excerpt from
Signers

by
Susan L. Sweeney
 

DIXIELAND BAND

       ... A week later, on Wednesday, February 9^th, Ed was headed for the Penn National OTB to bet two Santa Anita races and he asked me if I wanted to go along.  Just that morning I had been in our local courthouse filing some papers regarding our deed.  They had a metal detector, so I emptied most of the contents from my purse.  These contents happened to include my pocketsize Tomlinson pedigree ratings (before the time we had decided to purchase the two backup copies of his Mudders and Turfers).  When Ed and I arrived at the OTB, I opened my purse and I saw it only contained $20 so I decided to buy a voucher for this amount, relax, and bet for fun.
       It was quiet in the OTB since it was still early afternoon so Ed and I had our choice of seats and we sat in front of a bank of TVs.  I watched several Fair Grounds post parades and in two separate races, I had noticed horses that looked physically ready and I bet $2 across the board on each.  To my surprise, both hit for double digits.  Ed had already made his first bet and his horse came in third so we were waiting for his next wager.
         I went back to watching the post parade at the Fair Grounds, and this time I saw a horse that looked amazing.  He had a huge arched neck; he was prancing on his toes; and he had a determined look in his eye, coupled with an attitude that was saying to the world, “I am going to kick ass today”.  As soon as he passed by, another horse came along with exactly the same look and attitude, and suddenly I was faced with a dilemma.  I had never seen two horses in one race looking so good.
        I borrowed Ed’s Equibase Program to examine the race and was happy to learn that it was a 5-furlong Maiden Special Weight race on the turf.  I noticed the sire for one of the two horses was Zen.  I reached in to fetch my Tomlinson turf pedigree numbers out of my purse and discovered they were not there.  I thought, okay, this is the reason you memorize these numbers and I was thinking Zen was a 170 Tomlinson, which would make him capable, though not dominant on the grass.
        I checked the other good-looking horse for his sire, and compared all the other sires, to see if any one of them had a true advantage over any other on the grass. It was then that I noticed the 5 horse was out of Dixieland Band.  I gasped.  Just yesterday, for some unknown reason, Ed had mentioned to me that Dixieland Band is an extremely potent sire.  He said that horses sired by Dixieland Band “can literally do anything.  They can go short, long, run in the mud, on the turf; you name it, this sire can do it.” Strangely, up until yesterday Ed had never said a word to me ever about any sire.  So when I saw the Dixieland Band horse, my thoughts were “I can’t bet either of the other two horses across the board because Dixieland Band can beat them.”
      I went to the self-service terminal about two minutes to post and made the decision to box the three horses in a $1 trifecta for $6. I finally could sit back down, relax, and check out the odds of my selections.  Suddenly, I sat back up and onto the edge of my seat.  The odds were 17/1, 50/1 and 40/1.  As soon as I noticed those whopping odds, the race was off.
         The Dixieland Band horse got the lead right away and was running away from the field.  So many thoughts were going through my head, many of them telling myself how so very stupid I was for not having bet the Dixieland Band horse across the board.  The other part of me was more optimistic, daydreaming what a huge trifecta it would be with these longshots one-two-three.  I knew in my heart that this would never happen to me, especially since my other two horses were nowhere on the screen.
       It was a short race.  Only a minute had gone by, with all these contradictory thoughts swirling in my mind, when suddenly the Dixieland Band crossed the wire first and my two other horses followed in second and third!
        Ed was sitting next to me with his back sort of pushing into his chair, just studying the screens, when I lost my ability to speak and I started tugging on his shirtsleeve.  He looked at me and said, “What?”
       I was still mute.  I tapped his arm and pointing at the Fair Grounds television screen.  He did not understand me and had no clue what I had just bet because I rarely announced my bets to him.  Ed plays with the discipline and focus of a statue on Mount Rushmore, so I would have driven him crazy if I told him every wager I made, since I played so often and seemingly with no discipline.
        Finally, I blurted out a few words: “I think I hit that trifecta!”
        Ed said, “What trifecta, where?”  And I said, “At the Fair Grounds, and it’s going to be huge!”
       Seconds later the race was made official and my three horses were right there on the screen, the 5-10-12.  Then the payouts came up, and I saw an amount of $43,280, and I was thinking that it must be the pick 6 payout.  Suddenly I realized it was for the $2 trifecta payout and I had half that amount for $21,640!  To the Top