This is a response to Jerry Brown\'s posting that was forwarded to me.
I have not logged on or read the thread of remarks about my column and I just created an id and registered for the express purpose of responding to this post
All I am responding to here is the statement that was contained in an e-mail forwarded to me that apparently Jerry Brown posted on your site.
In fairness, I believe you should post this response in its entirety on your site where appropriate, including this prelude.
It is completely false that I ever called you from Florida and screamed at you on the phone saying your theories were wrong wrong wrong.
Never happened.
Twice I did call you, once from NY to thank you for the sheets you were distributing for free to a few members of the press for promotional purposes, as you currently do to many members of the media in different markets to this day. I was not in Florida, but was calling you to thank you about seeing them in Florida weeks earlier.
The other time from Minneapolis.
Both times in response to a suggestion by Steve Nagler who was acting as your agent to get your Sheets off the ground. In the second call I explained that I was interviewing you for a column that was to be published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in the late 1980\'s.
I called to say--and remember it vividly-- that I found value in your sheets approach to presenting \'performance figures\' in chart form and also noted the similarity to the Ragozin Sheets, which you told me in the conversation that you had once worked for him.
I also told you that I found your sheets to be helpful in identifying turf contenders, especially since no turf figures were presently being produced by Andy Beyer or anyone else I knew about and I had experimented with making figs for turf on my own but gave up due to the inconsistencies in clockings. I even told you that I had shared some of your turf figures when in Florida with Steve Crist, with whom I was staying at the time and we both hit exactas based on The Sheet turf figs.
You explained that your employees clock races from the gate and that was one of the reasons why you were able to make good figs.
I asked you what you did about weight and what you did about horses who were running on deep rails and what you thought about pace and what you did about other subtleties. In other words, I asked you professionally about your methodology and did not scream at you, far from it.
When you explained the ideas behind your theories and the research behind your weight formula and your lack of belief in track bias and pace as important mitigating form factors, I did not scream anything at you, I told you straight up man to man, that I disagreed.
I was not even argumentative, although I did explain why I thought you were wrong to discount slow rails when they existed and that weight is the most over weighted handicapping factor I have ever come across and that pace is a murky but important consideration when evaluating good and bad performances, rather than a predictive tool.But it is hardly something to be dismissed in when assessing how a number was generated by a horse in a race.
In other words this was anything but a screaming session, it was a professional interview with professional responses from someone who was both impressed with your approach and had disagreements with it too.
How and why you have found the nee to turn it into a way to make me look like an arrogant jerk, is hardly worth analyzing other than for me to simply state it does not become you or make any sense.
As for the subsequent Handicapping Expo you refer to, I have no recollection whatsoever of \'being reminded\' of your (mis) represented conversation. I have no recollection of any important interaction with you about any aspect of your work, or about any subject, although it might well have occurred, because there were dozens of short interactions with Expo attendees and speakers that I could not begin to list or recount. Whatever. There was no disrespect or argumentative feeling that I can recall from any of those interactions with anyone.
I can only also add that it is not my nature to dismiss people in the game in a cavalier or hostile manner.
Nor do I regard Thorograph as something bad for the game, something terribly misguided, I just think your Bounce notions go way overboard in explaining poor performances. Be they mentioned before the fact or after. Be there percentages attached before the fact either. What I do not like is an injured Rh horse being used as an example that seems to state that the theory of the bounce was proved by the injury, which was the implication of the note passed on to me that I reacted to when writing my TrackMaster column. That felt to me to be in bad taste. And if that did not occur as represented to me in the e-mail that I used as a springboard, I will print a correction. If it did occur as represented in that e-mail, than I would suggest it was in bad taste, winning play or losing play notwithstanding.
If you truly believe that----more power to you, but I have serious doubts that Barbaro\'s injury was the result of a SEVERE BOUNCE.
As for the number of weeks that a horse of today must rest to reproduce a good race vs the numerous starts compared to the numbers of races, close together by horses in the 1960\'s and \'70\'s---yes that is indeed an issue related to changes in training regimens, drugs, and other issues just as it is related to modern baseball pitchers and their less resilient form factors.
