Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

superdog — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 23:26:04 GMT

As usual, Mr.Haskins on the money. As a former owner and fan, I have seen the exact same results. It has always been a mystery to me, why there is so little coverage of this great sport by the media. They will highlight a negative story, and bury a deserving one. Owners and trainers, and the entire racing world, need to have a joint effort in producing a solid and sound marketing strategy, that will appeal to all sports fans.Start with the Kentucky Derby, and it's history, and highlight some of the great thoroughbred's that accomplished the near impossible task of winning the 'TRIPLE CROWN. I can be done with the right team of advertising professionals.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Elisabeth — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 04:18:35 GMT

All sadly true. I have loved horses all my life and been a fan of racing and a worshiper at the altar of the Thoroughbred since I fell in love with Native Diver at age 11.

For the many (and more) reasons named below I have largely given up on US racing. But I have NOT given up on racing. I am a big fan of English, Irish, Australian, and Hong Kong racing. Through the Internet and some TV coverage this has been made possible.

Tired of wondering if horses are running sore, running medicated, bored to death of running at all?

You might want to look into Hong Kong racing. The amount of information available to the avid handicapper and casual fan alike is astonishing. First of all, they cannot legally run on all the drugs used by US trainers and drug testing and punishment is severe, all equipment change info (including bits!) is available online. There are NO claiming races. Horses race in Classes (it's easy to find out what these are and the class of horses online). There are too many positives to Hong Kong racing to go into here. Check out the Hong Kong jockey club Web site for details. And I do mean details!

the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia are race-loving (and horse loving!) nations. Want to feel part of something exciting in racing again? Watch anything from the major races at the big tracks like Ascot, the Curragh, Flemington, etc. on down to the little country tracks in the UK, Ireland, and Australia. And check out their Web sites. (I recommend, not very hopefully, this to operators of US tracks, too). Just look at all the events they have to bring people to the track. And I don't mean a baseball cap or T-shirt giveaway. How about turf course divot tamping for Club members. I'll bet some real race lovers would get a kick out of tamping down the divots turned up by horses' hooves on Del Mar's or Saratoga's turf course. Well, I know I would! And every track is different. Great tests of handicapping skills as well as sheer visual interest for the casual fan.

So if North American racing is getting you down, investigate racing abroad.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Todd Fuqua — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 20:06:28 GMT

I love love love LOVE this column. Your first five paragraphs perfectly illustrate the atmosphere that made me want to get into sports reporting in the first place. As the editor of a racing magazine, I have seen first-hand the decline of writing at all tracks, not just the major ones like Saratoga, Belmont and Churchill Downs. It would be wonderful to see that rich culture come back with the sport.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Dark Horse — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 05:46:55 GMT

Right theme, wrong tune, Steve. If only because newspapers themselves are next. I bet you that horse racing will be around long after that cheap printed paper went extinct. The increase in new tv sports channels, after the monotonuos ESPN-ification of the US into a football/basketball/baseball republic, is where it's at today. No surprise that both NBCSports and FOXSports are actively broadcasting horse racing. They will continue to do so as long as the sponsors (commercials) are on board. The downer, for romantics like us, is that the US is now a corporate fascist state. But that's another story (and a good reason to escape into the exquisite microcosm of horse racing). Bottomline. As long as those tv channels continue the new trend horse racing may already have hit rock bottom, and may be back on the rise. Just don't expect to read about this inspiring come-from-behind win in dinosaur newspapers.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Uncle Smiley — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 01:15:04 GMT

Yes, Mr. H, Let us bring back the families with children in tow, to picknick near the Padock, and watch the riders and mounts parade to the track under the Call to The Post.

The Delaware Handicap this year was just that. We even had a youngster that day who greeted every horse leaving the padock by calling hello to the number on her saddle cloth. The crowd delighted in the salutes returned by the jockeys, as they rode to the track. And those salutes were heart felt. That made the spectators feel they were in the right place, like good street theater.

Delaware Park is an old school racing venue. The Philadelphia Inquirer long ago stopped covering its daily card, and we lost the wise prognostications of Craig Donnely, who was the Inky's racing correspondent. So yes, press coverage of racing is gone.

Just need to figure out how to keep racing Relevant to a young and digitally connected crowd.

