Radio waves and the art of abatement for a diehard gambler, Part 1

by Frank Cotolo

Nothing about my storied life of being a professional pari-mutuel gambler living in the pacific paradise of Leucadia, San Diego promised longevity. Even a tried-and-true method of betting and the magic of luck and love as well as freedom from the gnawing working routines of the common man had a life-style-span. Not that playing the ponies (and doing random writing jobs on the side) was unable to keep me financially afloat. I lived as well as I wanted. And I wanted little. Perfect. It was time for another escapade. Just for a while.

KVSD-AM was a small radio station servicing Carlsbad, CA, and vicinity. I was sure I could pick up some part-time work in a medium where I already owned a professional standing.

“You cannot possibly be serious,” said Mr. Keith the program director. “Your radio resume is amazing.”

“I am not asking to stand out in a small market, sir,” I said. “I just want to have a part-time position doing anything in radio because I know radio as well as anything.”

“Sure. But we cannot afford you.”

I told him I was not looking for a radio job that matched or increased what I made with Wolfman Jack. But I could offer experience at whatever-an-hour the small station offered. And since I was not currently gambling for a living, the job could have my full attention, and the station, my complete loyalty. With that I was hired.

Staying in touch with the racing world was not difficult because Del Mar’s simulcasting and the Daily Racing Form were available. Plus, I still wrote material for the standardbred publications. My rent was low and my meager lifestyle was not in danger. Aside from my earnings during the Del Mar t-bred and harness meets I was in no danger of foundering. And to boot there was the full-bloomed Natasha’s companionship.

But once a handicapper always a handicapper. I was well aware of the high odds facing any guarantee my current condition would last. Yet there I was during a Sunday sunrise starting the day of broadcasting at KVSD as the morning newsman, aka Victor Chakapokolips. I arrived an hour before the broadcasting day began and ran through the San Diego newspaper and the Associated Press news feed to rewrite items for an audience of next to none.

Mr. Keith assigned me as a producer for a call-in and in-studio talk show featuring two fledgling talk-show hosts. One of them (let us call him Joe) was open to my suggestions and the other (Moe) was not. For a meager market they cooked up controversial guests. Most recognized nationally at the time was the ill-fated Tom Metzger (former Grand Dragon of the benighted [sic] KKK and White Aryan Resistance). Another guest was the author of a thousand-page book claiming he was the reincarnation of Napolean Bonaparte, and a local disputable fellow with evidence of his nightly shuttle trips to the moon by its native creatures. And, thanks to me, there was a visit from Wolfman Jack.

I was the perfect producer if only because of my experience working in the ’70s with talk-show pioneer and inventor of the seven-second delay Long John Knebel. But Mr. Knebel was armed with knowledge and experience; Moe had all the media expertise of a golf ball.

While I doubled as a KVSD show producer and newsman Victor Chakapokolips, I was completing a book of autofiction — Pony Player — which a small press in Texas wanted to publish. Writing the provocative text was no feat for me because I was fueled with the longing for handicapping and betting and creative writing. Even though Natasha and I were rolling along famously, my romanticizing antics and gambling tactics in print left within me a void. Pony Player kept me in touch with the identity I created when I settled in San Diego County.

I wrote the book on my MacIntosh computer with no intention of it becoming a seminal edition to a horseplayer’s library (a used copy from the only press run eventually sold on eBay for $200 and a wealthy collector/horse-racing enthusiast bought a dozen copies to hand out to friends and business associates). Barry Meadow said it was a work that “said it all” and promised me any attempted sequel “would not survive.” Barry’s review was portentous.

Those of us injected with successful adventures of pari-mutuels participation are left with a good taste in our mouths when we stray from daily exposure to it. That is perhaps because the good taste lingers and we never truly believe we retired from total involvement. But how close to a divorce from handicapping and betting could a Pony Player get in the late ’80s as distribution of the sport ensued via technology?

The answer is: a universe away.