Holding Out for a Suffolk Longshot

View of Suffolk Downs in East Boston, Mass. (WikiMedia Commons)
Suffolk Downs has perhaps held its last day of live racing. The track’s failure to secure a license to host a casino probably means the track will not reopen next season. The hardscrabble, cold-weather Boston racetrack has been host to both Seabiscuit and The Beatles, but lately has struggled to make ends meet.
I visited Suffolk Downs one day in 2009 on a lark. I was in Boston on business and had some time to kill, so I parked the car and spent a few hours on a weekday afternoon picking horses. On that particular day, like any weekday afternoon at any racetrack in America, the track felt mostly empty. There were a host of regulars in attendance — stoopers, pensioners, professional gamblers, degenerates. If you’ve spent a day at the track in your life, you know the cast of characters.
I remember hitting a trifecta that day, a $1, three-horse box that cost me $6, and I cashed for about $700. I had to fill out an IRS form. The teller couldn’t believe it. He was happier than I was. I tipped him generously then found the teller who sold me the ticket (it wasn’t hard on such a slow day) and tipped him as well. I remember actually putting my feet up on the carrel in the video parlor, I was that pleased with myself.
The place wasn’t bustling with much more than scattered yelling of numbers at TVs (“come on 4! 4! 4! Up with this 4! Four six, four six, four six!) and the sound of brooms shoving discarded tickets across the floor, but it all felt like music to me.

If you’ve never been to Suffolk Downs, you’re in luck. You can still read T.D. Thornton’s fantastic book on the track, “Not By a Long Shot”. The book was written largely from his diary of his tenure as the racetrack’s announcer and public relations director during the 2000 season, but it also does a deep dive into the track’s rich and salacious history.
Thornton tells the track’s tale with warts and all, which left a bad taste in some people’s mouths but rang true for others. It’s a well-written book by someone who both knows how to write and truly knows and loves the sport.
When Thornton’s book came out in 2007, people were already calling the track “Sufferin’ Downs.” The track’s suffering probably is over, having been put out of it’s misery by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, but the suffering of the hundreds of men and women who made their livings (and, in some cases, even actually lived) at the racetrack is just beginning.
Stables are being uprooted and relocated, in most cases to very far away. There are no other comparably sized tracks in New England. Another piece of racing history is gone, but a piece of the racing industry economy is gone, too. The IBEW Local 103, which represents the employees at Suffolk Downs, announced this week the filing of a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, alleging that Wynn Resorts, the applicant the commission approved for a license to operate a casino instead of Suffolk Downs, was given an unfair advantage.
I hope that they will prevail and can save those jobs and their hardscrabble racetrack, but it’s going to be a longshot. If my day at Suffolk Downs and my $700 trifecta is any indication, Suffolk Downs is no stranger to longshot winners. 
SUFFOLK DOWNS

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