They like the real experience of being there, the follow up on the web will replace where ink and paper expired.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Windolin — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 00:26:08 GMT

Steve,

Way back when I was a horse crazy little girl (more years ago than I care to admit), I fell in love with Thoroughbred horse racing on Sunday afternoons, sitting on the floor at my father’s feet as he stretched out in his recliner and read “the paper”.

My father took newspaper delivery seven days a week. He got up every morning at 5:00A or so and walked down our long driveway to pick up his paper. He would roll the paper, slip it under his arm and walk back up to the house and sit down at the kitchen table and read as much of the paper as he could before he had to go the barn and milk the Guernsey milk cows and then leave for work in town. His newspaper was sacred and both my mother and I knew to not touch his paper until he had finished reading it front to back.

On Sundays he always gave me the three sections that I loved reading; the funny papers (comics), the Parade Magazine and the Sports Section. In those days, the Sports Section listed the weekly results from tracks all around the country and there was always an article or two on the top races or the horses and jockeys. Often a black and white picture of a horse with a garland of flowers, a smiling jockey and happy owner or trainer accompanied the article.

Jockeys like Willie Shoemaker, Bill Hartack, and Eddie Arcaro came alive for me and on more than one Sunday afternoon I daydreamed of becoming the first female jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. I could shut my eyes and envision that it was me sitting on the back of Carry Back, Kauai King or Chateaugay.

The words leaped off the pages of the newsprint and into the mind of a very imaginative little girl who was an only child and one that lived and breathed horses, especially her pony and later, her first horse. I could hear the thundering hoof beats as the horses headed for the finish line, the roar of the crowd and the announcer calling the race. I could smell the sweat of the horses, the hay, sawdust and hot dogs. I could feel the excitement of the favorite winning and the sadness when the favorite lost. I could see the racing horses with nostrils flaring, snorting with each breath and stretching out to reach the finish line with each stride.

The sports writers whisked me away from my bucolic country life in a state where there were no racetracks to the state of Kentucky and Churchill Downs and to Maryland and the Preakness and to New York for the Belmont.

Like Velvet Brown, I had a safe place to keep my newspaper clippings on the horses and the races. I could go back anytime I wanted and reread the stories and look at the photographs or read the results of the races.

On Saturdays, a group of neighborhood kids that had horses and ponies, including myself, all got together and spent the day riding the mountain paths, jumping creeks and riding on the dirt country roads. Almost every Saturday, we would be riding on a long straight stretch when someone would yell “Race” and we would all take off at a dead run as fast as our horses could go. We each wanted to be the first one to go flying by the oak or pine tree in the distance that was the designated finish line.

My pony of course could not keep up with the horses of course, but he ran fast enough for me to know that I loved the sensation of speed I got riding on his back. Later when I got my first horse, I could keep up and often outran the other kids on their quarter horses.

She was a Saddlebred mare, but she had long legs and a tremendous back end and was a beautiful bay with socks and a star. She loved to run and she would stretch out those legs and eat the ground with her strides. As she neared the finish line, she would stretch out her neck and fight for the win. I loved it. That kick when she surged off her back end sometimes almost unseated me, The wind hitting me in the face so hard that I would have tears in my eyes and holding to her mane for dear life so she could have her head,; I think about it now and it scares me to death; riding with no helmet, often bareback and in tennis shoes, what was I thinking?

The years went by and the scrapbook of newspaper clipping were tossed out. The pony named Champ and the mare, Lady Star crossed over the Rainbow Bridge and then close to 25 years ago, my father died suddenly the day before Thanksgiving.

They are all memories now, carefully tucked away and easily remembered as if it all happened yesterday.

Since the advent of the Internet, cable TV, Kindles and Nooks and the social media, texting, Twitter and Facebook,…all digital and electronic and available with the a keystroke or a the touch of a finger on the screen, the print media is slowly dying and will eventually only be found in a museum somewhere.

The writers and reporters who wove the words together with such passion that leaped off the newsprint into our hearts and minds that lead us to dream and imagine are also slowly disappearing.

