It's hard to believe that it's been 60 years since the late Jack Cohen started publishing Sports Eye in the Metropolitan New York region. Though I've been associated with the publication for a long time, it began some 10 years before I was hired. My first association with Sports Eye was purchasing it at a local candy store. In the early 70's Sports Eye covered sports and racing to a degree. It was different than regular daily newspapers in that it came out twice a week on Sundays and Thursdays. It's primary feature at the time to horseplayers on the trotting side was three full days of entries at either Roosevelt or Yonkers Raceway. Sports Eye offered entries and results from other harness and Thoroughbred tracks while also offering gambling-related information on football, baseball and basketball that included the betting line for each, days in advance of the games. That might not seem important today, but it was quite revolutionary in its time. It wasn't until I joined the staff of Sports Eye in 1978 that the publication started taking on a different look, ditching its former twice-a-week schedule and becoming a daily offering with past performances now included for Roosevelt/Yonkers and the Meadowlands. Now, looking back on its origination, it is quite clear that Jack Cohen was more than a publisher when it came to harness racing. He was an innovator that was up against monopolies and found a way to sneak in the back door and eventually kick it down, to the benefit of horseplayers and sports bettors alike. To fully understand the lengths Mr. Cohen went to, one would first have to recognize the era and who the main monopoly players were, and how they looked at a "gambling" publication not sanctioned by a racetrack. As an employee during its infancy into harness racing past performances, I found out rather quickly that Sports Eye employees were outcasts to the establishment of reporters/handicappers from daily newspapers that covered the sport. Perhaps it was that stature, knowing others were against us, that made the core staff at Sports Eye resilient, determined to break down barriers and provide something original and unique to horseplayers. While the establishment scoffed at our existence, we stood with the bettors at the track and were far removed from the "elite" title the established press had granted themselves. For Mr. Cohen, getting us in the door was a struggle, as I would learn early on. Sullivan Bros. had the contract for the track program at both Yonkers and Roosevelt Raceways and as such all past performance information garnered from the race office would be entrusted with its employees to print the program. To access this information Mr. Cohen hired his own group of insiders who I believe offered some payment to Sullivan Bros. employees in order to get access to past performance information on horses that were coming in from out of town tracks. For horses racing at Yonkers and Roosevelt, we were able to keep our own records and go a step beyond anything the track programs had offered. Mr. Cohen's vision was for improving the product. As with all monopolies at the time, there was no interest to change the past performances whatsoever. When you are the only game in town it's impossible for the public to recognize what isn't in the program or for that matter whether there was accuracy to the information provided within it. The term "Bible" was often associated with the track program, and Mr. Cohen saw virtue in exposing it exponentially for its missing information. ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter The dawn of Sports Eye, as I know it, is one based on a solid group of employees, a majority college graduates, that had a love for harness racing and a passion for building a daily newspaper that catered predominantly to horseplayers and in some cases horsemen as well. Mr. Cohen's innovation led to complete charts with written commentary for each horse for every race at Yonkers, Roosevelt and the Meadowlands, and that also included qualifying races at both tracks. It's hard to imagine how players deciphered this missing information in the past, but none of my contemporaries were all that concerned with what the program wasn't doing. We were all caught up in giving out the most information possible to players and filling in the holes that littered the typical track program. The charts would advance into past performances, and the past performances would contain something new to harness racing. With Sports Eye's own charters at work, the paper's past performances included lengths behind at every point of call in the mile and initially included the actual final fractional time for each horse. Eventually, the past performances would include individual fractions for each quarter for every horse. Today's racing programs are a direct result of Mr. Cohen pushing down the wall and narrative of the establishment and those working on his staff providing players with the necessary tools to make themselves better handicappers and ultimately a better chance to succeed as horseplayers. Through the years, Sports Eye did much of the same for sports bettors, though those individuals on the East Coast did not have the luxury today's audience has and were likely wagering with illegal bookmakers. Mr. Cohen found no reason to avoid catering to an underground market and found success in providing similar past performances for college football and the NFL. Ironically, unlike today's embrace of gambling, the times were not kind to Mr. Cohen and his pursuit of significant information. To my recollection, Sports Eye and other publications associated with Mr. Cohen were not given NFL credentials and were not permitted to access directly from them any statistical information. Mr. Cohen didn't willingly take the snub personally and instead found "workarounds" to infiltrate and gain the information without the NFL's permission. The digital world has changed what daily newspapers have become, and thankfully the legacy of Sports Eye, in the form of DRF Harness's online platform (DRF.com/Harness), has remained a voice in the industry while branching out to include not just horseplayers but horsemen and breeders alike. The original publication had perhaps one of the great storytellers of my time in Jack Rubin, the editor when I started with the publication. Rubin was a charismatic writer that had an incredible knowledge of horseplayers and their tales of triumph and tragedy. Long before I was ever given a chance to write a column for the magazine, I marveled at how effortlessly Rubin would pen a daily column with no notes and an incredible imagination. Perhaps more special to the overall vibe at the time was Rubin's ability to draw stories from many of the staff and weave them in seamlessly to his daily prose. Rubin also engaged with the readers by responding to letters in print. Through the years there have been changes and challenges in this business. That 60 years have passed and the publication that Mr. Cohen founded is still providing the kind of information and insight he first set out to do is thanks to many who have been inspired along the way to continue the voyage. Derick Giwner, the Editor who succeeded me when Sports Eye was only a print publication and has guided it to this plateau, has been an incredible steward. He's found a blend of talented handicappers and analysts that were the cornerstone to Sports Eye's birth and growth. He's mixed young and old to gain perspectives from the enthusiastic and the experienced. If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. That sums up my long association with this fine publication.