Some Believe Santa Anita’s Real Beauty Is a Swift Long Shot

Terry is a burly man with darting eyes and a frown that won’t go away. He’s having a so-so day at Santa Anita Park, he insists, scouring the floor of the clubhouse. He deftly flips a discarded betting ticket with the toe of his shoe and hungrily scans the top of a trash basket. There are nuggets in all that trash, he said. Sometimes a greenhorn will drop a ticket, not even realizing it’s a winner.

But that’s a long shot. A real long shot. Terry (who won’t give his last name) turns back to the racing program, where the potential payoffs are usually a little less dependent on miracles. “I just missed on an exacta in the last race,” he grumps, “but I’m still alive on the triple.”

A few paces away, just outside the clubhouse entrance, is a sweeping view of the San Gabriel Mountains, with a glimpse of a freshly powdered Mount Baldy to the east. For many fans, the Arcadia track’s palm-lined infield and its in-your-face mountain landscape elevate Santa Anita from race track to elegant picnic spot.

But Terry’s not impressed by the view. “It won’t put a dollar in my pocket,” he said.

At a time when racing administrators from Boston to Florida to Hollywood Park are talking gloomily about falling attendance rates, Santa Anita still packs them in with monotonous regularity. “It’s the only place in the world where people will fight to give away their money,” said one bettor, breathing hard as he hustles through the parking lot to get his bet in on the Daily Double before the betting windows close.

Actually, as race track regulars will tell you, racing fans all over the country hustle to wager their money. But there’s an extra festive something-or-other about the artichoke-green Arcadia track, where hard-line handicappers like Terry rub shoulders at the railings with a lot of people who just go for the fresh air.

“Just look at this place,” said Kathy Layman, an unemployed Orange County bus driver, struggling to explain the track’s appeal. “The scenery, the palm trees, the mountains with snow on them. It’s beautiful.”

In fact, attendance is actually slipping a little, Santa Anita managers acknowledge. The 17-week winter season last year drew an average daily attendance of 25,463, compared with about 27,000 the year before and 30,000 in 1987. “But that has a lot to do with off-track wagering (introduced in 1987),” said Jane Goldstein, director of publicity. “We knew that would draw some people away.”

And it’s still far ahead of fading tracks like Hialeah in suburban Miami, Suffolk Downs near Boston and Hollywood Park in Inglewood. Only Del Mar in San Diego County and Saratoga in New York State draw more people than Santa Anita.

At the same time, the average daily handle--the total amount wagered at the track--keeps going up (better than $7.5 million so far this season, which is less than two weeks old).

And the big events still bring the big crowds, jingling with coins, eager to put their money down. For example, opening day this year drew 50,605 to the track, Goldstein said, making it the biggest weekday showing since the track opened in 1934.

“It’s a different kind of clientele here,” contends usher Bill Ashland, a former jockey who mans the ramp to the winner’s circle. “People are probably going to go for more than a $2 bet.”

On a crisp, sunny Wednesday afternoon, the rail birds loll in the sun, thumbing through Racing Form and tip sheets, and picnickers spread out on the infield grass.

Track bugler Jay Cohen, a conspicuous figure in red fox-hunting jacket and top hat, with a five-foot bugle in one hand, goes about his duties of calling the horses to post.

He’s a little worried today, because there’s nobody to cue him when the horses are out of the paddock, pacing single-mindedly towards the long passageway to the track. “The guy who ordinarily does it is painting his apartment,” he said.

The problem is knowing how long to stand there on the track and play. “I have to be finished playing by the time the horses hit the track,” he said. “If not, I’ll probably get run over.”

Cohen, 33, a classical trumpeter who has been bugling at tracks in Southern California for three years, has an assortment of 15 fanfares, including five that he has composed. “The bigger the race, the longer the fanfare,” said Cohen, who practices three hours a day. Mostly, it’s the familiar call-to-the-post, but sometimes he plays one of his own, including a short, exuberant refrain that incorporates part of the theme to “Star Wars.”

Thursday is payday for track employees. “I shouldn’t tell you this,” he said, “but for the eighth race on Thursday, I play the Army call for payday.”

Out on the infield, a group of regulars sit on the grass and compare racing notes. These are old friends, who always meet at the same spot.

“You can see the whole race from here,” said Frank Ritchey, an insurance agent from Anaheim. Ritchey is a familiar face in the infield (“Someday, they’ll put his tombstone out here,” said his son, Frank Jr.) and a veteran horse player. He carries a legal-sized notebook with tightly written jottings on each race--the product of four hours of studying the Racing Form the evening before.

Santa Anita is Ritchey’s favorite track. “You can come out, breathe clean air and not have somebody blowing smoke in your face,” he said. “Just stand back here and look up at that view.”

But Santa Anita’s beauty goes beyond scenery, Ritchey said. “You get better prices here. There are better fields. The horses actually run truer to form.”

Serious handicappers, such as Ritchey, study the minutiae of earlier races, looking for telltale signs that, on a given day, a horse could perform beyond expectations. Santa Anita, with its wide bends and fast track, is a racing equalizer, he said. “At Hollywood Park, there’s such a bias (for the favorites),” he said. “With two long stretch runs and not much turning room, the come-from-behinders just can’t seem to get up.”

Ritchey’s theory certainly seems to pan out this day. Only one favorite comes through, a 5-to-2 horse in the third race. The rest of the day is wall-to-wall long shots, with payoffs as high as 27-to-1.

Judging track conditions and past performance is one way of assessing a horse’s chances. But the real story is in the numbers, said Marcelo Barroso, a Los Angeles baker, plying the standing-room area in front of the grandstand. “You see?” he said, showing the program for the third race. “No. 6 is Alex Solis’ lucky number.”

Sure enough, a horse ridden by jockey Solis, the No. 6 horse, has won the race.

“I keep records,” said Barroso. “Not like a computer, just in my mind.”

There may be high rollers at Santa Anita, but the track has its share of low rollers, too. Amerigo Rizzo, a retired tool and dye maker from the Bronx, makes $2 place bets exclusively. “I started doing that after a big lesson I learned once at Monmouth (a New Jersey track),” said Rizzo, 78, a husky man in a golf cap. “Seven of my horses came in second that day.”

The place and show bettors don’t get much respect at Santa Anita, Rizzo grumbled. “The cashiers are a bunch of snobs,” he said. “Ask them a question and you get an argument.”

As the shadows on the mountains deepen to a hazy purple, Cohen bugles the horses to the post for the day’s feature race, the $138,500 California Breeders’ Champion Stakes. It’s one of the most exciting races of the day, with a spunky filly, jockeyed by Eddie Delahoussaye, coming from way back in the pack to win decisively. The horse pays $33.20 for a $2 bet.

As owner and trainer gather around the horse in the winner’s circle to accept a trophy, one bettor, fed up with the day’s steady diet of long shots, muscled his way in to the rail.

“Hey, Eddie!” he shouted at the jockey. “Eddie De-lousy. Eddie De-lousy.” Then he stomped away.