For those of you who have never been to a racetrack to watch the horses run, then I would invite you to at least watch a video, like on Youtube, to get a feel for what a race is like. To describe it with words cannot do justice to the experience, but I can at least try.
A typical racetrack looks a lot like this picture:
You bought your racing form, and you have looked it over as to the horses running for each race. You make your pick for each race. Depending on how much you are into the game, you choose your horse according to a whim or through arduous study and calculations. Either way, you have more than a ninety percent chance of losing.
We have made our bets at the betting windows, and now we’ll decide where to watch the race. In the beginning, I liked to be close to the railing. I not only wanted to see what was going on, I wanted to be part of the action, to hear the cacophony of the horses’ hooves trampling the dirt track, to smell horse sweat as these thousand-pound monsters raced past me, and feel the sudden rush of wind filled with sounds from the horses themselves and the urgings of their jockeys. What an adrenaline rush this is going to be.
Of course, we could also sit in air conditioned areas in cushy seats in the grandstand complex, watching not only this race on television but all the other racetracks televised—simulcasted— across the nation. A diehard gambler does not just bet on the races at this racetrack but as many racetracks operating that day.
The bugler sounds his call: this tells everyone that the races are now entering the track. An announcer begins to narrate the race. The crowd begins to roar its approval.
The horses (today, we will say that there are eight horses) are led to the starting gate by trainers and groomsmen, their jockeys already seated and ready to race. The electrical starting gate, invented by Clay Puett (an American rider and starter) is a movable, mechanical tool that is comprised of tight compartments large enough for the horse and its jockey. Today, it is the best device to make sure that all the horses start the race at the same time.
Not all of the horses are comfortable being confined within each stall of the starting gate, and they have to be calmed or disqualified before the race can start. It is here that many injuries have occurred to both horse and the rider.
Like me in my early days of watching the horses, you move down to the track railing. You want a clear view of what is going to happen. After all, this is your first race, and you don’t want to miss a thing during the next two-and-a-half minutes while the horses aggressively traverse the mile and a quarter track.
The starting bell rings. The gates of each starting stall open simultaneously. The announcer declares with feigned excitement in his voice: “And, they’re off!”
You find yourself pressed up against the protective fence by other spectators eager to see the start of the race. It begins with a distant rolling thunder. You can barely hear it over the blaring loudspeaker with the narrator uncannily capable of keeping track of all the horses by name within a scrum-like pack. And don’t forget the crowd: bettors enthusiastically rooting for the horse of their pick, exhorting the jockey to “make his move” that will guarantee victory. No, you feel the thunder under your feet. The ground begins to shake, and this only titillates the excitement that is beginning to run up and down your nervous system. As the horses en masse approach your position, the pounding of the hooves on the dirt becomes deafening. Your heart accelerates, matching the increasing beat. Then, as the horses bear down on you, excitement turns to terror. Your mind’s fight-or-flee response sends all kinds of survival signals to your brain: “Let’s get out of here!” But you can’t move, you are so pressed against the fence by the other spectators.
Eight thousand-plus pounds of horseflesh with their hundred and sixteen pound or so riders stream past you, a huffing, puffing steam engine travelling between thirty-five to forty miles an hour. You can’t breathe. Your mouth is open with an unvoiced scream. Death screeches past you in mere seconds, and you wonder (later) why your heart is still beating. What a rush!
You are still alive, still caught up in the race.
The horses take the first turn, and they begin to separate. On the far side, the pack begins to stretch out. As they enter the back stretch, three horses now take the lead and are beginning to leave the pack behind. Your horse is one of the three, and the excitement returns with the realization that you might win some money today. They take the far turn and begin heading for the finish line. You are screaming your horse’s name. He’s in the lead, now not in the lead, then in the lead again as the bobbing heads of the horses vie for that photo finish.
Three hundred yards from the finish line, the “unbelievable” happens. The horse that will win suddenly and inexplicably spurts forward. The lengths between it and the second place horse begin to lengthen. It crosses the finish line ahead of all the others, a clear winner!
