THE STOOPER

            Just when everyone had reassured you that Big Brother wasn’t really watching us all in 1984, unemployment was down, and the electronics era wasn’t really taking over after all, along comes The Meadowlands with the most insidious plot ever devised by a race track.  Insidious, at least, to an often overlooked group of people.

            Now everyone is aware that at any given track there are a certain percentage of cashable totes that never make their way to the mutuel windows.  People get careless or, more likely, stoned out of their gourds, and these tickets end up left on Turf Club tables, tossed into garbage cans or, once in awhile, totally forgotten after being ‘hidden’ under a cocktail napkin.

            It is roughly estimated that unredeemed tickets at any major track such as Meadowlands or Santa Anita add up to about a million dollars per meeting.  That’s $1,000 followed by three zeroes.

            Which is a lot of money by anyone’s standards and, unfortunately, the tracks rarely share in this bonanza, the usual rule of thumb is that 60 days after a meeting closes the state takes all of this as another benefit of their outstanding support of racing.  And it’s certainly difficult for the state, after all once the track mails in the check someone in a government office has to take the time to endorse it and see that it gets to the bank.

            Given those statistics it is reasonable to assume that a lot more than a million dollars in redeemable tickets is unclaimed by the original purchaser.  Allowing for the fact that any track has a regular contingent of stoopers claiming territorial rights to selected garbage cans, and janitors whose main interest is who gets first crack at the clubhouse tables, one has to conclude that the public is throwing away a lot more than that million, which is simply what other people didn’t find to cash in.

            Now I’ve had some experience with discarded totes, before computers started printing receipts I collected the multi-colored Amtote tickets simply because I thought they were pretty.  Used to wander around tracks and pick them up, to the point that when the computers did take over I had about half a million of the things.  The collection is now dormant, but I can’t bear the thought of throwing them away after all those years of effort.  Every time my wife asks me to get rid of the boxes full of totes that fill the hall closet I simply give her my most hurt look and ask if she really minds having to hang her overcoat in the bathroom that much.

            Given that background, it is logical to assume that there were times when I surely must have encountered a cashable tote or two, sheer volume would seem to indicate this possibility.  For some years, I didn’t even bother to check them against the results, like I said my interest was in the fact that I was building a unique collection and considered them ‘pretty’.  Not that I expected any of them to be cashable, you understand, but, after all, aesthetics has its limits.

            It was only towards the end of this collecting binge that I started checking my days acquisitions, and I did find a few that I took back to the track on my next visit.  There was a $150 Exacta, $20 Win on a 2-to-1 entry, and the more prolific $2 to Place or Show that one encounters in the ‘stooping’ business.  Not that I considered myself to be a common stooper, but it sure brightened the mornings when I was sorting out totes for the collection and found something that could be readily converted to green paper.

            A friend of mine in Kansas City used to send me tickets he would pick up while visiting different tracks, and I remember how apologetic he was when he went to Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs for a day at the races.  “They keep the grounds pretty clean,” he advised me, “so only a few are enclosed.  There would be six more, except when I got home and studied them I decided to mail them back to the track.  Enclosed is a photocopy of the check they sent me.”

            Which brings us to the latest electronic wizardry that Meadowlands is exploring.  According to a recent Thoroughbred Racing Associations newsletter, they’re looking into ways to electronically scan large masses of discarded tickets.

            To, in effect, cut down on that million dollars the state takes, presumably for the benefit of the track.  Which is actually a great idea, one would hope they would channel some of the net return of this Big Brother expertise back into purses for the horsemen, although when I mentioned that possibility to a trainer I knew he promptly asked me what I had been smoking.

            Still, you can’t blame the track for trying to figure out a way to get their hands on at least part of a million dollars that is steadily being carried out the door in garbage bags every night.  Although it does cause you to wonder about the apparent inefficiency of today’s stoopers and janitors.

            But, being interested in the concept, I called an old friend of mine who had made a living as a professional stooper for almost twenty years, to see if he had heard about the Meadowlands idea.

