07-07-07 - Bill Dwyre - He's glad he let it ride - With $1,000 in the bank, a struggling bettor turns a $432 pick-six investment into about $600,000. It came down to a photo finish for the delivery man who once had to sell his house because of drug use.
For the second time in less than a month, horse racing has enjoyed a Rags To Riches moment.
The first, of course, was the marvelous filly of that name winning the Belmont Stakes with a stirring stretch run that beat the boys June 9.
And now, we have marvelous horse player Steve Mitchell, hitting the wire perfectly in Monday's pick six at Hollywood Park. If they had a winners' circle for bettors, Mitchell would get his picture taken with a check for about $600,000.
Mitchell's story is special because his successful pick six was all his. Frequently, the winners in this super bowl of exotic betting are a syndicate of 27 rich guys in coats and ties in high-rise offices, combining to invest $10,000 on a ticket that has so many permutations you need an MBA from the Wharton School to understand it.
This time, at least two of the perfect bets were made by average Joes, including father-daughter Jack and Lyn Ford, who put down a total of $6 at Los Alamitos and got a return of $1,154,321.
Mitchell's investment was $432. In his case, the term "money well spent" has seldom been more appropriate.
Mitchell is a 53-year-old working stiff who has lived his life pretty much from hand to mouth to betting window. The closest thing Mitchell has to a savings account is the loose change in his couch.
He has been around racing most of his life, once holding an assistant trainer's license, once being a hot walker for Hall of Fame horse Cougar II in the '70s, and, more recently, a groom for another great horse, McCann's Mojave. Along the way, he also ran a mud and carrot business, supplying trainers with mud that would help heal horses' hoofs and carrots that would heal their vegetable-tooth cravings.
"Wasn't a bad little business," he said. "Made $30,000 in it one year."
But he lost that business and just about everything else about six years ago.
"I was doing crack cocaine," he said. "Had a house in Ontario, and had to sell that. That stuff is tough. I still think about it every day, but I haven't done it again, and I won't."
To get on his feet, he gravitated back to racing, and got jobs delivering racing programs from Hollywood Park and the Racing Form to area tracks and satellite betting sites. His normal day starts with pickups at 1 p.m. and ends when he returns home to Arcadia at about 1 a.m.
