Racetrack Mentality in the Oval Office
Toxic gamblers in the oval office claim the race was fixed
Mark Cramer (author of Old Man on a Green Bike and Urban Everesting)
In horse-racing terminology, an “oval” is a racetrack. In the old days of Casey Stengel and the New York Mets, before the first off-track betting office was installed, I would escape to wager at Aqueduct Racetrack, explaining to my workmates that I was off to the oval office.
Most horseplayers are stoic realists, but among the regulars a certain type of toxic character can be seen and heard. When he wins a race, he’s in your face, bragging about what a great handicapper he is. I remember the worst of them, a guy we called Checkers. Often after winning a bet on an odds-on (obviously superior) favorite, he’d gloat, “I’m going to win so much that I’ll become sick and tired of winning.”
More often than not, players of his ilk eventually become sick and tired of losing. But not before irritating everyone within earshot with their inane logic and weak, loudly voiced, excuses.
“The race was fixed”
After these self-aggrandizing players lose a bet on a race, you can hear them shouting like an out-of-tune chorus, “The race was fixed!”
Checkers had the loudest voice, and the loudest clothing as well. We called him Checkers because he wore a checkered sport jacket.
At the entrance to the track, there was a row of stands where the touts hawked their picks for a buck. One of the touts looked like he worked out at the Charles Atlas Gym, so we called him Atlas. Sometimes Checkers would buy a tout sheet from Atlas or some other tout and play these “expert” selections.
Atlas shrugged
Atlas was Checkers’ go-to tout, especially when the second race in the daily double was too tough for him to decipher. On one particular windy Thursday, Checkers had the winner in the first half of the double but the Atlas pick in the second race finished last.
Instead of trotting out his usual gripe that the race was fixed, Checkers shuffled over to the tout stands and called Atlas a bum. Atlas could have twisted Checkers into a New York pretzel, but instead Atlas shrugged.
“They changed the rider,” he told Checkers. “Look, you can have my picks for free tomorrow.”
Atlas didn’t like being called a “tout,” preferring “turf advisor.” The rest of us called him the “Corona advisor” because he lived in Corona Park in Queens, an 8-mile drive from the track.
If you arrived at the track after the fourth race, the touts had split, but their sheets were strewn about, altered and reprinted after the first two races had been run, in order to show that they had picked the daily double.
One afternoon, in the midst of a losing streak, Checkers came up to me to tout the horse he loved in the fifth race. He’d perform this ritual with anyone within talking distance. The horse eventually lost. He came back to my seat to grumble that Atlas was a bum.
“Then why do you keep using Atlas as your Corona advisor?” I asked.
Checkers had many friends at the oval office, since misery loves company. They were an unruly crowd. Many of the regular horseplayers looked at them as disruptive, but the management tolerated them for their betting action.
The last time I saw Checkers, he had come over to brag that he’d bet the winning horse. I asked him why he was not now complaining that the race was fixed.
I wasn’t in a good mood, having lost three straight photo finishes, so I called him a loser. “Loser,” I shouted.
“You wait and see,” he screamed back. “One day I’ll become president of the United States.”
