And in the battle on the streets, You fight computers and receipts.
Modern sensitivities prevent me from quoting more lyrics from this song as some might find it shockingly offensive to certain non-white segments of the human race, as well as those with amorous preferences which are generally frowned upon by the Catholic Church. To be fair, the song is less Pete Townshend anthem and more concept album programmatic set piece.
On Belmont Saturday, I would fight a protracted battle with a race track computer and its receipt. I would ultimately win the battle but lose the war, as you shall see.
But first.....
Following the Preakness Stakes win by California Chrome, predicted here, below, in the May 15 posting titled "All Kentucky, All Of The Time" wherein I wrote:
I fully expect CC to win this Saturday in the Preakness... and then get clobbered in the Belmont three weeks from now.
The handicapping task came into sharp focus, that being determining which Belmont entrant not named California Chrome would be victorious in the third jewel of the Triple Crown and thus deny CC his chance at immortality. It's been said by many more than me - and by many before me - that the Triple Crown is too rigorous a test for the modern thoroughbred which has been bred less for stamina and more for speed. Winning the Triple Crown, today, remains possible and I think probable but will take an inordinate amount of luck. Much more so than that which is usually required to win a horse race.
Once the pieces to this year's Belmont Stakes puzzle fell into place - intentions announced, entries closed, post position draw, etc - there were two horses toward which immediately I was drawn: Commissioner and Medal Count. Commissioner was an early favorite on the Derby Trail before a minor injury caused him to miss the Kentucky Derby and Medal Count was a horse that I included in my Derby exotics but ran into serious traffic turning for home that First Saturday in May. Medal Count's bloodlines skew somewhat more towards being a turf horse, and not a dirt horse, but the Belmont racing surface - known as "Big Sandy" - is softer/deeper than more typical dirt courses and, most significantly, both Commissioner and Medal Count have been bred to, as we like to say, "run all day." A.P. Indy, the sire of Commissioner, and Dynaformer, the sire of Medal Count, were themselves thoroughbreds of exceptional stamina.
As an aside, each horse was assigned Morning Line odds of 20/1. Back on Derby Day, The Incomparable Joe Wilhelm asked me which three horses I liked (you will recall that I didn't really like anything, but was compelled to pick something). One the horses I gave him was the #17 Commanding Curve. Joe Joe replied sometime later;
#17 is 50-1?! WTF you thinking?
You might remember that Commanding Curve finished second in the Derby, paying an amount equivalent to 4 years of out-of-state college tuition. Today, there was nary a peep about my liking two horses who went to the Belmont Stakes post with odds of 28-1 and 25-1. The young grasshopper is learning.
The Thursday before the Belmont, The Old Master Of The Turf and I made preliminary Belmont Day plans. Work demands prevented Lou from participating. I spent a couple of hours scanning the past performances that were emailed to me, unsolicited and gratis (now there's a true pal!), by a fellow follower of the Sport of Kings. You can imagine my level of shock when Mr B - the man who likes to arrive hours in advance of any event - suggested we arrive at Miami Valley Gaming (I-75 Exit 29 in Monroe, OH, across the freeway from Joe Morgan Honda) around 2pm. 2pm?! We'd miss the first 5 races! And there were, in fact, wagers I'd intended to make on races 3, 4 and 5. I was stunned, but what can you do? When Mr B gives you an order, you obey. My disappointment was compounded by the need for me to be back at the Ranch by 3:30pm or 4pm to look after the Disney XD Girls for a few hours. As such, The B Team plan was to make our bets and get out of there.
If only.....
On the drive to the undisclosed location of Mr B's top secret bunker, I engaged in a little zen 1980's countdown meditation courtesy of the Jeep Main Battle Tank's satcomm.
The Old Master and I rolled into MVG at 2:14pm on the button. Mr B grabbed a seat at a table in the grandstand to do some final handicapping and I headed for the Race Book to find a wagering terminal (aka a "machine." One might refer to it as a computer, vis a vis the WHO lyric quoted above). I carried with me into the Race Book my cheat sheet upon which I had written out all of my wagers for the afternoon, amounting to $151. I began feeding $20 bills into the machine when a loud, profane groan erupted simultaneously throughout the Race Book. I looked up to my machine's touchscreen display to see, startlingly, an ominous error message:
"Host Not Available."
I've never experienced this before, not even in the earliest days of the automated wagering terminals that were introduced so many decades ago, now.
Every machine in the Race Book, maybe 50 or 60 terminals, displayed the same error message. After a few minutes of waiting, I began to suspect that we were not experiencing a temporary glitch but that, rather, the whole system had crashed. This suspicion led me to a more fearful conclusion; that the network was going to have to be rebooted and that, as with any computer system, "any unsaved work would be lost." Including the recorded balance of $20's I had been feeding so vigorously into the machine to the tune of $140. And so, I pulled out my Android and took photos of the terminals display in order to document the unfolding events (including the photo above), just in case.
