Another series of random bits…

To Rich and to last week’s anonymous commenter who posted about the Belmont Child Care Association holiday party—the folks at the BCCA would love to get in touch with you. If you’re interested in talking with them, please e-mail me at the e-mail address to the right and I’ll put you in touch.

In other backstretch news, I’ve got a couple of extra Curlin t-shirts from his win in the Jockey Club Gold Cup—one large and two XL. They’re $5 each and the proceeds from each t-shirt go completely to Backstretch Employees Service Team. If you’re interested, please contact me and I’ll get them out to you.

I’m glad to know that others think as highly of former Zayat filly Mushka; she was yesterday’s sale topper at Keeneland. Good to know, too, that she’ll stay in the care of Bill Mott and keep racing.

I’m currently reading Three Strides Before the Wire, the story of Charismatic’s 1999 Triple Crown run. Three tidbits that jumped off the page when I read them:

Elizabeth Mitchell, the author, quotes from a Clinton administration study on gambling: “A problem gambler was defined as anyone who lost one hundred dollars a year or more on lotteries, horses, bingo, casinos or any other game of chance.” [emphasis mine]

“ ‘No matter what theory of handicapping may seem most plausible,’ wrote expert bettor Tom Ainslie in his Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing, ‘the handicapper will be attempting to predict the future by interpreting past events of uncertain character and inexact significance. Yet survival at the track will demand predictions of considerable accuracy.’” [emphasis mine]

“Of all the world’s reporting beats, thoroughbred racing was one of the toughest that did not involve sniper fire.”

And in other news: anybody who thinks that New York City is a hotbed of liberalism should have been at the Garden on Tuesday night. When early election returns were flashed on the big screen, the crowd booed louder and longer than it did when the Islanders scored their second short-handed goal of the night. The guy sitting next to me observed of a Rangers’ black player, “Nigel Dawes just asked for a trade…”