And then a hush overcomes the crowd, a blanket that kills the adrenaline-induced mayhem just seconds before helped spur the horses to the end. It is almost as quiet as the grave as the spectators and betters alike assess if they won or lost. Most lost. People tear up their tickets and toss them into the wind like so much confetti.
So do you. The next question is whether or not you want to make another bet and go through all this highly charged, emotional roller-coaster again or not.
Aqueduct Racetrack is a Thoroughbred horse-racing facility and racino in South Ozone Park, Queens, New York City, New York. (The word “racino” was coined to combine both a racetrack and a casino. Joe Bob Briggs in 2003 urged racetrack owners to convert to racinos because horse and dog racing has been in a slow decline over the past two decades or so. The addition of slot machines and other gambling tables have helped revenues, and gamblers being gamblers would be induced to betting on the horses as well.) To be honest, playing one-armed bandits or the tables held no excitement for me. It was the horses that got me hooked.
When I first went to Aqueduct Racetrack in 1971, I went with a friend of mine with the appropriate name of Harry the Horse, whom I met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I used to pick Harry up and drive him to the AA meetings during the 1970s, and we eventually became gambling acquaintances. Harry and I would go to the race track together many, many times, whether it was Belmont, Yonkers, Aqueduct, Roosevelt, or whatever.
I never regarded Harry as a friend the way I would have liked. You see, Harry was a very guarded person. He stood a little taller than me—I stand just over six feet—and a bit more in girth. The only time he cracked open a peek at his personality and past, which was seldom at best, was when he talked about his son, who was also an alcoholic, and expressed being personally responsible for all his troubles. Harry was a lot older than me (he was near sixty-five years old while I was a “spring chicken” at thirty-eight) and had been playing the ponies for years. I never asked Harry on the way home from the track if he had won or lost. You just didn’t do it. I had no idea if he was a successful horse player or an unhappy or losing horse player. I just don’t know to this day.
But I learned a great deal about the horses from Harry. Being that Harry and I spent a lot of time together driving to and from the Aqueduct, he regaled me with a number of stories about racing. A lot of strange things happen about, around, and in the race track. My education came quick and fast.
“Young man,” he would always address me, “you keep coming to the racetrack, and you are going to see many, many strange things.”
Early on I noticed there were a number of gurneys—medical gurneys—at the Aqueduct Racetrack. I was surprised to see gurneys there, and so I asked Harry: “What are the gurneys doing here?”
By the way, you won’t find this answer on the Internet.
Harry answered: “Well, young man, you keep coming to the race track, and you’re going to see some people have heart attacks. When they fall down, people will call the medical people who will come and put them on the gurneys. Then they rush them to waiting ambulances who will transport them to nearby hospitals. That’s why the racetrack has gurneys. There are heart attacks at the racetrack.”
Well, I couldn’t imagine somebody having a heart attack at a racetrack because usually he either won the race or lost the race. Maybe, I thought, a person who probably lost a sizeable bet could experience a heart attack from sheer shock to the nervous system. I was still kind of dubious about this for months. But, like Harry said, if you keep going to the racetrack, some strange things are going to happen, including witnessing heart attacks. In this case: it was to me.
One of the early attractions for me in going to the race track was to watch the race. I would make my selection, go to the railing, and when the race was off, I would watch the race with great anticipation. I really enjoyed it. Win, lose, or draw, I got completely caught up in the watching, the pounding hooves of the horses on the track, and the tumultuous roar of the crowd. When it was all over in a matter of minutes, there would be a lot of happy people, and there would be a lot of sad people. And that’s how it was. There were winners, and there were losers.
I kept going to the track, and I got to the point where I didn’t watch the horses any longer. I couldn’t watch the horses any longer. I found out that at that one point during the race, as the horses turned for home, my heart beat would start to pick up. And I said: “Oh, my God. Maybe one of those gurneys has my name on it.” I had to figure out a way to keep from having a heart attack during a race. So, what I decided to do was to hide in the bathroom until after the race was over.
