Big day in sports today. American Pharoah, racing’s first Triple Crown winner in 37 years, was a solid winner of the Sports Illustrated fan poll for Sportsman of the Year but lost out in the end to tennis star Serena Williams.

I’ll admit I feel about tennis the way most serious tennis fans feel about horseracing, but I’d agree you could make a solid case for Serena as the winner. If you’ve ever subjected yourself to sports talk radio, hyper-arguments about even the most inconsequential topic are the meat and potatoes of the genre. It would be naive to believe the Serena v. AP argument wouldn’t occur on all the public media sites, or that the arguments wouldn’t occasionally degenerate into the absurd. One chucklehead suggested that if you favored AP over Serena you were a racist. Of course, there are a lot of horseracing people whose passions extend far beyond simple fandom. When Shared Belief, and even the young sire Scat Daddy, died, there were people who reacted like they had lost a family member.

The other thing that seems to be part of the sports discussion genre is that no one ever convinces anyone to change their minds. The discussion usually goes something like this.

A: I’m right

B: No, I’m right

A: You’re an idiot

B: No you’re an idiot

And then it’s like shampooing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I have no idea how important the Sportsman of the Year award is to an athlete, but it means almost nothing to me. Do you get more endorsements? Your Q rating go up? Does it bring you new fans or shut up your critics?  If any of those are the case, then better that it goes to a human than a horse anyway. The fact is, Pharoah would have no clue one way or the other, and Baffert, Zayat and the rest of the team will hardly suffer for not getting another award. He’s going to win horse of the year, and frankly that will do as much for the AP team as the SI award might have. There’s hardly a good reason for the horseracing community to go all sports radio on Sports Illustrated, other than AP was technically the people’s choice and we love our champions just like fans of other sports do. But in a week we might not even remember who was SI SOY.

Anyone who believes AP getting the SI award would bring horseracing into the mainstream, I have two words for you. Women’s soccer. The World Cup championship game was the most watched soccer game in U.S. history. A few months later, you still don’t see women’s professional soccer anywhere on TV, radio, or the print media. It was an event, like the Kentucky Derby or the Breeder’s Cup. When it was over, it was back to watching what Americans know as football.

I believe if Serena had won the U.S. Open that may have settled the arguments. Jordan Speith in golf had a great year and dominated in a way not many have since Tiger Woods at the peak of his game. The Kansas City Royals were mentioned, but c’mon, doesn’t the award need to go to one sportsman? I guess that means the U.S. Women’s Soccer team gets a similar DQ from me. Stephen Curry could have easily been justified as a winner.

All in all these sorts of general awards are anachronistic and for the most part silly (sorry, but I’m including the Heisman and the ESPY’s in the silly category). How do you seriously compare a female tennis player to a horse to a male golfer to a soccer team?  And moreover, how do you get angry when your favorite doesn’t win? In the big scheme of things, this really isn’t worth much more than a sentence or two stating your position and then moving on. Unless you have a blog to write or something.

The other big news was that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred denied reinstatement to Pete Rose. I don’t know Rose beyond what I read, but I still have some sympathy for the guy. On statistics he could have been a unanimous first ballot addition to the Hall of Fame. But anyone who plays professional baseball should remember that tolerance for betting on baseball has been zero since Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (is there a more somber name in sports?) sent the Chicago Black Sox to the sidelines permanently, including another potential Hall of Famer, Shoeless Joe Jackson whose guilt is still argued. Rose, on the other hand, is guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. Some of the bookmakers he used have sworn that he bet on baseball and more than just his own team while he was still Cincinnati player-manager, something that elevates the sins to their most serious level.

I’m not suggesting Rose shouldn’t have been punished severely, but Rose didn’t get to be baseball’s leading hit-getter on anything but sheer talent and determination. Part of me says you have to recognize Rose for that achievement, because that achievement is baseball’s achievement as well. That doesn’t mean he has to be elected to the Hall, but it’s a farce for baseball to deny him recognition in the place where baseball recognizes it’s most worthy achievements. And  perhaps gambling is only worthy of a lifetime ban in cases where that gambling influenced the outcome of events that, ironically, other people gambled on. If you want to extend the arguments, any professional player who is in a fantasy league may be gambling just as much as Rose did, at least if you believe New York and Nevada. Lots of baseball players (and other athletes) are horse players – Paul LoDuca, a retired player, is even an analyst on TVG. So it isn’t the gambling itself that is the issue, it is the gambling on your own sport while you are an active player or manager (or taking bribes as in the case of the Black Sox) that is disqualifying. I think.

