I found work as a checker in Preiss and Brown Advertising Agency. Basically an ad-checker ensured the media actually printed word for word the copy that was sent to them and then attached that ad to the bill sent to the client.

I was the lowest paid worker at the ad-agency but in that my other life as you’ll be reading about in the next chapter often paid dividends, I would let an executive ‘hold 10 or 20" until payday.

My other life was instigated by my step father an avid horseplayer both flats and trots. I still remember watching the grey ghost Native Dancer failing just catch Dark Star in the 1953 Kentucky Derby on one of those old Dumont televisions.

It was at Preiss and Brown advertising that I started writing ad copy- primarily real estate and recruitment. If memory serves, an ad I wrote in the New York Times for an Elevator Starter in the Pan-Am building got written up as most creative help wanted ad in a column probably in 1963.

The headline was TELL THE EXECUTIVES WHERE TO GET OFF although my name was never credited by the columnist.

Oh well, that was the day stuff back then. What you’re about to read was the night stuff.

WAY OF LIFE

CHAPTER 1

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It was a way of life at the time. Get up, go to work then head right to the racetrack. Being a Long Islander, Roosevelt was much more convenient than Yonkers, though subways and busses made the Westchester trek doable. Plus, you could always find a ride home. Didn’t matter where your particular neighborhood was located, there were always cars heading back, many with at least one empty seat.

Of course, you were expected to ante up the bridge tolls and if you were a winner you’d get the coffee at whatever diner you might pass. However, that was a small price to pay for the privilege of being chauffeured to your corner.

Then again, the better your reputation as a handicapper the more welcome a passenger you became. Guys would even volunteer Hey kid need a ride tonight? I got room.

It was a way of life.

There were no real class distinctions amongst regulars, though most showed deference to those perceived to be opinions. Whether or not these opinions actually made any real money is another story, but they were assumed to be winners. Everybody was at the track for the same purpose, that being the immediate pursuit of the next winner. The self -styled professional had no qualms communicating with those he considered riffraff if he thought the latter might be privy to a tidbit of inside information or conjecture that he himself might not yet have heard. In that respect, we were all brothers under the same skin. We were horseplayers. It was a way of life.

You stood in the same section night have night. Downstairs on the apron surrounded by familiar faces that you might not know from Adam walking down Broadway but were readily recognizable as racetrack regulars. Like you were…

The regulars fell into several distinct categories. There were the every night guys who almost never missed a card. Then there were the weekenders, and the once a week types who showed up on the same night each week, probably sandwiched between bowling and card nights. Lastly, there were the novices, many of whom might eventually morph into one of the above categories.

Horseplayer, like normal human beings, tend to be creatures of habit so you’d see the same faces in the same spots night after night—year after year. To some you’d nod, while others received an indistinguishable grunt. Then there those you’d just kind of glance at and ignore. But should your paths cross outside the track there would be an instant and enthusiastic acknowledgment of recognition. See that same guy in a bar and you’d be inclined to tell the bartender to send one his way.

It was a way of life.

My dentist was a horseplayer, as was my accountant, car mechanic, lawyer, pharmacist, deli owner, and just about everybody I knew from the neighborhood. Many nights we’d converge outside of Jerry Silva’s Chem RX waiting for Howie Marcus to get off so he could drive us up to Yonkers. Howie was one of those guys born with a steering wheel as an extension of his fingers; he always insisted on driving. We paid the gas and the tolls and left him to his Nascar aspirations. Terrible handicapper and bettor, but especially deft at navigating the horrible traffic jams expected on the Throggs Neck bridge, Cross Bronx Expressway or the monumentally miserable Major Deegan. With Howie at the wheel you always made the double, even if there were times you wished you had been shut out—unless, of course, you were carrying neighborhood money.

The mere acceptance of neighborhood money to bet on any horse on the program represented a blood oath obligation. If it won, you paid off. There was no such thing as getting there too late, leaving too early, having an accident, or whatever. You took the bet and it was your responsibility to pay the ticket if it was cashable.

Of course, you could always pocket the bet, or do any of several things with it which we’ll touch on later, but the obligation remained. If it won, you paid off. No excuses tolerated or accepted.