You got to picture this. Here we go with the insanity of the gambler. I would drive maybe two hours to the race track to make my bets. I would probably lose my money, which I most often did. And, instead of watching the races, I would hide in the bathroom until the race was over. And, then I would drive two hours to go back home again. I was spending maybe four hours on the highways, never seeing a race because I believed my heart couldn’t take it. What did I do? I’d hide in the bathroom. Now, to me, that is insanity. And the upshot of my ill-founded thinking? My heart was racing just as fast in the bathroom as it would have been if I had been outside watching the race.
I was asked if I noticed other gamblers in the bathroom, hiding like me. I don’t know. I was so fixated on that single race, praying, begging, pleading that my horse would win that I didn’t have a clue what was happening around me.
But it gets even better—or sadder—or maybe to the reader funny. I would hide in the bathroom, and I would hear the roar of the crowd as the race came to its conclusion, and then the roar would die down because the race was over.
Only then did I figure that it was safe for me to come out of the bathroom. But I didn’t just walk out of the bathroom like a normal person to see if I won or lost. I would sneak out. Sneak out!
I must have been very comical to watch if anyone bothered to notice. But then, I wasn’t the only person at the racetrack that was imitating this bizarre behavior. I mean, it was like I was a criminal or something, hiding from the police while trying to surreptitiously escape from their net. Or, I was the naughty kid who pulled a prank and was trying to blend in with the surroundings as I snuck away from the scene of the crime.
After exiting from the bathroom, I could not walk up to one of the tote boards to see if I had won or lost. Oh, no! I had to stalk the boards, as if it were some wild beast or game. I didn’t want to scare it off, so I would make my approach very slowly, using whatever cover was available. Maybe somewhere in the recesses of my mind I believed that if I crept up to one of the boards where the results were official that it would be kind and announce that I was a winner. Maybe if I walked boldly up to the boards, the results would magically change to make sure I was a loser. In any event, all of my actions were irrational!
After I gazed up to see that I had lost, then and then only could I calm down. But up to that point of walking up to the tote board to see if I had won or lost, even though I was hiding in the bathroom, my heart would be pounding. I now know why they have gurneys at the race tracks.
Gamblers eventually become lepers of their own insanity. As I write this, I think back to those days I was hiding in the bathroom? I asked that big magical question: what the hell was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I watch the race? Why did I get so totally caught up with the physical aspects of my heart pounding with the anticipation of the horses coming out of the starting gate and rounding the turn to come home.
It was unbelievable what I put myself through. Luckily, one day, I realized my insanity, and I gave up the ghost. It wasn’t easy, but it was something I had to do if I wanted to avoid ending up on a gurney.
When I first went to the race track, I thought I was going to go and have a nice day, especially during the springtime and summertime, and watch the horses run. I was smart enough to know that, usually, you are a loser. They didn’t build these huge race tracks because there wasn’t anything else to do. People aren’t winning all the races. Most gamblers are losers. The owners use the gamblers’ losses to build more casinos and race tracks because they are lucratively profitable. Besides, they have to pay taxes to various state entities as well as some underhanded activities we are familiar with and generically term it corruption.
I got quite an education about how serious it is to be a compulsive gambler. A compulsive gambler, to me, is somebody who keeps on doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. From my experiences and others, gamblers are losers in the long run. Oh, you hear the occasional exception about somebody winning a huge lottery, and that’s wonderful. But, believe me, most people going to casinos and racetracks, when all is said and done, and you tally up their debits and credits, they usually have more losses than profits. That’s just the nature of the beast. The cards are stacked up against them. As they say in Nevada, the house never loses.
Early on in my journey in my gambling career, I noticed that after the races were completed, many people would discard their tickets and throw them on the floor. They were left there for the sweepers to clean up after the last race. I didn’t think much about it. I’ve done it a million times. And then you go on your merry way to bet on the next race or go home.
But then, one day, I asked my friend Harry the Horse: “I see a lot of people picking up losing tickets! Why are they doing that? I mean, are they going to collect losing tickets and sell them as paper down the road. What’s the purpose of picking up losing tickets?”