Rose has done a lot of things wrong since deciding to bet on baseball, most especially denying his guilt for years. Whether or not he has done whatever would be necessary to prove he has rehabilitated himself is subject to interpretation. Manfred certainly didn’t think so. Rose’s reinstatement is nothing that keeps me up at night, but it does bother me that we’re still going through the case again and again. Let’s face it. Charles Manson isn’t getting paroled no matter how many times he goes to the parole board, and no matter what he does to rehabilitate himself. It’s a farce that state law insists the parole board go through. But nobody worries when Charlie comes before the Board. On the other hand, there is no law that forces Manfred to reconsider Rose’s ban at some regular interval. I believe Manfred either has to make it clear that the book is closed on Rose, or he has to lay out specific conditions for how Rose gets back in baseball’s good graces. Rose and his lawyers rejected negotiating that kind of agreement previously, and if they do it again, Manfred should slam the book shut permanently. Let’s face it. Manfred holds all the cards and Rose is 74, meaning he doesn’t have much time to prove himself Hall worthy. For 26 years this story has regularly appeared on the sports pages, and enough is enough. Rose should either be in the Hall or he shouldn’t and Manfred has the power to decide that once and for all.

When I started my blog a year and a half ago, my “goal” was to get noticed for my handicapping and writing ability and ultimately get picked up by a handicapping service or a publication, or maybe have advertisers begging me to put their ads up on my site. At the very least I was hoping to find a web designer who would take pity on me and help me develop a slicker site.

As Burns said, the best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew.

Somewhere along the way I thought it would be a good thing to write opinions. My first thought was to write about two topics: the parts of racing that needed fixing, and informational articles on how to bet and handicap. If you check my blog you’ll see plenty of articles on both, and they are as good as anything you’ll read.

One day I was on Twitter and news of Doug O’Neill’s suspension for Oxazepam was posted. The tweets were immediately harsh – O’Neill was seen as a serial cheater who continued to operate as a trainer in spite of his convictions. I’m embarrassed to admit there was a moment when I wanted to join with the crowd. After all, O’Neill was as easy target and piling on has become a national pastime.

For whatever reason, I started looking into the case and came across O’Neill’s letter explaining his side of the story. I also looked at the report Dr. Steven Barker prepared on the sample analysis. It struck me, just because O’Neill had this unsavory reputation, it didn’t mean he was automatically guilty every time he was charged. I wrote a blog suggesting maybe the New York authorities were unfair in this case, that O’Neill had some valid points. To this day I am convinced that authorities have not caught up with the science on environmental contaminations. The absolute trainer rule may make a trainer automatically guilty, but that doesn’t mean he did anything wrong.

After that for me,  Alea iacta est.

Most of you probably remember what happened next. I talked to O’Neill on the phone for quite a while, went out to meet him when I attended the Breeder’s Cup and that March got to spend three full days shadowing him all over the track. I had unrestricted and often unaccompanied access to the stables. I had the opportunity to question him extensively about any topic I wanted. I talked with his assistants, his exercise riders, some of his regular jockeys, his vet, his farrier, and even the state vet who examined the horses pre-race.

I wrote about my trip and made it absolutely clear that O’Neill had been a bad actor in the past, but that I believed he had turned a corner and rehabilitated. That remains my opinion, and I can only cite as proof the fact that he is winning a lot of races and big races and he hasn’t had a bad test since 2013. What more do you want from the guy? He made his mistakes, he admitted them, he paid his penalties, and he says he wants to be the right kind of trainer. Still, the response was about the same as if I’d said I was in favor of toradol for horses with breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I’ve freely admitted my current bias about O’Neill. He is an infectiously likable person, and we connected immediately. I root for him to succeed and he actually taught me an important lesson. When he was at his lowest, his real friends were there for him, and I realized that having friends and family support you is greater than having all the money in the world. I also believe Doug works every day to repay the faith of family and friends by being an exemplary trainer. There is such a thing as learning your lesson.

