Flatter: Forever Young, Mott inspire a night of dark laughs

“How many of you here are into horse racing?”

There was quite a bit of applause and hooting from the couple dozen people in the room. It was Wednesday night. Very late at a dark, little dive in a half-vacant strip mall across the river from Louisville. One of those places where the beer is cheap, the patrons are as cranky, the barkeep is crankier, and the Clark County deputies look the other way on smoking of all kinds. This is still farm country. And horse country.

“Did you see what happened this morning in Japan?”

Mott wins award from Kentucky Thoroughbred owners.

The racing crowd knew where this young, local comic was going. She is maybe three or four years out of U of L. By day she works at Churchill. The corporate office, not the track. At night she does stand-up wherever she can find a stage, no matter how small or dingy. Even late on a weeknight, she is getting more and more popular working borderline blue material for workaday Bud drinkers in Southern Indiana.

Oh, yes. She is known by railbirds to bet on horses. Always at the track on weekends, especially around the paddock. She is old school except for her three ADWs and a tablet full of PPs. And she melds her love of the game into 10 tight, topical minutes.

“Did you see Forever Young win that race at some ungodly hour this morning?”

A half-dozen people acknowledged her. They saw the race. Or at least they knew about it.

“Now everybody is going crazy over him again. ‘He’s going to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic. He’s going to come over here and take all our money back home to Japan. He is a superstar. This is the year.’ ”

The cynics were yelling back, “Bull bleep.” Or something starting with bull.

Our rising star of the open mic was not backing down. As an older-than-her-years handicapper who learned from her dad how to read a form, she likes Forever Young.

“Listen, I think he’s the next Sierra Leone. Your smartass friend will say he has given up on him, and then he’ll come back after the race with enough money to pay off all the football bets he was bragging about before they all lost. Because he’s a liar.”

The chuckles were knowing, maybe cutting a little too close to the bone. This crowd has friends like that. Check that. This crowd is the friend like that.

But this woman was not there to proselytize her picks next month at Del Mar.

“Did you see that crowd in Japan? They’re always so happy over there just watching horses race. Or horses walk. Or horses take a dump. Or clutch their plushies of horses taking a dump. But at 8 o’clock on a Wednesday night in the rain in the suburbs of Tokyo? Don’t they have bars like this over there?”

The chuckles were amplified if still just polite. But she was about to make a left turn. This headliner wannabe is an observational comic. It’s like she comes from the school of Nate Bargatze and Sarah Squirm.

“If you looked closely at that crowd of maybe 2,000, 3,000 locals from Japan, there was one American tourist who stood out. He was easy to spot. He was angry, and his brooding face was buried in his phone, probably using his ADW illegally. Just as Forever Young was crossing the finish line, and everyone was screaming and delirious and going crazy, this one angry man clearly was mouthing those words we all hear. ‘He went from 5-2 to 1-5 on the last click. Effing computer players.’ ”

That got a laugh from the crowd back home in Indiana.

“I’ll bet the night before, he showed up at a sumo match, put an illegal bet on it with some offshore joint in Costa Rica, puffed out his chest thinking he would make a ton of money, and then when he cashed out, he yelled, ‘Damn Makoto went from plus 550 to plus 180 on the last click. Effing computer players.’ ”

The laughter swelled just a bit more. For a comic it’s like a shot of ear adrenaline. Her eyes were glowing now, and so was her confidence. She knew there were enough horseplayers in the crowd for her to go deep in the weeds. Or maybe it was just the weed.

“After I watched the race I called out sick and went back to bed. I was still trying to get over last night’s hangover when the phone started vibrating around noon. I saw it was my friend Margie, who hates texting. So I answered. She was all breathless about the Warner L. Jones award. Do you know about this? The Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners give it to their horseman of the year.”

She earned enough collateral to have the undivided attention of the horseplayers in the crowd and even some of their friends who by now were caught up in their curiosity.

“Margie says, ‘Can you believe they gave the award to Bill Mott?’ So what? I said he’s probably overdue. But she said, ‘No. Bill Mott. Remember what he and Godolphin did after Sovereignty won the Kentucky Derby?’”

There were a few uh-ohs around the room sensing this was about to turn into a Comedy Central roast. They were not wrong. The comic who works the desk at Churchill by day, at least when she shows up, was about to fire up the grill late Wednesday night.

“I’m guessing the Maryland Thoroughbred owners won’t be buying a table at that banquet.”

The chuckles were building as everyone realized where she was heading with this.

“Margie said she actually might go, and she wants me to come with her. She asked me, ‘What should we wear?’ I said the only way I’d show up is if I was in all black, and she wore a Godolphin blue dress. Silk, of course.”

The laughs were building, but she was just getting started.

“She said the invitations to the ceremony have cocktails at 6 and dinner at 7. I bet Mr. Mott thinks the dinner is coming too soon after the drinks, so he’s going to skip that. But he’ll be back for dessert.”

Now she was getting her biggest laughs of the night.

“Seriously, I know Mr. Mott is a Hall of Famer and a decent man, so he will not miss the dinner. It’s on Nov. 22, right after the Saturday races at Churchill. He will be there to accept the award graciously. But then I hear because Thanksgiving is only five days later, he is going to skip that dinner and come back for Christmas.”

The laughs had swelled enough by this point that she had to wait for them to die down.

“The tickets are $175. Can you believe that? You know that American who I talked about over in Japan? He lives in Kentucky, and he’s ticked off at Mott. Not because he bet the Triple Crown prop, but that’s how much he lost on a Pick 6 ticket with a Mott horse. He was all sour grapes. He said, ‘It wouldn’t have paid that much anyway. Effing computer players.’ ”

Everything after that was a haze just like the Uber ride back across the river. So was waking up from this dream.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.