No longer do we teach our children grammar and to learn a new list of spelling words. No longer are children required to write themes like the little kid in the Christmas Story who daydreamed that he would get an A+++++to the 30th power writing about his Red Ryder double action BB gun with a scope. No longer do we teach Creative Writing or prose. Letter writing has even become a lost art and fewer and fewer schools are teaching cursive writing. Computers correct our spelling and our grammar and sentence structure for us, we do not even have to think about it. We no longer seem to be able to find words to describe emotions and feelings and have become dependent on emoticons to do it for us.

We live in a visual world now, lusting after instant gratification. There is no time to read the story behind the headline, only the headline itself.

We have lost the newspapers, the writers and sadly, I think we will eventually lose the imagination and dreams that we were able to conjure up like I did, sitting at my father’s feet, of becoming a female jockey who won the Kentucky Derby.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

sara futh — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:59:01 GMT

As always, you said it all, but coming late to the table, had to put in two cents. As a former stringer for the Times, sitting ringside at the press table in MSG for the Westminster dog show didn't hold a candle to climbing the stairs to the Saratoga press box and be in the presence of those great writers. filing a color piece and the excitement of seeing it in print.

Today when the Times has anything about racing it is usually negative; do they think that is what people want to read? Thank goodness for the internet where we can at least get entries and results and some really great reading like yours.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Belmontlover — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:35:30 GMT

Steve, once again, you hit it dead on. The state of racing is indeed close to being buried completely. There are so many factors which lead to it, that this comment thread could set a world record.

As for the newspaper industry its on borrowed time. Part of the problem regarding racing in the news is that today's editors don't identify with what goes on at the track. Simply put they are not racing people, and don't care.

I was one of the Post guys laid off last year...not Ed, and not John so that leaves the "other guy"

After seven years under Greg Gallo as our editor we were "safe" and led the way because he was a horse guy. He loved and understood the game, and knew how much weight the paper carried within the sport. After his retirement his replacement knew little to nothing about racing. It was the sport which took too much room every day, and interfered with the other sports, and who tweeted what.

Concerns by me and my fellow racing guys to build the internet, and turn to social media were unheard on an almost monthly basis. When we were reluctantly given space on the web it was buried deep and hard to find unless you knew to search for it.

Only Saratoga was given adequate coverage because the powers that were wanted it that way. Once the meet was over, racing too was done for the year.

Its unfortunate, but in the days ahead the other sports will feel the crunch too. Athletes are able to tweet and within seconds its public knowledge. Newspapers are 24 hour late, and even their websites are lax in the time sensitive world. Its a shame, but these are the times.

As for the New York scene, its in dire straits. I've been told personally by a top NYRA guy that he doesn't care if anybody ever comes to the track again. Its all about the internet as long as they bet. This is the thinking that not only rains, but pours at NYRA. Its no surprise when customers and employees are treated as they are at all three tracks.

One State appointed fat cat no longer at NYRA set out to eliminate the coverage by cutting the money for the ads that appeared in the paper. That was the beginning of the end. His reasoning was that negative NYRA editorials appeared in the past. He disregarded the daily coverage that appeared six days a week, and promoted his venue to thousands and many more on the web ( if they could find it.)

That was a final nail in the coffin for the Post, but that is just one outlet. It was feared that the Daily News would follow suit, and it took over a year to do it.

Jerry Bossert is a good friend and worked extremely hard at his job. He now like we had been a year ago has plenty of new time on his hands. No more daily deadlines, hundreds of horses to examine in past performances, phone calls, etc. Now its a life of anonymity. Like him or not, he was identifiable on a daily basis. A sounding board for your own opinions and selections. Writers and handicappers are. I got started following the sport as a kid by following Newsday. Read Paul Moran's column and picked horses in the paper by following Pricci and Sisti. The next day I would see how many I got right and then pick more. Then it was the Post too. Got a hot walking job in high school, and followed Rick Lang. It got to the point I was taking bets from friends, janitors and teachers and running with a friend to the local OTB during lunch. I was hooked. A fan for life at 50 cents a day. Now becoming an extinct possibility. This is one of the hundreds of problems that alienates the sport today, and its a shame.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Alex'sBigFan — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 06:37:26 GMT

A great piece here, Steve. It all hinges on the effective marketing of the sport. Frankly I have talked about it ad nauseum here. It's easier said than done, they need to find a way to connect the fan and the horse, clean up the sport, keep the stars around so there is something to market, and find a way to return it to the times when it was posh when folks like Lucille Ball filed into Del Mar for the races. This, the way it looks right now is going to be a herculean effort if the sport is ever to return front and center like it was in it's glory days. It needs to be the "de rigeur" thing to do and place to go again, the see and be seen thing to do, but how is the question.

