Candy & Nuts

Ah, yes… “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts…”—what a quaint little adage, isn’t it? The sort of thing one might hear from an uncle nursing a bourbon, hunched over a losing ticket, muttering to himself at the rail. You see, in the world of horse racing—handicapping, to be precise—excuses are as abundant as cigarette butts outside a dive bar in Queens.

There's a kind of poetry in the delusion, don’t you think?

"He was a little bit short..." they say, as though conditioning was a metaphysical happenstance, not the trainer’s singular responsibility."A little bit wide,"—well of course he was, darling. It’s racing, not synchronized swimming. Not everyone gets the inside rail and a halo of luck.And my personal favorite: “A little bit green.” As if the colt had just emerged from the womb wearing shamrocks and quoting your favorite bar rat.

These phrases—they’re not analysis. They’re anesthesia. A linguistic balm for the bruised ego of the losing bettor. They cling to these little euphemisms like a drowning man to driftwood. It makes losing palatable. Predictable. Even noble. But the truth? The truth is as unforgiving as a stopwatch. The horse either fired or he didn’t. The trip was clean or it wasn’t. And excuses… well, they’re the currency of the broke.

You want winners? Don’t tell me about what almost happened. Don’t bring me the “ifs”, the “buts”, or the shamrock-scented fantasies. Bring me the data. The replays. The fractions. The angles no one’s watching. That’s where the money is. Everything else is just… sugar-coated failure.

Would you like a mint?

Ah… brilliantly venomous, with a touch of sardonic flair—how wonderfully refreshing. Yes, a mint would indeed help mask the unmistakable stench of desperation that wafts off a losing ticket like stale cigar smoke in a Jersey OTB parlor.

“Would have won if he switched leads.” That gem. That precious excuse plucked from the fool’s orchard. It rolls off the tongue like some profound revelation, as if uttering it makes the loss more palatable, more dignified. But in reality, it’s the handicapping equivalent of blaming the rain for a plane crash—it may be part of the narrative, but it’s far from the cause.

You see, the parroting—yes, Polly, dear Polly—is endemic. The racing world is full of them. They listen to some half-baked analyst blurt out “lead change” like it's an arcane mystery decoded by a coven of turf sorcerers, and suddenly it's gospel. The parrots chirp, the forums echo, and the myth spreads like a virus in a kindergarten classroom.

But the truth—the real truth—is far more nuanced. It's context. Ah, yes. The delicious, elusive flavor of context. You see a horse like Candied, who holds her line with grace on a single lead, powering through the stretch like a dancer refusing to bow, on that left lead, and when she switches, the perscription to her problem, she falls thru a trap door, now she is off to the breeding shed, because she did switch, or Sunny Blossom, who hugs that left lead like it’s his childhood blanket, when he did switch, he was retired. And they win. Decisively. Because they’re comfortable there. Because that’s their rhythm, and when they do what handicappers cry for, they are done.

The pattern breaks—when the metronome skips, when a horse who always switches doesn’t—or does so awkwardly, or too soon—that’s when your antennae should twitch. That’s when you start asking questions. Not parroting nonsense, but investigating. Digging. Like any good operative would.

And yes, it requires effort. Observation. Awareness. But that’s too much for most, isn’t it? It’s easier to echo the clichés, blame the trip, the surface, the sun’s position over Saratoga Springs. “Didn’t switch leads,” they moan, clutching their tickets like death certificates.

Meanwhile, 'cappers with the Bugs Bunny smarts are off to the windows, cashing with a smirk. Because they watched. They learned. They noticed that little flick of an ear, that flash of tail, that change in stride cadence that told him something was off. The Elmers or Daffys bemoan the ride, the track, the sun, the moon and their luck.

So the question, as you so eloquently put it, is this: What’s up, Doc? Are you parroting? Or are you thinking?

Because Christmas only comes once a year. And for most handicappers, it never comes at all.