Horseplayers Don't Delete

It's been pretty wild to watch the last week. Tweets like this are being screen-shotted, rehashed, propagandized, and, yes, deleted.

I know I don't speak for horseplayers, but I am one. And as a horseplayer, I profess:

Don't hit delete. And for everyone promoting this so-called grand "wrongness", don't be a goof.

Why? Because it happens to us all the time.

Someone once said, "Zenyatta is a surface specialist".

Someone once said, "American Pharoah is a lock in the Travers."

Someone says, almost daily, "this horse has no chance to lose."

Those proclamations were wrong. Those horses all lost.

And Horseplayers don't delete.

Horseplaying (and training and owning and being a fan of these animals, too) is humbling. Not only do most of us only hit one of every four of our bets (if you're good and you're looking for a sweet spot in the odds), we oftentimes make some of the worst, boneheaded, stupid, awful, incredibly wrong predictions.

We don't delete, because it's a truth in any gambling game. We will - sooner or later and more than once - have egg on our face.

Our horses come up sore, and sick, and get bad rides, and don't like the weather, and ship poorly and have a fever; have a cough and have allergies. They get bodychecked and stopped right in front of.

They kick themselves in the trailer on the way over to the track.

They see a shadow at the half mile pole, and it messes them right up. A bird flies in the infield, and despite a massive hood with full cups, the horse sees it.

A horse sees a grey pony when loading into the gate and it scares them, throwing them off their game. We bet a horse yesterday who was lone speed, but they get ridden into the ground by another horse, because that grey horse spooked the other horse first.

The Donald had a small chance to win Michigan a month ago. Via the polls, if a couple of people out of 100 changed their minds -  or if a polling methodolgy about turnout was off a smidgen -  he'd win the state.

It's not worth deleting a tweet, or hiding a prediction, because that grey horse can be anywhere - at Mountaineer or Monmouth, Gulfstream or Golden Gate. Or in Michigan.

For us it's old hat, for them, not so much. But they sure could learn something by going to the track more often.