Our leader was a Pack

Real Writing on Racing 💯

This past Tuesday afternoon longtime NYRA television host Andy Serling made a post on Twitter informing the racing world that the legendary horse racing personality Harvey Pack had died at age 94. Harvey had been out of the spotlight long enough that the bad news was less jarring than hearing of your typical famous person passing, many responses to that tweet were those sheepishly admitting that they hadn’t even realized he was still with us. Yet the name Harvey Pack elicits memories that harken back to a past age of racing, a period of time when so many of us grew to know and love the game, an era when the sport still seemed to be so alive. 

It’s hard to imagine in the present day but there was once a world that existed without every race being televised. The early 80’s was a time when cable TV was just starting to expand nationwide allowing access to new stations and markets that weren’t available under the old five channel system. SportsChannel New York, which launched in the spring of 1979, was beamed all over the country, providing those fortunate enough to have one of those little brown cable boxes in their living room, the opportunity to watch a brand new replay show from the NYRA tracks six days a week. It was programming using a simple format but the impact from Harvey Pack’s groundbreaking work still reverberates in racing today. 

Before the advent of cable television the primary method to get horseracing information was via newspapers, many of which printed stories along with entries and results charts from various tracks in a special racing section of the sports pages. Thoroughbred Action with Harvey Pack brought those black and white pages alive as we could actually see what happened now and Harvey provided short yet succinct post race quips, accurate recaps in less than ten seconds. The airtime was mostly filled with the replay of the race yet it was the few minutes of dialogue every night that captivated viewers. Harvey Pack was a horseplayer, he talked like a horseplayer, he looked like a horseplayer and he hosted the show as a horseplayer. His verbiage was what you heard in the grandstand, not up in the fancy clubhouse boxes. No his was the special language of the racing everyman, the wise guys and the railbirds. Harvey Pack was not just a horseplayer though, he was far, far more than his shtick revealed.     

Genius is often not recognized until much time has passed and the retrospective view has illuminated the brilliance that was missed the first time around. So much of what we see on modern day horseracing broadcasts especially in regard to the gambling nature of the sport started with Harvey Pack. His guest-list was mostly local handicappers and writers like Steve Crist or Andy Beyer or Paul Cornman though he’d throw in a Louis the Clocker visit to keep everyone on their toes. Many still recall his famed handicapping rules which were never delivered in a formal manner but often as a cautionary tale as when an odds-on favorite lost, “doing something that he had never done before.” Throwing the program at the camera was part of his signature sign off, the end of the show punctuated with a quote spun off of the Star Wars series, “may the horse be with you”. It was part of our daily lives, NYRA raced six days a week back then and Harvey had a weekly recap show on the dark day Tuesday, called Inside Racing as well. He would interview a wide variety of guests, often giving younger people from various roles in racing some time in the spotlight along with showing replays of prominent stakes races from both New York and out of town, all framed by his witty, self-deprecating humor. 

It’s impossible to know exactly how many dedicated fans and players were created by Harvey Pack during his years in racing but he was a regular horseracing pied piper. Between Thoroughbred Action, Inside Racing, his daily paddock club presentations, the Siro’s seminars, his work on NBC’s Breeders Cup telecasts or the tens of thousands of interactions he had with fans, his presence was a constant during that fantastic era. His ability to both educate and entertain, often simultaneously, captivated his audience of players hungry for both. I would give anything to go back in time, to sit on a bench with my Dad to listen to his paddock preview show on a warm Saratoga summer day. Just one time go back and take in Harvey and a guest like the celebrated jockey agent Lenny Goodman’s banter as they went over the card, just like they did on August 20, 1983 when Devils Bag showed later that afternoon that indeed he was “the fastest horse in the world”. It was like history happening right before your eyes and an outsider like me never felt more like an insider because of Harvey Pack. Rest In Peace Harvey, may the horse be with you!