NEWS & OPINION :: May 11, 2005

Author sniffs out ‘Horseplayers’ from inside

By BILL CASTANIER

Too late. Too bad. If you had read Ted McClelland’s book, “Horseplayers, Life at

the Track,” you might have picked Giacomo in this past weekend’s Kentucky Derby. A $2 bet paid $102.60.

The book, written over a 12 months, is an insider’s look at playing the ponies by a self-described gambler’s apprentice.

The author is a Lansing native better known locally as Ted Kleine. He is the son of Robert and Gail Kleine. The obsession to write the book and to gamble started quite innocently, McClelland says, when he and his father went to a track near Chicago for a day of entertainment. McClelland won $150.

“There is nothing worse than winning on the first trip,” he says.

He was hooked and he soon found himself rearranging his life so he could go to

the track, turning down a job since it would interfere with his betting life.

In one of his first experiences he talks with a blind grifter who begs at the track to get money to live and to bet. McClelland popped for a $20 donation and he hit a $660 exacta.

“There was some serious juju in that cup,” McClelland says.

McClelland himself actually got lucky, and not necessarily at the track. As a writer for the Chicago Reader, (think Pulse only bigger) he was able to combine his two obsessions — writing and horse racing — by writing about the denizens of the track world.

McClelland’s writing jones began in Lansing, where he wrote for the Capital Times, Lansing Sate Journal, L.C.C. Lookout, the Lansing Business News and City Pulse.

“Anything on paper, I wrote for,” he says.

The inveterate gambler says that betting on the horses saved his life. He took his experiences of one year at the track and fashioned them into a readable, Damon Runyon-type look at the characters who spend their day at the track trying to handicap the centuries-old sport.

Those characters and betting experts make up the bulk of the book as McClelland learns from insiders their schemes and often elaborate methods of handicapping horses. These are the serious betters who are at the track everyday trying to make a living by picking the fleetest — or at least the horse that can run the best on the inside on a given day.

While he was learning his new profession, McClelland turned his experiences at the track into witty articles about the eccentric professional gamblers who use systems ranging from elaborate computer models and statistical analysis to numerology and lottery picks.

The book focuses on his mentors — people with nicknames such as “statman” and “Bob the Brain,” “professor speed” and “the stooper.” Part of this anonymity, McClelland says, is to protect the real betters from the IRS and the social security system since many of the gamblers work at the fringe not paying taxes. It may be a job for them but they aren’t about to send in payroll taxes.

The author had the good fortune to begin his quest with a $4000 nut, his publisher’s advance money for his book. With that and his writing for the Reader he became a daily visitor to tracks near Chicago.

“Horseplayers” is not a “How To Handicap Horses for Dummies.” It is a straightforward, funny, sad and often introspective look at the obsession of gambling, the obsessed and their complex machinations to win.

McClelland even tracks down a big-time loser at a 12-step meeting. He locates a guy who used company credit cards to rack up $170,000 in debt. The recovering gambler offers insight into obsession and the addictiveness of playing the ponies. On Derby Day in Vegas the guy bets more than 320 races, winning more than $4,000 on the Derby alone. He still makes three trips to the ATM to cover his losses. Today, the guy’s wife lets him only carry a dollar in his pocket in recognition that a buck covers bus fair and the minimum bet at a track is $2. She probably hasn’t heard about the 10 cent superfecta that some tracks have.

The book is filled with maxims for life — gambling maxims. Apparently famed poet Charles Bukowski, a gambler himself, said that any man who can beat the horse should be painting, writing a symphony or making a woman happy. McClelland adds in his deadpan writing style: “When would he find the time?”

After the book was published McClelland returned to the track with some trepidation. How would his fellow gamblers like his book? “The ‘statman’ loved it, but the guy who complained about everything — ‘the complainer’ — complained,” he says.

McClelland is already mapping out his next book, which will be a look at the culture of the people who live on or near the Great Lakes. The book, with a working title of “Third Coast,” will use the same writing style as “Horseplayers,” and McClelland will spend a lot of time camping, looking for another subculture.

The Chicago-area author will be signing at the Preakness in Baltimore, but for those who want to stay closer to home and meet a homegrown Tom Wolfe meets Diane Arbus, he will be at Way Station Books, 223 South Washington Ave. in Lansing, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, May 12, and from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, May 13.

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