But the point I raised is that such issues are not absolute gospel truths.
Time between races and numbers of starts are an evolving trend that can shift in either direction, slow down, or speed up through time, just as it is has in other sports, including basketball where players are more resilient, more active than they were 20 years ago.
Bonds? Vs Aaron?
McGuire and Sosa vs Mays and Mantle?
Etc.
Sure Bond and McGuire and Sosa are bigger and stronger through drugs in combination with modern training regimens and nutritional supplements. At the same time, the livelier ball and smaller ballparks are among other important factors that blur equal comparisons, just as pole vaulters and golfers leap higher and hit further through technological advances in equipment, just as racetracks are manicured differently to produce faster clockings. But good figs take out the condition of the track and purport to measure how fast a horse really ran.
I wonder when I read in some public forum that the fifth or six place finisher in an ordinary Derby ran a 4 on The Sheets, or that the latest winner of a mediocre Derby ran a zero and that Secretariat only ran a 2, or something like that.
It seems to me that if that is anywhere close to what is being recorded for such horses that your scale is sliding more than the horses are improving and I base that on my own speed figure research which I have published in many forums through the years. But if there are contrary facts that you possess,I could be persuaded otherwise.
I also believe that the fault with 3 yr old racehorse fragility can be better traced to the layout of principal stakes at 2 yrs of age, where distances have been lengthened for those stakes--from August on--more than is reasonable from a development and health standpoint. this more than increasing the spacing between Triple Crown races should be addressed seriously, I think.
At the bottom line, I do not believe I have the Rosetta Stone to explain the universe of handicapping, but I do believe I have a realistic, professional perspective and I have spent my entire life trying to find things out, trying to share them honorably and not being afraid to offer critics when it seems fair and deserved.
Should you wish to discuss any of this honorably-- anything about any aspect of your work, or mine---please feel free to contact me by return E-mail or provide your private phone number. I would suggest though that you retract the comment that I \"screamed\" at you and labeled your theories, \"wrong wrong wrong\".
I strongly suspect that you confused me with someone else.
Sincerely/Steve Davidowitz
davidwtz@aol.com
I have not logged on or read the thread of remarks about my column and I just created an id and registered for the express purpose of responding to this post
All I am responding to here is the statement that was contained in an e-mail forwarded to me that apparently Jerry Brown posted on your site.
In fairness, I believe you should post this response in its entirety on your site where appropriate, including this prelude.
It is completely false that I ever called you from Florida and screamed at you on the phone saying your theories were wrong wrong wrong.
Never happened.
Twice I did call you, once from NY to thank you for the sheets you were distributing for free to a few members of the press for promotional purposes, as you currently do to many members of the media in different markets to this day. I was not in Florida, but was calling you to thank you about seeing them in Florida weeks earlier.
The other time from Minneapolis.
Both times in response to a suggestion by Steve Nagler who was acting as your agent to get your Sheets off the ground. In the second call I explained that I was interviewing you for a column that was to be published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in the late 1980\'s.
I called to say--and remember it vividly-- that I found value in your sheets approach to presenting \'performance figures\' in chart form and also noted the similarity to the Ragozin Sheets, which you told me in the conversation that you had once worked for him.
I also told you that I found your sheets to be helpful in identifying turf contenders, especially since no turf figures were presently being produced by Andy Beyer or anyone else I knew about and I had experimented with making figs for turf on my own but gave up due to the inconsistencies in clockings. I even told you that I had shared some of your turf figures when in Florida with Steve Crist, with whom I was staying at the time and we both hit exactas based on The Sheet turf figs.
You explained that your employees clock races from the gate and that was one of the reasons why you were able to make good figs.
I asked you what you did about weight and what you did about horses who were running on deep rails and what you thought about pace and what you did about other subtleties. In other words, I asked you professionally about your methodology and did not scream at you, far from it.
When you explained the ideas behind your theories and the research behind your weight formula and your lack of belief in track bias and pace as important mitigating form factors, I did not scream anything at you, I told you straight up man to man, that I disagreed.
