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

Nestled in our beds on snowy December nights, members of the harness racing community do not have visions of sugar plums. Owners dream of yearlings bedded down in stables. Gamblers dream of new angles and lower take-outs. And all of us in this game dream of a future free of attrition and subsidization.

Christmas also brings thoughts of family, faith and friends. The holidays are an island between the past and the future; they give us time to reflect on what is important and what is possible.

My dad was a modern day Don Quixote. His life was a series of adventures.

Rumor has it that he worked as a pipefitter for a few years while I was in diapers, but I do not recall him ever going to a “job.” Although he was a child of the Great Depression and a man who fought in World War II, dad‘s approach to life was relentless optimism. He always had a twinkle, a wisecrack and a new scheme.

Autumn Ryan graphic

I still see him walking off into some Arizona mountains to prospect for uranium, looking like a leprechaun in search of a pot of gold. He opened a roller rink in Cleveland. He dabbled in a very early version of a putt putt course. I recall knocking tarantulas off concrete blocks and tying a rope around the blocks as he hauled them up to build the first permanent structure in a lonely outpost called Gila Bend, Arizona. I remember him inventing weird contraptions like a snow removal system that was a massive steel wedge chained to a motor bolted to our garage floor. He spent a sweltering summer tinkering with an air conditioner made of a wooden box filled with straw. He built me a pole vault pit, opened a restaurant and tried his hand at inventing and selling exercise equipment.

Our little family moved like gypsies. A blur of schools had me thinking my name was Newt Kidd. We lived in a mobile home near a rodeo. We lived in a tiny trailer on the desert without another human being in sight. Once we wound up in rooms above a dental office while dad was involved in one of his countless crazy business ventures.

Moneywise, the results were mixed. A few seeds he planted bloomed; others harvested gold after we moved on. Dad was happy for them. He winked at failure and he winked at success — he saw them for the imposters they are. My dad kept happily chasing windmills for 78 years. I’m sure he was dreaming and scheming as he closed his eyes.

Surely, some people viewed my dad as a fool.

I think he was the coolest, happiest guy ever.

So, where am I going?

In harness racing, we need do-it-yourself Don Quixote dreamers that are willing to grab a few Sancho Panzas and head to the windmill of their minds. Maybe you are one of these people. You can head for the windmill in search of fortune. Maybe you simply want to save our fair Aldonza. Maybe you just want a challenge. Maybe you are frustrated or bored. Maybe you want to prove something to yourself. But if you ever had an idea, a plan, a plot, or a proposal to move our game forward, this might be a good time to take it out of the box.

We need more than just dreamers. What harness racing needs are doers — doers who are willing to travel the traditional paths, paths not taken, and paths not even imagined.

The chasm between an idea and an action makes the Grand Canyon look like a silk thread. People are afraid to risk money. People are afraid to risk embarrassment. If you look for reasons not to try, you will find them. But if you chase dreams, you will find them. I know this is true from watching my dad.

Harness racing people look at our sport as competitive horses trotting or pacing across the finish line after traveling a mile. Our game has many facets, but basically, it is what it is and what it has been for over a hundred years. How can you change it? How can you look at it differently? How can you monetize and sell harness racing without destroying the fundamentals? The answers are unclear but the path for harness racing will get smaller without innovation.

When my dad took up fishing, he explored until he found a virgin lake deep in the Canadian wilderness. To get there took a thousand miles of freeway, 30 miles of logging road and two portages through unmarked woods. He invented a hoist contraption, some sort of pole on the bumper that allowed him to load and unload his modified boat onto the roof of his modified car (terrified drivers gave him wide berth). Thirty years ago, long before the internet, he had a plan for competitive fishing tournaments (that idea eventually caught on big time). He invented a vehicle (much like a racing sulky) to help haul his boat and fishing equipment to his secret lake.

Harness racing could use a few loose cannons like dad, people with new ideas and new ways of looking at our game. We need a very exotic species — entrepreneurs who can use harness racing as the framework for a business model. At the very least they would bring energy; if we are lucky, some may bring salvation. Some efforts will be crazy failures — so what?

The very existence of our showplace, the Meadowlands, is in jeopardy. If you cannot see that the same old, same old, is a losing game, you need an ophthalmologist. If you are waiting for a knight in shining armor to pull us out of the flames, you will have a long wait.

At our core, harness racing is an amazing sport/product/game/business. We are better by open lengths than so much of the entertainment drivel that gets peddled in today’s society. You know this. It is maddening that so few others do. Harness racing is like a small gem that keeps sinking deeper and deeper into the soil. We need people, including people not already in the sport, to discover us. We need to be reset and sold.

Regardless of economics, good old products can successfully be repackaged and marketed. Reinvention, repositioning and remarketing harness racing as a new and different product is possible. And harness racing has the unusual position of being able to run on both new and old tracks simultaneously.

Lady Gaga, independent league professional baseball, kayaking, casinos, dancing stars and poker are all thriving as viable entertainment products. In my opinion, harness racing is richer, more complex, and makes better economic sense than any on the above list. The postings in this spot are a clearing house for ideas, some are my own, and some are from harness folks that send them my way for repackaging (the next three columns will be business models). They may seem unusual, they may seem foolish, but nothing should be off the harness racing table.

Many believe the harness racing future is hopeless and that they are helpless. Others of us dream the impossible dream. Maybe you have a bit of Don Quixote in your soul. Maybe you can build a small platform to give us some new footing. Your windmill can be political, legislative, experimental, promotional, or entrepreneurial. Why not take a swing. It’s been a long, long time, since our game has had an experiment where people sat up and said, “Hey… that looks interesting.”

My dad was never exposed to the harness racing bug. He would have loved it. The risks of our sport would have fascinated him. The people in our game were his kind of people. Our reluctance to re-invent ourselves would have challenged him. Dad would have looked at our old sport and heard reinvention calling from our grandstands, our front offices and our backstretches. I can see him trying outlandish training methods, building his own track in a non-racing state, trying radical promotions and a hundred ideas that would leave observers scratching their heads.

Dad did not wait. He rarely asked for permission or followed rules. His motto was, “Let’s give it a try.” Of course this led to some bumpy roads, citations, arrests, and boats flying off of vehicle roofs at high speeds — but dad just keep grinning while mom and the rest of our little clan aided and abetted.

Obviously, many of you are much more organized than my dad. You have superior business sense and your odds of success are substantially higher. But keep this in mind — chasing a business dream is not as hard as you may think. It starts with a single step, gathers momentum and often becomes a fascinating trip. The message from my dad is simple. Do not be afraid to try.

I wish dad was here now. He would look at the mess in harness racing and see opportunity.