The photo above, displaying my $140 balance, would later prove to be critically important.
Note; The following events, and timeline, may be somewhat misplaced due to the seething rage which gradually washed over me and may have led me to, intermittently, lose a firm grip on the time-space continuum.
All the terminals in the Race Book and, as we soon discovered from fellow patrons, all the betting machines at MVG (excluding the ubiquitous casino slot machines but including the race track grandstand, where Mr B was stationed) were frozen. Nobody at MVG could place a single wager, whether through a machine or via the handful of (traditional) human tellers. Of course, all of us were chained to our machines. In the event that the glitch resolved itself, no one could risk walking away and having someone else saunter up, cash out your balance and abscond with your hard-earned greenbacks.
And so I waited at my machine. Patiently at first. With less patience as the minutes bled away. One Belmont race came and went, and with it any opportunity to play the Pick Six. I observed that money was still pouring into the wagering pools at Belmont (and presumably at all the other tracks being simulcast, but I was focused only on Belmont).
After about 20 minutes of inaction, an MVG employee circulated the Race Book announcing - utterly unconvincingly - that it wasn't the fault of MVG, it was a nationwide system failure and that it would only be another 5 or 10 minutes before the problem was resolved. In what form the resolution would materialize was left uncommitted. A minute or two later, the same unconvincing announcement was made over the MVG public address system. By this point, the universal mood in the Race Book was murderous hostility. The fact that now, some 24 hours after the fact, the interwebz doesn't turn up a single news item about a nationwide system/network crash that prevented untold millions of dollars from being wagered on Belmont Day only further solidifies the conviction that it was an MVG-specific failure.
About 30 minutes after the system crashed, terminal screens throughout the Race Book flickered and every display changed:
"Terminal Not Available."
I knew, at this moment, that when (if) the machines rebooted that the balance would be erased. I suspect my fellow patrons may have divined the same conclusion. I cannot verify this, but - upon seeing the above message - in some corners of the Race Book the common bonds of civilization may have dissolved and unfathomable acts of mayhem, anarchy and cannibalization (of betting terminals) may have occurred.
The "Terminal Not Available" screen above was static for several interminable minutes.
Two pleasant, professional young women who work for MVG in some indeterminate capacity were thrown to the wolves by their superiors. They were tasked with acquiring from all the affected patrons our names and addresses as an unclear means to provide refunds. When they arrived at my terminal, having made their way around their designated sector of the Race Book, as cheerfully as they could muster under the circumstances and asked for my contact information, I first asked them, "Are you going to make a cash refund today or is the plan to mail refunds at a later date?" They looked blankly at one another. It was obvious that no patron had thought to ask them this question, nor was it made clear to them by their superiors. One of the helpful young women, trying to be as efficient as possible, said, "Let me go find out."
She wasn't gone for 1 minute before some of the terminals across the room came back online. From my vantage point, and from the vantage point of those patrons near me, it wasn't clear if their balances had been restored. At a glacial pace, more terminals came back to life. Evidently I picked the wrong corner of the Race Book as the 7 or 8 machines in my vicinity were still dead. The remaining MVG employee asked me and my neighbors if we wanted to give her our contact information or wait and see if our machines would begin working just as before the crash.
We're gamblers, we said we'd take our chances and just wait it out.
45, 50 minutes into the ordeal my screen went black. A reboot began taking effect. It was the second-to-last terminal in the Race Book to come back online. My touchscreen roared back to life.
Sans my $140 balance.
My compatriots also had their balances erased. The loud, drunk, obnoxious jerk next to me, on my left (natch), who ranted about his $20 - and whom I nearly smited with righteous cause and two knuckle sammiches - finally shut the [expletive deleted] up when I told him I had seven times as much lost in digital purgatory.
An MVGer higher up the food chain - "Jeff," he had a walkie talkie - drifted over to see if we'd gotten our balances back. Discovering that we hadn't, he radioed for technicians to open up the machines for diagnostic investigation. While this charade unfolded, and another Belmont race had come and gone, the walkie talkie MVGer was in contact with "the hub." Down (or up?) in central control - aka "the hub" - the white lab coat brigade was trying to determine from their end of the network, independently from we patrons, how much money each of us was due. One can objectively appreciate the position MVG was in at this moment; the mere claims of patrons would have been, largely, unverifiable.
Except, that is, for one irresistibly handsome, clever Heavy Artillerist from Reily Township who had the foresight to photograph his terminal's display. And who shared said photographic evidence with walkie talkie dude.
After almost exactly 1 hour into this torturous ordeal, whether through the efforts of "the hub," the technicians exploring the guts of our terminals or some conjunction of the two - my two fellow compatriots had their machines spit out vouchers (as is the normal function of the wagering terminals) making them whole ($20 and $25, respectively). My terminal spit out a voucher (or perhaps a receipt, vis a vis the WHO lyric above) in the amount of $110.
$30 short.
