August 7: Call on Chart Callers: "Have a Way With Words" Saratoga -- One of the most precious usages of the English language may be the two-word journalism practiced in the racing newspapers. I refer specifically to the section in the Morning Telegraph known as "past performances." The past performances lists are filled with pungent phrases which tell their story in an instant. They include descriptions like "hung" and "brief speed" and "game try." Or, when the writer truly is telling it the way it is, "showed nothing." As far as I know, the professors of language have not gotten around to discussing past performance verbiage. It's too bad the language boys haven't looked into this because there may be some lessons about communication to be learned here. Don Fair, a sober gentlman in a Stetson hat who looks as if he might be the owner of King Ranch, is the chart man at New York tracks, and is currently plying his notable craft here at Saratoga.
The past performance lists are an important by-product of the chart of the actual races. The charts are made by the chart man operating from the press box with binoculars. He charts the race, i.e., calls off the position of each horse in the race, at designated fractions of the race while an assistant records his comments on a sheet. At some small tracks the chart man doesn't even have an assistant; he calls and marks at the same time. The chart is then completed by the chart man's brief description of the drama in time-honored, race-sharp verbiage. Example: "Bullpen Car was well-placed behind the top pair, responded strongly to the whip in the last furlong and wore down Headliner with authority. The latter was rated with a commanding lead, etc." Now then, from that chart a record of each horse's performance is distilled into one line of type. Those lines of type, about eight of them, signifying eight races, stand as the past performance record of that animal preceding his next race. The racetrack bettor studies the past performance records of all the horses in a race, measures the horses against each other, weighs in with his own intuitive factors and makes his choice. That sir, is handicapping. That one line of type in which an entire race is recorded includes hard information like the place and date of that race, type of race, weight carried, his jockey, post position, his position at various stages of the race, his odds and the top three finishers in the race. The final item on the extreme right of that line is reserved for the chart man's evaluation of the horse's performance. Here, the chart man brings into play subjective evaluation and use of the language. In the current Saratoga past performances we learn that thoroughbreds "lacked a response," "held on evenly" and "tired in drive." Often one word tells the story. Like: "rallied," and "wide," and "sore." These words in the past performances are a critical evaluation of a past event ; they are more worthy of respect than the pre-race comments of professional handicappers. The pre-race comments are a thesaurus of mealy-mouthed two-faced language that protects itself against all eventualities. No, the beauty of language is in the past performance prose. Here, brevity is the soul of wit. If we believe the scholarly Prof. Strunk's admonition to be succinct, then we are to look with awe at the chart callers. Perhaps a man like Don Fair should be offered a chair in the English department of a leading university. To employ past performance prose, he is "sharp." There are racetracks where the Morning Telegraph is not sold. The Racing Form, the other half of Triangle Publications racing paper monopoly, carries the same past performance information as the Telegraph with the exception of the chart man's past peroformance prose. I take comfort in the chart man's descriptions. The element of subjective evaluation tempers the hard facts found in the rest of the one line of type. I feel undernourished without the past performance words. I don't handicap free and easy when I don't have them. Generally speaking, my betting performances can be summed up handily. Occasionally, I have had "early foot," "held on evenly," and "finished well." More often, I have had a "slow start," then "rallied," "dropped back," then "used up," become "sore,' and "returned bleeding."
Just as I was curious about how they made movies, I was curious as well about how television worked. When I went on to writing a TV sports column in the late 1970s, I approached the task from three angles: 1) critiquing sports productions and the announcers; 2) reporting on financial developments in the business; and 3) going behind the scenes to explain how the production people worked. When I began the column I knew I had the sports background that made me credible with readers and TV people. I also wanted to know how the TV people worked so I could better understand and critique their work for better or worse. I didn't know it at the time but Ted Nathanson, the veteran NBC director, told people he had respect for my work whether he agreed with things I wrote or not because I had come behind the scenes and had him explain what he did and was trying to do. From a newspaper standpoint some of the most interesting things that occur in the press box and in the newspaper offices never make print. A few incidents involving Joe King, a beat man for the World Telegram, come to mind. There was the time some controversial story in King's paper irritated Stengel. It broke as the Yankees took a train down to Baltimore for a series with the Orioles. Before the first game Stengel harangued the press, King in particular, for the story that ran in the World-Telegram, though King had not written it. King, after taking as much as he could stand, stood up in Stengel's office and said, "If you don't like what they write, write a letter to the editor." It was King, an independent kind of guy, quite readable, who inspired one of the memorable lines in the journalistic trenches. The story has been told many different ways, but I was there and it happened this way. In the late 1950s King was just about the only sports guy who took pro football serious enough to cover the summer training camps. He would leave the baseball beat during August and come back to cover the baseball pennant chases in September. On this day when the Phillies were in Cincinnati in the process of a pennant-race collapse, King was sitting in the press box with Stan Hochman of the Philadelphia News and me. Jimmy Cannon, the waspish New York Post columnist was sitting nearby. King, fresh from one of the football camps, was waxing enthusiastically about some of the grid prospects he had seen. He went on at this for a while. Finally, Cannon had enough. He pounded a fist on the counter and said, "Baseball, gentlemen, baseball." The line, "baseball, gentlemen, baseball" has been picked up and used in many situations where a subject was getting out of hand. King was in his element in pro football. As I said, he covered it more extensively-earlier and in more depth-than anybody at that time. Now we come down to the National Football League championship game in Green Bay, the so-called Refrigerator Bowl-in 1967 when Green Bay beat Dallas, 21-17 on the last play of the game. King had been in Green Bay most of the week. He liked to, in the kindly expression of the time, take a drink. He had been imbibing all week. And on this climactic Sunday he started drinking early-and often. By the time the game started he was, as I think they say, four sheets to the wind. By the end of the game he was in no position to write. The World Telegram was an afternoon paper so he had a late deadline, not having to write immediately after the game. He somehow got himself back on the press bus to hotel headquarters. In the press room it became evident to his colleagues on the other papers that Joe was not up to his appointed task. Somebody then sat down and started writing a story for Joe. It developed into a group project. Dick Clemente of Newsday would write one paragraph, a wire service man would sit down and write one or two more. Several took turns at this inspired task. And in the midst of it, King, who had a habit of rocking on the balls of his feet when he was tanked, stood looking over the shoulders of his collaborators and saying, "Yes, that's good, that's good."
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Let's Bring Back the Linescore 
