Most men are gifted with one talent at least; some design bridges and cathedrals, others compose music and write fiction, still others can hit a baseball, or a golf ball, or rocket a tennis ball across a net at 100 mph, and some can sing, some can draw, some come with a limitless capacity for compassion and understanding, and yet others possess a command of the language-the gift of gab-that propels them to success as salesmen… Sy Seltzer could pick horses. First, allow some prologue.

I was beyond desperate on that second Sunday in the summer of my 17th year. I’d worked long and hard to develop my handicapping prowess, and through some miracle combination of selling, conning, pleading and crying, I’d convinced my dad to grant me a portion of the summer to test my talents at Monticello Raceway. The drawback was that I had a preset limit--$500 that I’d squirreled away during the winter, and I’d agreed that if I exhausted this bankroll I was to immediately join dad on his regular Monday 5 AM commute to Manhattan, where I’d become onne of his office messenger boys, hustling packages on the sticky city streets. Now, by this Sunday, in less than ten racing cards, I’d managed to squander over $300-more than 60% of my bankroll. A summer in purgatory lay before me like a one lane highway in the desert sun, and I felt the icy stare of my dad’s office manager, a man named Kelso, and shivered at the thought of laboring under his totalitarian rule.

I quickly squandered over fifty dollars in “doubles”-wagering on the outcome of the first and second races, combined. I’d decided to key with a driver of questionable talents and even scanter morals, one who might have had trouble outmaneuvering my eighty-year old Tanta Henya in a stretch drive. He turned for home at the head of the stretch with a three-length lead only to see it evaporate like a snowball in the summer sun. He finished fifth, not a fully dubious achievement for this driver.

“Put a fork in me,” I said, to my friend and fellow race track bum, David. “By tomorrow morning I’m going to be a messenger in Manhattan.”

Then, looking up into the grandstand, to the dining room area, I saw a young married couple from my colony, Joe and Sandy. They were eating, drinking, and conversing with a stout man I’d often seen around this and other harness tracks. I knew his first name, Sy-and that he was reputed to be a handicapper possessed of considerable acumen.

“Let’s go,” I said, and we did.

Joe and Sandy were as open and friendly as we could ever have hoped, and they proceeded to introduce us to their friend, Sy, and his wife, Audrey, and another couple whose names have been expunged from memory by time and tide. Sy sipped a Coke, munched peanuts, and studied the program.

“I seen you guys around,” he said, his eyes fixed to the racing card.

“You wanna do me a favor?” He asked.

We quickly volunteered. Sy reached into his lime green slacks and pressed a sizable roll of greenbacks into my palm. “Hold ona this,” he said. “And bet for me.” David and I both considered him a bit quizzically.

“I go to the windows,” Sy lamented. “And I collect a whole band of music following me to get my numbers. I don’t need that. Ya follow?”

And it was just that swiftly, and easily, that David and I found ourselves recruited, inducted and indoctrinated into the elite, the privileged, the very fortunate few, a closed circle to be sure, who were privy to just what and how and why Sy Seltzer was betting any particular race. And don’t think this was any small thing. Through the course of the next few months we would both be offered bribes in cash, credit, goods and services-including an evening with several comely young ladies, no request too outrageous, in return for divulging Sy’s wagering choices.

Looking back now I realize Sy wasn’t as old as he had appeared to us that summer. He might have been, at most, in his early forties, but gave the impression of having been around a lot longer than that. His entire demeanor and bearing was a throwback to another time, so Runyonesque was he that, with appropriate attire, he easily might have stepped from the cast of Guys and Dolls. His speech was littered with colloquialisms born of the Brooklyn streets. His thinning hair was worn slicked back-Vitalis or Brylcream (a little dab’ll do ya), and he sported a salt and pepper goatee on his fleshy face. In clothing he showed a clear predilection for polyester in all shades of the rainbow-sometimes in leisure suits that were then in vogue, other times in colorful slacks, a stretch shirt, and white shoes, that might have had him mistaken for a golfer awaiting his tee time.