The lack of unity in the fragments and in each state doesn't help either. It needs a governing body and some unification across the board. And airtime, TVG isn't going to cut it here for the mainstream, it needs NBC to cover more than the TC races, why not cover all the Derby preps too all the way to the BCC so the "mainstream" folks have a concept of what it all is and what it takes to get there.

There is an additional fan base out there other than us the core base, it just remains the challenge of how to reel them into the sport. Now, Steve hosting some of this proposed NBC stuff would be excellent!

Maybe it would take more mainstream visibility of a Baffert, Pletcher, Assmussen, Jones, Mott, etc. Maybe the states should all have some local racing channel on their sports lineups, like NYRA had. Or HRTV goes national, I don't even have that as a choice on my cable lineup. It will all need a Don Draper type marketing wizard, combined with trainer exposure nationally, the star equines themselves, and joining the fan closer to them. Good luck with all that!

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Justine — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 05:53:05 GMT

I feel that there's something to be said when the comments 1) complain about the loss of print in favor of digital multimedia and 2) complain about the younger generations' need for instant gratification when they are the people you WANT around to keep the sport and industry alive. Color me surprised when people then complain about racing's decline.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Richard Edmunds — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 04:28:13 GMT

Excellent article, Steve.

And this isn't just an American problem. I've recently started as a print racing journalist here in New Zealand, earning my first-ever press pass a couple of months ago. Getting paid to write about the sport I love - a dream come true, even though we're in the desperat depths of winter at the moment.

I can easily feel how wonderful the press boxes at our tracks must have once been, bustling and buzzing with activity. But now there's an average of around three or four people there at most race days, and I'm the only one under 30. In fact, most of the time I'm probably the only one under 45 or 50. It's a rather strange feeling, and more than a little unnerving.

I really hope it turns around somehow. Maybe someone in the US can reverse the trend and we can follow their lead.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Pik4Joel — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 03:48:25 GMT

Not to beat an old topic - but I think this is one of the most relevant articles of recent... Saw many who questioned Steve's lack of comment comment, but I see it differently... If we are surrendering as a nation (aka brooklyn white flag conspiracy) then those of us who are willing enough, educated enough, nurtured in a caring relationship enough, should have a mutual understanding as to where we want to take the sport... i.e, Breeders' Cup experience, race replays on local networks (ah, Dr. Allred we are speaking to you), print info such as daily sheets that don't cost twelve freeeaaakin dollars and free programs to those of us who visit brick n mortars on a consistent basis, and if it won't cost like a hundred bucks more - CAN YA PLEASE STOCK THE BRAND OF BEER WE LIKE? NOT SOME PROMOTIONAL CARTER ADMINISTRATION JUICE?

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Arch the phoneman — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 03:45:11 GMT

Steve, I came to love horse racing in the 70's shortly after Big Reds Run. I'm out in California and we had the L.A.Times and the Herald Examiner, but, all the papers had their racing pages. I always went to the track with a folded up Herald sports page. They had Professor Gordon Jones and Jerry Antonucci and I followed their picks religiously. You know what I really miss? The full results charts that the papers printed the next day. Lots of info there. I still buy the Times everyday, but, it's a shadow of it's former self and the racing coverage is an absolute joke. Non-existent really. Steve, please don't confuse lack of comments with lack of interest. I read every word you write. Your Summer of 69 was very personal and I like everyone else really enjoyed it. It made me think of my own personal times at the races. Like the winter that The Bid came out here for the Strub Series. The Bid won all 3 races and Flying Paster was 2nd every time. I had a lot of horse racing buddies in those days. Good times. Sadly, they have all drifted away from the game for one reason or another. I'm the last man standing. I still enjoy the game, but, they make it hard. Thanks, Steve. Sorry to ramble.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

BelmontBarb — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 00:32:10 GMT

Seems as though the number of comments has risen!

