Harness Racing In New York State. By Dean A. Hoffman. History Press. 124 pages. $19.99.
During the past decade we’ve seen the emergence of historical biographies that have caught fire with the general public and become wildly successful: two examples are Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and David McCullogh’s John Adams. Both books conflate the nuts and bolts of the historical record with colorful anecdotes and read like novels. Well, harness racing’s premiere present day historian, Dean Hoffman, has done the same thing, on a smaller scale, in his new book about the highs and lows of standardbred racing and breeding in New York. From Messenger charging down a gangplank when he arrived in Philadelphia in 1788 to the regulators cracking down on Lou Pena, we get an overview of the growth of the sport in New York, as well as an anecdote laden narrative about the men and horses that made it happen.
Hoffman was
an Associate/Contributing Editor at Hub Rail during the latter half of the
seventies, subsequently moving on to a twenty-five year stint as Executive
Editor at Hoof Beats, beginning in 1981. He published Castleton Farm: A
Tradition of Standardbred Excellence in 1995 and Yankeeland: The Farm
The Kellers Built in 2005. While those were niche books geared to a hard
core harness racing audience, Harness Racing In New York State will have
broader appeal, and it is written in a straightforward, congenial style that
will satisfy the expert while not scaring away the newcomers to the sport. The
same sort of engaging reminiscences that have always played a role in Hoffman’s
work can be found throughout this book.
The almost
seventy photographs which are synchronized with the text are superb. Digital
age editing techniques have breathed new life into historical black and white
images, some from the author’s personal collection. The chapter layout works for the reader and
the text is print-friendly
The book’s preface
zeroes in on August 1, 1959, the night of the First Roosevelt International
Trot—the seminal point for the metropolitan brand of harness racing that has
dominated the latter half of the twentieth Century. And it’s only fitting that
the first three words in that preface are George Morton Levy, who along with
Bob Johnson—as Hoffman points out—and Bill Cane, did the dirty work with the
politicians and unions that led to the meteoric rise of harness racing in
metropolitan New York.
The
Hambletonion, which was first raced in Syracuse and later at Bill Cain’s mile
long, pear-shaped track in Goshen, remained in New York from its inception in
1926 until 1957, when it was relocated to DuQuoin, and Hoffman gives us a
colorful account of the people and horses involved in the early days of that
classic.
Steve
Phillips, Marty Tananbaum, Allen Finkelson, Ted Zornow: all the characters are
included in this book. There’s plenty of behind the scenes political intrigue,
too. Hoffman goes into the long road travelled by the legislation that finally
allowed for pari-mutuel betting in New York, as well the Laverne Law, which has
allowed the sire stakes program to flourish. The longstanding battle between
the USTA and the New York regulators is also covered.
A chapter on
race-fixing in New York would obviously be out of place here, but I do take
issue with Hoffman’s approach to that topic. He states: “There were always
challenges to the racing industry, of course. Where money and wagering is
involved, there will always be a suspicion that some things are not exactly
kosher.”
No, say it
isn’t so. At Yonkers, Roosevelt and Monticello? He writes about an inquiry
initiated by the Brooklyn DA in August, 1966 in which Bill Haughton was
subpoenaed to testify and his name appeared in the papers. Oh, well. Sholty,
Insko, Chapman and Gilmour got the same subpoena, and so did Tod Gibbons, Phil
Tully and John Cashaman Jr, the racing secretaries at Roosevely, Yonkers and
Monticello. Sure, the authorities, State and Federal, did plenty of
grandstanding back then, and there were plenty of investigations that generated
lots of publicity but went nowhere, but this was not a case of the mean and
nasty authorities picking on poor, innocent harness racing.
At a
Congressional hearing in Washington in 1972, a proposal was made that either a
national racing czar be appointed or pari-mutuel racing be eliminated. The
legislators had just watched a video of the Mr Ace-- Moonstone Bay boat race at
Yonkers. A $28 winner and a 9-2 place horse gave the bettors a $43 payoff. The
trainer of the horse blocking for the winning combination and another
trainer-driver collected more than $26,000 on the exacta, and the owner of that
horse wound up dead in the trunk of a car in Brooklyn the following week. A
Yonkers Raceway executive and a state-appointed track official also displayed
their skill as handicappers; they collected $6,000 on that race.
The toxic
cocktail of OTB, the superfecta, and inflated pools generated by the televising
of those gimmick races, brought cheating to a new level. A sophisticated
betting syndicate eliminated two horses in most races featuring the super and
hence reduced the box price to $1,080—bingo. The Director of Monticello Raceway
from 1959 to 1972 was indicted for tax fraud when he had others cash $10,000
worth of super tickets that belonged to him. Buddy Gilmour, Ben Webster and
Carmine Abbatiello were three of the drivers barred from Roosevelt by George Morton
Levy. It goes on and on. You can’t understate corruption when discussing
harness racing in New York.
Another
minor objection is that only five drivers are listed in the Empire Builders
chapter at the end of the book: Carmine Abbatiello, Glen Garnsey, William
Haughton, Thomas W Murphy, Harry Pownall and Cat Manzi. All are accomplished
New York natives and deserving of mention, but Herve Filion deserves more than
a spot in a picture of Tim Rooney. From the winter of 1967, when he was
assigned a dozen stalls at Yonkers, up until his indictment in 1995, Herve was
a force to be reckoned with in New York. The fact that he was born in Canada
shouldn’t discount his contribution.
And while
I’m at it, Goshen native Elizabeth Rorty is recognized as an Empire Builder,
which makes sense, but none of the men who covered the sport for the
metropolitan newspapers get much recognition—writers like Louis Effrat, Warren
Pack and Clyde Hirt. The promoters like Lou Barasch, Joe Goldstein and Nick
Grande also deserve high marks for creating an audience for the Roosevelt
International and beyond that for keeping the ball rolling through good times
and bad with their crazy promotions.
Hoffman does
a wonderful job detailing the rise of the New York Sire Stakes program, from
the early sixties when the ability to get around the track without falling down
seemed to be the only prerequisite for stallion status, to the elevation of the
program to national status via Oscar Kimelman and his Blue Chip Farm. His
acquisition of Most Happy Fella in the early seventies was a game changer. The
disconnect between purse money and performance started to shrink and New York
bred yearlings became desirable to top owners and trainers. This chapter is
loaded with information on the sire stakes races, the Old Glory Sale and the
stallions that populated the various breeding operations that sprouted up
around the state during the sixties and seventies.
While
Roosevelt and Yonkers were clearly the driving force in New York racing, and
get the most play in the book, Hoffman also details the establishment of racing
at the various satellite tracks around the state. We find out when Batavia,
Buffalo, Saratoga, Vernon Downs and Monticello came online and the
circumstances and people behind those operations. Again, we get details and
background information in a conversable format.
Trust me,
this book will tell you plenty that you didn’t know about racing in New York. We
haven’t seen anything like it for ages, and the way things are going we may not
see anything like it again. 
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