It’s Good Bet They Won’t Last Forever

First, there was the pterodactyl. Then, the dinosaur. Then, the Great Plains bison. The white Siberian tiger.

One by one, the great species became extinct or endangered. Nature lovers deplored it. Conservationists decried it. Societies sprang up. Save the whale. Protect the coyote. Take a wolf home to pet.

But nobody raised a finger when another great unique species began to disappear from the land about a generation ago.

Once upon a time, there used to be abroad in this land an indigenous species known as Eohippus Ludus Americanus, the Great American Horseplayer. It was really found nowhere else in the civilized world. Damon Runyon got rich off him. So did some states. So did a generation of bookies. Bob Hope made movies about him. Frank Loesser wrote songs.

He was colorful, lovable, irascible. He talked tough but his heart was a plate of mush. He was a sucker for a hard-luck story. He got his shoes shined every day whether they had holes in the soles or not. He drank coffee by the barrel.

He was as migratory as a bird. He didn’t follow the sun, he followed the horses. He wasn’t looking for a tan, he was looking for a meet he could beat. His whole life was spent looking for a sure thing--that would pay at least 10-1. He never bet anything that paid less than a bank. Not that he trusted banks. Banks could run third, too.

He traveled alone because it cost less that way and because he didn’t trust fillies, no matter how many legs they had. Besides, what woman was going to stand by and see her fur coat run fifth? Or her new wallpaper lug out in the stretch? All he wanted in this world was a hot horse and a bookie who paid.

He had colorful nicknames. Harry the Hat, Sleep Out Louie, the Writer (not fiction, checks, which were the same thing), Fingers, the Dealer, Murray the Camel. He officed out of his pocket. He had his own phone. It was in a booth in the back of a pool hall.

He had his own language. He knew what case money was, that the wrapper was a 2-dollar bill and he lived in a world where a nickel was not five cents but 500--or 5,000--dollars and a dime was a grand, or 10 grand.

He was dour and dyspeptic. He was sure the world was a conspiracy and that every horse owner, jockey or trainer was out to cheat him. He subscribed to the Runyon theory: “All life is 6 to 5 against.” But he was willing to listen to any proposition. He’d rather have lost than not play. He thought everyone else was a sucker but he was the biggest one in sight himself.

I loved him.

He never noticed he was dying out. They never had any Little League horse racing or university studies on how to rate a beaten favorite. Handicapping is strictly a word-of-mouth science passed down, like diamond cutting.

Apparently, it wasn’t passed down. Horseplayers never had any families to pass it down to.

He got a bum rap, Eohippus Ludus Americanus. “All horseplayers die broke,” some wise guy wrote and it stuck.

He didn’t die any broker than a lot of other professional people. Horseplayers never lost the family firm or the wife’s inheritance. They didn’t have any firms to lose--or wives with or without money. The worst they dropped was the rent money. That’s what they had fire escapes for.

He’s becoming as scarce as the aurochs or the California condor. In the last few years, only occasional sightings have been recorded.

A pity. He was the backbone of an industry. He didn’t buy Japanese or go to Swiss banks. He did more to keep money in circulation than the IRS. It’s for sure he never buried it in any CD’s. He buried it in 9-5 shots.

He always looked as if he feared the worst and was having a miserable time, but I never bought it. To me, the happiest cast of characters around any sport were the ones around racing. They’ve got their own little world and they keep the real one out. The headline in the racing paper the day the Allies landed in Normandy was “23 Go In the McClellan Today.” How’s that for keeping first things first?

What happened to this hardy American species? Even the grizzly is making a comeback. But in the horseplayer’s world, handles are down, attendance is down, interest has peaked and horseplaying seems to have gone the way of the quilting bee.

It can’t be economics. What other industry do you know where the common rate of exchange is still the same as it was 60 years ago? The $2 bet is still the standard at a race track, the same as it was when coffee was a nickel and a hamburger a dime.

They used to say that racing would never succeed in California because it was too far from Lindy’s. There weren’t any horseplayers out here.

Turned out, the sound stages were full of them. They not only bet horses, they bought them. Hollywood Park became a citadel of racing. The tradition went on. The great names of show business joined the great names of horse racing. Citation was on the track and Bing Crosby was in the stands. Every day was an opening.

It’s been 50 years since Hollywood Park opened its gates, a great glittering palace of beauty and color. On June 10, it will celebrate its golden anniversary with a gala evening staged by that nabob of night television, Merv Griffin, and featuring 50 of the town’s most famous stars. For one night, the racing will be under the lights.

It will also be an effort to show that someone cares about our losing one of our national treasures, the woolly-coated horseplayer. He should not be allowed to go the way of Tyrannosaurus Rex, the whooping crane, or the missing link.

Why hasn’t the horseplayer reproduced himself? He has no natural enemies. He is no threat to anyone’s way of life. He’s not destructive of crops, malignant, even parasitical. He’s a producer. He just stands there and bets the 10-1 shot.

I think it’s as serious as the elm blight. He didn’t die broke. I’ve known too many over the years who went to the track all their lives and continued to eat three times a day and pay the light bill. Maybe they could have bought a yacht with what they wagered over the years. But what would a horseplayer want with a yacht?