Escaping to the races

The horses were racing at Santa Anita, but my brother and I went to gamble at Hollywood Park. We were after something specific: a long, hourless Saturday in the Turf Club, where we would eat off of good linen, the waiters bringing Cobb salads and Bloody Marys while we studied the Daily Racing Form. Our friend Philippe was along, with his own flask of whiskey, so he wouldn’t have to spend the 7 bucks for each drink. Every half-hour or so, we would rise and hit the betting windows, a task no more arduous than strolling from one’s bedroom to the kitchen.

The track is an escape, involving important decisions at regular intervals, none of which end up mattering much. In this way it is like entering a parallel universe or even a trance. Knowing the language of the Daily Racing Form is one way to feel like a native. In your hand it feels not unlike a tabloid newspaper like the New York Post. “Beginners often find the Form overwhelming, since it offers more information than anybody could possibly absorb, including a horse’s age, sex, color, parentage, birthplace, breeder, owner, trainer, racing record over the past two years, amount of money won, and so on, but most serious gamblers won’t make a wager without first studying its contents,” Bill Barich wrote in his 1980 book on horse racing, “Laughing in the Hills.”

As kids, when we won more often, we just picked a horse whose name or color we liked and had our father put down $2 to win. But nowadays we bet (“We invest,” my brother likes to say) $30 and $40 and $50 a race, trying to make a big score on a trifecta. Life is short.

At the Turf Club, we met up with Gary, a friend of my brother’s. Gary has the best hard-luck gambler’s story I’ve ever heard: Once, his horse was coming down the home stretch in the lead, when a guy ran onto the track and punched the horse in the face. Gary got his money back, but my favorite part of the story is this: The results of the race stood, and the punched-in-the-face horse finished last.

Our day progressed pleasantly, the track as lazy and majestic on a Saturday afternoon as a ballpark hours before batting practice. It was 80 degrees and stale out, and, because the Turf Club was mostly empty, the betting windows were never more than two or three people deep. The real gamblers were betting the field not just at Santa Anita, but also at Aqueduct in New York and Gulfstream Park in Florida.

Each table in the Turf Club comes with a 12-inch TV screen, its channels piping in races from all over. “I’m gonna blow my brains out at this place today,” a guy at a nearby table wailed as a race ended somewhere in the United States and he lost.

The comedian Shecky Greene was five or six rows behind us, sitting alone at a table. Men of similar vintage mingled about, but not many, and it was easy to wonder where the next generation will come from.

Before long our Racing Forms were in 15 pieces. We sucked at the ice in our empty Bloody Marys and said things like “This No. 7 horse is taking a major step up in class.” Horses with decent prices were coming in, but soon enough we were losing. My brother and I hit a tri, but it only got us our money back. Gary yelled at his TV every now and then, in the coded language of the track. “Get up! Get up!” he exhorted, if his horse was making a run down the stretch.

In the seventh I hit an exacta for $150 and got that gambler’s rush. Souvenir Party, I thought, I’ll never forget that name. Then I threw money away in the feature, and it was harder to remember.

In between, the waiters came, unhurried and decorous. This was the rhythm we had sought, and it lasted for more than five hours. Gambling ruins people, but if you can fashion it into a hobby, the track becomes another home, after the office and wherever you live. A third place.

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Paul Brownfield can be reached at paul.brownfield@latimes.com