The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told by Mark Paul

Author:Mark Paul [Paul, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mark Paul
Published: 2019-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Heaven

All racetracks are unusual places. On any given day, the turf club could be filled with some of the wealthiest people in the country watching their own personal horses compete. At England’s top track, Royal Ascot Racecourse, the Queen of England frequently attends to view her own horses run. English gentlemen will be found wearing top hats and tuxedoes, while the ladies sport elegant dresses, custom hats, and fine jewelry.

However, at the same tracks, on the same days, the grandstand is filled with people from all walks of life, some at the lowest economic levels, who survive on welfare and other forms of government assistance. In between the exclusive private spaces and the open-air seating is the clubhouse, filled with middle-class fans. It’s a truth that diverse groups love the sport of horse racing.

Miami understood it. He believed that to buy a betting ticket on a horse, for the minutes of that race, the gambler owns that horse’s performance as well as a potential to gain the joy of a profit or experience the sting of a loss. “Greatest game in the world!” he always said about it. Someday I’ll bring my sons here, he often thought. “Other dads will take their kids to the playground, but I’ll bring mine to Hollywood Park, and Santa Anita Park!”

All racetrack venues are not equal. Most tracks today show the evidence that they were built in a bygone era. In the late 1930s, over 40,000 fans would attend Seabiscuit’s workouts, and for his great match race against War Admiral, over 40 million people listened on the radio. The great tracks of Saratoga Race Course in New York, and Churchill Downs in Kentucky, were built in 1863 and 1875. A bit later, Belmont Park in New York was built in 1905, and Santa Anita Park, in Southern California, was constructed in 1934. These places were built in the era before televised Super Bowls, or March Madness college basketball playoffs. They were built when the two most popular US spectator sports were boxing and horseracing. These magnificent tracks were built when land was plentiful, and the track grounds could accommodate over 100,000 fans during the top races. Walking through these old racetracks is like walking through history, and, except for the fashions of the men and women in attendance, the grounds are not much different today than they were 100 years ago.

Miami believed that the track, Las Vegas casinos, and other forms of gambling were not intrinsically evil. Nor was drinking alcohol intrinsically evil...in his view. People go to a two-day Las Vegas getaway, lose their allocated $500 bankroll, and then go back to be a teacher, realtor, or an accountant the next Monday morning. In the same way, most people can drink a couple of beers or glasses of wine at happy hour, and report back to work the next day without any issues. For about five percent of the population, moderation is impossible and they drink or gamble to excess. Yet, there’s

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.