But I would staunchly maintain my objectivity was never compromised. I stand by what I wrote as the untainted facts.

And that, as Cantinflas used to say, is the rub. Once I decided to write about trainers whom I believed had been treated unfairly by racing commissions, I believe I became radioactive, although it would be fair to also point out I can be argumentative and very direct in my critiques. I took ARCI, the racing commissions in New York, Colorado, West Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, and especially Joe Gorajec to task for sloppy investigations and unfair treatment, and that didn’t make me popular in some quarters. I’ve been critical of the RMTC regarding its research for medication standards and I’ve been critical in general about the inability of all the stakeholders to come together to work on compromise solutions to racing’s problems. Like my fellow Amsterdamian, Nick Kling, I generally start off thinking I am right (perhaps it is the water, which has always been horrendous. When my grandparents visited from Brooklyn, they brought their own water) and it sometimes takes more work than most people probably think it is worth to dissuade me. I know it isn’t my handicapping or writing ability that is lacking. I shouldn’t be shocked that it’s hard to achieve success as the guy who unabashedly defends “drug-cheat” trainers (although I’ve never defended anyone I didn’t sincerely believe was treated unfairly). I’m not Ray Paulick or the DRF, mainly reporting the news. For whatever reason, I decided it was important for me to be a provocateur in a way that would make some of the people in charge uncomfortable enough to fix some of the obvious problems. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to go about being an agent of change, but building a platform for change is never easy. In the world of horseracing, it doesn’t seem as if I am one of the majority when it comes to some drug/medications issues, although I’ve said over and over that trainers who knowingly use illegal performance enhancing substances should be dealt with harshly.

I apologize for nothing I did. I wrote what I believed and I tried very hard to stick to the facts. I’ve heard often that my pieces can be lauded for the amount of research I do and my willingness to get it right. If I missed and someone pointed it out, I made a correction. As my father once told me, everybody makes mistakes. What’s important is that you know how to fix them when you do. If someone disagreed with me, I printed their responses in total and unedited. If you think that is enough to stop detractors from taking pot-shots, it’s not the case. I think I’ve got a pretty thick skin, and most of the time I recognized that if you stick your nose out, you can’t act surprised when someone takes a swing at it.

Still, sometimes things get to you. I remember asking O’Neill how he dealt with the vitriol on public media, and he basically said you just have to not look at it. Keep your head down and do your job as best as you can. Easier for him than for me.

One person on Twitter remarked that I was a laughingstock because I defended O’Neill, even though that’s not exactly what I did, suggesting I was the subject of regular behind the scenes derision. That might have been the most intelligent thing he said in a slurry of ridiculous tweets. I’ll just mention one advantage I’ve had. I looked O’Neill in the eye and asked him if we’d ever see his name associated with a drug/medication overage. He was looking dead at me when he told me he would do everything in his power to make sure he didn’t. Another person went into what seemed to be an uncontrollable rage because I had the temerity to suggest the RMTC wasn’t doing a great job, a position I still hold with what I believe is good reason. The lesson from that was, I will have a mature, intellectually honest discussion with anyone, but if you want to act like a complete ass I’ll have no more to do with you. Perhaps I am a laughingstock in some quarters, but I’d like to think most people realize I’m trying to fill a niche not many have the guts to take on, and I’m trying to do it sincerely and with no ulterior motive. I make no money from my blog, and nobody pays me to write what I write. If you agree with me great, and if you don’t agree with me but I make you think, good enough. If you don’t agree with me and can’t stand what I write, I have an easy fix – don’t read it. But never assume I have any higher motivation than to make racing better for horseplayers. If in some small way I am a part of that, it is all worth it. Believe me, as most people who lay it on the line publicly find out, the amount of shit they have flung at them publicly far exceeds the public praise, even if there is a silent majority who favors them. Believe it or not I don’t perversely enjoy having shit flung at me. Perhaps the Irish part of me avoids ducking sometimes.

