People are everywhere, diverse and interesting looking people. There are the buyers, intensely studying cryptic sheets with numbers and bloodline flow sheets. There are anxious agents, working for farms, or sellers or buyers--or themselves--as they scour the lists for bargains. Some are breeders looking for mares to match with their stallions. Some are trainers looking for a horse to run or a yearling to develop. Some are pin-hookers, looking to find a horse to improve, develop and sell next year--like a house-flipper.
And the people are different. It is separate culture, like the cast of "Guys and Dolls," with more in common with like people across borders--like the ocean-going boating nation--than with geographic neighbors. There are Hispanic stable hands, what seems like a recent Vassar graduating class of horse handlers, farmers and cowboys, suits and stetsons.
The animals are beautiful, well mannered and powerful. There is obvious fondness between the ex-Vassar girls and the horses especially, but no commitment, no sadness when the sales are made. This is not a place of the hard present, it is a place of potential and dreams.
The money is plentiful but not very obvious. The bidding is self-consciously subtle but it is hard to imagine there are enough people for all the day's bids. Each section has a man who tracks and calls the bids from that section while the auctioneer raps incomprehensibly acapello in the background. The bidders are totally unpredictable; the most innocuous might bid a small fortune.
It is an arcane practice, democracy with a bank account. Subjectivity rules, sometimes with a splash of science. Some horses are obviously extraordinary but many of them blend together in the untrained eye in defiance of expert perception, sometimes by a factor of ten or twenty. The decisions are made personally: the shape of the head and neck, the size of the hind quarters, the gait. It is reminescent of Bill Beane's Oakland Angel's baseball scouts who insisted there was a "baseball face" and stayed away from players without it. And the genetics are out of Mengele. Some stallions breed foals of strong shoulders, some stamina, some turf speed--or so it is said.
It is a beautiful setting with beautiful animals and fascinating people; a bustling marketplace of hopes, science and magic. Someday this field will be invaded by the "sabermetrics" guys and someone will make sense of it all this and something wonderful will be lost.
The money is plentiful but not very obvious. The bidding is self-consciously subtle but it is hard to imagine there are enough people for all the day's bids. Each section has a man who tracks and calls the bids from that section while the auctioneer raps incomprehensibly acapello in the background. The bidders are totally unpredictable; the most innocuous might bid a small fortune.
It is an arcane practice, democracy with a bank account. Subjectivity rules, sometimes with a splash of science. Some horses are obviously extraordinary but many of them blend together in the untrained eye in defiance of expert perception, sometimes by a factor of ten or twenty. The decisions are made personally: the shape of the head and neck, the size of the hind quarters, the gait. It is reminescent of Bill Beane's Oakland Angel's baseball scouts who insisted there was a "baseball face" and stayed away from players without it. And the genetics are out of Mengele. Some stallions breed foals of strong shoulders, some stamina, some turf speed--or so it is said.
It is a beautiful setting with beautiful animals and fascinating people; a bustling marketplace of hopes, science and magic. Someday this field will be invaded by the "sabermetrics" guys and someone will make sense of it all this and something wonderful will be lost.
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