It was a way of life.

So how did it start? While I can remember observing the grey ghost Native Dancer failing to catch Dark Star in the 1953 Kentucky Derby on one of those round screen Dumont televisions, I had no idea what I was watching.

Subconsciously though, something penetrated. I’d read about Adios Harry and Dotties Pick racing at Roosevelt in Newsday, the local paper on Long Island in the mid 50’s. Never saw either of them but was aware that they were important, given the 42- point headline type introducing the story.

Growing up some 25 minutes from Roosevelt, you knew the difference between trotters and the runners that circled the track at Aqueduct. There were always older guys on the block or in the candy store discussing who won what and where.

The neighborhood horseplayers, while not exactly revered, were known to most, and many of those guys would good naturedly exaggerate their alleged good fortune.

Years later we realized it was pure bullshit but at the time some of us hung onto every word.

Long about mid May of 1960, just before graduation, half our senior class got wind that Hundred Proof was somehow winning at Roosevelt that night. Somebody else thought Mr. K Braden would also win.

Change and bills got collected and pooled and one of the guys (Stanley Lang, I believe) who worked the cashier’s line at Waldbaums Supermarket, and thus had his own car, either volunteered, or was designated, to go up and make the bets. Actually, from Long Beach you went up to Yonkers, over to Aqueduct and out to Roosevelt, but nobody was technical that night.

They both won.

Hundred Proof, a Scotland pacer with Stanley Dancer driving, won the AA-2 pace, while Mr. K Braden prevailed in his customary A-1 class for Billy Haughton, not that any of us had the foggiest idea what AA-2 was or who Dancer and Haughton were, for that matter.

What did matter was the $20 mutuel price paid by Hundred Proof and the $16.60 paid by Mr. K Braden.

Suddenly this full of himself adolescent, who had to forage through every crevice of his secret hideaways just to scrape up enough loose change for a single ticket on each horse, was worth the astronomical sum of 36 dollars and 60 cents.

Hey, they give away money up there

Or so it seemed the following day to a couple of impressionistic teenagers swaggering over to the Laurel Luncheonette for a celebratory egg cream

Mind you this teenager was no stranger to gambling, as we all flipped baseball cards, played draw poker, five and seven card stud, acey-deucey, and occasionally someone might even risk a bob on a gin rummy outcome.

Then of course there was Fascination, the local boardwalk bingo with lights game, played for real money, which some started frequenting by age sixteen.

Being a summer resort type town, not unlike New Jersey’s Point Pleasant, the Long Beach boardwalk was always packed in summer and Fascination was one of its honky- tonk highlight attractions.

The object of the game was to roll a ball over a slight hump and whichever hole it fell in lit the corresponding bulb on the bingo like screen in front of you. The ball was then immediately returned to the player, to be rolled again-until somebody won.

The rules were the same as bingo in that you had to have five in a row either horizontally vertically or diagonally, and the first player to light the board in that fashion was the winner. As players competed against each other, speed and accuracy was paramount, and invariably us skilled wiseasses were escorted out for winning too much.

Each game cost 10 cents to play-the winning prize was always one dollar and with the 48 tables generally filled it was a cash cow

Oh, did I tell you that certain loudspeakers were always set to 1010 WINS so at 10 minutes after 10 each night we could hear the call of the featured race from either Roosevelt or Yonkers.

Guess who stopped everything to hear that call?

Actually, let’s blame it on the stepfather. It was at his knee that I actually became aware of the furious stretch charge of Native Dancer. My stepfather was a devoted horseplayer, equally fond of the runners and harness.

So when he announced as he usually did going to Roosevelt tonight someone grabbed a paper, scanned the entries (by this time I knew how to do that), and suddenly a horse named Tar Boy coming off three consecutive wins and listed at 9-2 started burning in my brain.

Flush from a good night at Fascination the previous evening, I handed him my precious two dollars stammering two fateful words, TAR BOY.

Fascination started each evening with a six games for 20 cents special of which I’d be odds on to win at least one. Armed with another dollar, this guaranteed