I had a really good 2015 by most measures and I have a lot to be thankful for. I get to do a lot of the things I love doing, including playing the horses and writing. I have family and friends who support me. I published a book, I shot a 77 (not quite my age) at a really tough golf course, I can still referee high school basketball, and I made a lot of great friends on and off the track. I’m not sure I’d trade my life with anyone.

I’d still like to think I’m one of the elite handicappers (for NYRA) and one of the elite handicapping writers. I’m not bragging – I posted every racing day through the Aqueduct main season and anyone can check any claims I make. Besides, as Dizzy Dean said, if you can do it, it ain’t braggin’. I’ve got plans to write two more books, one on horseracing tentatively titled, Betting Horses to Make Profit, and another fictional novel. 

I’m not sure why I haven’t been “rediscovered” (I use that term because I have a lot of articles that were printed in American Turf Monthly and Horseplayer Magazine – not like I’m new at this – that have drawn wide praise) but like O’Neill said, keep your head down and do your job as best as you can. Expect that from me in 2016.

A week ago I made a casual statement that in 83% of NFL games, the line doesn’t come into play when determining the winner of the bet. In other words, the winner of the game is either a favorite that covers the spread or an underdog that wins outright 83% of the time. In 17% of the games the favorite wins but doesn’t cover the line. Another way of saying it is that if you picked the winner of every game without paying any attention to the line, you’d win 83% of your bets in the long run.

I know, it sounds outrageous, but I’ll explain how the statistic works and why it doesn’t trouble Vegas.

Anyone who understands Vegas knows that the line is set in order to direct the action 50-50 between the teams (in theory). It does not represent, as many people think, the number of points Team A is superior to Team B. The books make money based on what is called the vigorish (or the vig). Let’s say I bet $11 on team A and you bet $11 on team B. The book holds $22. If team A covers, I collect $21. The other dollar, the vig, is profit for the book. What Vegas is essentially attempting is to predict the division of the action based on giving one team a handicap, also known as the point spread. If New England was playing Cleveland and there was no point spread, the vast majority of the action would be on New England and the books would take a bath if New England won, a pretty good probability.

So back to the 83% figure. This is a pretty well known statistic, but someone on Twitter just went apoplectic with me, saying among other inane things, I think I know more than Vegas. I’d reprint the exchange, but you get the idea. Someone who doesn’t understand something often chooses to berate the person who does understand it. I’ll give you a good example.

I was telling someone that if you shot a gun on a perfectly straight line, and dropped a bullet at the exact same height as the exit opening of the barrel and at the exact same time the bullet exited the barrel, both bullets would hit the ground at the same time. It’s a pretty simply application of the principle in physics that states the force due to gravity is not affected by horizontal velocity. But I might have well as been trying to explain Tourette’s Syndrome to the Salem puritans as an explanation why it wasn’t witchcraft. No way he was buying it. Same with the guy on Twitter. (For all you Sheldon Cooper’s out there, yes, it only works perfectly in a vacuum, but it is close enough in the real world to make the point.) Now admit it – it just doesn’t sound right, does it.

I’ve learned, once the thickness hardens, there is little you can do to penetrate it no matter how hard you try to explain. But here goes once again.

Let’s assume Vegas has done a perfect job and the winner of the game is a favorite that covers 50% of the time, and 50% of the time the underdog wins the bet and there is the exact same amount on both bets. They get all the vig. Of the 50% of the underdogs that collect the bet, two-thirds of them will win the game outright and one-third of them will collect because the favorite won but did not cover. Again, these are statistics you can verify all over the internet. So doing the arithmetic, 50% + (0.67 * 50%) = 83%

So 83% of the time the betting line does not determine the winner of the bet and 17% of the time it does. Pretty simple. If you pick the winner of the game, you’ll only lose 17% of the time. If you think about it, the statistics make perfect sense. So why aren’t people killing Vegas? A few reasons.