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

nobledancer — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 23:27:02 GMT

A masterful column, Steve, which poses some deep and troubling questions. I wish I had the answers and the antidote to reverse racing's precipitous tumble into the ranks of the disenfranchised. The majority of my generation came to love racing through osmosis. We absorbed the enthusiasm and passion of family members who exposed us to the sport at an early age. Today's "Family Fun Days" in the infield are a poor substitute for a one-on-one experience with dad as he patiently (or not) explained the finer points of the game.

I wish I had been born just a tad sooner so that I might have read, fresh off the press, the glowing words of such luminaries as Red Smith, Dick Young, Grantland Rice and Damon Runyon. They were giant men of letters whose greatness matched the demands of racing's glory days. Perhaps because racing is such a dichotomy, with great beauty paralleling omnipresent tragedy, and immense power masking the most tenuous fragility, racing has always attracted the most gifted wordsmiths. These days, I sometimes feel as if we are living in pygmy times, in so many ways. I don't even like to read a serious story on-screen, but always print it (I do re-cycle and file). For many, largely because of the way we were taught, reading is still a tactile experience.

The one thing which I do not miss about those halcyon press box days is the lack of women turf writers. Were there any? If so, I would love to discover them. Or, because of the restrictions of the times, was the press box too much of a men's club for them to crack? So many songs unsung. So much beauty not expressed. So many words never written or read.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Steve Haskin — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 22:32:36 GMT

Thank you so much, Bob. That was great. I appreciate all your in depth comments and fond memories. I didnt intend to slight Ed. I know he covers the major races. I was referring to daily coverage by a regular beat writer. I should have made that clearer.

Mark, thank you very much for sharing yet another brilliant piece by Paul. The words came so easily to him. Great stuff. It's been a long time.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Eric Rickard — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 22:21:21 GMT

Another topic hit on the head by Mr. Haskin. In my opinion the sport is killing itself. It is becoming an elitist happening. It is reverting back to the Sport of Kings. Every thing is geared to the 4 big days; Triple crown and Breeders Cup. They make the average "Joe" pay through the nose to attend these days. The Saratoga Meet used to cater to bringing the Family; by keeping the cost relatively inexpensive to attend. This at least promoted the Sport to the younger set. This has gone by the wayside. The closing day "fare" is gone and the Labor Day weekend special pricing has quadrupled. With out fans, the sport can not grow.

Mistake.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Mark Meyer — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 20:39:06 GMT

One of those memorable pressbox ghosts -- the late Paul Moran -- wrote this piece about the legendary Esposito's, a racing landmark with a character all its own:

Remembering Esposito’s (May 2009)

Every long stand begins with day one and my 23 years at Newsday began on March 11, 1985, a Monday at Aqueduct. Only Tuesdays were dark in those days. When the races were over, I drove directly to Elmont, almost as if it were required, a ritualistic homage to this new post in the midst of the best racing on earth, to a place with which I had become familiar while on many assignments in New York for my former employer in Florida.

The late Bill Leggett, of Sports Illustrated, sat at a table near the front window. He looked up as I sat down.

“You’re in the right place,” he said.

The sign in front of the building not a furlong from the Belmont Park stable gate now reads: Elmont Eglise Du Nazareen De La Saintete.

Nothing of particular note will happen there on Saturday. No one with a horse in the Belmont Stakes will stop for a drink before or after the third leg of the Triple Crown is run and the fence will not be painted in the colors of the winning owner. There will be no pepperoni, cheese and crackers set out after the races, a scant repast offered only on Belmont Stakes day. This was a place for drinking, for the gathering of kindred spirits and others whose lives revolved around the racetrack across the street.

Once, this was Esposito’s Tavern, quite simply the best racetrack bar ever, anywhere. You knew the whiskey in the bottles was something other than the labels suggested, that the lines through which soda, water and beer flowed were cleaned with something less than rigid regularity and the popcorn that came in institutional-size plastic bags was made at some point just after Man o’ War won the Belmont. But the bar was three-deep in people who would eventually be inducted into the Hall of Fame and drew owners, trainers, exercise riders, grooms, journalists, handicappers, most of those employed by the New York Racing Association and horseplayers of every stripe. True racetrack characters, a species on the verge of extinction, gathered here when they walked the earth I great numbers. They celebrated victories and betting scores and life at the races. When appropriate, they commiserated with friends in times of strife and fallow bankrolls.

History was made at Belmont Park and, later, embellished at Esposito’s.

