Horse Racing the Chicago Way PDF Download

Author: Steven A. Riess
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815655282
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Chicago may seem a surprising choice for studying thoroughbred racing, especially since it was originally a famous harness racing town and did not get heavily into thoroughbred racing until the 1880s. However, Chicago in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was second only to New York as a center of both thoroughbred racing and off-track gambling. Horse Racing the Chicago Way shines a light on this fascinating, complicated history, exploring the role of political influence and class in the rise and fall of thoroughbred racing; the business of racing; the cultural and social significance of racing; and the impact widespread opposition to gambling in Illinois had on the sport. Riess also draws attention to the nexus that existed between horse racing, politics, and syndicate crime, as well as the emergence of neighborhood bookmaking, and the role of the national racing wire in Chicago. Taking readers from the grandstands of Chicago’s finest tracks to the underworld of crime syndicates and downtown poolrooms, Riess brings to life this understudied era of sports history.

Author: Kimberly A. Rinker
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738560809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
The popularity of horse racing in Chicago has yet to be rivaled in any other metropolitan area. Since the 1800s, the Windy City's enthusiasm for both harness and Thoroughbred racing led to 10 major racetracks being built in the Chicago area. Four of those raceways--Balmoral, Maywood, Hawthorne, and Arlington--are still racing and thriving today. From Washington Park, Lincoln Fields, and Worth Raceway on the city's South Side, to the Near West Side venues of Hawthorne Race Course and Sportsman's Park, to Arlington Park's northwest locale and Aurora Downs to the west, Chicago's racing community has enjoyed a long and sometimes scandalous history. Chicago's Horse Racing Venues provides insight into Chicago's rich racing history and a behind-the-scenes look at the people and horses involved.

Author: Don Herion
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1450081657
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Traffic Tickets—What a Pain Every police officer is issued a traffic summons book when he is assigned to a district. The supervisors have what we used to call a quota on tickets issued. When an officer is assigned to the traffic division, he is expected to write at least eight moving violations a shift. But that is all he has to do; he doesn’t handle any crime scenes or domestic disturbances or whatever else comes along. On occasion, he has to handle a traffic accident, but that’s about all. Don’t get me wrong. I hated to write tickets, especially moving violations like red lights, speeding, or no left turn. Parking tickets were also a pain in the ass; all they accomplish is that the poor soul that gets the ticket now hates you. I guess that they are a necessity though, and maybe in some way they help keep drivers from getting too crazy behind the wheel of their car or truck. Personally, I would rather be out in the street locking up bad guys and harassing gang bangers. Some of these traffic guys really like working traffic, giving out their quota of summons, and putting a few drunk drivers in jail before they kill somebody or themselves. People that get stopped by the police for a traffic violation really come up with some original excuses. I remember an elderly lady that we stopped for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. This violation is usually an open-and-shut case. When I asked her for her driver’s license and explained why we had stopped her, she called me a liar and asked why wasn’t I out chasing down dope dealers or communists instead of bothering a woman alone in a car trying to get home. 20 DON HERION No matter what I said to her, she had a look of hate in her eyes; and if she had a gun, she would have shot me dead. When I began opening the summons book to write her the ticket, she pulled an acting job on me that was a beauty. The first thing she did was to roll her eyes up in her head and then grab her heart like she was going to have a heart attack right there. Well, needless to say, she hit the right button and her act worked. Even though I knew she was probably faking it, I didn’t want to take a chance of her dropping dead in front of me. I asked her if she needed an ambulance or wanted to be taken to the nearest hospital. She said that she only lived two blocks from there and that her heart pills were in her bathroom. She explained that if she got them, she was sure to be OK. Well, at this point, I was pretty aggravated and couldn’t imagine myself giving this wacky broad mouth-to-mouth resuscitation if she was telling the truth. Of course, I told her that we would be glad to drive her home if she couldn’t drive. She said no, that she felt better, and she thought that she could drive home OK. I said, “OK, lady, under the circumstances, I won’t give you a ticket this time but that you had better be more alert in the future.” I just knew that I made this old broad’s day when she thought she really bullshitted me about the heart attack. To top it off, when she was driving away, she winked at me and said, “Thanks, Officer, have a nice day.” The best part of all is when I got back in the squad car, my partner Bob was just shaking his head and laughing. It seems that he had stopped this old witch in the past for doing the same thing and she pulled the heart attack routine on him too. He admitted that he didn’t want to take a chance and have the old broad drop dead on him either and gave her a pass. The thing that got him was when her eyes went up in her head and all he could see was the whites of her eyes. Later on, we talked to a few of the other guys that were working in that part of the district, and they all had stopped her for doing the same thing, driving the wrong way on a one-way street. They all witnessed her heart attack routine, and none of them gave her a ticket. I thought, your day will come, you old bitty. Not only will I give her a ticket,

Author: Michael Harvey
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408819775
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
When PI Michael Kelly is called upon by former colleague John Gibbons to help with an old case, he doesn't expect to find him dead the next morning. Coincidence? Kelly doesn't think so. Determined to catch his friend's killer, Kelly must piece together a link between Gibbons' death and the brutal rape that happened eight years earlier. He needs all the help he can get. Kelly's fearsome new team is bright, savvy and determined, but Chicago's mob, serial rapists and shady policing won't make it easy. This fast-paced debut captures the dangerous, gritty world of Chicago crime through wit and suspense.

