It was an old tout site, before the Internet. Based in Los Angeles and heard all over SoCal.
Radio show, "recreating" the races shortly after the running of the races, interspersed with a hard sell for the great selections of "Head Trackman Sammy Parker."
Yep, kiddies, back before you were born, or maybe when you were in diapers, that was what we were reduced to. Simulcasting either had not come about, or was just beginning, and there was no way to get the results, except in a newspaper next day.
Aren't you lucky you were born when your were? Course, we were paying maybe 50 or 75 cents for a gallon of gas, and even with inflation a lot cheaper than now. And California was cheap and livable then . . .
Anyhow, Turfcraft was located in downtown LA, seedy office building. The head trackman was a little Jewish guy, with one secretary.
Their cheif annoncer (before Danny what-his-name) was a guy called Leo Herbert. Real name was Herb Markell. We called him Herb. Another little Jewish guy, prototypically so. The type that the Ultimate Jew, great funnyman, Jackie Mason, affectionately ridicules in his act.
Herb's great lines were: "Another win for the incomparable Head Trackman, Sammy Parker!! How sweet it is!"
They relied on stable help to give them tips (in exchange for some cash if horse won). But the really big winners they spoke of was for races in which they made no releases, tho their marks did not know that,
Herb himself couldn't handicap his way out of the proverbial paper bag. I don't think he could read the Form. I used to go with him tothe Caliente track in Tijuana, and he'd bet on horses that had the same name as his sister's parrot, or like that.
When Herb got cancer he dedided against conventional treatment and opted for the macrobiotic diet as a cure. It didn't, and if recall rightly Herb passed on in the early 90s. And the Turfcraft thing, along with its Incomparable Head Trackman is also history.
Radio show, "recreating" the races shortly after the running of the races, interspersed with a hard sell for the great selections of "Head Trackman Sammy Parker."
Yep, kiddies, back before you were born, or maybe when you were in diapers, that was what we were reduced to. Simulcasting either had not come about, or was just beginning, and there was no way to get the results, except in a newspaper next day.
Aren't you lucky you were born when your were? Course, we were paying maybe 50 or 75 cents for a gallon of gas, and even with inflation a lot cheaper than now. And California was cheap and livable then . . .
Anyhow, Turfcraft was located in downtown LA, seedy office building. The head trackman was a little Jewish guy, with one secretary.
Their cheif annoncer (before Danny what-his-name) was a guy called Leo Herbert. Real name was Herb Markell. We called him Herb. Another little Jewish guy, prototypically so. The type that the Ultimate Jew, great funnyman, Jackie Mason, affectionately ridicules in his act.
Herb's great lines were: "Another win for the incomparable Head Trackman, Sammy Parker!! How sweet it is!"
They relied on stable help to give them tips (in exchange for some cash if horse won). But the really big winners they spoke of was for races in which they made no releases, tho their marks did not know that,
Herb himself couldn't handicap his way out of the proverbial paper bag. I don't think he could read the Form. I used to go with him tothe Caliente track in Tijuana, and he'd bet on horses that had the same name as his sister's parrot, or like that.
When Herb got cancer he dedided against conventional treatment and opted for the macrobiotic diet as a cure. It didn't, and if recall rightly Herb passed on in the early 90s. And the Turfcraft thing, along with its Incomparable Head Trackman is also history.
