Mall

Well, that confirms we were both at Pimlico on the third Saturday of May 1978! Jerry, if you were there, you could have seen us both at the same time. Besides Aborigine's electrfying move to seize that race on the undercard, I recall it being brutally hot. By the time the Affirmed-Alydar race came up, I was completely wiped. This making me feel all nostalgic. Those were the last days when betting tickets were those different colorful rolls that went through a special punch system. Windows were denominated by the size and type of ticket they could sell. I am sure they would never do it, but I would LOVE it if a track decided to do the racing equivalent of baseballs "back to the 70s uniforms" and decided to have a few of those machines on the big days for people who liked them.

I have heard about the Wink story but have not read the book. FYI, I live and work walking distance from the Moscow Hippodrome. The racing here is absolutely awful. And, this is even after racing has gone through a huge resurgence because it is one of President Putin's favorite pastimes. To give you a sample, the best stallion to ever stand in Russia was Leo Castelli. It would be interesting to see the TGI Sire stats on old Leo. I bet they are pretty pathetic.

CTC,

beer (in Russian "pivo") is very popular here, and, believe it or not, the Russian varieties are not bad. Vodka is still the drink of choice here, but it defeats me. Also, we call them onion domes, not onion tops.

FYI, I am also a big stones fan. The only problem is that their reference to Russia is in SFTD and the reference is to St. Petersburg not Moscow. Not a bad song though (with some pretty amazing lines). I have always wondered if Mick is a racing fan. There are some references to races in some obscure stones songs (Dead Flowers comes to mind off the top of my head); plus if "Your so Vain" is written about him, well, his horse naturally won!

As to why I still use Ragozin, I am an information maniac and like to get as much as possible. I like to handicap races multiple times if I can. There are times where there are discrepancies between the two sheet makers, and sometimes this discrepancy works out in favor of the Ragozin sheet. Quite frankly, I am looking for an edge that is not obvious to the crowd. If I find a nice priced horse that I can find a good reason to bet, then great. Using two sets of sheets gives me two different opportunities to find such a horse. Also, I really like to be able to throw out favorites (or, occasionally, if I think they are unbeatable, I am willing to single them on top in the Super if I can fill out the ticket with some nice prices underneath). With two sets of sheets, if they do not agree a tough favorite is unbeatable, then I have more of a reason to throw out such a favorite (although it is far better if both sheets agree the horse is dead). If both sheets agree a favorite is tough, then I need to look if I can find some value in a super (unless of course there is good enough value in the win pool).

Also, (and I think Jerry would probably agree with me on the following) if you put aside issues of whether somebody has blown the ground or the beaten lengths or something like that, a key thing we are looking to figure makers for is the variant they embed in their numbers. I think Jerry will agree that sometimes making a variant is a very tough call and there is no easy answer with what to come up with. Sometimes he may get it right and sometimes he may get it wrong. Some of the times he may have gotten it wrong, maybe Ragozin got it right. The deal is that these sort of discrepancies may lead to a hidden virtue (or hidden weakness) in a horse. I am just trying to unlock such hidden stuff and having two bites at the apple gets me a second chance at that.

Also, and I am not busting on Thorograph here, but sometimes Thorograph makes mistakes, too. There was the one mentioned on the site in NoCal where somebody subtracted a number that shoudl have been added. Also, I have emailed Thorograph when I have seen a number I have purchased that is clearly wrong. Also, I have noticed on rare occasion that their ground comment appears to be wrong (I am incredibly sensitive to needlessly wide rides from idiot jocks and ones that cost me money stick in my head. I was shocked once to see such a bad ride get a 1w,1w later on -- Jerry, if you want me to point this one out to you I would be happy to off line). Again, none of this is criticism, it just happens and I am very happy with Thorograph.


Finally, I will see if I can lock up the name Ethel Mertz. If somebody has beaten me to it, I may have to be something like EthelMertz2 or EthelMertz37. As to the original SoCalMan....there is no mystery about him. He is me. I just lost the password and could not figure out how to get it back at the time I wanted to post something so I just made a SoCalMan2. I used to live in Southern California (a 12 minute drive from Los Alamitos, and I am a big fan of Southern California racing (even though it has fallen on some tough times compared to the good old days).

Enough of this, it is late and I need to go.