Harry said to me: “They are looking for winning tickets. Maybe a person didn’t know they had a winning ticket, and they threw it away. So, these people you are talking about picking up tickets, they are looking for winning tickets.”
I said: “Harry, that’s nuts! Why would a person throw away a winning ticket?”
Harry would say those magic words: “Young man, keep coming to the race track, and you’ll find out these answers to your questions.”
So I kept going to the race track, be it Aqueduct, Belmont, or wherever. There they were, losing gamblers throwing their tickets on the floor after each race, which means they lost the race. I still noticed other people picking up those very same tickets, looking for, I assume, a winning ticket, which was accidentally thrown away by a gambler who just didn’t know he had won the race. And, to me, for many years, it seemed totally insanity to bend down to a dirty track floor with cigarette butts, spilled beer, and everything else to pick up these tickets. Who knows what kind of germs were on these losing tickets. In the beginning I would laugh at them, saying that these people were crazy!
Oh, really!
As Harry said: “Young man, keep going to the race track and you’re going to see many, many strange things.” And lo and behold, as the years went by, as I was going to the race track—and please believe me—I succumbed to the madness. I’m a loser. I’m a loser.
I recall one day I was down to my last fifty dollars. It was the ninth race. I put enough money aside for gasoline and tolls for the bridges going home. I had fifty dollars mad money left over. I said to myself: “Okay. I’m a loser today, but I’m going to take this fifty dollars and make one last bet, and this bet is going to be a winner, and I’ll walk out with money in my pocket.”
Did I not tell myself I was a loser? Needless to say, I made the bet. The horses ran. As the expression goes, “The horse is still running,” which means the horse didn’t win, which means I lost my last fifty dollars. All I had left in my pocket was money for gasoline and bridge tolls to go home.
So, what did I do? I was totally frustrated. I was saying to myself: I knew I had made the right selection in that final race, and it should have won. But as I said earlier, horses cannot read the racing form. So out of frustration, I—I—a college graduate, a CPA, started to bend down and pick up losing tickets, looking for possibly a winning ticket.
Now, when you pick up these tickets, you don’t know if the horse won or lost. I mean, you just don’t know. You have to go check the previous races publications for winning and losing. You have a handful of tickets in your hand. All of these are losing tickets. But you are hoping beyond hope that in your hand is maybe a discarded winning ticket. You walk up to the booth where they have all the results of all the races. And you start taking each of the losing ticket in your hand and checking the races.
Yep! That’s a loser. Yep! That’s a loser. Please believe me, I never, never found a winning ticket. And yet, I persisted in doing this in my future days of going to the race track. Just another indication of the insanity of the gambler.
Instead of realizing that if it was a winner, the person would have been cashed in the ticket, the gambler says to himself that maybe the winning ticket belonged to a dumb gambler who threw it away. The real dumb gambler was the one picking up the losing tickets. And please believe me, I was a dumb gambler.
So far, I am making a main issue that the gambler is one sick puppy. I shouldn’t generalize by saying that all gamblers are sick puppies, but I sure as hell know that this gambler was one sick puppy. What is amazing is that I never realized the mental strain I put on my brain when I was wagering bets. I just figured I would make a bet and that’s it. I wished it was that easy. But then I had the mental masturbation of asking myself: “Did I make the right bet?”
I started gambling in the early 1970s. It was strictly to kill some time on weekends by going to the racetrack, because early on my gambling was restricted to betting on the horses. It wasn’t until I moved to Las Vegas in 1980 that I took up gambling on sporting events, mostly college basketball games, college football, games, and professional football games. Even when I was first making these kind of bets, it was fun. But somewhere along the line, in the mid 1980s, unbeknownst to me, my gambling was becoming a mental and a physical problem. Although I am an addicted person, affected by alcohol and gambling, I don’t understand how those two activities can become a mental obsession, resulting in memory blackouts, the shakes, and fear of getting the results from my bets.
I’m living in Las Vegas.
As my career in gambling persisted, I was into too many track horse races. I was also betting on basketball games when they were in season and football games when they were in season. One particular night, I had made a rather large basketball bet on Duke University. I don’t recall who they were playing, but I was certain after studying all the forms I had on the game that Duke should win this game easily.
