Reminiscing about my three-decades career in horse racing media and public relations, my thoughts carried me to my friendship with one of the best, if not THE best, thoroughbred racing handicappers on the once-flourishing Chicago circuit.
Martin “Marty” Dermer was his name. It was the days of the racetrack newsstand, when people arriving for the afternoon program of nine races were greeted by a display board covered with “tip sheets” from the day before, filled with felt-tip pen circles drawn around the winners the handicapper had picked the day before and the fat payouts they produced.
The colorful pre-electronic media era when display advertising, visuals, and just plain old word-of-mouth and downright hawking were the methodologies to boost sales and attract racing fans eager to get the inside info on picking the winners of that day’s card.
If the handicapper had boxcar winners and exotics the day before, imagine what they will do today! Competition among the tip sheet creators was fierce, intensely competitive, and sometimes downright cutthroat.
Marty utilized the initials of his name to title his sheet “MD”. His brand would forever become “The Doctor”. It was the hottest and best-selling tip sheet of them all. Marty was his own best “drum beater,” frequently venturing down from the press box into the stands to mingle with his legion of followers.
An affable, rotund man with a winning personality, Marty was a beloved member of the press box corp. He was a character in every sense in a sport filled with colorful backstretch dwellers among a wide variety of participants, including jockeys, trainers, owners, jockey agents, and bettors, to name just a few.
They were frequently the subjects of stories and columns written by such legendary sports writers as Damon Runyon, Red Smith, and Grantland Rice, all of whom loved horse racing and knew from firsthand experience that it was fertile ground for storytelling.
When the bugle blew for post time for the first race, however, Marty was all business. He would stand on the press box deck in line with the beat writers from every one of Chicago’s daily newspapers, binoculars focused from start to finish, note pad in hand to document everything he observed to get an edge the next time the horse ran.
After every race Marty would return to his desk to watch the replay to make certain he hadn’t missed anything. It was the days before the plethora of statistics and computer-driven algorithms and AI-enhanced information that aid handicappers today. The barebones past performance lines in The Daily Racing Form were ripe for serious students of the sport like Marty to gain an edge.
The one category that Marty did not fall into was “horse player”. He hated the term and was quick to correct anyone who stuck the label on him. Marty did not “play” the horses. He invested in them, much as a broker invests in stocks. His selections were based on countless hours of research, fortified by his intellect and experience. He was, after all, The Doctor.
He didn’t believe in luck by chance either. “The harder you work, the luckier you get,” he would frequently say, especially after cashing a ticket on his best bet of the day.
A man can walk into a restaurant with a copy of The Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm and command respect. Another man walking into the same restaurant with a copy of The Daily Racing Form tucked under his arm is a bum, a horse player. Not Marty. The track was his industry, the races his market, the horses his stock.
Memories of Marty come easy now that spring is in the air and Kentucky Derby fever has hit full stride.
It’s rather unfortunate that for a sport desperately seeking to build a new base of fans, the one race that everybody pays attention to also happens to be the most difficult of all to handicap.
The frustrations experienced by Derby fans do not necessarily translate into the day-in, day-out races held at tracks around the country. Those who take their handicapping seriously often reap the fruits of their labor. Handicapping the races is not as difficult as the Kentucky Derby makes it look.
When it comes to creating new fans, thoroughbred racing’s fabled “Run for the Roses” is often the great sport’s own worst enemy.
There are many factors which make the Kentucky Derby virtually impossible to predict using statistical data and past performance:
- None of the horses has ever run as far as the 1 ¼ – mile distance of the Kentucky Derby.
- The electric-charged atmosphere, the crowd of 150,000 people, the band, and the pageantry can affect a high-strung thoroughbred like no other race in which they will ever compete.
- The unusually large number of horses which compete creates “traffic jams” unlike any other race a horse will ever experience.
- The horses are 3-year-olds in various stages of development and very difficult to measure.
What’s more, a horse has only one chance in his entire life to win the Kentucky Derby, and they must be at their finest fettle at approximately 5:35 pm CST on the first Saturday in May. A minor ache or pain, or one missed day of training, and that window of opportunity for sports immortality slams shut forever.
I am certain my old pal Marty will be watching the Derby from the press box deck at that great racetrack in the sky. He loved the race because he loved the sport.
