How the hoarsehorseplayer became hoarse is by trying to get the racing establishment to listen to me.

So I got a big kick out of Andy Beyer's observation that if racetracks want to compete with the internet they better get their technology act together, if only because it reminded me of something I once wrote.
As background let me just say that my philosophy concerning tracks is that the horseplayer should not be treated as a gambler but as an investor. The gamblers and the two dollar bettors will always come but if the parimutual end of the racing industry can plug into the monopoly money crowd in the same way the breeding end has, you got a thriving enterprise again. But to do that you're going to have to make people who are sharp with money feel like they are making legitimate investments, or at least bets where they feel they have all the information they need to suceed. And therefore, it seems to me that tracks should celebrate information, to have at least one area of the track that is akin to a security trading pit, where a horseplayer can look at the crawl board encircling him, or at any of a series of monitors surrounding him, to find out the particular information he is looking for.

Anyway in the letter I am quoting from, I offer a series of ideas on how to turn tracks into information centers and then offer this summation:

"More importantly, we've brought the track into the twenty-first century, for the benefit of the next generation of Horseplayers. In the preceding paragraph I've stated that the casino atmosphere appeals to the modern gambler, but I guarantee you the next generation, who should already be pushing their entry level money through the windows, are never going to become smitten unless their techno-entertainment needs are satisfied. You talk of how television coverage legitimizes horse racing as an activity, well forevermore, for the children of baby boomers onward, its dancing lights, interactive keyboards, and instant access to information that is going to determine the legitmacy of any pursuit. You want the young to plug into horseplaying you've got to plug them in. Consider this an inevitablity, as inevitable as it was for your predecessors to put in parking lots once the automobile was invented."

My letter is dated January 1996. And I can only hope it doesn't take the track managers of America another ten years to hear what Andy Beyer is saying. For I think he speaks the truth. Me? I'm too hoarse to talk.