I made my bet through a legitimate agency and then proceeded to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Although I have convinced myself that this bet was a sure thing, I could not for the life of me let it go. The game consumed me, even though I was nowhere close geographically to either the arena or had access to radio and television coverage. So here I am at this twelve-step meeting for recovering alcoholics. As the meeting is going on—and please believe me—I have no idea of what is being said at this meeting. My mind is all caught up on Duke University basketball game. I sat there for one hour. I don’t know what the speaker said. I don’t know if I said anything. I don’t remember who came to the meeting or what was said to me in passing. My mind was a million miles away from reality, playing the game as if I were actually there. I would say to myself: “Well, the first quarter is over, and maybe Duke is up by four points.” When the half is over, “Maybe Duke is up by eight points. Maybe when the third quarter is over, maybe Duke is up by twelve points.” Maybe, maybe, maybe. I’m really going nuts at playing this game.
What I didn’t know back then was that I was in a blackout—a gambling blackout—whereby everything around me was in the dark. I did not know who was speaking, what was going on during the meaning, because my mind was caught up in the Duke basketball game. I call it a blackout. I used to joke about it, that if my wife had been there—this beautiful blond girl— was there and every guy the place was jumping on her bones, I wouldn’t even have noticed it. I was so caught up in this mental masturbation of how Duke was doing in the basketball game. It was a blackout.
So, the game was over. I didn’t know if Duke won or lost. So what did I do? I ran to a phone booth. Not walked; ran! I got my coins out, dialed the appropriate number, and waited for the results. The betting information switchboard answers and begins telling me the results. My heart was pounding. I was so nervous, I couldn’t hear the results. I don’t know if the person on the other end of the line said if Duke won or if Duke lost.
I didn’t know anything. I was still in this mental blackout. I just couldn’t absorb my surroundings, what was going on around me. So, out of frustration, I called back a couple of times, and the same thing happened. The results came on; the announcer gave the results. But I was so wacky, so caught up in the blackout, I couldn’t hear the results. I was in a panic. I didn’t know what was happening to me.
So, I hung up the receiver, and I left the phone booth. I headed off to a nearby casino, Sam’s Town, to check the results. While I’m driving over to the casino, my mind was still playing the game. (I was lucky I didn’t have a car accident.) I kept saying to myself, over and over: “Well, Duke should have been ahead in the first quarter; maybe Duke was ahead in the second quarter, the third quarter, and in the fourth quarter they won the game. Maybe they won by the appropriate points, and I won my bet.”
I’m just going wacky, but I didn’t know I am going wacky. This is just what is happening in my mind.
So, I get to the Sam’s Town safe and sound. Inside, they have this big tote board with the results of the games all over the country. I got to the casino and parked my car. An ordinary person, I think, would just walk inside the casino walk, over to where the tote boards are, and look up at the results to find out if he won or lost. Well, not this gambler.
I was so nervous, unreasonably so. I was still in this blackout state. I have to slow down my heart. I didn’t want to have a heart attack in the middle of the casino—besides, they didn’t have any gurneys surreptitiously hidden behind a corner.
I snuck into Sam’s Town like a cat. I snuck in like I am trying to be the Invisible Man and getting ready to make my move to rob the place. I slid up against the walls; I hid behind the pillars. I was inching my way towards the area where the tote boards are. Then like a cat peeking around a corner, I start to peek around the corner to look at the tote board to see if I won or lost. I was sneaking around like a cat. You know how a cat sometimes enters the room, it peeks around the corner to see if there is any danger. That what I did at Sam’s Town. I peeked around the corner. I peeked around the corner. I peeked around the corner. And I still can’t see the results, even though the results are very visible. I was so nervous, that I was kind of blinded to the point that I couldn’t see the results.