First, people like betting the favorite because after all they do win the game 67% (or so) of the time (same arithmetic as above), even if they only collect the bet 50% of the time. People, on average, bet the favorite 65% of the time in Vegas and the underdog 35% of the time. (I’ll avoid a discussion about “trap” lines). Vegas knows this and because they are uncanny about setting the line, they keep the 50-50 division fairly intact. Second, and this is the big one, it’s really hard to pick underdogs that will win outright or cover in 50% of the games. For that matter, it’s really hard to pick the 50% of the favorites that will cover. Just as with horseracing, if you bet the favorite every time, you will be a small loser. If you don’t believe me try it sometime. Millions have and Vegas is still ahead.

Now there are even more broken down statistics available on the internet for percentage of time the favorite wins based on the size of the line. As you might guess, the closer the line, the more likely the underdog will win. In fact, there are public handicappers who base their picks purely on the macro-statistics, and some weeks (or even seasons) they do pretty well, and of course they never do really horrible.

So if you want a system that won’t cost you a ridulous amount of money paid to an “expert” service, look at all the games and identify the 50% of favorites that have the highest probability of winning the game (ignore the line) and bet them. In the other 50% of the games, bet the underdog. And if you are really, really good, you’ll win 83% of your bets.

I’ll await the apology from thickhead, although I’m guessing I’ll wait a long time.

This blog is about horseracing. It’s a sport, a hobby, a distraction from the real world, But there are times when the real world is overwhelming. So much of America is angry. The rise of political outsiders like Donald Trump and Ben Carson underscores that fact, as does the speech from those on the left and right poles of the political spectrum. Excess in criticism has become so commonplace, we no longer see a line between civil discourse and vulgarity. The ability to disagree, to engage in reasonable intellectual debate, becomes less and less possible as those with differing opinions simply see their opposite as somewhere between misguided and outright stupid. Your opponent just doesn’t have a different point of view – he is wrong, evil, incompetent, and a moron.

It is more complicated because at the same time Americans are fearful. They fear attacks from without by groups like ISIS, and they fear attacks from within by everyone from the delusionally insane James Holmes shooting up a movie theater in Aurora (my current place of residence), to the alienated rageaholic shooter Robert Dear, who last week unloaded his semi-automatic rifle inside a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, to the latest mass killing in San Bernardino by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, disaffected by something the authorities have not yet determined, but committed enough to their cause to forfeit their lives and leave a six month old child forever parentless.

There is no answer to the randomness of the violence. It has not been stopped by what must have been the billions of prayers offered by those who believe in the power of prayer. It has not been stopped by the platitudes and rhetoric of the political class. It hasn’t been stopped by laws aimed at arming more people, or laws limiting certain types of weapons, like the law in California making automatic weapons with high capacity clips illegal, which had no effect on the killers there. But inaction based on the excuse that those who would do us harm will always find a way regardless of our laws is cowardice. It is not our way as humans or Americans to believe there is any unsolveable problem. There is only an unwillingness to do what is necessary to solve a problem.

If there is an answer it is to agree that the issue cannot be driven by the fears of groups like the NRA that even the smallest limitation on gun ownership is the first step on the road to becoming Australia, nor can it be driven by the people who believe the only answer is the elimination of private ownership of firearms. The issue must be driven by those who believe responsible gun ownership by responsible people is reasonable, but that the irresponsible or the deranged or those driven by perverse ideology must be denied access to weapons. There must be a recognition that certain classes of weapons are simply too dangerous to be in the hands of anyone other than those authorized by law to keep us safe, but that banning public ownership of such weapons does not have to lead to banning of personal protection and hunting firearms. It must be based on the kind of research that has been disallowed by those who fear what that research might reveal. The idea that research must be suppressed is anathema to those who believe in the power of rational and informed thought to solve problems. If we do not get the information we need to make good decisions, then we will continue to react with meaningless anger and answers based on nothing more than the direction from which the anger originates. The danger in searching for answers is that we may not like the answers we get, but we must have faith that rational people working together with good information and good intentions have all the armament they need to find the right solutions. We must demand that those who have been elected to set the plate for solving those problems do their job or get the hell out of the way.

There are days when horseracing cannot distract me from the world. And more and more often that happens. It is impossible to hide from the beheadings, mass killings – the anger and the fear. But we are sentenced to having that world assault our senses and sensibility as long as the anger and fear keep us from doing those things that we must do to say we are doing enough.

It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means.     Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now