University of Virginia Library

Steve Wells

Madness In Fun City

Have you ever seen a city go
bananas? I don't mean small time,
half-baked bananas, but big league,
boiling over, exploding bananas.
Well, you should have been in New
York the end of last week. Why,
you ask?

"Let me have H twice, D once,
and E four times."

Now, if you're smart, you have
guessed correctly that the above
was said by a bettor placing a wager
on a horse race. This, it would
seem, is nothing out of the
ordinary; indeed, millions of people
throughout the world mouth
similar words every week. Only in
this ease, there are two
circumstances which make these
words slightly unusual.

One is that they were spoken
(by yours truly) at 8:45 a.m. this
past Saturday morning after I had
waited on line for almost half an
hour to get to the betting window,
many hours before most racetracks
even open their gates.

Which brings us to the second
point: these words were not spoken
at a racetrack nor at a bookie's
establishment, but at New York's
Grand Central Station, a landmark
for an outdated mode of travel
which now primarily services
commuters who live in Connecticut
and Westchester County.

The station was one of six
locations where Howard Samuels,
head of Off-Track Betting, Inc.,
placed off-track betting windows
for the Kentucky Derby. It had
never been done before inasmuch as
legalized off-track betting in New
York is a fairly recent innovation.
Samuels estimated that New
Yorkers would wager about
$500,000 on the Derby with his
"fledgling" corporation. And had
Samuels been around in Noah's
day, he probably would have
forecast a spring shower.

Lines Never Ceased

From Wednesday afternoon to
Saturday afternoon, the lines at the
windows never ceased (except for
the few night hours when the
windows were closed), forcing
police barricades to be set up and
enthusiastic bettors to weave their
way up and down stairways and out
on to the street before even getting
into the betting area. On Friday
night, some of the locations (all of
which were supposed to close at
midnight) stayed open until nearly
2 a.m., when they had to close up
because they ran out of tickets to
sell. The tidal wave of business was
almost 100% greater than Samuels
had predicted-and Derby Fever
was rampant.

The town was on a betting
spree. After all, solid handicapping
and scientific thinking had made
its people confident. For example,
the elevator operator in the
building where I was staying (he
had the fever bad, as you shall see)
put $30 on Jim French because a
nice man named French had once
lived in the building. Now that's
reason to believe!! A sure sign from
heaven that Jim French would win
the roses!!

Others took the scientific
approach as well. The friend with
whom I was staying put two dollars
on a longshot named Canonero II
because he had ridden in a Camaro
car earlier in the day, and any fool
can see the mystical connection
between Camaro and Canonero. His
wife bet on Impetuosity because
people had told her she was an
impetuous person. My mother even
phoned me long distance to ask if
I'd put two on Impetuosity for her
based simply on the notion that it
was time for a horse with a long
name to win the Derby.

If there had been a horse named
Insanity running, he would have
gotten my money, for it was all
around me. Since there wasn't, I
put my ten on Eastern Fleet, based
on such trivial and foolish
considerations as past performance,
owner's reputation, breeding, and
favorable 8-1 odds in N.Y. when he
was 7-2 in Louisville. But keep in
mind, I've spend much of my life in
Kentucky and therefore wasn't up
on the sophisticated ways of
choosing a horse, the way most
New Yorkers were.

Amazing Part

The amazing part about it all
was not so much how bettors chose
their horses as the way in which
Derby Fever affected them. The
elevator operator who I mentioned
earlier (usually a quiet, unassuming
guy) would serenade his passengers
with "Fugue For Tinhorns" from
"Guys and Dolls"; "I got the
morning line/Jim French is running
fine." I was beginning to think that
the Derby was the high point of his
life. When I went out at 8 o'clock
Saturday morning to place the bets,
he greeted me in a W.C. Fields'
voice: "Ah, yes, they'll be playing
'My Old Kentucky Home' before
long." I wasn't still asleep, though I
wished I were.

New Yorkers suddenly became
friendly. There was time-time to
patiently wait in line, time to speak
to strangers. I'd go into a store and
the clerk would ask me what horse
I had. "Eastern Fleet," I'd reply, to
which another customer would add,
"He's a good horse."

It was a nice atmosphere, one of
comradeship, which probably last
appeared when the Mets won the
pennant, and which made some
wonder if all of the nation's
decaying railroad stations shouldn't
be turned into betting parlors. But
important races aren't run every
day, and I imagine by now New
York is back to its impersonal self,
except perhaps at the payoff
windows.

So, Canonero II won. And my
friend won. And Howard Samuels
really won.

As for the elevator operator,
well, I beat it back to C'ville before
he returned to his job. I hate to see
a grown man cry.