What was most memorable about Sy, though, was his attitude. Within the confines of the racetrack he carried himself as if he were the master of his domain, as if he were born to be doing precisely what he was doing-handicapping races-in exactly the place he was at that instant. He had made much more of his life away from the racetrack-a loving and devoted wife, four adorable and precocious children, a small circle of close friends-but at times it seemed that all was prologue and prequel to the few hours when the horses made their way to the starting gate. So much like a master actor awaiting his moment to be bathed in the footlights, was Sy Seltzer anytime and anywhere beyond a harness racing track.

On that particular Sunday, immediately after entrusting us with a sizable bankroll, he pointed to his racing program.

“In the toid,” he said, indicated the third race. “Make me sixty dollar triples with the five on top, wheeling the two six and seven unnerneath.”

I quickly calculated that was 6 different combinations, each ticket $60, totaling out at a $360 wager. Triples at Monticello were a 3 buck ticket, so Sy was betting each number twenty times. If the five won the race, with any order of the 2, 6 or 7 finishing 2nd and 3rd, he’d have hit the ticket.

“Also,” he said, grasping my forearm in a vise-like grip just as I was about to sprint up the stairs to the clubhouse level windows. “Get me a hunna and a hunna on the 5.”

“What?” I said.

“A hunna and a hunna,” he repeated. <

It was my first lesson in Sy-isms. A hunna and a hunna meant a hundred and a hundred--$100 to win, $100 to place.

“You pass,” he said.

“What?”

“You want to make a punch?” He inquired. A “punch” is race track vernacular for a sizable bet. “Wait till the fifth,” he said. “I got something there.”

David and I sped off for the betting windows, for the first time in our race track lives cognizant and wary of any touts who might be following behind us. We were being paranoid, of course. Nobody paid us a second thought. But, as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you. We may have suspected our lives were changing, even as we hoofed for the triple windows, but we had no way of knowing just how cataclysmic those changes would be.

Sy hit the triple in that third race, and had the exacta in the fourth, as well. Then, as promised, in the fifth race he touted us onto the one horse, Teddy Go Lucky, with a driver change from the stone hands of a guy named De something or other to the very capable, and often cooperative, John Gilmour. The tote board reflected the crowd approval of the improvement in the bike, and the odds hovered at 5 to 2. Looking to make a bigger hit than a $7 win ticket, I wheeled the one on top of the field in exactas-then a $3 bet at Monti-four times each-seven tickets costing me $84, and just about all of what remained of my dwindling bankroll. If I’d ever had a “tap-out bet”, well, this was it. Sy bet Teddy Go Lucky five hundred to win, and made exactas of 1-4, 1-5, 1-6 and 1-8, forty five bucks-fifteen times-- each. David and I got back to the dining room just as the horses were filing into their slots behind the moving starting gate. Sy grinned at us, and I noticed he needed new “uppers” - dentures - those he wore were hardly a fit.I saw that the odds on our horse had risen to 9-2.

“Relax,” Sy said, as if reading my trepidation. “You already bet, right? Might as well have the odds go to a hunna to one. Nuthin ya can do now.”

The race was off. Gilmour goosed the one to a fast break, and by the turn he was hugging the rail, a length in front of the four, who had also left hard and slotted in behind the one. The field headed up the back stretch for the first time. I watched this race as I had no other in my life, not just hoping the one would win, but praying for a long shot in the place spot, insuring me a bigger payoff. As they raced by the half mile marker it all looked too easy. Gilmour and Teddy Go Lucky had led every step of the way and had been under little or no pressure. The half posted in 102:4, slow even for this cheap field, and if we didn’t win there would be no legit excuse. Then, in a heartbeat, they were at the top of the stretch. I stood on a dining room chair, rooting Gilmour home at the top of my lungs. It wasn’t necessary. He was in total command and in no need of my encouragement. As they approached the wire I knew we were cashing tickets, the only remaining question was how large the tickets would be. Then, suddenly, as if coming from the distant hill, perhaps as far off as the highway, here came the eight horse, Levi Row Gil, Eldon Harner in the sulky, rushing up five wide on the outside to best the rest of the field and slip in for place, just a half length behind the tiring Teddy Go Lucky. My eyes flashed to the tote board where I saw that Harner had been sent off at 15 to 1. Thank God, I thought. The exacta would have to be at least eighty, maybe ninety bucks.

“You got this?” Sy asked, with a wide and somewhat toothless grin. Gee, I thought, the uppers must’ve been truly uncomfortable, because at some moment before the race began he had managed surreptitiously remove them from his mouth to stash them only God knew where.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I got it.”

