The Sport of Kings

In the summer of 1968, Munson was adamant that we try to support ourselves full time by playing the horses.  To kick it off, he wanted me to accompany him to Hollywood Park on opening day.  I'd never been to the races, but betting on horses was as natural as breathing to Munson since he had grown up living across the street from Santa Anita.  Attending opening day was a Munson family tradition and he hadn't missed one since he was twelve years old.  This applied equally for all five major tracks operating in California – Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, Del Mar in Southern California as well as Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Park located in the San Francisco Bay area.

I arrived at his apartment late in the afternoon so we could spend plenty of time handicapping and head out to the track the next day.  Munson had picked up two copies of the Daily Racing Form and once we settled in, launched into a four hour tutorial trying to bring me up to speed.  Munson had more than a decade's experience at this stage and possessed a formidable, if not fanatical, knowledge of all aspects of American thoroughbred racing.  Fortunately, I had always favored baseball for its numbers and statistics, so I was completely enthralled by the speed ratings, medications, track variants, track bias, blood lines, pace, class, wagering options, money management, jockey and trainer trends and the like.  Munson placed the greatest emphasis on not trying to bet every race as it was a guaranteed road to ruin.  Rather we must limit ourselves to one wager that we have derived at via methodical analysis and that represents the best bet on that given day.  Any other approach was doomed to fail.  Discipline was the secret.

Once I became conversant with the jargon and technical nuances, we turned our attention to the next day's slate of races.  We set as our opening day goal, to reach a consensus on a single wager that was an assured winner, and set about to find it.  We bounced back and forth for hours but slowly began to narrow the divide between our selections.  Eventually, we settled on a parlay that we both were totally convinced would come in.  Our only concern was that it seemed to us to be so totally obvious that the payoff would be ordinary – but that was the discipline and by God, it was a mortal lock!  We had picked a 5-2 daily double.  Horse number 5 in the first race parlayed to number 2 in the second.  We were going all in by combining our funds on this single wager.

I took forever to fall asleep that night as I visualized a life of riches, travel and excitement following the thoroughbred racing circuit around the USA year after year.  Summers at Saratoga and winters at Hialeja, all the time studying at the foot of the master.

We woke up late and had to hurry over to Hollywood park.  We zoomed into the parking lot that was pretty crowded due to its being opening day and looked for an open spot.  We were running out of time and Munson looked desperate.  Finally, we saw an open space and pulled into it with a slight screech of tires as we came to an abrupt stop facing the back end of a battered, yellow VW bug.  Munson leaned forward with his eyes a-bulging as he spied the VW's license plate numbers and shouted, "It's a sign!!!  Six three six!!!!!  That's the daily double!!!", and with that he leapt from the car and sprinted off to the betting windows.