Fantasy leagues work for baseball, why not modify one for harness racing?

by Trey Nosrac

Dang it.

As the pirate looked at 80, good ole Jimmy Buffett sailed away to sip margaritas in the sky.

He leaves behind a catalog of good music, millions of smiles, and his membership in the club of 735 American billionaires. Buffett appeared to enjoy his time and money. I worry about the happiness level of the remaining 734 club members.

For most of us, having mega money would not make us one tick happier. We know our friends don’t want to get in our pockets. We don’t need bodyguards. We don’t feel the urge to grow our pile or the pressure to protect our fortune. A single happy house is better than six empty mansions. We do not build yachts longer than football fields. We do minor things to make us happy.

For example, I’m setting up a friendly baseball competition around the Christmas holidays. My home baseball team is the Cleveland Guardians. They play in the American League Central division with the Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins, Chicago White Sox, and Kansas City Royals. I know a few fans of competing AL Central teams. Dave is a Tigers fan. Mike, the Spike, Belpre is a long-suffering Chicago White Sox fan, and T-Rex is a Twins fan. That makes four, so I need to hustle up a Royals fan (or anyone who wants to “become” a Royals fan).

The activity is straightforward; We each wager 50 dollars on our team, and once a week during the season, say noon on Wednesdays, if we have time, we take five minutes to recap the baseball events and talk a little trash via a text thread. Some folks may refer to this as a small effort at social interaction or keeping in touch with a few friends in an ever-isolating world. At the end of the season, the winner gets a few bucks, and I will supply the 2024 AL Central Excalibur Cup (a small, repurposed bowling trophy) and mail it to the winner.

Harness racing column, billionaires, baseball? Let me try to knit some random paragraphs together.

I view writing, publishing, and posting as sending flares into a big dark sky. Sometimes, most times, nothing happens. Occasionally, a remarkable thing happens. You meet new people and make friends. Publish a story about baseball, and you wind up in a press box. You tell a tale about a wacky inventor; a film company knocks. Drop the name of a famous person in a column, and you get a call. Have your byline on a story about the history of a small town, and the city council sends an invitation. You never know.

This column is a harness racing flare.

Maybe, just maybe, this column reaches one of the 734 billionaires that Buffett left behind (billionaires do have minions, bots, and AI searching for references to them and their companies). Suppose you are a member of the club looking for a new adventure. If the stars align, here’s an idea to pep up your billionaire step. And for once, nobody is asking you for a penny at any point in this process.

Remember that little baseball paragraph above? I have a better idea: learn a new sport with a few pals in the billionaire club. Our sport is called harness horse racing. On Jan. 1, a large percentage of our horses turn 3 years old (for competition purposes, all our horses share the same birthday). Although many racehorses compete at age 2, our horses make most of their earnings during their 3-year-old season. Yes, harness racing can initially seem complicated, so let me simplify as much as possible.

An expert in our industry will select the 16 horses he believes will be the top money earners in 2024. The selection is like Warren Buffett, predicting which business will soar next year. The industry expert will divide the 16 choices into four equal groups.

You get three more billionaire buddies who don’t know squat about our little sport. You each put up 50 bucks. Each of you follows your group of horses and your friendly competitor’s horses for a season. The group of horses with the most total money won at the end of the season is the winner. Guaranteed you will have fun and learn a heck of a lot.

And here is a little trivia: While harness horse racing is low on the sporting popularity lists in America, over a century ago, it was numero uno. Racing harness horses was a passion for billionaires of America who preceded you, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Sanford, etc. Many titans found joy and friendship in our little corner of the sporting world. So could you.

Well, that’s my flare for this week. I’ll find another bowling trophy to repurpose and await your contact information.