by Trey Nosrac

INTERIOR:

A hotel banquet room. Over the entrance doorway, a large white banner with red block letters reads 30TH REUNION, RANDALL FALLS HIGH SCHOOL – GO WARTHOGS!!! Two males. Both men are tall and fit. One man, Peter, is wearing an expensive black suit with a large wristwatch, his black hair combed back, showing flecks of white. The other man has long hair in a ponytail and is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, blue with green palm leaves. The background to their conversation is the Journey song “Don’t Stop Believing.” Murmuring and clinking glasses. They point at each other from 10 feet away, walk toward each other, give high fives and an awkward man hug, and then step back.

TREY

(Opens palms, extends arms)

There he is, Peter Richmond, the person voted Most Likely to Succeed.

PETER

(Opens his palms, extends arms)

And there he is, Trey Nosrac, unanimously voted Most Likely to Show Up Late and Stoned.

TREY

Nice threads. What time is the funeral?

PETER

Right after your Big Lebowski Look Alike contest.

TREY

Speaking of great movies, how’s La La Land? Man, you headed to Hollywood before your mullet hit the floor.

PETER

Hollywood is a jungle. Up and down, plenty of near misses. COVID and the internet have not been friends to Show Biz.

TREY

You only came home a few times.

PETER

Yeah, then I moved my folks and my sister to California. I see the racetrack is still chugging along. Are you still a devotee?

TREY

Yeah, I never shook the bug. Mainly, I bet on the iPad these days. Occasionally, I buy into a piece of a yearling.

PETER

You know the problem in your sport?

TREY

THE problem. You might be simplifying, but go ahead, enlighten me.

PETER

There aren’t enough villains. People can’t get all fired up about rooting against nothing. You can’t hate a horse. Rule number one in show business is you need a protagonist and antagonist.

TREY

I know, being against someone or something gets the juices flowing. Do you ever listen to political talk on the radio? They constantly use two words – us and them. They only use the word WE to reinforce membership in our tribe.

PETER

Division sells. The internet and AI have sent division into warp speed and unfathomed depths.

TREY

I can’t argue.

PETER

Being against something is essential in sports. What’s your favorite baseball team?

TREY

Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

PETER

You’re happy when they win, but I bet you’re just as happy, maybe happier when teams in the division lose.

TREY

No doubt. Take the Yankees, our division rivals. I hate the deep-pocketed bastards.

PETER

See, you don’t get that negative feeling, that shot of adrenaline in horse races.

TREY

Those are team sports.

PETER

The emotions work in other sports. Who is your favorite golfer?

TREY

I like Rory, the guy from England. I can’t believe he doesn’t win more.

PETER

Every time you watch or bet on a golf tournament, Rory is your positive emotion guy, BUT every player in the field, in some respects, is now your enemy. You have emotions going both ways.

TREY

Sort of like politics?

PETER

Sure. What we see in our ridiculous clown of a candidate isn’t nearly as important as thinking the other guy is hysterically awful.

TREY

So, what about horse racing? Do you have a theory? Do you have any applicable solutions?

PETER

Hating the people who race the horses is silly because humans are too tiny of a factor in racing.

TREY

So, if we ain’t got a foe, horse racing is toast?

PETER

I’m sure this isn’t new, but maybe selecting stables of horses at the beginning of the year, making a league with different teams for a defined amount of time. Focus the customers’ attention.

TREY

Like the Ohio Stampeders of the Ohio Valley Harness League.

PETER

Yeah, something like that. Make the number of teams manageable, probably six teams. People make serious wagers at the beginning of the racing season, say $500 for the entire season. Your Stampeders only need to beat the other teams in the league to win attention-getting money. The psychology goes back to your engagement with the Tampa Bay Rays. You cheer on your team and against the other teams in the league, but you always have action and someone to root against.

TREY

I like the concept, but $500 is a touch steep.

PETER

The money needs to be meaningful, or the psychology doesn’t work. The customer needs to feel pain or danger. Keeping track of a manageable number of teams all with some relevance, would make the internet a friend of horse racing.

TREY

I would play. I would join a league to cheer for, but who will promote and operate the leagues, the tooth fairy?

PETER

No tooth fairies. Your sport needs entrepreneurs or operators with a vision and who see a way to make money. They take a small cut for running a league, and in the wild new world of online wagering, I have no doubt sharp league operators will find new revenue streams. Similar to Hollywood projects, the league would need investors and a plan.

TREY

When you think about it, setting up a league wouldn’t require much upfront investment, and the people running the racing league would just be piggybacking off the sport. It could be one of those – win, win, win deals.

(Takes a drink from his beer bottle).

You got me jazzed up a bit, and I must admit that rooting for and against would take me deeper into the sport and might bring in some newbies. Emotionally, 99 per cent of the races or horses don’t mean diddly to me. A league like that would be a carve-out, say, six teams with four horses. I would spend my season paying uber attention to the ups and downs of a couple dozen horses. Weekly charts can be updated to see how my team is doing against my foes. Emotional investment is the goal, like following a ball team with serious smack talk.

PETER

Having a foe is in our DNA, some tribal survival deal. Cheering against a foe gets our juices flowing. Sports are no exception, even though cheering against someone or something often doesn’t make sense. I mean, is your hatred against the Yankees reasonable? If you lived in New York, you would be cheering for the Yankees.

TREY

Whoa, whoa, now you are just talking crazy.

CUT