Arthur and Gilda Esposito founded the business deep in the Great Depression. Gilda, who would come to be called “Mom” by generations of racetrackers, fed those in need of food, lent money to those down on their luck, was known to keep a large cash reserve for these purposes and bailed many a racetracker out of jail so that the accused could be back at the barn in the morning.

Mom, revered in the racing community, was almost always repaid. Those who crossed her or failed to meet their obligations became pariahs here and were blacklisted at racetracks throughout the country. Few took that risk and many whose names are now familiar on racing largest stages would at one time or another while paying their dues find themselves beneath the nurturing wing of Mom Esposito.

The business eventually was passed on to the Brothers Esposito, John and Junior, who were literally raised in the tavern where they worked throughout their lives. They were cut unmistakably from the same cloth, five-by-five men of great appetite, bald, gregarious, opinionated and willing to share.

John considered himself to be an expert on all things great and small and put forth often far-fetched theories from his pulpit, the bar, often igniting spirited if equally far-fetched debate. Junior, while keeping up a continual banter of small talk, was the engine that kept the place going and the place was where the pulse of racing in New York beat and could be monitored. The exchange of information, some accurate, was continual and took many forms.

Awakened one summer afternoon from an impromptu nap by a discussion that revolved around a suddenly hot trainer, a groom who worked for the subject in question raised his head and said: “New vet,” then resumed his siesta.

Both the Brothers Esposito would travel great distances to save money, the frugality taught by an parents who lived through the Depression. Junior drove to Eastern Long Island to buy cigarettes from the Shinnecocks long before cigarettes were taxed beyond middle-class affordability. He hunted down bargains, cheap whiskey to refill mislabeled bottles and John was always willing to launch a road trip in devoted pursuit of what he considered restaurant bargains, frequently involving the phrase, “all you can eat.”

Esposito’s was a place without pretense that would occasionally be visited by those who had spent the afternoon in the Directors’ Room at the track and wished to watch the replays of the day’s races, usually after one of their horses had won. Edie LiButti, owner of Devil His Due, on one such visit asked one of the bartenders, for a wine list unaware that the available vintage was generally not potable. “We’ve got red and we’ve got white,” the bartender answered, “and if we mix them, we’ve got rose.”

The tavern could be the scene of the occasional high drama with great implication.

On a grim Sunday, July 7, 1975, the bar filled slowly reporters who kept vigil while the great filly Ruffian, mortally injured in a match race with Foolish Pleasure that afternoon, was down the street at a veterinary clinic her fragile life hanging in the balance, a team of surgeons attempting to save her life. They drank. They waited for updates and eventually what they knew would be the worst possible news.

On the afternoon of June 11, 1977, with the nation awaiting the undefeated Seattle Slew’s Belmont Stakes and a Triple Crown that was widely considered no contest, trainer Billy Turner, Frank Tours, a former NYRA official who was at the time in the employ of Hialeah Park, and several friends repaired to the relative quiet of Esposito’s, a place in which it was easy to lose track of time.

Across the Plainfield Avenue, a second call to bring the horses in that Belmont to the paddock prompted Turner’s assistant and exercise rider, Mike Kennedy, to locate his missing employer. Esposito’s was the first place he looked. Turner’s reaction to Kennedy’s alarm: “You don’t think they’re going to start the race without us, do you?”

Seattle Slew arrived at the paddock 10 minutes late, and then proceeded to make history. Turner was fined $200 by the stewards. Tours, who would be accused of orchestrating the stunt, was thoroughly amused and the story has become part of Triple Crown lore.

What became a traditional painting of the fence in the colors of the Belmont Stakes winner was begun after Seattle Slew’s Triple Crown. Turner had been a fixture at Esposito's for years before that, beginning in the days when he was called Turnpike Turner and traveled the Eastern seaboard on the steeplechase circuit. If the trainer of a jumper needed a rider on short notice, a call Turner on one of two phone-booth lines at Esposito's, would have him on the road.

Woody Stephens, also a late-morning fixture at Esposito’s trained five straight Belmont winners, the first in 1982. On the morning after each win, Stephens, en route to his barn, would stop in front of Esposito's and honk his horn, a reminder to the proprietor that the fence had not been repainted. John claimed an unwritten rule allowed him a week.

