No Cheering, but Lots of Betting in Press Box

When Swale won the Belmont Stakes last summer in New York, finishing four lengths ahead of a colt named Pine Circle, that was not the biggest story in the Belmont Park press box.

Andy Beyer, the racing columnist for the Washington Post, had a bigger payday than Pine Circle, who earned $113,000 for finishing second.

Beyer, already flush because of a five-figure profit from the daily double earlier in the day, was confident that Swale and Pine Circle would run 1-2. He was so confident that he bet $2,000 on the exacta. Swale was the favorite, but Pine Circle was a longshot, which resulted in a $125.80 exacta payoff for $2 and a return of $125,800 for Beyer.

The Post chose not to carry an item on Beyer. “It was my call,� said George Solomon, the newspaper’s assistant managing editor in charge of sports. “Andy had written about his selections the day before the race, but I decided that we shouldn’t wave the flag and brag about it. We took the high road, but it might have been a mistake.�

Almost all major race tracks have parimutuel windows in the press box, and certainly not for ornamental purposes. Betting in the press box is as common as spitting in baseball dugouts. A Churchill Downs spokesman said that about $100,000 was wagered by journalists covering the Kentucky Derby last year.

On Derby day, three mutuel clerks are needed to handle the action in the press box. The rest of the year, betting in the press box is a comparative trickle, ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 a day.

In recent years, Churchill Downs rejected an application for Kentucky Derby credentials from a newspaper columnist who had given the track $1,000 in worthless checks. Latonia Race Course, near Cincinnati, once had a policy that it would cash no personal checks in the press box because it had been stuck with too many bad ones.

Hollywood Park announced that press-box betting for Breeders’ Cup day last November totaled $34,000. That seemed like a small total, because the press boxes at Hollywood, Santa Anita and Del Mar, which are often visited by celebrities on big-race days, have a national reputation for having the biggest bettors. A one-day handle of $40,000 at Santa Anita is not unusual.

Even Beyer was impressed by the heavy betting during a visit to Santa Anita.

“Out there members of the press are not merely passive observers of the game,� he said. “Most press boxes are populated by $2 bettors, or at least modest players. But in California, almost everybody is a serious handicapper and a two-fisted bettor.�

The most visible of the local players is Gordon Jones, the turf writer for the Herald Examiner, though he is by no means the biggest. It is not uncommon for Jones to run $5,000 through the window during an afternoon, but often a good chunk of that money represents the bets of his Pick 6 Club, a daily breakfast group that pays $15 a person to share in Jones’ handicapping opinions.

Jones and Beyer grew up with academe, Jones’ father having been the president of Whittier College and Beyer’s father a college history professor.

Jones has a Ph.D. and used to teach journalism at USC. Beyer would have graduated from Harvard, but for a choice he made between Chaucer and Amberoid in 1966.

The final exam at Harvard was in Chaucer and the field for the Belmont Stakes included Amberoid, one of the horses trying to prevent Kauai King from sweeping the Triple Crown.

Beyer skipped the exam and went to Belmont Park to bet Amberoid. He was a $2 bettor in those days, and Amberoid won and paid $13.

“For the day,� Beyer jokes, “I lost $11,987--the $12,000 education I blew, minus the $13 I won on Amberoid.�

Neither Beyer nor Jones sees a conflict of interest in writing stories that could perhaps be colored by which way his betting luck was running.

“I don’t think I have to apologize for what I do at all,� Beyer said. “I know this is a serious issue at some papers, but if I’m good at gambling--and I am good--it is because I exercise complete objectivity when I select horses. My paper gets that same objectivity when I write a story, regardless of whether I’m winning or losing my bets. You can read my analysis of last year’s Belmont and not be able to tell that I won all that money that day.�

Beyer might be objective, but never accuse him of being unemotional. Several years ago, when a horse he had bet at Gulfstream Park was disqualified, Beyer struck the wall next to his press-box seat with his fist, making a large hole. Until recently, the track left the hole unrepaired, sort of a monument to horseplaying intensity.

