Horseplayers: Life at the Track

by Ted McClelland

Overview

This fun and witty exposé of horse racing in America goes behind the scenes at the track, providing a serious gambler's-eye view of the action. Ted McClelland spent a year at tracks and off-track betting facilities in Chicago and across the country, profiling the people who make a career of gambling on horses. This account follows his personal journey of what it means to be a player as he gambles with his book advance using various betting and handicapping strategies along the way. A colorful cast of characters is introduced, including the intensely disciplined Scott McMannis, "The Professor," a onetime college instructor who now teaches a course in handicapping, and Mary Schoenfeldt, a former nun and gifted handicapper who donates all of her winnings to charity. This moving account of wins, losses, and personal turmoil provides a sobering look at gamblers, gambling, and life at the track.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556525674
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2005
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.78(d)

About the Author

Ted McClelland is a staff writer for the Chicago Reader, where he writes a popular column called "At the Track" featuring his stories from the racetrack.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	How Gambling Saved My Life	1
1	The Blind Man and the Hustler	15
2	If Wishes Were Horses	27
3	Professor Speed	49
4	First Your Money, Then Your Clothes	63
5	170 Large	87
6	Derby Day	95
7	Travels with McChump	107
8	The Rebel Enclave	131
9	The Stat Man	147
10	The Late Great Eight	155
11	Omar and Lucky	169
12	Men Betting Badly	177
14	Eureka?	191
15	'Seabiscuit' Jockey Nearly Trampled	203
16	The Gold Club	211
17	The Twenty-Five-Dollar Horse	217
18	True Adventures in Gambling	223
19	Bob the Brain's Big Score	239
20	The One-Eyed Man Is King	249
	A Racetrack Glossary	257

Editorial Reviews

"Immensely readable account, by a brutally honest writer...a gambler’s book that is well worth a punt" —The Racing Post



"A delightful memoir . . . McClelland details his transformation from casual fan to obsessed racing geek with humor." —Railbird

From the Publisher

McClelland, who writes a column on horse racing for the Chicago Reader, took a year off to learn about horse racing and gambling. Though he was introduced to the sport as a young boy by his father the reader can easily see that the author is an outsider trying to fathom the sport's inside secrets. Here he introduces us to all the regulars at Chicago's Hawthorne Race Course and Arlington Park and shows how horse racing can become more than a passion. In fact, it can become an addiction. This book will best be appreciated for its humor and insight even by those who have had little experience at the racetrack. It echoes the hilarious Thirty Tons a Day by baseball showman Bill Veeck, who made a glorious but futile attempt to master the world of horseracing.-Paul Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A Chicago journalist spends a lively year playing the ponies. You can make a life at the track, but you can't make a living," says McClelland, a columnist at the Chicago Reader, as he sets out to prove himself wrong. Spending ten months at Illinois tracks both seedy (Hawthorne) and bucolic (Arlington Park), he studies the art of wagering. He bets on maidens (horses that have never won), the chalk (the betting favorite) and suckers (horses that repeatedly finish second, leading bettors to believe the animal is due for a win). McClelland learns from personalities both inside and outside the paddock: there's curmudgeonly Creighton Schoenfeldt, a devotee of a handicapping program called All-Ways, which ranks every horse "according to its speed from the gate, its class, its workouts" and its finishing kicks. And there's mild-tempered Bob the Brain, who, in the late 1970s, was one of a group of horseplayers making a living wage at the track. (That streak ended in the early 1990s, when the Racing Form began publishing speed figures each day.) And there's also Omar Razvi, a cab driver and gambler who buys a filly named Sassiness with his winnings. After months of "betting like a eunuch," McClelland decides to go from tightfisted to two-fisted, and triumphs-for a time. He finally discovers the "secret" to winning. It isn't in predicting the horses' behavior, it's in predicting how other gamblers will bet, and exploiting their mistakes. Amusing, opinionated, rambling and filled with a dizzying array of handicapping formulas-in short, everything a horse-racing book should be.

Kirkus Reviews