BANKROLL BEATDOWN
Tim Wilkin and Anthony Affrunti each was given a mythical $2,000 to spend as he sees fit during the Saratoga season.
Tim Wilkin
Lots and lots of rain on Thursday. Driving around the backstretch (left the golf cart on dry land), I saw moats and little lakes and rivers, courtesy of Mother Nature. Can only imagine what Otis was doing down on the Island with the mysterious Leopold. Am sure the dolt brothers were trying to recreate the scene from here. Maybe Oatie was the Skipper and his little buddy Leopold played the part of Gilligan as they tried a remake of the pilot episode of "Gilligan’s Island." Or maybe dimwitted Otis put a sail on the Blue Baloo and he and his mysterious friend put their own spin on “The Perfect Storm.” Most likely, Otis, shaking and nervous like a day-old puppy, was hiding under his futon bed (with a New York Islander blanket on top) waiting for the bad weather to pass. Otis, as we all know, is a coward. We also know he is a cheat. Wonder how much he has added to his account for this day’s Beatdown edition. When you have to pad to win, you aren’t a winner. W.C. Fields once said that anything worth having is worth cheating for. That is the gospel of Otis. He is not only a cheat, he’s a gutless cheat as well, as Doyle Lonnegan famously said to Henry Gondorff in “The Sting.” We’ll know for sure what kind of swindler Otis is if he starts betting on horses named Lucky Dan or Blue Note.
That Otis. What a character.
For today, $20 to win Alphalfa (3rd, turf only), $20 win/place Breaking Stones (7th) and $5 exacta box with Road to Success. Total bets: $70
Thursday’s results: Our $60 plays in race eight all came back when the race was taken off the grass. Top pick Gambling Cat was scratched as was Kitten With a Whip.
Losses: $0
Bankroll: $929.50
Anthony Affrunti
Spent another day downstate watching the races from afar while Wilkin wages on in the war for information and winners in the press box and abroad. More allegations of fixing numbers and tallies, but as we over on this side of the page know, it’s been corrected. Weeks ago. Time to concentrate on winning while he talks about fictional characters. Few weeks left for this pony show, and we’re swinging for the fences like a healthy Lou Gehrig. Great to see our old pal Rick Thompson in the pick box Thursday. Rick polices the press box stairs and all things surrounding the hovel where the scribe tribe plies its trade, which is not an easy task. The job isn’t as bad as it used to be, however. Years ago, it seemed that our late pal Jarboe used to tell everybody he met to come up and visit him, and did this year-round. Once the season came, so too did the multitudes, most of whom Jarboe forgot about. This started the Jarboe Roof Tour, which drew the ire of Wilkin and others while Rick shed 50 pounds by the end of the meet from climbing the stairs 40 times a day to summon Jarboe. There’s no telling how many people he brought up over the years, and chances are if you see a photo overlooking the track, it came from somebody on a Jarboe tour.
For today, not sure what kind of track we’ll have after the deluge of rain, nor what the turf situation will be, but we’ll bet $40 win and place on City Magic in the opener. Total bets: $80
Thursday’s results: Recovered $20 from our double with Sweet Mia, who scratched from the first race, but True Castle finished third, which killed the double with Big Scully, who won the second race. The $20 to win on Misty Veil (4th) was looking good until she decided to instead take a mud-laden scenic route through the stretch run and settled for second.
Losses: $40
Bankroll: $1,721.10