Author: John McEvoy
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458711838
Category : Pets
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Why are some of America's best and most respected jockeys suddenly losing big races? And who would kill a ninety-two-year-old bookmaker? ''McEvoy has created a winning protagonist in Chicago turf writer Matt O'Connor, who has an abundance of friends in mostly low places and his finger firmly on the pulse of the national horseracing scene.... [He] is dead-on in his descriptions and accounts of Thoroughbred racing. He also gives us characters we can care about and suspense enough to make the blood race like a stakes-winning sprinter.'' - Booklist starred review ''Horse racing has always attracted a wide range of colorful characters, and McEvoy portrays them all with an obvious affection and a sharp eye, from jockeys, trainers and touts to fans, newsmen and suckers.... charm, racing expertise and a willingness to go the distance that will carry the reader all the way to the finish line.'' - Publishers Weekly Praise for Blind Switch... ''This accomplished first novel set in the world of horse racing is bound to be compared to the novels of Dick Francis....'' - Publishers Weekly starred review

Author: Ted McClelland
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 155652675X
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This fun and witty exposé of horse racing in America goes behind the scenes at the track, providing a serious gambler's-eye view of the action. Ted McClelland spent a year at tracks and off-track betting facilities in Chicago and across the country, profiling the people who make a career of gambling on horses. This account follows his personal journey of what it means to be a horseplayer as he gambles with his book advance using various betting and handicapping strategies along the way. A colourful cast of characters is introduced, including the intensely disciplined Scott McMannis, "The Professor," a one-time college instructor who now teaches a course in handicapping, and Mary Schoenfeldt, a former nun and gifted handicapper who donates all of her winnings to charity. This moving account of wins, losses, and personal turmoil provides a realistic look at gamblers, gambling, and life at the track.

Author: Mark E. Ripple
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781581501261
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This guide instructs horseplayers how to apply stock market theories to betting horse races. By studying the consistencies between the stock market and pari-mutuel market or betting pool, horseplayers can gain new insight on how to discover inefficiencies in the betting pool and aid their quest for Xtra winners at the track.

Author: Roger Salvino
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 1504388259
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description
Although horse racing started in the seventeenth century, high-level horse racing didnt come to Illinois until 1909. The history of horse racing in Illinois was largely due to families in the horse racing industry. Included is some of the glorious history of famous tracks: Hawthorne, Arlington, and Sportsmans Park.

Author: Katherine C. Mooney
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300271670
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
The rise and fall of one of America’s first Black sports celebrities Isaac Murphy, born enslaved in 1861, still reigns as one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Black jockeys like Murphy were at the top of the most popular sport in America at the end of the nineteenth century. They were internationally famous, the first African American superstar athletes—and with wins in three Kentucky Derbies and countless other prestigious races, Murphy was the greatest of them all. At the same time, he lived through the seismic events of Emancipation and Reconstruction and formative conflicts over freedom and equality in the United States. And inevitably he was drawn into those conflicts, with devastating consequences. Katherine C. Mooney uncovers the history of Murphy’s troubled life, his death in 1896 at age thirty-five, and his afterlife. In recounting Murphy’s personal story, she also tells two of the great stories of change in nineteenth-century America: the debates over what a multiracial democracy might look like and the battles over who was to hold power in an economy that increasingly resembled the corporate, wealth-polarized world we know today.

Author: Gene McCormick
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786430494
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
The world of Thoroughbred horse racing is much more than the glitz-and-glamour Saturday races shown on TV. From Sunday through Friday, there are a myriad of horses who run, not for million dollar purses, but in the smaller claiming races that keep horse-racing alive and financially viable. On these same days, there are the bettors, owners, trainers and jockeys who form the backbone of horse-racing with their less-than-glamorous livelihood. This volume presents a non-fiction insider's look at today's sport of Thoroughbred racing from a day-to-day, behind-the-scenes vantage point. Divided into three sections, it discusses the racing, breeding and jockeying which is the reality of Thoroughbred racing. From trainers and jockeys to the editor of the Illinois Racing News, men and women well versed in the sport provide firsthand insight and experience regarding the actualities of Thoroughbred racing. Selected racing records and an extensive glossary of horse racing terms are also included.