SHUG

[TGJB]

Bob, of all the amazing things in that article, the Gene Tunney thing was the most amazing. You would think a guy that smart would have figured out to stay away from Dempsey the WHOLE fight.

[magicnight]

Yeah, pretty amazing a guy like that as heavyweight champ.

My personal favorite is Vanessa Redgrave not savvying that Mellon might not be all that interested in a revolution of the proletariat.

[magicnight]

Think Richie may be in the right ballpark here, as I\'m pretty sure I did not make it up there until the early 1980s.

These days when I\'m hanging around the paddock fence it seems like I dreamed that up. It seems impossible now to think that the place was that wide open not that long ago.

[TGJB]

It\'s at least that recent. Serling grew up there, he\'ll probably know.

[magicnight]

Found this:

For over a hundred years, horses were saddled in Saratoga’s backyard, under the trees; no fences or other barriers separated the horses from the customers who wanted to see them.

Security concerns ended this practice in the mid-1980′s, and since then, horses have been saddled in the paddock adjacent to the backyard, just behind the clubhouse.

http://helloracefans.com/track-guides/saratoga/

[Edgorman]

I have a vague memory, as all of mine now are, of a period when the horses were still saddled in the back by the numbered trees but you couldn\'t walk in. Maybe \"pre paddock\".  In any case I agree the change came early-mid 80\'s.

[moosepalm]

First time I went to the Spa was \'85 or \'86, and they were still saddling by the trees.  Seemed like they did it for at least another year or two beyond that.