OUGHTA BE A LAW

FADE IN: Santa Anita Gambling Track ___"What blatant thievery!" shouted a man standing only a few feet away. He angrily waved a clenched publication of what he thought contained actual racing form, also known as the Raging Rag by amused insiders, in front of his wife's face. "One thing for certain, if this damned thing means anything, there's no legitimate way that horse could have won!"

Gambling fans were expressing shock over the fact that a horse named Drum Drum, after having been in a 6-furlong Gambling Proposition (GP) just three weeks earlier, at 6-5 odds, and only managing a disappointing eight-place finish by 16 lengths against $40,000 maidens, had been stepped up (against faster horses) to straight maiden company and inexplicably displayed newfound athletic ability to the tune of a 23-length improvement over its last effort, crossing the finish line first by a neck. Drum Drum paid almost seventy bucks. Numerous gambling fans were convinced they had been cheated. The payoff lines were understandably vacant – that is, until the right people holding the majority of the tickets made their move.

The angry man groped through the pages of the Raging Rag to once again review matters. "The horse runs 23 lengths faster than it did in its last race," he continued, "which was just three weeks ago! And against better company!" His anger slowly gave way to disbelief and suspicion, nodding thoughtfully as he studied the evidence in his hands.

"Just because a horse is entered, my dear, doesn't mean that the jockey will be trying to win," his wife reminded him. "You've even said so yourself."

"If a jockey isn't racing, and he isn't trying to win, he shouldn't be allowed to participate!" he concluded. "There oughta be a law that forces jockeys and trainers to reveal whether or not they'll be trying."

"You’re so right," she quipped. "Jockeys are like frustrated actors. They have a tendency to pretend a good deal of the time. That's why the word ‘performance’ is used to describe a lot of their activities."

"I'd like to know how they can legally get away with calling this racing form," reflecting on its questionable value as he continued, "when it amounts to a lot of meaningless garbage? There oughta be a law of some kind that would put a stop to this."

"Maybe they only have to be able to point to one horse that won, in each publication, to keep from being hit with a big lawsuit." She laughed and kissed him on the cheek.

"If you stop and think about it," she cautioned, "racing form is only the name given to the publication. I would bet the contents in my purse that Drum Drum's racing form has a lot more to do with jockey and trainer intent than anything else. It's all very cute and misleading."

"Much of the time it tells you everything but the most important things you need no know - who's been trying and who hasn't?"

His anger growing the whole time, the man directed his wife's attention to the so-called (SC) official racing program. "Even in the program," he went on, "at the very top of the page, is the word ‘race’ in bold print. How can they get away with claiming every time a bunch of horses running around a track constitute a race when there is utterly no way of knowing what the jockeys and trainers are doing? If people responsible for conducting these races don't have enough confidence in their representations to guarantee that all of the horses, in all of the races, are being ridden by jockeys who are trying to win, maybe it's not real racing, and maybe we don't belong out here."

She laughed and playfully tugged on his shirt. "If we leave now, we’ll have plenty of time to stop at your favorite restaurant before we meet the kids at Disneyland."

"Why not," he said, throwing his arms up in despair. "At least there the monkey business is clearly labeled."

Within moments the man and his wife turned and made their way through the crowd toward an exit.

Of all the publications in America, perhaps the Raging Rag has no equal in terms of displaying a lack of concern for the integrity of the material it publishes for its readers, of providing a service that, unfortunately, all too often fails to provide the purchaser with the necessary validity required to reach an accurate conclusion. Not only does this flagrant reality give rise to serious questions, but ostensibly contradicts its intended purpose.

In addition to presenting text for its readers to entertain as the "final word" in SC racing form, the publishers of this mellifluous rag have anointed it as America's Turf Authority, a ridiculous claim that can be readily observed at the top of its glorious cover page. Authority is one of the most compelling and powerful words in the English language. Because of its track record, the manner in which it has been used down through history, the word rarely fails to influence our thinking.

From a legal point of view, any person is authorized to make the claim of being America's turf authority. And there is no law preventing any publication, whether it be Hustler Magazine, the Raging Rag, or even the National Enquirer, from authorizing the appointment of anybody or anything as a turf authority. Even a discarded beer can - or mentally retarded mannequin - could hold the title.

Puritan students of the English language, however, concerned over the attempt to mongrelize certain words, are quick to rally behind the definition of authority, which they point out was neither meant to be applied in the manner just described, nor should be used to lull people into a false sense of confidence.

In the section where we find all of the entries, recommended odds, and a flurry of monotonous comments having little or no value, we cannot but help notice the following headline: THE HANDICAPPER'S PAGE. This is where the SC experts ply their trade; regularly spewing forth conclusions that could be reached by almost anyone who has ever been to a Gambling Track (GT) at least once. An expert, in simple terms, is a person who displays special skill or knowledge. But in the objective sense, an expert is the state of possessing intelligence and knowledge equal to the task; the ability to accurately evaluate all relevant factors, however vague or abstract, which lend themselves to a conclusion consistent with the outcome of a given situation.

While many of these SC experts would have trouble finding a cow at a dairy farm, the small number remaining rarely rise above the lowest level of acceptable mediocrity. Considering a good deal of the time they are simply not in possession of all the facts, plus the realization they are occasionally attempting to make selections for any number of GTs, they must, for the most part, take refuge behind hard favorites - or slightly better.

True, favorites cross the finish line first approximately 30 percent of the time, but nowhere else in America could a person reasonably expect to remain employed with such a dismal performance. Their job status is merely that of a Hired Gun, to avoid the Three Evils at all times, basing their conclusions on the integrity of the data printed by the very publication which provides a paycheck.

