SANTA ANITA : This Better Idea Turns Out to Be a Bad One for Bettors

“Please do not shoot the umpire. He is doing the best he can.”

--Sign in a Kansas City baseball park, 1886

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To protect parimutuel clerks, perhaps similar signs ought to be posted these days at Santa Anita and area off-track betting sites.

Getting a bet down was an ordeal on opening day at Santa Anita, Dec. 26, and although some glitches in new Autotote equipment have been corrected, many horseplayers still face the threat of being shut out at the windows.

Seven minutes before a race at the Hollywood Park satellite location last Saturday, betting lines were so long in the clubhouse that a track employee announced on a bullhorn that it would be faster if the players moved to the grandstand windows, where clerks, instead of automatic tote machines, were punching out tickets. Some bettors made the trek. Others stayed in their original lines and didn’t get their bets down.

One of the problems is that the voucher dispenser machines have not been installed.

Vouchers can be inserted into automatic betting machines, the same as winning tickets. But without the dispensers, the only way to buy a voucher is to line up with players who are waiting to buy tickets from clerks. Then, voucher in hand, the bettor must join another line to reach the automatic tote terminal. Autotote’s automatic terminals do not accept paper money, as did the machines furnished by AmTote, the company that lost the contract after servicing Santa Anita since it opened in 1934.

“Not having the voucher dispensers at Santa Anita is completely our fault,” said Lorne Weil, the chief executive officer of Autotote. “The automatic betting machines don’t accept dollar bills because the majority of the tracks don’t want them to. They feel that the bills jam the machines or get rejected too often, resulting in delays.”

For Wally Olson, a mutuel clerk with 13 years’ experience, the Autotote machines have been a drawback, preventing him from serving Santa Anita bettors efficiently. According to Olson, these are some of the problems:

--When the tickets get wet, the printing washes off.

--Dry tickets can be difficult to read when a clerk is required to manually enter the numbers of a winning ticket that can’t be scanned by the terminal.

--When a bettor makes a series of bets and wants to change the last one called out, the clerk must clear his video screen and start over.

--When clerks reach over their terminals to hand the bettors money, the machine is so sensitive that the screen will go blank if it is touched.

Olson estimates that Santa Anita is losing thousands of dollars in wagers because of these problems.

Said Joe Stellino, president of the union local that represents the clerks: “My people are professionals, but they only had three hours of schooling before opening day. We’ve had this equipment shoved down our throats.”

According to union officials, the pressure on their clerks has forced them into errors that have resulted in significant cash-drawer shortages.

Stellino said that on opening day, his clerks were short about $7,000. Cliff Goodrich, president of Santa Anita, said that the track absorbed that loss, not requiring the clerks to make up the difference, as they usually do.

Stellino said that during the four racing days immediately after opening day, his clerks were short about $2,300, compared to $950 for the same period in the previous Santa Anita season.

Goodrich said that his parimutuel director, George Haines II, told him that clerk shortages were not abnormally high.

Said Autotote’s Weil: “We get our tote paper from different vendors. The kind that was used by the Ontario Jockey Club when they opened a meeting (in Canada) the first of the year was a better paper. We’re sending a ton of this type paper to Santa Anita.

“We’re going to deliver the voucher dispensers in a week to 10 days.

“As for changing a bettor’s bet, a clerk should be able to do that without erasing the other bets. Clerks that can’t do that haven’t been trained properly. Those clerks had been using the same terminals for 50 years, so it’s not easy to get people to change after that long.”

On opening day, with a crowd of 46,242 at the track, Santa Anita lost an estimated $3 million in handle. Goodrich said Thursday that after reducing customer frustration on the weekdays last week, crowds were larger than anticipated on the weekend and Santa Anita again didn’t perform as well.

“On Saturday and Sunday, the system wasn’t at the level we would have wanted,” Goodrich said.

Both horsemen and the state of California are expecting to be reimbursed for the revenues that were lost on opening day. Purses and the state’s share come from a percentage of the handle. Goodrich said Thursday that he is continuing to negotiate a settlement with Autotote. One horse owners’ group has mentioned a purse figure of $120,000.

Besides their immediate problems, the mutuel clerks are fearful that the Autotote system will cut deeply into their membership, which stands at about 2,600. All of the Autotote terminals can easily be converted into automatic machines. Weil said that at Northern California tracks, about 40% of the handle is bet through automatic machines, compared to about 5% when AmTote had the contract.

Horse Racing Notes

The target date for Kent Desormeaux’s riding return is Jan. 18. Desormeaux is recovering from a fractured skull suffered when he was kicked by a horse in a race at Hollywood Park on Dec. 11. In statistics released by the Daily Racing Form, Desormeaux still led the country in 1992 purses with $14,193,006. Three of the next four jockeys were from California--Chris McCarron with $12,821,841, Eddie Delahoussaye with $12,753,791 and Gary Stevens with $11,149,112. Pat Day, who is based in the Midwest, finished fourth with $12,321,973. . . . The first four trainers on the money list were Californians--Wayne Lukas, $9,806,436; Ron McAnally, $8,234,176; Bobby Frankel, $6,911,529, and Gary Jones, $6,018,206.

Answer Do will try to win the seven-furlong San Carlos Handicap for the second consecutive year when he races eight rivals Saturday in the $100,000 stake. The field, in post-position order: Individualist, Cardmania, Arrowtown, Slerp, Excavate, Anjiz, Answer Do, Sir Beaufort and Letthebighossroll. Excavate and Sir Beaufort will run as an entry. Answer Do will carry 122 pounds, spotting the opposition two to nine pounds. In last year’s San Carlos, he beat Individualist by 1 1/2 lengths. The last back-to-back winner of the San Carlos was Rising Market in 1969-70.