Esposito’s is long gone as are its erstwhile proprietors and many of its habitués. Turner has not taken a drink of alcohol in years but remains a font of remembrance, lamenting the absence of the truly Runyonesque from the current racing scene. To those of sufficient longevity, the building now known as Elmont Eglise Du Nazareen De La Saintete remains a relic of a time long gone, a rich time when the racetrack was not a job or a hobby, it was a lifestyle, a closed society populated by those who shared a love for horses, the appreciation of a well conceived and executed scheme, reveled in the game and the life. -- PM

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Bob Ehalt — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 20:18:24 GMT

Steve, I felt compelled to write this because you eloquently addressed a topic that has a great deal of meaning to me. I’ve been working in the sports department of daily newspapers since 1978 and covered my first stakes in 1979 when Instrument Landing won the Wood Memorial. Newspapers have indeed been my life for more years than I’d like to remember, and like you I’ve seen once vibrant press boxes in New York turn as quiet as a library on a typical non-Saratoga weekday.

It’s surely a sad day for racing when writers like the News’ Jerry Bossert and the Post’s Ed Fountaine and John DaSilva are laid off, and it does not bode well for the sport’s future.

Yet at the same time, I believe it’s more of a negative reflection on the newspaper industry than the racing industry. Over the years, I’ve seen scores of co-workers, colleagues and friends laid off as declining revenues and an inability to proper monetize the Internet have spawned a decline that no one knows how to solve.

The inevitable response has been to cut jobs. Twice I’ve been a victim of that axe and while I’m still employed at a newspaper, it’s because of my prowess at editing copy, laying out pages, loading web sites and working inside the office , not my writing – even though I’ve won a number of national awards over the years. My outlet for writing on racing now comes from internet sites you mentioned like America’s Best Racing and ESPN and I consider myself fortunate to have that.

Cuts are a way of life in the newspaper industry, and virtually all of us in it, myself included, live with a Sword of Damocles hanging over us, wondering when or if our positions will be eliminated. In that climate, while the state of racing plays a role in the cuts, the sport faces a difficult struggle for attention at a time when the media trend is to focus excessively on major sports like football and baseball.

Racing simply cannot compete with football and it would not do so even if we lived in a fantasy world in which every bad apple was removed from the sport and every horse ran free of medication.

The problem is that the bean counters at newspapers who decide people’s fate look solely at numbers in a ledger. They see racing requires manpower and expense money to cover and it’s not as popular as the Yankees so it becomes the target of the axe.

What goes over their head, of course, is that while there may be 2,000 people at Belmont Park on a Wednesday afternoon, there are 2,000 more people watching the races at Aqueduct. Overall, there might be say 20,000 or more people in their circulation area who follow that day’s races and bet at an OTB or online. There are owners, trainers, jockeys, and track workers who live their area and have family and friends, but a bean counter who gets rewarded for sending people to unemployment line is not going to care about that.

The timing of some layoffs certainly speak worse for the papers than the sport. The New York Post lays off Fountaine and DaSilva and Anthony Affrunti a day before the Belmont Stakes. The New York Daily News lays off Jerry Bossert a day before the Saratoga meet began. Does any of that make sense? These were the times when there would be the most interest in the sport, and you cut people then?

My closest friend since high school, Tom Pedulla, covered horse racing and the NFL for USA Today. He spent more than 30 years working for Gannett. In 2012, he was laid off two days after I’ll Have Another won the Preakness and was headed to New York for a Triple Crown bid. On the night of that Preakness, I was with him as talked with an editor around midnight to map out plans for Belmont coverage. Two days later, he’s let go. Classy, eh?

The fact that newspapers cut positions before racing’s biggest moments shows it would take a return to the 1950’s to save most turf writers unless they work in Kentucky or near Saratoga and Del Mar or in one of media’s ivory towers.

One thing you were slightly off on is that Newsday has an excellent turf writer in Ed McNamara, who in some ways is symbolic of the modern day turf writer. Ed does not cover the races on a daily basis. He’ll cover the major NY races at the three tracks and Triple Crown chase as well as the Breeders’ Cup on occasion.

The rest of the time Ed is a valuable asset to Newsday for his work as a great copy editor and the important role he plays in the production of each day’s newspaper and web site.