The Raging Rag - and with a great sense of pride - hints to this 30-percent factor as if it were some kind of grand achievement. The real issue, of course, is the whopping 70 percent of the time when horses other than the "anointed choices" thunder home first. One can only conclude that these bullshit artists are engaging in the type of malicious activity, criminal in the opinion of Getting Down, which wrongfully influences the thinking of gambling fans approximately 70 percent of the time, leading them to false conclusions.

The practice of establishing - SC morning line - odds is also nothing short of a farce and should be halted immediately. Given the ANYTHING GOES nature of SC horse racing, particularly the significant number of undetectable drugs that can alter a horse's performance, not to mention the disgusting ease with which horses can be held back to build odds, that any individual or group would attempt such an undertaking contradicts the most fundamental principles of common sense. The fact that they repeatedly assign huge odds to horses that go on to cross the finish line first is most disturbing. After a few days of having your judgment literally dragged through the mud, any normal persons would be so embarrassed they would skip town. But not this bunch. Who was it that said, "Show me a person who cannot be embarrassed or shamed and I'll show you a cheap hustler?" This overt willingness to deal in cheap hype and make-believe, as opposed to simple reality, does not bode well for a gambling game that now depends, in large part, on the accumulation of New Faces for its very survival.

Odds are posted for the purpose of hopefully encouraging gullible gambling fans to "start counting the money they think they could make" before it is actually transferred to their pockets.

Before an accurate probability ratio can be assigned to the likelihood of any event occurring, all of the relevant facts (dynamics) must be thoroughly evaluated. This concept is so profoundly simple that it is found at the heart of all levels of elementary education in even Third World countries. The indiscriminate incorporation of incorrect and/or false information literally destroys any attempt to establish probability - thus destroying GP stability.

Take two boxers, for example, who are about to fight each other in an important match, and in whose past fights both had vigorously tried to win every time. From a gambling point of view, this proposition offers extremely high stability: legitimate past performances, and the undeniable importance of winning. On the flip side of matters, if one of the fighters was struck with a severe case of the flu on the morning of the day the fight was to be held, or had been offered a tremendous amount of tax-free money to "take a dive" in the fourth round, or possibly was under the influence of performance-altering drugs - dynamics the gambling public didn't know about - the GP would become utterly unstable.

There was a time, of course, not too many years ago, when boxing and fraud were synonymous. But when faced with the loss of massive public interest, however, the game has since been cleaned up. A good rule of thumb to remember, dear reader, the higher the degree for potential fraud, the less stable the GP - the greater chance you'll go home as just another loser.

But doesn't the Raging Rag supply all the facts necessary to reach an intelligent decision? Lets assume, for example, we are about to evaluate the Current Performance Capability (CPC) of a given field of 10 horses. We open the Rag and, after wading through any number of trite articles which brazenly attempt to portray the gambling game as a sport, plus a litany of near-Biblical advertisements extolling can't-miss methods on how to win big, eventually arrive at our entries. We are almost overwhelmed with what appears to be a staggering compilation of statistics, a humbling paragon of facts, carefully laid out in such a manner to convince gambling fans that their interests come first, that this aggressive fact-finding publication, forever your servant, has left no stone unturned in its never-ending, exhaustive search for the truth.

The representations we must consider range from breeding, colors and ages of horses, earnings, sex, numerous dates, fractional times, weights carried, running surfaces, distances run, to the GTs where they've performed; from the names of jockeys and owners to the odds of horses when they crossed the finish line first - to the odds when they didn't. The color of the grass and the color of the sky are deliberately not mentioned so as to provide you, the sport's fan, the opportunity to make a few tough decisions on your own, to become a better SC handicapper. About the only thing needed to complete matters would be to have the likes of Pat Boone, accompanied by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, singing "With God on Our Side."

Given this crescendo of "hard-hitting information," surely, when one dutifully considers the national anthem and the American flag, along with the trappings before us where so many great horses have fought stride for stride down the home stretch, should not all of this undeniable truth be more than adequate to disarm us of any reservations we might be foolish enough to harbor regarding the integrity of the SC performance representations? Your answer will depend entirely on how long you've been around the game. Usually a few days will do.

It should be remembered that the publishers of the Raging Rag, though an important instrument in promoting the game, are in no way responsible for the manner in which it is played. The main interest lies in selling their product. Just like the individuals who work for the game's Bureau of Propaganda, they also have no idea whether or not a good deal of SC past-performance representations reflect legitimate integrity, whether or not chemical substances were used, whether or not they are about to be used, and, as the man and wife reasoned earlier at Santa Anita GT, a disturbing percentage of the time they simply don't know "who'll be trying and who won't" - yet the word race is used with monotonous regularity in all of their written material.

Given the conditions that must exist before a race can take place, covered earlier in Name of the Game, to use the word race to describe a situation whereby every time a group of horses is run between the starting gate and the finish line is sheer folly - unless by doing so you have something to gain.

The Rag's publishers, in order to avoid a lawsuit, could always say they only print the horses' order of finish, and that they just naturally assumed they were all being raced. This line of reasoning would undoubtedly cause any sensible judge to smile and wink at the prosecutor.

Considering the publishers of this not-so-slick publication don't guarantee the integrity of their SC racing representations, however, provides a strong clue as to the degree of faith in the product.

There are some who would say that to do so would invite a horde of mindless, unsubstantiated lawsuits, consuming a lot of time that might otherwise be devoted to more "important matters." What a bunch of bullshit! Rest assured, dear reader, that no gambling fan would be willing to absorb the legal cost of such a foolish undertaking…nor would any group, for that matter. What is feared, as common sense overwhelmingly suggests, is the threat of lawsuits supported by irrefutable evidence.