Gone, Baby, Gone
Items lost at Roosevelt Raceway, 1977-1981:
On March 20, 1978, someone reported a lost box of Girl Scout cookies and a book entitled Physics for Career Education. Several weeks later, a Mineola man claimed to have lost $2,350 sometime between buying a pretzel and the top of the 10th race. (The plot thickens!) Elsewhere, there are missing baby clothes (who takes a baby to the track?) and wedding rings, a birth certificate, a blue and orange flowered plastic bag, mimeographed copies of important files, and a woman’s imitation fur coat: “Right pocket contains a lot of keys and left has lipstick.”
Roosevelt Raceway was once the site of the Messenger Stakes, one of the races that make up the Triple Crown of harness racing for pacers. The track was closed in 1988 and torn down in 2000, to the grief of many fans.
Sunday Evening Notes
– Teresa has a great post up on Brooklyn Backstretch about our Saturday trip to Laurel Park. While the day was a bust for me at the windows, the visit was more than redeemed by the pleasures of watching a race from the backstretch, hanging out in Laurel’s comfortable clubhouse box seats with fellow horseplayers, and meeting Washington Post turf writer John Scheinman, who had some excellent tips on the local card (if only I had listened).
– First round Triple Crown nominations are out (PDF).
– The Super Bowl looked over at 14-10. Then — in a fourth quarter moment so transcendent even a non-football fan like me could appreciate it — Eli Manning eluded swarming Patriots players to pass the ball 32 yards into David Tyree’s sure hands, putting the Giants on the Patriots’ 24-yard line and pretty much guaranteeing an upset. My sympathies to New England Patriots followers, who must have been sure their team was on the verge of football immortality. All the pressure on Tom Brady couldn’t have helped, but it also looked as though the Patriots — and especially the offensive line — were outplayed from start to finish by a scrappier, more determined team. Sort of like 1-2 Great Emperor finishing a nose behind longshot Jed Greeley in the third at Aqueduct this afternoon …
– Speaking of the Super Bowl, one of the best ads of the night had to be this one from Vitamin Water, featuring Shaq, Santa Anita, and a horse named Chunk of Love:
The Quiet Season
The Thanksgiving weekend stakes flurry over, racing enters its annual quiet season and I’m taking the chance to catch up on some reading, refresh my handicapping, and pursue a couple of other little projects. Things will be quiet around Railbird until Santa Anita opens, Aqueduct returns on New Year’s Day, and the first stirrings of Derby fever arrive with Gulfstream racing. Happy holidays, everyone …
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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