Trevor Bayne/Daytona 500: Cheering in the Press Box

Public horse handicappers should bet, even if moderately . . . it aids in maintaining the focus.

And unless I'm sorely mistaken, one of the multiple reasons Crist left the Times is because they didn't want their horse writers to bet (and still don't . . . ask Drape).

 

At my first paper, I had a three-year "winning" streak of taking out our area basketball teams in the section playoffs. Boys, Girls, didn't matter. If you were one of our teams and you saw me with legal pad and tape recorder at your basketball game, you were 48 minutes away from uniform-collecting time.

Problem for me was my boss knew it, so he'd send me to the most far-flung games in an effort to get our outlying teams knocked out. Lots of desert and mountain trips.

 

I'm not a handicapper, but I can say unequivocally that I report way more authoritatively because I'm also a bettor.

I had heard that about Crist. And when he went to the DRF, he transformed it into a newspaper, as opposed to just a source of PP's.

Just for the hell of it, I searched Equibase for "Gray Lady", and perhaps not surprisingly, there are four horses registered (two quarterhorses) since 1939, and ... they're all unraced.

 

And readers could change the way they bet based on what you wrote. Again, in theory you are affecting the line.

So to write ANYTHING about an event in which wagering is going on is theoretically unethical. Exactly how high is the "absolutist" bar anyway?

Which is why this entire argument is, well, ridiculous.

 

That's exactly why it has to be approached from a practical sense. I said above that I've considered the fact that my (thoroughly objective) race advances inevitably are going to be used by some readers as handicapping tools, but, you know, I sleep OK at night.

 

Wait a minute. My point isn't that you can affect the betting line. Of course, you can always do that. That's not unethical. All coverage can theoretically affect the betting line.

The line that gets crossed - and it's a huge one - is when you are manipulating your coverage for your own self-interest, financially, rather than as an unbiased, dispassionate reporter. It harms the integrity of both the sport and the coverage.

This reminds me a lot about the debate back when the former sports editor who was now working for MLB.com was allowed to judge APSE entries. Everyone who knew the guy said it was no issue, because they could vouch for his integrity. But guys like me don't like leaving stuff like that to case-by-case determination, because it compromises public faith in the process, i.e. it is highly manipulatable.

Same thing here.

I guess the point is that I don't like case-by-case determinations, no matter the field.

 

The worst I've seen was the Mexico City Busch/Nationwide race a few years back. There were probably no more than four regular U.S. writers there, and we were housed in a quonset hut with only a hint of Internet service.

The "media center" was what I imagined a Mexican soccer stadium crowd might be like. It was a zoo.

Every time a Latin driver did something positive, particularly Adrian Fernandez, the assembled group roared and clapped and jumped up on the tables. When Juan Montoya bumped Scott Pruett out of the way near the end, it was pandemonium.

The post-race pressers were scary, with dozens of photogs shoving and punching each other, jumping over the tables and crushing everyone in their way. It was paparazzi run amok. I finally escaped to the small NASCAR PR room in an adjoining building because I feared for my safety, plus they finally allowed us to use their password-protected server to file back to the States.

An eye-opening experience, for sure. And I was very glad that venue was taken off the schedule one year later.

 

48 minutes, birdie?? That's a lot of overtimes for a high school game.

 

My bad, SoCal. Early a.m. posting. :-[

 

Just jerking you around, you know ...

 

You should cover a Formula 1 race sometime.

 

Editorially, it's MUCH more of a bettors' paper than it was prior to the late '80s, when Annenberg let it go to Murdoch in a package featuring a prize hen (at the time) known as TV Guide.

The statistical content has improved, vastly, over the past dozen years or so.

The paper is also markedly pro-New York Racing Association in its coverage. Crist and NYRA poobah Charlie Hayward are very close.