            “Yeah,” he sighed, “I read about it.  But it’s not a first, they tried it last year as a secret experiment at a Fair track out west.”

            “And?” I asked.

            “And?  The trip cost me nearly two grand and I picked up maybe three hundred bucks in two weeks.  People were sweeping up tickets so fast I barely got near them.  That meet used to be good for three or four grand in the old days.

            “Plus it was pretty insulting when they were running one of the big garbage bags through a scanner and I happened to be in it.”

            “I should think that would be embarrassing.”

            “Naw, it was insulting, especially when the scanner told them the three season passes I had in my pocket didn’t belong to me and they took them away.  The embarrassment was the next day when I had to crawl over a fence to get in the joint.”

            “Then these scanners really work?”

            “Work?  Hey, I had to get a certified letter from my dentist before they’d give me back my false teeth.  Yeah, they work.”

            “So what do you plan to do if this becomes a common practice at all the tracks?”

            “Not much I can do.  Course I’ve talked to some of the other guys, like in Jersey, Florida, New York, there’s a chance we might get together and get a lobbyist to push through some sort of anti-scanning legislation.”

            “Do you think anyone in Congress would be willing to seriously consider something like that?”

            “You don’t read the Congressional Record, do you.  Anyway, the juice might be a bit heavy to get it into committee but, on the other hand, it’s an election year, you think the President needs a bunch of unemployed stoopers picketing the White House?”

            “I suppose not.”

            “You better believe it.  Plus, we already got some of the janitors on our side.  I hear the ones at Golden Gate Fields will form a picket line if they try to bring the scanners in.”

            “But the janitors at Golden Gate Fields are always on strike for something.”

            “Yeah, but this time it’s for something important.  Plus I hear we got maybe half a dozen other major tracks where the janitors will go along with us.

            “But,” he continued, “the real issue here is that something like this threatens our livelihood.  Do you realize what we stoopers do day after day and year after year to keep the tracks of America clean?  Bet you never thought about that.  I mean, how many people do you see at the track in a garbage can?”

            “Not many,” I admitted.

            “You better believe it.  It might not be glamorous, but we have our pride.  Automate the stoopers out of business and the tracks would have to hire ten, maybe twenty more janitors just to clean up the debris.  You figure their wages and fringe benefits, plus the cost of the scanning equipment, it just don’t make sense when you stop and think about it.”

            “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

            “Course, we got some opposition to face, I already heard about some bumper stickers some nut is pasting on cars that read ‘Scabs For Scans’, but I understand that Local 39 of the Stoopers and Collectors Union is about to catch up with him.”

            “Based on what you’ve told me, I guess you consider scanning a serious threat.”

            “You bet.  But, like I said, we’ve got a lot more backing than these electronic geniuses think we do.  The Brotherhood of International Pickpockets is 100% on our side, and there ain’t a bartender in the country that wants his tips scanned when he leaves the track.  After all, the IRS has already found a home behind the windows, it’s only a question of time before they branch out.”

            “So it could affect everybody?”

            “Of course, this is like the tip of the iceberg.  You know what this could lead to?  Next thing you know they’ll be stamping everybody’s hands in that purple ink the Turf Clubs seem to love so much, except you’ll have to show your I.D. to get in.  Which means they can scan you when you leave.  How’s the poor slob who made a few bucks going to be able to stash it away when the IRS sends his wife a Quarterly Scanning Report?  Divorce rates go up maybe 15% right there.”

            “Well, do you seriously believe you have enough organized resistance to counteract this new idea?”

            “Maybe so, maybe not.  We already got some scientist type guy working on an anti-scanner, it like deflects the signals, that ought to confuse ‘em for awhile.  Might even convince ‘em to forget the idea.  So we’ll keep working on that, but if all else fails, we still got an ace in the hole.”

            “Ace in the hole?”

            “Sure, we gotta protect our income, they get too pushy we’ll just go back to the good old days and mug everybody in the bathrooms.  Let ‘em scan that.”