The $64,000 Question

Saturday's late Pick Four at Saratoga paid over $64,000; and that with favored Cops Fever winning the finale. I can imagine that, on some day, under a certain circumstance, in a particular frame of mind (or state of consciousness), amongst a singular mix of horseplayers (or by myself), with a high degree of recklessness, emboldened perhaps by a recent score or some other financial blessing, with the planets aligned in a precisely defined manner and the weather invigorating the body, soul, and an especially creative nook somewhere in the folds of my brain, I might have had that. Just saying.

I'd started to handicap the sequence for a post and a wager, but abandoned the effort when it became obvious that the bet would be too expensive for my taste. I'd included Ninth Client ($18.40) off the big drop in class....and I'm a bit surprised that Eliot Spitzer didn't claim this horse and put it out to pasture. Telling ($68) was in my mix for the Sword Dancer; problem was that so were five others. This son of AP Indy had pace excuses when a close 5th in the Arlington Handicap, and had raced quite well at a mile and a half in the past. And I eventually came to settle on Cops Fever as my key in the 11th (though I came otherwise nowhere near cashing a ticket), so I can deduce that I could have ended up singling him had I pressed on.

The horse that would have beaten me was actually Expansion ($14). I tend to look at a horse like that and go 'no way,' coming off five consecutive losing efforts at short odds since graduating to this class as he had - the last four times as the favorite. However, that first impression is generally based on the assumption that the horse is going to be short odds again, and be worth a bet against on an established propensity to somehow come up just short. But the fact is that, at 6-1 (and, of course, with the benefit of hindsight), this son of Maria's Mon needed to be seen in a completely different light. He had competitive Beyers, legit excuses in his last three, and hailed from the sharp McLaughlin barn (which broke that little slump with first-time juveniles with Liston ($5.90) in the second. At 6-1, he goes from money burner to fair value, if not an overlay.

And that's one of my problems betting the multi-race wagers - lacking the crucial context which the tote board provides. With a horse like this, it's necessary to cast aside any assumptions or conclusions based on what odds a horse has gone off at in the past, or what it might be today, and judge it on a single, simple criteria - is it a contender? In the case of Expansion, the answer was clearly 'yes,' and it would have been a shame if I lost the bet basically by being a wise guy.

- Sean Avery ($14) won for fun for Hushion a little over a year after making his debut at Belmont (for Alan Iwinski). Tom Durkin is obviously either not a hockey guy, or one of those bitter Islander fans. My call would have been: "And here's Sean Avery, he's in all alone......HE SCORES!" For Hushion, that's three wins out of just eight starters, and at prices of 4-1, 5-1, and 6-1. (He has horses entered in the first and last race today.)