HORSE RACING : The Storied Life of a Slightly Mysterious, 85-Year-Old Gambler

A few gamblers were sitting in the Gulfstream Park grandstand and chatting between races about the planned introduction of big league racing to Texas. They all saw the potential for great profits there, and some were contemplating a trip to the first race meeting in Dallas or Houston.

“How about you, Phil?” one of the bettors asked the senior member of the group. “Are you coming to Texas?”

Phil shook his head. “I’ll leave that to you younger gentlemen,” he said. “Besides, I have an aversion to crossing the Texas state line.”

“Why, what’s the matter? Are you on the lam?”

“I was, formerly.” There was a twinkle in the gambler’s eyes. “But I’ve outlived them all.”

At the age of 85, Phil has outlived most of his old enemies and old friends. He seems almost impervious to the aging process; he is tanned, fit, energetic, acute, articulate. (He watched the warm-up for one race at Gulfstream, then lowered his binoculars and declared, “There are only four horses on the track who are capable of winning. Nevertheless, I find this race a conundrum.”)

Phil’s allusions to the past often hint at the adventure, intrigue and occasional danger in a lifetime as a professional gambler. Even his identity is slightly mysterious. He occasionally refers to himself by names other than Phil; in his day, itinerant gamblers routinely used aliases and monickers.

As he talked about his past, the most jaded and skeptical horseplayers around him listened with rapt attention. His reminiscences were an oral history of an era that modern-day horseplayers could barely imagine.

Raised in Massachusetts, Phil discovered the merits of gambling when he went into the Army and was stationed in the District of Columbia in 1923. His pay was $12 a month, but after three months of barracks card games and other unspecified activities, he had amassed a bankroll of $13,000 and had found his calling. He would gamble on anything: bridge, poker, backgammon, pool, dog racing.

“I remember one time when I was playing poker in San Diego--and the best players in the country were at the table: Sacramento Sam, Panama Red, the Deacon. I got a message from one of my spotters that there was a big game on the eighth floor of a hotel in New Orleans--all suckers in the game and more than $100,000 on the table.

“So I got into my Stutz Bearcat and drove for four days to get to New Orleans. I checked into the hotel in the afternoon, took a nap and had dinner. At 11 o’clock I went to the game. There at the table were Sacramento Sam, Panama Red, the Deacon. . . . “

If the competition at the poker table was frequently cutthroat, Phil found a source of easy money: dog racing. There was little published information on the greyhounds in the 1930s and 1940s, and there wasn’t even a classification system to ensure that the dogs in the field were evenly matched. A handicapper who did his homework could find tremendous opportunities. Moreover, dog tracks were teeming with illegal bookies, and a gambler could wager thousands on a race without affecting the odds.

“One night,” Phil related, “I was standing in line to bet a $10 daily double, and a bookmaker came up to me and said, ‘Give the bet to me. It’ll pay for my dinner.’ I gave him the $10. The double hit and I got $300, and so I let it ride on a 15-to-1 shot, who won. Now I had $4,500 and I bet it on an even-money favorite, and he won. At the end of the night I’d run it up to $23,500. The bookmaker paid me with 23 $1,000 bills and one $500--they used the big bills in those days--and I had to needle him. I said, ‘All you could have won was $10.’

“The next night I lost $6,000 to the same bookmaker and--I shouldn’t tell you this--I mushed him. You know that word? I couldn’t pay. In between I’d lost the $23,500.” Phil hastened to add that he paid his debt a couple of days later. He was an honorable gambler--most of the time, at least.

As profitable as greyhound racing was for him, Phil turned his attention to horses, for a reason that might seem incomprehensible to modern-day handicappers: “I got into it,” he said, “when I saw how easy it was.” Published information on horses was skimpy, and the betting public was remarkably unsophisticated: “Bankers and doctors would go to the track and they’d be looking for tips from guys with holes in their pants.”

After Phil learned to watch races astutely and to judge horses’ appearance in the post parade--skills he retains to this day--his main difficulty was finding and keeping bookmakers who would take his action.

Phil would spend his summers at the New England tracks and his winters in Florida, but even his travel in between was laced with action. He and a friend--an extremely talented golf hustler--would take a leisurely drive down the Eastern seaboard, stopping on the way in golf resort and country clubs, where Phil would back his companion with $100 bets. And they’d lose them all.

Months later, when the Hialeah racing season was over, they would head north retracing the same route, stopping in the same resorts and clubs. Phil would offer to bet and the locals, remembering these suckers from the north, would invariably propose that they raise the stakes. Perhaps into the thousands? Phil and his accomplice would always accommodate them--and would leave with their pockets stuffed with cash.

“Those were glorious days.”