For Jones, there are two aspects to covering racing, the competition among the horses, trainers and jockeys and the competition among the bettors.

“I choose to emphasize the betting aspect,� Jones says. “These are wonderful animals that make up the game, and there are a lot of interesting horsemen that participate, but without betting there would be nobody at the track to watch them. And there is just as much competition among the horseplayers as there is among the horses and horsemen.�

Beyer and Jones have written several books on handicapping (one of Beyer’s titles: “My $50,000 Year at the Races�), and Jones would like to write more.

“If it ever came down to a choice between covering racing and handicapping, I would prefer to do handicapping,� Jones said.

The Herald recently published two letters that said Jones criticized Hollywood Park stewards because their disqualification of a horse had cost him a bet. Jones responded in a column, saying that over the years he has complained more often about stewards’ decisions that have helped him, “but helped me for what I thought were the wrong reasons.�

Early this season at Santa Anita, there was a Pick Six mixup because a power failure prevented betting on the final race. The stewards at first told the fans that all Pick Six tickets would be refunded, then reversed themselves.

Before the final decision, Jones was seen telling the stewards they had erred, even though their original ruling would have meant a $1,200 refund for him on a losing ticket.

Beyer, who has a library of Daily Racing Forms dating back to 1970, said that his dedication to playing the horses makes him a better reporter. “When you study horses as much as I do, you acquire a greater knowledge of the technical side of racing, which the casual player doesn’t have,� Beyer said.

Solomon agrees. “We have no problem with his betting, it’s a legal activity,� Solomon said. “He’s very open about it when he writes, so the reader knows where he stands. It boils down to trust. If you trust the guy who’s writing for you, his betting shouldn’t be an issue.�

Jones says that owning horses and writing about them would be a definite conflict of interest. Dave Feldman, who covers and handicaps races for the Chicago Sun-Times, owns, breeds and trains horses that run in Illinois and Florida. On occasion, he has to write about or handicap his horses. He is also an officer in the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn., a union for owners and trainers. At one time, Feldman wore still another hat--he was the track announcer at Sportsman’s Park.

“My paper could care less about all these activities,� Feldman said. “They don’t say a word about what I do. It’s better for them that I’m well known in all these areas and can freely circulate to gather news for stories.�

Feldman says he seldom makes a sizable bet anymore, except occasionally on one of his own horses. “I’ve given up playing the races,� he said. “You bet every race and eventually you get killed, even these guys who cash a big ticket once in a while. What I do is play a horse.�

Feldman, Beyer and Jones have large followings. Feldman recently filed a lawsuit in Chicago and he said the defendant’s lawyer had trouble approving a jury because so many of the potential jurors had read Feldman in the Sun-Times.

“Dave understands the ground rules when he appears in the paper,� said Tom Cunningham, sports editor of the Sun-Times. “He’s expected to give both sides of any issue. He’s one of the best and most knowledgeable turf writers around, and we’re glad we have him. Walk through the grandstand at any Chicago track and it’s incredible how many people know him. He’s more than a newspaperman, he’s like a cult figure.�

Jones’ Pick 6 Club has cashed winning tickets more than 100 times, but it was another group of press-box handicappers that hit a near-record $390,000 payoff on $3,400 in bets at Santa Anita a year ago.

Jeff Siegel, a horse owner and widely read newspaper handicapper whose morning line once appeared in The Times, was one of the winners.

“I know there are a lot of rules about rooting in the press box,� Siegel said. “But I don’t think they cover the last race of the Pick Six when your horse takes the lead at the eighth pole.�

While The Times has no official policy on horse race betting, Sports Editor Bill Dwyre believes that a horse racing writer should bet very little or not at all and hired his beat reporter, Bill Christine, based on that belief and the knowledge that Christine was not a heavy bettor.