MR. PINK SHEET
Stan Hudy is the man behind the Saratogian’s ‘Pink Sheet’
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. >> At the Saratoga Race Track every summer, odds are you will need help picking a favorite horse running that day.
Maybe, you’ll want to see the past performances in a race over the last several years. Maybe you want a preview of the races happening that day.
If you ever were stuck looking for any of that information during the horse racing season, boy do I have a paper for you.
The Saratogian’s “Pink Sheet” celebrated its 130th birthday this past summer. And what if I told you that same paper is taken care of by just a single person?
Well, there are three of us, and there is a print room that prints the paper, but the day-to-day minutiae of the historic paper is taken care of by the one and only, Stan Hudy.
If you are reading the Saratogian on a daily basis, you more than likely know him. If you go to the horse track a few times every year, you have probably seen him.
He’s the oldest pink sheet hawker out there on the street. If you asked him where the bathroom was, he probably told you where the nearest one was, and then told you where every single other bathroom was at the track as well. You
may have seen him running down to the winner’s circle to interview a winning trainer.
Stan lived and breathed the Saratoga track this year. Along with our horse racing expert Jeff Scott, Stan, bright eyed and bushytailed, walked through the gates every morning, giving his dollar bill to a one of our hawkers for a pink sheet, and up to the press box.
“It’s a two-man squad for three daily newspapers during the horse racing season,” Stan will tell you. “Our editorial staff is locked into production.”
Sure, it’s his job. But without Stan, the status of the pink sheet this summer would have been a serious question mark.
Every day, for the 40 days, Stan made his way to the track to focus solely on horse racing, and more specifically, The Pink Sheet. Every day, Stan wondered what he could do to make the Pink Sheet a better product for the reader.
One of Stan’s biggest accomplishments this summer was forming a partnership with the Daily Racing Form for use of their past performance charts in the sheet. The partnership with DRF is a unique one which no other paper at the track can say they have.
“The DRF past performance chart addition was huge,” said Stan. I talked with him following the horse racing season for what he thought, was a track season wrap up meeting.
Stan even went as far as to have his hand in the pink sheet hawkers and making sure they were set to move the pink sheet on a daily basis.
“I was face to face with pink sheet customers with being involved with the Pink Sheet kids,” said Stan. “The big surprise was how hard our kids are working to sell every single copy and make commision versus the competition that pays there kids hourly for a similar product.”
Stan knew every single hawkers name, and even knew the competition’s hawkers.
So if you are keeping count, Stan wrote for the pink sheet, took photos for those articles when there were none already available, produced and copy edited every page, and was also helping the hawkers outside of the gates.
Being outside the gates, gave Stan a good idea of what people were looking for and what he can do next year to make the product better.
“What are people looking for? They want our first person features in the pink sheet,” said Stan.
Horse racing season is far from over, and with it, is Stan’s focus on it. If you asked him, he’d tell you it was only 40 days. But in those 40 days, Mr. Pink Sheet single handedly put out a product that the whole Saratogian staff can be proud of.
Not many writers are willing to go out onto a street corner on a hot summer morning and push their own newspaper. Stan Hudy sure will though, and that is because he is Mr. Pink Sheet, and there is no one else even close to competing for that title.