There’s nothing like picking a winning horse with long odds. Too bad it wasn’t happening at Rosecroft Raceway on Friday, when live racing returned to the harness track after a three-year absence. The lure of seeing one of the area’s unappreciated venues sent me looking for a score.
Lucky N Bad was 9-1 but dropped to even money by post time, turning a potential $20 winner into $4. He finished third anyway. It was a quick reminder that fighting the tote board at a small track is like swatting bees from a hive; you’re going to get stung and leave with regret.
Status Symbol went from 99-1 to 8-1 in one flash of the odds before the eighth race. If the wise guys were betting, they weren’t too smart; Status Symbol finished sixth. A longtime colleague and Rosecroft handicapper promised a triple that would send everyone home with pockets stuffed with cash. Instead, the exotic wager was a plain old stinker.
Still, it was nice to see the Oxon Hill track again. It once was “The Raceway on the Beltway,” with a 1,200-seat dining room that was the largest in town and featured a great view of the races and the region’s best crab cakes.
Liz Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor visited Rosecroft. Charlie Brotman, the best local publicist ever, secretly told his assistant to bet every horse in every race so Brotman always could give Taylor a winning ticket to cash.
Vice president Lyndon B. Johnson was a regular. LBJ once called track officials while en route asking whether they would delay the first race so he could bet the daily double. It wasn’t unusual for politicians to frequent the track, which was the Maryland suburbs’ leading venue from its 1949 opening to Capital Centre’s 1973 debut.
The grandstand was stocked with seats from old Griffith Stadium until it burned down in 1991. A trailer city emerged behind the far turn. So many horsemen and their families lived there that school buses came. It seemed as if everybody around the backstretch was related because they were the only ones who would marry into a lifestyle of 16-hour days for minimal money.
Rosecroft surged in the 1980s with year-round racing, but the founding Miller family’s control was diluted by inheritance taxes. Real estate developer Mark Vogel bought the track in 1987 but four years later lost it along with developments in Bowie and Ocean Pines during a 1991 real estate downturn.
The track slowly faded to black by 2008, with live races replaced by simulcasts in which patrons bet on horses from other venues. But new track owner Penn National, gambling on the eventual approval of slot machines or casino games at the track, bought Rosecroft in March. Rosecroft will have live races on Friday and Saturday nights through Dec. 17, possibly restoring hope the sport can survive locally.
Now if only the winning tickets would pay something decent.
Examiner columnist Rick Snider has covered local sports since 1978. Read more on Twitter @Snide_Remarks or email [email protected].
