Restaurant Stop Pays Off Big for Track Denizen

Don “Hee Haw” Alvey has spent the past 30 years around race tracks in the East and Midwest. He has worked as a jockey agent and a bloodstock agent, he has always been a bettor, and he knows that sharp swings of fortune are part of the game. But even he was unprepared for the way fate took hold of his life during the past 14 months.

In November 1995, Alvey felt that something was wrong in his gut. It didn’t take long for a doctor to diagnose that he had cancer of the kidney.

He was taken almost immediately to the the Veterans Administration hospital in Louisville, where surgeons removed a rib, a kidney and a four-inch malignant tumor. They told Alvey that they got out all of the cancer, but during his months of recuperation he was obsessed by worry: “You have a lot of time to think, and every time you feel an ache or a pain you think, ‘Here it is again.’ ”

The cancer had not only affected his health and his usual buoyant spirits, but his bankroll: There are no group-health plans for race track scufflers. Alvey went to work in the summer as the agent for jockey Larry Melancon at Churchill Downs, with some success, but their relationship dissolved and Alvey was out of action again. The thought of the cancer kept weighing on his mind. “I had no hustle. I was basically staying at home.”

In November, one year after his operation, Alvey went back to his doctor for a checkup. When it was finished, the doctor said: “We’ve run every test known to man. You’re going to live.”

His assets were low but his spirits were elevated, and Alvey realized it was time to get on with his life. Oaklawn Park was opening Jan. 17, and he decided to go there to start wheeling and dealing again as a bloodstock agent.

On the day before the season was scheduled to begin, he began to drive from Louisville to Hot Springs, Ark.--and that is when fate stepped in to steer his destiny.

When he was 80 miles from home, his car phone rang. A friend at Oaklawn was calling him to advise, “You might as well turn back. They’ve postponed opening day by a week because of the weather.”

Alvey, however, was eager for action. “I decided,” he said, “that I’d just turn left at Nashville and go to Gulfstream Park.”

He got to Miami that night, and the next morning he headed toward the stable area at the track, stopping on the way at a restaurant that is a popular hangout for racetrackers. While he was having his breakfast, a Kentucky-based trainer, Tony Reinstedler, stopped in. Alvey has high respect for the trainer; he had cashed a bet on a Reinstedler horse named Tansit at 11 to 1 at Churchill in the fall.

The trainer greeted Hee Haw and mentioned, “That colt who won at Churchill is in the ninth race today. I ran him here two weeks ago and he blew his mind coming into the paddock; he came apart and ran a really bad race. I’ve schooled him (in the paddock) since then. Use him in your exactas and trifectas--he’ll be a big price.”

At the track that afternoon, Alvey studied the Racing Form and observed that there were two formidable New York invaders running against Tansit. But with the Reinstedler horse at 60 to 1, he couldn’t resist taking a shot. He bet $40 to win, $20 to place and $20 to show, plus $10 exacta boxes coupling Tansit with each favorite.

For good measure, he played $2 trifectas coupling Tansit and each of the favorites in the first two positions, with everybody else in the field in the third position. The total investment came to $200.

Alvey watched excitedly as Tansit rallied from seventh place and took the lead as he entered the stretch. But then the Bill Mott-trained Zede, one of the two favorites, hooked him and looked as if he were about to surge past. Alvey was relieved that he had bet to place. But Tansit fought back and resisted the challenge, inching away to win by three-quarters of a length.

Alvey dashed toward the winner’s circle and let out a whoop in the direction of Reinstedler, who motioned for him to join the winner’s circle ceremony.

As Alvey was posing for the photograph, the race was made official and payoffs were posted. Alvey glanced at the tote board and exclaimed that the trifecta had paid $2,900. But somebody standing next to him said, “There are too many zeroes for that,” and Alvey looked again. With a 30 to 1 shot running third, the trifecta had paid $29,854.80. Tansit had paid $130.40 to win, and the exacta was worth $1307.

For his $200 investment, Alvey’s total return was $39,763.80--all of it because of a deep freeze in Hot Springs, Ark.. and a fortuitous stop at a restaurant.

The pendulum of race track fortunes is always swinging, and at long last it had swung in Hee Haw’s direction.