It doesn’t take much to flip a future book upside down.
One game. Heck, one second, when you look at the second that was put back on the clock at the end of regulation of the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn which allowed the No. 1 Crimson Tide a final field goal attempt. They missed the field goal and it was famously returned the other way for an Auburn 34-28 upset victory as a 10 1/2-point home underdog and +340 on the money line.
Admission to Belmont Park and Saratoga has been $3 for the grandstand and $5 for the clubhouse since 2005, well below the cost to walk into major tracks in other states, including Arlington ($8/$8), Del Mar ($6/$10), and Santa Anita ($6/$8.50). Given those industry norms and nine years of flat pricing, it was not entirely unreasonable for the New York Racing Association to consider a modest increase in those charges for 2014.
If King Leatherbury and his 6,409 wins aren’t going to get serious consideration for the Hall of Fame (and they absolutely should be considered), perhaps the committee can just get Ben’s Cat on the ballot when he retires – if he ever retires.
Like his trainer, Ben’s Cat seems to get better as he gets older. I could be wrong about this, but I think what Leatherbury and his horse of a lifetime are doing together is unprecedented.
Chad Brown would very much like to win the last running of the Matriarch Stakes on Sunday at Betfair Hollywood Park. In this, he is not alone since the Matriarch is a Grade 1 race for fillies and mares, and fillies and mares with Grade 1 credentials seem to be worth their weight in gold these days.
The purse is $250,000, a far cry from the Matriarch’s $700,000 high point, but still, the money spends. Brown even has an outside chance of finishing second in the national purse standings behind Todd Pletcher this year, so every little bit will help.
It’s a melancholy job, and it could get to a person if they let it – dwelling on the last running of the Hollywood Gold Cup, the last Californian, the last in a long line of historic Hollywood Derbies. But somebody has to be in charge of spreading the word through traditional and social media as Hollywood Park nears the end of its 75-year run, and who better to do it than Bob Mieszerski.
Let us pause in the public rending of garments over the last days of Hollywood Park in order to give thanks and pay tribute to another Southern California institution sailing into the sunset.
Tranquility Farm, the Cadillac of the West’s all-purpose facilities serving those Thoroughbreds deemed no longer to be of use as racehorses or breeding stock, is down-sizing and relocating to Northern California near the town of Cottonwood, by the Sacramento River.
Laurel Park-based trainer Tim Keefe, who has done such a great job with Eighttofasttocatch, is flying from Baltimore to Cancun on Thanksgiving morning with his wife and four children. On Dec. 1, the 46-year-old will compete in the Ironman Cozumel, a full triathlon (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile marathon). He has teamed with the Ulman Cancer Fund and the Foxie G Foundation in a fundraising effort. Tax-deductible donations can be made by going to www.timkeeferacing.com.
Penn National has tried to combine its major stakes races on two cards, one in between the Preakness and Belmont Stakes and the other on Thanksgiving eve. The first Penn Mile Day this June was an unqualified success. This is the third day-before-Thanksgiving extravaganza.
Rummaging around its closets, looking for any place to store racehorses beginning in early 2014, the good folks in charge of the game in Southern California came across a taped up cardboard box labeled The Seventies, from which emerged several pairs of bellbottoms, a few wide-collared shirts in a variety of floral patterns, cassette tapes from some group called Supertramp, and – what’s this? – 500 perfectly good stalls and a one-mile racetrack at a place called San Luis Rey Downs.