I can relate to that as my coverage of racing for some 23 years at the Stamford Advocate had more do with my love of the sport than my editor’s desire to have racing coverage in the paper. The weeks I was given to cover the Belmont Stakes were generally a reward for the numerous Saturday nights I spent on the desk or the extra days spent covering other sports. That’s the way it usually is with a fringe sport like racing.

If the Daily News was wise, it would have followed the Newsday model. It is indeed a hard sell to explain a body at Aqueduct in early December when finances are dwindling. But rather than alienate all of the people who have enjoyed the News’ racing coverage for decades, they could reshaped Bossert’s position to include coverage of sports like college basketball during slow periods.

Unfortunately bean counters at newspapers these days do not use common sense or concern themselves with the quality of the publication or become creative in ways to grow their business. It’s just cut and sometimes receive a bonus for doing it.

I can understand how you and others look at this as racing’s problem. But for me, and I believe many others in my position, it’s a commentary on the sad state of my chosen profession.

Yeah, I’d love to see racing become more popular. I’d also love to see newspapers find a way to make the Internet work better for them - be it through print and digital or simply online – so they can become thriving news organizations once again.

Hopefully I’m not a dreamer.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Bill Two — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 18:36:31 GMT

One of the things that captured my interest early on in my love affair with racing was the quality of the prose of people like Charles Hatton. I loved to read his columns in the DRF. His use of the language was so eloquent. It was really stirring to dwell on his descriptions of horses and people and it inspired me to learn as much as I could about the sport. You simply cannot find his ilk anymore.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Soldier Course — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 18:29:00 GMT

RacingFan:

I stopped our local newspaper subscription a while back. This year I bought the Sunday editions after California Chrome won the Derby and Preakness. The article about his Preakness win was squeezed over to the side of the first page of the sports section. The bulk of that page was taken up by a huge photo of a Clemson coach and accompanying article. The Preakness was an afterthought, even though it looked like we were heading toward the 12th Triple Crown.

I don't know why this surprised me because this was the same newspaper that put Benghazi on Page Five when the story broke. That's the reason I cancelled the subscription my family had had since 1951.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Vince Bruun — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 18:01:58 GMT

Steve, Excellent article with several interesting comments. But somehow the elephants in the room--legalized gambling & lotteries--have been overlooked. In the state of Washington, for example, whereas Thoroughbred racing once accounted for nearly 95 percent of all legalized gambling in the state, racing now accounts for less than 5 percent. Mind you, this shift of dollars has taken place in two decades!

Certainly other factors have contributed to a lack of coverage: the demise of newspapers and shrinking budgets for ones that have survived, negative news about cheaters, the difficulty of teaching impatient youths to handicap, promising racing careers shortened by injuries and breeding dollars, dramatic decreases in foal crops, the list is practically endless.

On the other hand, thanks to the Internet,I now have more racing news than I ever dreamed possible. There are hundreds of websites devoted to horse racing, and most of them are far more sophisticated than the horse racing news found in daily papers.

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

tjconway — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 17:55:57 GMT

FIRST STEP.

LOWER THE PAYOUTS!

15% WPS

17% EXACTA

18% TRIFECTA-SUPERFECTA

...and noone gives a damn about the pick 6 or pick 7. Who cares, every race is different!

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Coldfacts — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 16:54:41 GMT

“We must eliminate negative perceptions in the eyes of the general public.”

The negative perceptions of Thoroughbred Racing covers a wide number of issues. Race day medication is just one of them. There are far too many variables involved in handicapping races. The deck is always stacked against the betting public. Incompetent trainers, inconsistent horses, unexplained no shows, unbelievable recapturing of form after poor performances, turf to dirt, dirt to turf, unnecessary equipment and many other issues make finding winners virtually impossible.

Until the drug philosophy is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned and until the playing field is leveled for the betting public, the elimination of negative perceptions of Thoroughbred Racing by the public -

“Will remain but fleeting illusion to be purused but never attained. “ Haile Selassie

re: Ghosts of Press Boxes Past

Susan from VA — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 16:39:09 GMT

A few years ago I had to contact the Washington Post to complain that they had published the results of the previous year's Virginia Derby. Their response was that they contracted with a freelance writer who accidentally sent the wrong file. I guess he was "just mailing it in." How low has the Post's coverage of racing has sunk!