Not Your Ordinary 7th Race

Lots of people get things named after them. George Washington got about 200,000 streets named after him, a monument, a state, a city, a couple of universities, a bridge here and there, and a high school in every nook and hamlet in the hemisphere. Lincoln got a car named after him, also a tunnel. Grant got a tomb.

Napoleon got a brandy, Caesar got a salad. They named a tank after Sherman, furniture after Louis XIV, a candy bar after Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson and toast after Madame Melba. McKinley got a mountain.

Big deal! Know what I’ve got named after me? A horse race! Not a race horse. Lots of guys have that. Me, I got a whole race of my very own. Match that around Washington, D.C., or Paris, France.

Sunday Silence won’t be in it. It’s (not yet) a part of the triple crown. I don’t know that Easy Goer will be shipping out for it. So far as I know, Wayne Lukas hasn’t been holding out a horse for it.

But these things start slowly. It’s at the classic distance, a mile and a quarter, and I have no doubt that, in a year or two, it will be right up there with the Kentucky Derby. Maybe it’ll be another jewel added to the triple crown. Or, maybe, it’ll replace the Belmont. I’m a little worried it might upstage the Breeders’ Cup. I’ll bet Bill Shoemaker is sorry he retired too early to add the Murray to his illustrious list of stakes wins.

Ever notice these things always happen to you too late? I’m just sorry my Uncle Ed isn’t here to see this. You remember my Uncle Ed? My gambling uncle?

Ed was what your Aunt Matilda would call a pool shark. He could do things with a pool cue that Zorro couldn’t do with a sword. He could stack a deck of cards blindfolded and let you cut them twice. He was the best crapshooter in New England till a guy named Pittsfield Dick wiped him out one night in an Elks Club in Athol, Mass. Pittsfield Dick had an unfair advantage. He was sober.

Ed was the one who got me started in racing. He took me to my first horse race. At Agawam in Massachusetts. Neither Agawam or Uncle Ed is here anymore. Ed died broke. So did Agawam in that Depression year.

I won on a horse called Kievex and Ed said afterward that might be the worst thing that ever happened to me.

Ed tried to beat the horses two ways--as a bookmaker and as a player. He didn’t have much luck either way. Ed’s problem was that he was always looking for an edge. He boiled dice, stacked decks and always wore glasses (which he didn’t need) and, sometimes, a clerical collar if he played out of town.

Ed had a lot of adventures trying to break the books. Once, he and his partner, Johnny Pachesnik, had an elaborate setup where they had a phone line next door to the bookie parlor (which probably had a sign reading “League of Women Voters” over the door even though nobody in there was a woman or had ever voted).

Ed’s scheme was to get the results of the race from a spotter at the track who would say something like “War Play has a 10-length lead going into the stretch, plenty of run left, he’d have to break a leg to lose.” And Ed, wearing a cardigan sweater with 12 buttons on it, would hurry next door with the sweater buttoned except for the number of the winner of the race.

If the bookie took the bet from Johnny on post time, Johnny would give him a loser. But the bookie would get greedy. He’d take the bet irrespective of post time. Johnny would bet the real winner gleaned from Ed’s buttons. It’s called past-posting.

The sting worked till Ed started to come in on a 98-degree day with his sweater buttoned up to his chin. The bookie knew he either had pneumonia or a scam going. The bookie didn’t get mad. He got even. One day, Ed and Johnny chunked it in on a horse who was winning in a canter. But the horse lost. Ed got on the phone to his informant. “The horse did break a leg,” the guy told him.

But after three such episodes, Ed (and Johnny) got suspicious. A few phone calls and they found out the bookie had wised up and paid the spotter more than they did. Ed was philosophical. “The house wins again,” he shrugged. It was Rule 3 of the words to live by that he gave me: “Never play a house game whether it’s a race track, roulette or just a tired guy cutting a small pot.”

Ed, of course, never took his own advice. I don’t even know if they have street-corner bookies anymore. I know they don’t have any Uncle Eds anymore. They’re respectable dealers in Atlantic City or golf pros now.

Ed would never understand off-track betting, state lotteries--or his nephew getting a race named after him.

He taught me to read a Racing Form, but one day, when I showed up with a pool cue, Ed just took one look and shook his head. “Put that down,” he said, “and pick up a book. You’ll make more money out of a book than you ever will out of a pool cue.”

You can see why I wish he could be there at the first running of the Jim Murray Handicap (we’re only 116 runnings behind the Kentucky Derby) in the seventh race at Hollywood Park Friday night. You can see why, when I think of horse racing, I think of Uncle Ed.

They should have named the race after him.