“Good,” he said. “Me too.”

“I know. We bet it for you.”

“Watch this,” Sy said, nodding towards the infield tote board. Then the lights flashed and the exacta-1 and 8, was posted, with the exacta pay off. The combination had returned $204 on each three dollar ticket. I could do the math. I was going to collect over eight hundred dollars. I felt like dancing. I wouldn’t need to join my dad at five the next morning on a long winding drive into Manhattan. I’d been granted a reprieve from the steamy streets and the crowded office and the hot, filthy subways. I’d bought myself some time-a last moment phone call from the governor-an implausible stay of execution, but a stay all the same. My dream summer of handicapping was alive!

Through the remainder of that day’s racing card Sy Seltzer combined what I still believe to be the greatest display of handicapping acumen with a most astonishing run of luck. He wasn’t just hot; he was the surface of the sun. After our exhilarating victory in the fifth race he proceeded to hit exactas in the sixth, eighth and ninth, as well as the two remaining triples, in the seventh and tenth. I, too, caught the triple in the tenth; two tickets on the winning combo returning $400 each. David and I used our new inside information, as well, to cash winning exacta tickets in the ninth race-a smaller ticket, just $30, but we did have it four times each. By day’s end I would leave the track with over two thousand American greenbacks riding heavy in the left front pocket of my cut-off denim shorts. Having handled his bets all day, and cashed the winners, as well, David and I estimated that Sy must have profited somewhere in the neighborhood of forty grand. Not too shabby a neighborhood at all.

Driving home on Route 17 I experienced what I thought might be bliss. In my mind I played out the scenario that would unfold when I arrived at the bungalow and spread over two thousand dollars on the kitchen table top before my wide eyed dad. My singular moment of absolute triumph would redeem me; no asinine plan mine, this intention of playing the horses for a living. Sure, I understood that 98% of all horseplayers were chronic losers, but what of the other 2%? Perhaps I was destined to find my niche within that elite group.

I avoided any mention of Sy’s influence, and portrayed the day’s success as a result of my own designs, but much to my bewilderment my dad was hardly overjoyed with my windfall. He reacted with consternation and apprehension, pacing the long kitchen, and then walking outside to our porch, sitting in his rocker and saying not a word. This was his game face, I knew, and he meant business. It was better to steer clear of him at this moment, permitting him to broach the matter at the time and place of his choosing. Then, in an instant, I knew he’d chosen-that time, that place.

Dad was willing to allow that it appeared I had enjoyed an outstanding day. Perhaps he’d been mistaken and I did actually possess a smattering of handicapping ability. This was a considerable concession from a man who limited his race track wagering choices to horses bearing names of his spouse, his children, and, in a pinch, that of his parents, aunts and uncles. Yet, he insisted, I was a fool to believe that comparable luck could carry past one or two fortuitous days. He fully expected that when he departed the colony the following morning at dawn that I would be packed and ready to join the labor force in Manhattan.

I was crushed. I’d been certain that the display of cash-more than he garnered from a month’s worth of wages-was going to persuade him. But he was adamant and resolute; no son of his was going to be a race track bum, profitable or not. In his mind almost any method employed to earn a living was to be respected, as long as one put forth an honest effort towards that end; betting horses, however, no mind how profitable the pursuit, did not fall within this genre.

I stormed from the bungalow to consider my alternatives. I knew that sooner or later would come the inevitable need to forego summers at the bungalow colony, but later was far preferable to sooner, and, what the hell, I wasn’t yet old enough for the draft, for voting or to legally order a beer. As with all other youthful quandaries, I knew my ultimate fate could be mitigated only by intervention from an absolute and incontestable authority. I immediately sought out my mother.

To say my mom was a soft touch is to critically undervalue the implication of the phrase. Next to my mom, Mother Teresa was a button man for Murder Incorporated. A fifteen minute pleading session with my mom was immediately followed by a summit conference between mom and dad, and, as the US had at Yalta, Dad was cornered, hoodwinked and outmaneuvered. He shrugged his shoulders and resigned himself to having fathered a son who was, in his words, a bum.

