breeders' cup

I should live blog this sonnofagun - two days of BC action - but I could never match the effort put in by lungfish over at acruns.blospot.com and his running diary of the Rays-Sox ALCS game 7. Compelling stuff, really. I'm afraid to think what might have happened had the game gone the other way. Has anyone live blogged while trying to extract their head from a flat screen tv? We came closer to it than you might think.

Ummm, yes, the Breeders' Cup. It's on right now on ESPN. Jerry Bailey is busy stating the obvious. All three of the guys on set are wearing pink ties. Ok, no problem there. I just remembered that it's breast cancer awareness month. Pink is cool by me. Very awkward bit featuring Bailey and Gary Player. Toward the end, when Player gives him big hug, Bailey is like, "you're gonna cut this out, right?" Greatest.

Ok, 2yo fillies on turf, usually a recipe for disaster. Euros probably better in the main, but post is tough for the top pair, not sure the rail filly classes up. How about Beyond our Reach at 15-1. Post is crummy, but you get Dettori, baby. She's been put in some awfully tough spots, so maybe the firm turf and drop in class helps the cause.

Oh, man, Lezcano riding like it's the 5th at Monmouth. Great ride. Heart Shaped made sustained run over the rock hard course. Dettori still out there picking daisies. Maram gets the photo! Good stuff. Small outfit takes it to Coolmore. Chad Brown used to work w/ Frankel. Ran his string at MP. Bobby a tough guy to work for, so this has to be pretty sweet for Chad. He's trying to play it cool on TV now. Ok, his grandpa passed away, so coolness is for a reason. All I do is put my foot in mouth doing this. Nice score, anyway, for Jose and Chad.

Man, I'm wiped. I'll be back for F/M Turf. No interest in balance of card, except to check out Zenyatta. Sealy Hill is live at a big price, says Brad Thomas, so we'll see what she can do. I'll hook her up with the logicals - Forever Together, Wait a While, Visit and Mauralakana. I'll play against the top two Euros. These ESPN guys are tough to watch. The knot on Bailey's tie so big, it's almost the size of his head. Randy Moss is okay, I should add. He actually offers some real handicapping. Joe Testosterone is wearing a pink tie AND a pink shirt. He is very aware, I'll give him that.

And we're back. Sealy Hill sitting at a juicy 44-1. Hoping she sits pocket trip before getting first run on deeper closers. Loading in the gate...Checked back to last. Fna. Time to start taxes....YES!!! Sealy Hill probably good enough to win, but gets up to complete sweet exacta with Forever Together. Let's see what this thing pays. Fna. The filly nearly won it. She doesn't get squeezed by winner and the placings are reversed. Proof once again that Brad Thomas a genius. Great, great times. Let's get a big number...Just off phone w/ Dad. He reports that exacta pays something like $440 for $2. Might have to start back on taxes, anyway. What a laugh! They can take me to the woodshed tomorrow, but this BC ended up on the plus side. Maybe keeping a running diary, a la lungfish, the key to gambling success. If Sealy Hill wins, it'd be raining dollars down here in Canton. Exacta still good enough for me to throw quarters at cars driving by. Glad you could share in the fun. I'm really exhausted now. Nap time...

policy shift?

It could amount to a whole lotta nothing, but caught today that NJ Governor Jon Corzine has nominated Jerry Zaro to take over Gary Rose's old gig heading up the office of Economic Development. Only reason I mention it is because while Rose was a big supporter of Atlantic City casino interests, Zaro is a more likely advocate for slots at the Meadowlands. He owns horses - or at least he did, as recently as last summer. His best one was Bold Child, a nice Flatter filly picked up for around $20k as a yearling, I think, that got hurt first back and was subsequently retired earlier this year. She was with Tim Hills and placed in the 2007 Sorority. He might have some J-breds in partnership, too, with his buddy, Dennis Drazin, head of the NJ horsemen.

Zaro a big Monmouth Park fan. He spearheaded the somewhat controversial move to sign an exclusive distribution deal with TVG a few years ago. I know that they've since cut deals with TrackNet, but I'm not sure if the terms require additional monies to TVG for the right to do so. Would have to get numbers from NJSEA. Wonder if he's of camp that advocates cut to boutique meet at MP? Law doesn't allow for it (141 is required), but I'd be curious to know where he stands. Given his strong connections with Chris Christie, too, does he stay on in the event that the Rs take the statehouse? Polling suggests that the race is tight, but we still have to see if Corzine sticks around or makes the move to DC as Sec. of the Treasury. Whole lotta insider baseball, but bottom line is that Zaro could be point man on slots push were it to happen, and that's the best news NJ horsemen have had on that front in some time.

market watch

Man, what a crazy few weeks it's been. Like everyone else, I'm caught up with the financial drama that's playing out, only because, as I told my wife, "it's probably important." I studied English and Political Science during my undergrad days, Urban Planning after that, but I've slept through enough econ courses to know that the goofiness with the world's stock markets, while compelling enough, doesn't really get to the heart of the crisis. Yes, it affects your 401k, sure, but it's more like a symptom of the bigger problem: the credit markets and fact that trust is good and dead in the banking world. Part of the problem is that these banks have crummy books, and because everyone knows that everyone else is BS-ing the valuations of these real estate backed assets, nobody wants to play ball. And, it's not like I can blame them. I mean, if you think that Bank X very likely has the financial equivalent of the clap, you're gonna stay home and play video games that night, right?

Anyway, Great Britain was the first to grasp the whole deal and determined that if everyone in the system is convinced that everybody else is sick, the only means to right the ship is to guarantee all the bad debt on the books in exchange for a percentage ownership of the bank. It's this game's version of a clean STD report to waive around, and the best chance to get banks doing business with one another. So, today's big market rally is really a celebration of that waive, pending or otherwise, of the magic wand by the world's governments, but likely doesn't signal that the road ahead will be anything other than bumpy. While we might have done something about these banks that f-ed up their books, we'll still have to deal with contracting growth, increased unemployment, additional credit deleveraging and empty coffers here at home.

I like to check out Calculated Risk, Econobrowser and Paul Krugman for thoughts on the whole deal. I'll often pass off their ideas as my own, so you can think of me as the Cliff Notes version of their collective writings. Be warned, though, that I'm prone to misunderstanding what they write, so it's probably better to check them out yourselves. Just as Cliff Notes never did much for me back in the day ("Sean, did you read the book?" was a fairly common notation on some of my earlier pre-Wikepedia writings on Women's 18th Century literature), I'll more often than not leave you with that empty feeling inside. Not fun times, I know. As Calculated Risk suggests, I'm tracking 3 month treasuries, the TED Spread and commercial paper. I have no idea what I'm looking at half of the time, but I am tracking those babies like a hawk. When I see movement, I note it, nod my head and file it away for nonsensical blogging.

Oh, and horses are good. Tattooed at Fasig Tipton sale. Half to Veiled Reference went for $67,000. That's him above. Good looking sucker, looks a lot like sister. We passed on him for $25 or 30k last December as a weanling, so missing the $15,000-20,000 that we could have pocketed on the flip. He has a bone spur on top of left knee that I couldn't shake (often a sign of other stuff going on, or waiting to go on in the joint), so I shouldn't kick myself too much. Only other filly in play, one by Malibu Moon, went for $100k, waaay more than we would have spent. We'll look at weanlings in December if the TED Spread plays in our favor.