Hit or Get Off The Pot

Ah… Oaklawn today.

I don’t merely like the card — I love it. The way one loves a well-executed con, an unopened bottle of something expensive, or the moment right before a secret is revealed. It’s rich. It’s layered. It demands attention, not obedience.

This is the kind of card that doesn’t hold your hand or whisper sweet nothings. It asks a simple question: Are you paying attention, or are you just along for the ride? Field size, conditions, intent — it’s all there, hiding in plain sight, waiting for someone sharp enough to connect the dots.

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Days like this separate the horseplayers from the tourists. The thinkers from the followers. The ones hunting opportunity from the ones chasing comfort at a short price.

Oaklawn doesn’t beg you to play.It dares you to understand.

And I, for one, find that utterly irresistible.

So, sit down. Pour yourself something brown and hot. This requires a proper tone.

You know, one of my favorite human contradictions — right up there with “I hate drama” said loudly in public — is the handicapper who swears his number one complaint is field size. “We want chaos,” he says. “We want prices. We want opportunity.”

And then — like clockwork — opportunity shows up, dressed nicely, holding a full workout report that didn’t even exist a year ago at Oaklawn… and handicappers run back to Aqueduct or Gulfstream, the ever-shrinking Florida mirage, like Linus and his comfort blanket from 1999.

Fascinating, really.

Handicappers, bless their hearts, are Charley Browns, and Peppermint Pappy keeps pulling the football back, and y'all have perfected the art of falling — and on particularly inspired days, directly out on your rear end. They complain about chalk, yet chase it. They curse short prices, yet worship name recognition. They rage against CRWs, yet somehow never seem to mention the small detail that they didn’t bet the winner anyway.

Let’s be clear — CRWs only matter if you actually won.If you didn’t, your argument is… academic. At best.

Now, take Oaklawn. The best track in the winter, hands down, races that require handicapping. Reading conditions. Understanding placement. Recognizing that the condition book isn’t a suggestion — it’s a roadmap. Trainers use it to hide, reveal, and ambush. If you’re paying attention, it’s all right there.

But instead, we get the tote-board theological crowd.

Here’s the delicious irony: The same people that worship value will pick up a hammer, religiously, every day and try to force it — jam a square peg into a round hole — then howl in outrage when it splinters, now that's faith.....

Thursday’s Fifth Season Stakes At Oaklawn — Speed King at sixty cents on the dollar. A horse we didn’t have sniffing the top four. A sprinter living off the glory from a year ago, buoyed by nothing more than nostalgia and local name recognition. But boom — instant favorite. Why? Because memory is a powerful drug, and bettors love to relapse.

We had the winner at $11.80, Will Take it.

And tomorrow? Saturday, Ah yes… Sandman. The most overhyped horse of last year’s Triple Crown trail, bar none, returns to the one place he ever did anything meaningful. He’ll be short. He’ll be adored. He’ll be promoted relentlessly by a media influencer whose sole vocation is manufacturing confidence where facts refuse to cooperate.

"But he is so purdy"

Last I checked the race went to the swiftest not the prettiest.

P.T. Barnum was an optimist. He underestimated the efficiency of modern propaganda, 'there is a sucker born every minute'

Influencers, the newest kind of P.T. Barnum, exist to make sure you are the sucker — and judging by the enthusiasm with which people hitch themselves to the bandwagon, business is booming.

So I’ll ask the only question that matters: Which one are you?

Because eventually, there comes a day in a man’s life when he has to look in the mirror, face his demons, and admit a difficult truth — if you rail about value, CRWs, and fairness, yet blindly follow the tote board or listen to influencers with Ferrari avatars and suspiciously vague resumes… you are your own problem, because, probably, you don't own a mirror.

If you don’t want to learn about dogs out, on the turf in the morning and how that impacts works and times — fine. If you’d rather outsource your thinking to men with bags of money and rented confidence with Ferrari avatars — that’s your prerogative.

But then, please…Stop complaining. Stop bitching.

This game is hit or get off the pot. And in the meantime, there are plenty of sharp players perfectly content to let the gullible fund their winnings at the windows.

Wise up. Rise up. Decide whether you’re going to be part of a winning team — or remain a permanent victim on the losing one.

Ah… Oaklawn. A place where the air smells of opportunity, hope, and just enough desperation to keep things honest.

You see, I’m genuinely pleased — delighted, even — that our racing stable is part of the Oaklawn product today. It’s a proper circuit. Honest racing. And if you haven’t noticed, that’s simply par for the course. Which, of course, leads some to an inevitable conclusion: perhaps I need to become more of an influencer than I already am.

A chilling thought.

Personally, I prefer to leave the thinking to the players themselves. But judging by the current state of the world — and social media in particular — most people seem to require their hands held, gently guided into the starting gate, and told precisely what to believe before the latch springs open.

I’m afraid I’m not that man.

If you can’t see it, can’t keep it, and can’t capitalize on it, then by all means — don’t quit your day job. There’s no shame in honest work. There is shame in pretending someone else stole an edge you never had.

Once again, it comes down to vigilance. Open your eyes. Stay on your toes. Opportunity doesn’t knock — it whispers. And if you’re listening for the roar of the crowd instead, you’ll miss it every time.

Chasing Irad Ortiz like a bouncing ball isn’t following opportunity — it’s following comfort. It leads to short prices, thin margins, and a familiar companion known as frustration. And I have to ask…

Why would you ever want that?

After all, the game doesn’t reward the loudest voice in the room — it rewards the one who noticed what everyone else ignored.

After all…Fairy tales are expensive these days and did I say I love the Oaklawn card today?