The ensuing six weeks were akin to a Damon Runyon fantasy. I was at the track seven days a week-a day/night doubleheader each Saturday and a matinee card on Sunday. This occurred during the waning years of the Catskills’ heyday, and there were still ample numbers of small and medium hotels, large resorts and countless bungalow colonies to insure a packed grandstand almost every summer evening. Monticello Raceway was perhaps the only track in the nation to have a delayed post time-8:30 PM, and that was in effect to allow adequate time for the hotel busboys and waiters, as well as their vacationing clientele, to arrive for the daily double, still stuffed and sated after yet another gluttonous Catskill meal.

We arrived at the track just after eight, the summer sun setting in the western sky, the horizon ablaze withy streaks of pink and crimson. After a few days of being seen in the constant company of Sy Seltzer, most track denizens had come to accept us as quasi-celebrities, to be afforded a certain modicum of respect and favor. We parked valet, but the attendants knew not to bury our cars amongst the tourists, and we knew when departing the track later in the evening we’d find our ride parked immediately next to the exit gate, keys on the visor, ready to go.

When we strolled through the grandstand and the clubhouse, and the restaurant as well, people nodded and smiled and even whispered that we were in “Sy’s crew.” With the attention and recognition came a degree of inconvenience as well. We needed to be guarded when making our bets, for fear of letting our selections slip to the hungry public and seeing the odds clobbered as they piled up their 2, 5, 10 and 20 dollar wages.

Yet any trifling difficulty we encountered was easily offset by our new status. We were living the good life. We’d sit with Sy and company in the clubhouse dining room, welcome at the table, encouraged to order whatever we desired-steaks, shrimp, lobsters, cocktails. We were never expected to go to our own pockets to pay a tab, as Sy always had a loyal follower more than happy to stand the amount of the check in return for access to Sy’s selections. At the start of each racing card Sy would entrust David and me with several thousand dollars each, and then throughout the evening he would stealthily indicate his selections with a carefully pointed finger or a quickly whispered word. We would bet, and collect winnings, and save the losing tickets in a separate pocket to account for our tallies. And, best of all, we were always included in the play-always encouraged to place our own wagers on the best of his selections.

In all gambling there are streaks of luck-both good and bad. From late June through the waning days of July, Sy Seltzer enjoyed what might be the most extended run of astonishing and inconceivable good luck ever witnessed at a racetrack. To say he was hot is to say the Beatles played rock and roll. We never even ventured an estimate of the amounts he took from the pari-mutuel windows, but by extrapolating from what we, ourselves were winning, Sy’s haul could have been nothing short of gargantuan.

When David and I first hooked up with Sy we were small time bettors-a five or ten dollar win bet, maybe a four dollar exacta. Within weeks we’d graduated to wagering several hundreds per race, and, if when returning to the colony we chanced upon a friend who inquired to our evening’s fortunes, if we’d won less than three or four hundred we answered that we’d “broke even,” and we meant it, too. There were so many memorable moments through that fleeting stretch of weeks. One Saturday, at a day-night double header, after cashing for eighteen hundred at the matinee, I was tempted to go home and party, only to be convinced by Sy that rich pickings lay ahead in the evening card. His prognostication was on target, and we cashed multiple tickets on a triple-Grundy on top, the Manzis running second and third, and we added another two grand to our booty.

That evening, returning to the colony, we checked in with my parents in the casino just before the Saturday night show. My dad was already three drinks past sobriety, and he asked how we’d done at the races. In response I pulled a fist-sized wad of hundreds from my pocket, tightly wrapped in a rubber band. He stared at the bills for a long moment, nodded, shrugged, and returned to his friends. I wasn’t certain, but I suspected the look that flashed on his face was borne of a vague disappointment. Yet, I was far too egocentric and my world too self contained to be shaken by my fathers’ consternation. I was just having too much fun.

My connection to Sy cemented as the summer advanced, and this closeness began to exert itself in shaping my personal idiosyncrasies beyond what I recognized but to what might have been an alarming degree. A well-chewed toothpick was ubiquitous in Sy’s mouth, so I, too, began carrying an inventory of toothpicks and working well working them in the corner of my mouth. Sy drank bourbon-Jack Daniels with a splash of ginger-ale; I began ordering “Jack and ginger,” and, in fact, continue to favor that particular drink even today. Sy’s idioms included phrases such as “Make me the six and eight,” when indicating he wanted to bet the 6-8 exacta combo. I began speaking the same way. “I’m making the five,” I would say, “with the four and the seven,” if I wished to bet the five-four, five-seven exacta combo.”

