by Bob Carson

Editor’s Note: The USTA website is pleased to present freelance writer Bob Carson and his popular “Outside the Box” features. This monthly series is a menu of outlandish proposals presented with a wink — but the purpose behind them is serious. The views contained in this column are that of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent the opinions or views of the United States Trotting Association.

Bob Carson

The sport of cricket is among the alarmingly large catalogue of subjects of which I have scant knowledge. Therefore, the headline on my I-pad was both intriguing and confusing.

“The International Cricket Council suspended three cricketers after allegations they received money to bowl no-balls.”

Scandal and a strange sport with wagering are an irresistible siren song for some of us. Wikipedia revealed that cricket is the second most popular sport in the world, second only to soccer. Cricket matches can last for days, so maybe my gambling money could last longer. I surfed over to YouTube and watched a cricket match. The game was strangely compelling, with longer breaks in the proceedings than harness racing.

I logged off and headed to my local library for books or videos on cricket. I plucked a cricket book off the shelf and sat at a table to look up an explanation for the term in question — “no-balls.” This has nothing to do with courage but is like a balk in baseball. I also learned that “corkers” are unhittable pitches and “mullygrubbers” are balls that do not bounce. Cool stuff. I headed home for my “luncheon,” the first of two intervals taken during a full day’s play at a cricket stadium. On the way to the library checkout counter, something familiar caught my eye.

Displayed on a library shelf was a DVD. The faces on the cover brought back a flood of wonderful memories. The title of the documentary DVD was “Touching Home – Baseball in the Bushes.”

My film.

It’s not like I had forgotten about the documentary, orders for the movie pop up every month, but stumbling across the film in a public library was like meeting your old High School chemistry teacher in a strip club. He has every right to be there — but it’s weird.

Made in 2005, Touching Home was my first, rather crude, attempt at filmmaking. It would be a stretch to call the documentary good. Making this film was a learning experience, and like most early efforts, you know you could do much better with practice and another try.

The professionals I hired were terrific and the “movie year” was one of the best years of my life. Every day led to a new avenue in the world of filmmaking. I wish we had turned out a masterpiece, but hey, there it was, sitting on the shelves of public libraries and getting popped into DVD players for years to come.

There were no DVDs on harness racing at this library.

Autumn Ryan graphic

All I could find on the trotters and pacers were a few ancient print publications. We need to fill this void. We need to have a digital presence on library shelves and any other platform that will support us. We need digital downloads on YouTube, on cell phones and across the new media universe. We need entertaining films with the potential to generate a digital buzz.

I think I’ll make one.

The baseball film was self financed. Although it took a lot of twigs out of our little nest egg, I wasn’t worried; well, not too worried. A solid base of readers from my baseball work and the library systems were insurance policies that would allow me to recoup my daughter’s college fund. Mercifully, I was correct. The film turned a profit (which, in the documentary film world, is as rare as a Taliban disco). My daughter was eventually able to attend college and the movie still brings in a few bucks that I blissfully squander on harness horse wagering and ownership.

Better still, and this is where harness racing should sit up, or step up, my little documentary was a promotional tool for low-level professional baseball. Each person that views Touching Home (and by now that number is in the thousands) is a potential new fan of the sport. In the course of one hour, we try to explain and promote independent league baseball. Every time I stuff a DVD into a mailing package, my thought is “I wonder if this person will become a new fan?”

A few years ago, I wrote a treatment for a harness racing film (a treatment is a boiled-down prose version of a screenplay). Primarily, my concept is a documentary, but like most marketable documentaries, the product has its foundations in drama and conflict (the pillars of entertainment). The harness racing market is too small a target so the audience will be the ocean of people that do not know we exist.

Soon films, like books and television, will be routinely distributed via the internet. Movies, like music, will be digital files waiting to be uploaded. Harness racing needs digital products If we are not to be left in the cyber dust. Good digital content will be a valuable resource in the years ahead. We have very few digital harness projects out there. A few may be in progress. We need more, lots more.

We could use digital content for handicappers, for potential owners, for history buffs, for novices and for experts. A tsunami of digital products would be useful. A breakout hit or two would be a blessing for harness racing.

One of the problems of introducing new people into harness racing is that our sport is hard to “get” in a single night at the racetrack. Potential fans see horses pulling buggies and racing to the finish line. We know this is just a sliver of what we have to offer. Causal visitors to our world never see “how” these horses get to the race. They miss “how” races are organized, classified and strategically raced. For a new fan, watching one night of racing is like taking a vacation in Bali and only looking out the window of your hotel. Nice view, but hardly a complete experience.

Film holds the opportunity to take the visitor deeper. Film allows a longer amount of nuanced time. And a film with real people in dramatic situations, layered on the unique world of the backstretch, with action and the magic of horses gives the filmmaker a lot to work with.

All films, like all yearlings, are dreams. Some come true, some are nightmares and most are in between. Every movie around a topic — baseball, or cricket, or kite flying, or harness racing — holds the potential to bring new aficionados into the tent.

Like a yearling it is hard to predict the final profit or loss numbers on a movie. Everyone starts with the idea of finishing with a Hoop Dreams or March of the Penguins. Everyone hopes for international distribution, big deals and millions of dollars and viewers. In film making, like in horse racing, everyone is a champion when the hammer falls. However, when the film is finally cut and scored, or the horse is qualified, what happens next is determined by many factors — interest, marketing, connections, luck, and of course, quality.

When your yearling is ready for prime time it can race on the Grand Circuit, Sires Stakes, Fair Circuit or racetrack. Or, as we all know, it may not race at all and stand around in the barn. Movies are like this, except movies offer a bit more control on the final product and movies offer a wider range of places to run; film festivals, theatrical release, television, cable, the racing network, independent channels, national public television, local public television, other horse breeds, direct sales, public libraries, as instructional videos, commercial distribution outlets, cell phones, I-pads, simple internet downloads, social networking sites, yada, yada. If you create a good program, there will be revenue streams and there will be places to run.

So I’m busy, dreaming away, starting another adventure and scraping up financing. Maybe I can unleash a champion.

Last week, I found cricket in the digital world. Maybe I will become a “cricketer,” maybe not. Maybe I will make a great documentary centered around harness racing, maybe not. Maybe it will expose harness racing to a new audience, maybe not.

There are a lot of maybes, but here is a definitely: if we do not have digital footprints in the future, harness racing will fall farther and farther behind in the race for attention.