Black Cats and Maidens

THIRTY TONS A DAY by BILL VEECK with ED LINN 296 pages. Viking. $8.95.

In 1961, when Bill Veeck thought he was going to die of a brain tumor, he sold his Chicago White Sox baseball team and wrote a humorous, hardbitten memoir, Veeck--as in Wreck. Then, finding himself at least temporarily immortal, in 1968 he took a job as president of Suffolk Downs race track near Boston and plunged headlong into the murky world of horse racing and Massachusetts politics. Thirty Tons a Day, written with the same zest as his earlier book, is an entertaining account of Veeck's disastrous descent into horse-racing hell with Hectic and Hilarious as companions.

There was more to salvaging the semimoribund "Suffering Downs" than spending money for a new paint job or personally carting out the artificial flowers from the clubhouse--or even learning how to cope with the 30 tons of horse manure that the track manufacured each day. Veeck found himself in combat with what he describes as the "venal" Boston press and an allegedly corrupt clique of public officials and race-track owners.

"The politicians are a pain in the neck" writes Veeck, "because they keep you from doing what you're trying to do." What Veeck wanted, among other things, was additional "racing dates which conflicted with Massachusetts' lucrative dog-racing schedule) and permission to allow parents to bring their children to Suffolk Downs (at the time against the racing commission rules).

Eventually he hauled his opponents into court. In mouth-to-mouth combat, he bloodied local politicians, the racing commission and even the state's attorney general, who deliberately stood in contempt of court in his futile efforts to best Veeck. Without tongue in check, Veeck's account of these events is alternately fascinating, horrifying and amusing.

Veeck, who once introduced a midget into the lineup of his baseball team to please the fans--and frustrate opposing pitchers--had a few other new promotional capers up his sleeve to boost track attendance. To one of more than 4,000 racegoers who officially submitted beefs about the track, Veeck presented a Brahman bull and a couple of calves. When he threatened to give away 100 black cats as seat prizes, he was deluged by complaints from ladies who thought he had stolen their favorite pets. He hired a tribe of Indians to re-create Custer's Last Stand in the infield--but the massacre was mercifully rained out. In the days when women were still fighting for their rights as jockeys, Veeck put on the Lady Godiva race, with eight girls on eight fil lies. Said he: "I'd like to put eight maidens on eight maidens, but I don't think I'd be able to fill the race."

Veeck succeeded in his re-creation of the chariot race from Ben Hur. But a heat wave turned his rich $200,000-added Yankee Gold Cup stakes into an attendance disaster. He should have been forewarned from the way his wooden leg was acting before the race.

The day before the Gold Cup it split.

Veeck had a slightly shorter spare in his Maryland home. The airlines refused to carry it as baggage, but allowed it passage on a first-class ticket. Since no one wanted to sit next to a wooden leg, Veeck actually had to buy two first-class tickets for the flight so he'd have a leg to stand on for the big race.

Veeck's defeat, if it was one, finally came when the parent company, a voracious conglomerate, gobbled up the track's operating money. "I marshaled my forces," writes Veeck, "to seek my fame and fortune as the operator of a race track. Two years later, fortune having taken one look at my weathered features and shaken its hoary locks, I retreated, smiling gamely. And bravely. And winsomely." So does the book.

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