Sy had about him a certain joie-de-vive, a flamboyance that was as fun as it was contagious. In those days the track sponsored a series of pre-race concerts. In a given summer the schedule included the Temptations, Ike and Tina Turner, The Four Seasons, Natalie Cole, Chuck Berry, Jay and Americans, Dion and the Belmonts, The Shirelles, The Four Tops. One evening, immediately after Jay and the Americans had concluded their performance, Sy instructed David and me to seek out Jay Black, the lead singer, and inform him that his cousin Sy was in the dining room. We thought it was a practical joke, and were slightly dumbfounded to discover Jay Black was delighted to come with us and visit is first cousin, Seymour, and even stay on for dinner.

The following week, after a fabulous performance by the Four Tops, Sy instructed us to get in to see the members of the group and inform them that “Sy” wanted to buy them all a drink in the dining room. We were a bit dubious about the assignment.

“Don’t worry,” Sy assured us. “I know alla dese guys.”

Again we were stunned when the Tops, all four of them, happily accompanied us to the dining room for drinks with Sy and entourage. They even stayed half the race card, betting on everything Sy selected, and leaving with a tidy profit.

After the race card David asked Sy how it was he happened to know the members of the Four Tops.

“Never saw ‘em before in my life,” he said.

“Seriously?”

“Uh-huh. But, look you invite a guy for a drink, what’s the worse that’s gonna happen? He’s gonna say no? So, I took a shot.”

As my veneration of Sy increased, so did my dad’s misgivings about my new role model. I believe a share of his apprehension was born from his envy of the closeness and intimacy I had so effortlessly developed with Sy. After all, at a time when I was in the very core of adolescent angst and estrangement from my own dad, here was another man, my dad’s contemporary, with whom I shared all I refused to share with my father. Years later, watching DeNiro’s film, “A Bronx Tale,” I would strangely relive the myriad emotions and conflicts of that summer.

George Harrison told us that all things must pass, and so they shall, and eventually, as we turned into August, Sy’s venerable hot streak came to a crashing and most disenchanting halt. As his handicapping cooled, so his temperament moved opposite, and he would frequently bark and snap at David and me, as if tempted to shoot the messenger upon presentation of yet another stack of fresh losing tickets. And, as the winning streak faded, and my fortune reversed, I saw clearly, for the first time perhaps, as does a man waking from a dream, that my idol did indeed have feet of clay. Sy was a resident of Sullivan County as much from necessity as his love of the area. In his native Brooklyn, he’d made some adversaries of people with short fuses and long memories, and Monticello, though not out of mind, was at least out of sight. While Sy had almost always treated me and David with courtesy and respect, as his frustrations mounted we found we were more and more regarded as underlings, employees, go-fers, fully expected to serve his every command while at the track, and, sometimes, off track as well.

By mid-August I’d begun to take a much needed sabbatical from the races. I rediscovered fishing, and swimming, softball, hiking, music, and girls. I realized I’d neglected much in the preceding six weeks, not the least of which was the feelings and sensibilities of my dad. But dad, being a dad, understood. I believe he was satisfied and gratified that I’d learnt some of life’s lessons, lessons of true intrinsic value, and had not been much bruised or badgered in the process.

When something appears too good to be true, than it usually isn’t…true.

In the summers to follow we would see Sy at the track, sometimes with his complete entourage, but more and more often by himself. By the time I was engaged to be married, he had slimmed somewhat, aged some, and almost always traveled alone. There were no longer hanger-ons and crowds following him to the window to clamor for his numbers. He no longer enjoyed the devotion and dedication of impressionable teens, willing to run his bets in exchange for his information. Yet, he was still Sy-like the guy in the Billy Joel song, quick with a joke or to light up your smoke.

Sy passed away somewhere in the middle 1980s. I heard it was a stroke. I took the news not well, walking away from the group I’d been standing with at the track, finding a private and dark corner to quietly cry. Then, after a short while, I went to the betting window, where I instructed the clerk to “Make me the six, with the two, five and eight…”