I was not even argumentative, although I did explain why I thought you were wrong to discount slow rails when they existed and that weight is the most over weighted handicapping factor I have ever come across and that pace is a murky but important consideration when evaluating good and bad performances, rather than a predictive tool.But it is hardly something to be dismissed in when assessing how a number was generated by a horse in a race.
In other words this was anything but a screaming session, it was a professional interview with professional responses from someone who was both impressed with your approach and had disagreements with it too.
How and why you have found the nee to turn it into a way to make me look like an arrogant jerk, is hardly worth analyzing other than for me to simply state it does not become you or make any sense.
As for the subsequent Handicapping Expo you refer to, I have no recollection whatsoever of \'being reminded\' of your (mis) represented conversation. I have no recollection of any important interaction with you about any aspect of your work, or about any subject, although it might well have occurred, because there were dozens of short interactions with Expo attendees and speakers that I could not begin to list or recount. Whatever. There was no disrespect or argumentative feeling that I can recall from any of those interactions with anyone.
I can only also add that it is not my nature to dismiss people in the game in a cavalier or hostile manner.
Nor do I regard Thorograph as something bad for the game, something terribly misguided, I just think your Bounce notions go way overboard in explaining poor performances. Be they mentioned before the fact or after. Be there percentages attached before the fact either. What I do not like is an injured Rh horse being used as an example that seems to state that the theory of the bounce was proved by the injury, which was the implication of the note passed on to me that I reacted to when writing my TrackMaster column. That felt to me to be in bad taste. And if that did not occur as represented to me in the e-mail that I used as a springboard, I will print a correction. If it did occur as represented in that e-mail, than I would suggest it was in bad taste, winning play or losing play notwithstanding.
If you truly believe that----more power to you, but I have serious doubts that Barbaro\'s injury was the result of a SEVERE BOUNCE.
As for the number of weeks that a horse of today must rest to reproduce a good race vs the numerous starts compared to the numbers of races, close together by horses in the 1960\'s and \'70\'s---yes that is indeed an issue related to changes in training regimens, drugs, and other issues just as it is related to modern baseball pitchers and their less resilient form factors.
But the point I raised is that such issues are not absolute gospel truths.
Time between races and numbers of starts are an evolving trend that can shift in either direction, slow down, or speed up through time, just as it is has in other sports, including basketball where players are more resilient, more active than they were 20 years ago.
Bonds? Vs Aaron?
McGuire and Sosa vs Mays and Mantle?
Etc.
Sure Bond and McGuire and Sosa are bigger and stronger through drugs in combination with modern training regimens and nutritional supplements. At the same time, the livelier ball and smaller ballparks are among other important factors that blur equal comparisons, just as pole vaulters and golfers leap higher and hit further through technological advances in equipment, just as racetracks are manicured differently to produce faster clockings. But good figs take out the condition of the track and purport to measure how fast a horse really ran.
I wonder when I read in some public forum that the fifth or six place finisher in an ordinary Derby ran a 4 on The Sheets, or that the latest winner of a mediocre Derby ran a zero and that Secretariat only ran a 2, or something like that.
It seems to me that if that is anywhere close to what is being recorded for such horses that your scale is sliding more than the horses are improving and I base that on my own speed figure research which I have published in many forums through the years. But if there are contrary facts that you possess,I could be persuaded otherwise.
I also believe that the fault with 3 yr old racehorse fragility can be better traced to the layout of principal stakes at 2 yrs of age, where distances have been lengthened for those stakes--from August on--more than is reasonable from a development and health standpoint. this more than increasing the spacing between Triple Crown races should be addressed seriously, I think.
At the bottom line, I do not believe I have the Rosetta Stone to explain the universe of handicapping, but I do believe I have a realistic, professional perspective and I have spent my entire life trying to find things out, trying to share them honorably and not being afraid to offer critics when it seems fair and deserved.
Should you wish to discuss any of this honorably-- anything about any aspect of your work, or mine---please feel free to contact me by return E-mail or provide your private phone number. I would suggest though that you retract the comment that I \"screamed\" at you and labeled your theories, \"wrong wrong wrong\".
I strongly suspect that you confused me with someone else.
Sincerely/Steve Davidowitz
davidwtz@aol.com