I am a bit surprised that I was not arrested or at least questioned because of my bizarre behavior. I mean, the casino is literally covered wall-to-wall with cameras, and there is security in just about every corner. I figure that, while I was acting totally insane, I was not out of character with other sick gamblers. My actions were interpreted as “normal,” within the bounds, that is, of this gambling disease that all gamblers go through. Thank God no one was filming me to later broadcast on “America’s Funniest Videos” or something like that. Me! A banker! The damage to my career would have been devastating. But I wasn’t thinking my career at that moment. I wanted to know one thing: did I win or not?
I said to myself: “This is crazy! Just walk up to the tote boards and look at the results!” But I can’t do that. I gotta stay hidden. After an agonizing length of time—again, I cannot remember how long it took me—I finally get up the bravery, the gusto. I turned the corner and walked up to the tote boards and looked up at the board. Lo and behold, I lost.
As I looked back on this, for just a lousy bet, I put myself through such agony. Was my wife at the meeting? Were men having sex with her? What was the score after the first quarter? Did I speak at the meeting. I have no idea what when on during the meeting. I had no idea what the phone call was all about. I held the receiver. The man was talking the results, but I couldn’t hear him or understand what he was saying! I went to Sam’s Town. I snuck in like a cat. I peeked around the corner. I couldn’t see the tote board even though it was bigger than life itself. I was so blinded by my nerves being shot. I finally got up the courage to turn the corner, walk up to the tote board, look up, and I lost!
And I said to myself, “Eddie, what are you doing to yourself?”
Friends, that is a sick gambler. There will be more sickness. This is not the first time it happened to me. It happened at future bets.
Betting or gambling, in my mind, was meant to be fun. But somewhere along the line, the fun went out of it. It’s just like the drinking career I had: it was fun for a while, and then when the compulsion took over, it was no more fun. I describe myself as a chronic alcoholic, which to me means that I would get so mentally and physically sick from drinking that my deranged mind would tell me that I would feel better by drinking some more. Obviously, in that mental state, I had no control over my alcohol addiction. I would simply drink until I was simply too sick to drink, and then I would be forced to dry out for a number of days before I resumed my insanity of taking the first drink.
The same thing happened to me when I bet on professional football games. While the games were in progress on any given Sunday, I could not watch the game on TV or listen to it on the radio. My mental state was so caught up in my illness that I didn’t want to get the results. I was afraid to find out if I had won or lost.
On Sunday afternoons, during the professional football season, I was afraid of getting the results, either via television or the radio. To protect myself from this insanity, I would jump into my car and drive for hours in the desert area surrounding Las Vegas. While driving, I only played music, avoiding any stations that might have results of the football games. It may be difficult for you to understand the mental state of this gambler, but somewhere in my mental makeup, I developed a tremendous fear of getting results of my bets. It wasn’t always this way for when I first started gambling, but I crossed the line some place where my mind was telling me not to get the results. And, I don’t quite understand where my thinking was coming from, but it seems crazy for me today to think I would drive for hours in the desert, playing only music, only to avoid hearing the results of the football games.
This didn’t happen only on one Sunday: it was a recurring event each Sunday. I didn’t share what I was doing with any of my friends because I was afraid they would tell me that I had a problem with my gambling. I didn’t want to hear that either. Again, the mind of this sick gambler didn’t want to face the reality that he had a disease, which left unattended could lead him to financial disaster or even suicide. I have known a couple of gamblers who were sober in the twelve-step program for a number of years but became addicted to gambling, and the mental anguish of losing everything led them to commit suicide.
To a non-gambler, that may seem insane, but to a gambler, who gets so distraught with constantly losing, his self worth falling to an all-time low, helplessly burdened with a feeling of no way out of this circular dilemma, there is only one option left: to take his own life.
I am lucky in that I stopped gambling before my only option to handling the disease of compulsive gambling was to commit suicide. I recall one instance in a twelve-step meeting of Gamblers Anonymous that a young fellow came to one of our meetings. I remember him very clearly. He was a nice-looking fellow, and he was a dealer at one of the hotels in Las Vegas. At these meetings, they would ask if anybody was a newcomer; in other words, was this their first meeting.
This gentleman stood up and said “Yes. This was my first meeting and my last.”
This caught our attention when he said this meeting was his last. We asked him what he meant by that.