In two weeks, we’ll be on deadline. The first deadline of The Saratoga Special 2025. Our 25th season. Imagine that. We embarked on our first year, from an out-of-business yoga studio on Broadway. I recruited four students from Skidmore and realized quickly that creative writing was very different than turf journalism. They didn’t last long.
I became a writer that summer. Just out of necessity and pressure. There was no one else. Joe was laying out pages as fast as he could, he never left the office. I wrote most of the pages. Slinging words and sending copy as fast as I could. We were doing six days a week, then mid-meet, we just bagged the Monday editions. No one noticed or cared. We printed eight-page newspapers. Frank Alexander held it up one morning and said, “This isn’t a newspaper, it’s a pamphlet.” He had a point.
The day before the Travers, I asked Gary Stevens if he could talk about favorite Point Given. We sat on top of a picnic table under the trees outside the jocks’ room. I flipped mini cassette tapes in my recorder as the Hall of Fame jockey talked about the big red train for as long as I wanted to talk. I walked away thinking maybe The Special would make it. Twenty-five years? I was just thinking about the next day, the next season. That’s all.
So, celebrate with us this summer. Twenty-five years of The Saratoga Special.
