by Rick Ackerman
RickAckerman.com
[I wrote the following for the Sunday San Francisco Examiner two decades ago. I offer it as lighter fare in lieu of the usual rant about how the stock market is mentally ill, investors are besotted with greed, and the global financial system galloping toward ruinous deflation. RA]
Talk about a sure thing! Here was the kind of inside information that one imagined tumbled from heaven into the ears of the anointed. It concerned not the stock market – we’ll get to that part soon – but a pacer named Happy Yankee A that was running in the seventh race at Roosevelt Raceway outside of Philadelphia one evening nearly four decades ago. According to my source, this horse was not merely a strong bet to win, he was an absolute lock, lead-pipe cinch. This horse absolutely could not lose. What’s more, the Yankster had looked so tired the last few times out that he would probably go off at fat odds.