LAS VEGAS - There's obviously no accounting for taste on television these days, since shows where people eat worms are consistent ratings-grabbers. Even so, did it seem much more palatable a couple of years ago that millions of Americans would gather round the screen each week to watch people play poker?
ARCADIA, Calif. - It's not the showgirls, the beach balls, the banners, or the looming presence of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
It's the money.
It's not the (mostly) full fields, the familiar names, the television time, or a chance to hang with the guys from "Casino" and "Raging Bull."
It's the money.
It's not the honor, the glory, or the sudden fame that comes with winning a race on a major American racing stage.
It . . . is . . . the . . . money.
ARCADIA, Calif. - On Saturday at Santa Anita Park, in the West Coast version of the Sunshine Millions, fans will be treated to bathing beauties, sky divers, free hats, and four competitive fields running for the kind of money that could finance a primary campaign. It should be good, clean, mindless fun.
The best race of the weekend, however, will take place on Sunday, when the Santa Monica Handicap is run for the 47th time at seven furlongs on the main track for older fillies and mares.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Monday, in the San Marcos Handicap at Santa Anita Park, Gary Stevens nursed Sweet Return along on a modest pace, practically lulling his audience to sleep, and came away with all the applause.
Such tactics work great if you're dealing with 1 1/4 miles on the grass, and Stevens is a master of the technique. Next Monday, however, at the Eclipse Awards Dinner in Miami, he will need to pick up the tempo.
ARCADIA, Calif. - No one names their racing Thoroughbreds with more care and creativity than Ann and Jerry Moss.
For this they should get ample credit. The name game can be a frustrating slog through alternate choices and arcane Jockey Club rules. After seeing their first, second, third, and fourth picks turned down, no one can blame an owner for giving up and just slapping the sire and dam together for an unimaginative hybrid.
ARCADIA, Calif. - If Rafael Becerra is going to return to the Kentucky Derby, 20 years after his first and only experience with America's most captivating horse race, the trainer will need to be smiling at the end of Saturday's Santa Catalina Stakes at Santa Anita Park.
NEW YORK - By one account, it took just six days to create the heavens and the earth. It has taken longer for someone to win the pick six at Aqueduct.
Thanks to weather-related cancellations and a blizzard of longshots, no one has gone 6 for 6 at The Big A since Jan. 4. The carryover began at a tiny $24,795 when no one connected Jan. 7 and grew to $97,959 the next day. A partial cancellation Jan. 9 and a full cancellation Jan. 10 carried the pool to the 11th, where it went unclaimed again and the carryover swelled to $270, 911.
ARCADIA, Calif. - In a career that began nearly 30 years ago, Russell Baze managed to ride 38,935 horses without breaking a collarbone.
Then came number 38,936 on Nov. 30 of last year, when the 4-year-old colt Snoopy Cat stumbled leaving the gate in the third race of the day at Golden Gate Fields and threw his Hall of Fame jockey to the ground. Adding injury to insult, another horse stepped on Baze in the tangle, leaving him with a painful souvenir.
TUCSON, Ariz. - Promoter Shawn Scott has come and gone again, this time in Maine, leaving without a racetrack, as he did in New Mexico and Louisiana and is doing in New York, but not without a satchel full of cash.
Whether he heads to haunts in Hawaii or Las Vegas or the Virgin Islands, he leaves behind the virginal harness horsemen of Maine, who clasped him to their breasts because they had no other suitor. Now, at the end of their romance with Scott, they wind up with a strong and handsome paramour in Penn National Gaming, and a dowry of a purse-boosting racino.