I looked at walkie talkie guy, "Jeff," who was forthright and as helpful as circumstances could allow. This unfortunate situation was not his fault, and he was not to blame for any of it. I showed him the $110 voucher. He cautiously looked back into my penetrating glare and saw that he was facing an imminent thermonuclear detonation. "Jeff" walkie talkied for backup; his own superior. "Helen" materialized nearly instantly. She was not on a walkie talkie. She was on a smartphone. Also talking to "the hub."
They ["the hub"] say they're only reading $110, said "Helen."
"Helen" was nice. "Helen" was only doing her job. "Helen" was relaying the information from the cowards in "the hub" who didn't dare confront me personally. I could read "Helen;" MVG was prepared to draw the line at $110. At this juncture, I mixed gambling metaphors and played my ace card on "Helen" - the Android photographic evidence. "Helen" looked at my Android, gritted her teeth, handed her phone to "Jeff" telling him Don't hang up, it's "the hub," don't do anything else until we resolve this and then "Helen" asked me to follow her. She escorted me out of the Race Book, through the grandstand, and into the areas which are routinely off-limits to the general public. In professional wrasslin' parlance, we went into the back. "Helen" disappeared for an instant and reappeared with $30 cash muney [sic].
Had I not the foresight to anticipate the essential events as they unfolded, and had I not photographed my terminal's display, I would have been out $30.
"Helen" was genuinely apologetic and I appreciated that, telling her as much. Everyone I dealt with personally (which by definition excludes the IT and/or administrative gerbils in "the hub") conducted themselves professionally and respectfully. But that Belmont Day experience, on what will be the third- or fourth-busiest simulcast wagering day all year for Miami Valley Gaming, was an unqualified disaster. And sincere apology aside, I was as angry as could be.
Having taken more than 1 hour simply to get my money back, having made not one single wager and needing to get back to The Ranch and the Disney XD Girls, Mr B and I exited MVG.
The Old Master Of The Turf had an opportunity to make his bets with a human teller once the system came back online. Thanks only to his being persuaded by me on Commissioner, his day was profitable. On Derby Day, having discovered that - once the Turf Classic was over, and - I'd cashed a $100 straight Win bet on Wise Dan in a race that came down to the wire, yet I hadn't uttered a peep (confident as I was in The Free Money Express), he said to me "I'm really proud of you. You didn't make a sound when so many others would've been making fools of themselves rooting for their horse with so much money on the line. You were just as calm and cool as could be." It's always nice to receive praise from a parent, but that's just how The B Team Syndicate operates. As former Miamian Paul Brown was famous for saying, Act like you've been there before. In the aftermath of the Belmont, I spoke with Mr B on the phone about the race - and specifically about the race run by Commissioner - and The Old Master said, "You're a great handicapper." Awww, shucks, Dad. Everything I know about horse racing I learned from the best - from him.
Driving back to The Ranch, the following musical reinforcement was not lost on me:
Looking forward to some quality time with the Disney XD Girls, this sight (below) greeted me upon my return to The Ranch:
They were both zonked out. Tap City. Boy, summer vacation is rough.
When my youngest niece finally stirred from her nap, we talked about all that she'd done so far that day. "Watched Magnum P.I.," she cheerfully said. She then proceeded, unprompted by me, to do a Jonathan Quayle Higgins imitation; "Oh my God, Magnum!" I have the greatest family.
By now you all know that CC lost the Belmont Stakes (finished in a dead heat for fourth). By now you may have read the - I think correct - analysis that CC's jockey succumbed to the pressure of history, became too anxious and sealed CC's fate when swinging wide around the final turn... the longest, most sweeping turn in all of North America. By now some of you may have seen the disgraceful, sour grapes, major case of the goo [credit: Marty Brennaman] post-race comments expressed by CC's co-owner. Hey pal, welcome to horse racing. What you don't know is that for the Belmont Stakes this year, I sported under my Izod golf shirt (too bad I don't have any Ocean Pacific shorts these days, otherwise - harkening back to my zen 1980s countdown meditation - I would have looked something like my old 1986-era self) the blue and white "Go Smarty Go" Smarty Jones t-shirt I picked up for Smarty's own attempt at Triple Crown glory. It was my way of putting the jinx on California Chrome. Never underestimate the power of a lucky, or unlucky, t-shirt. Or lucky boxer shorts.
Commissioner led every step of the way, at odds of 28/1, and was caught at the wire, losing by a head as his official margin of defeat. In a race that lasted 2:28.52, Commissioner led for 2:28.25 (or thereabouts). Commissioner paid $23.20 to Place. Medal Count finished 3rd, a length back, and paid $13.20 to Show.
And so I had won the battle against the computer, its receipt and Miami Valley Gaming - I'd gotten my bankroll returned intact. Yet I'd lost the war because the prolonged struggle ran out the clock on my available time to place any bets. Hitting just the back half of the $20 Win and Place wager I'd have placed on Commissioner would have had me up for the day even assuming every other wager I'd intended to make turned out to be a misfire.
Roll the credits!
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