Is Today A Good Day To Box The Field? (Ouch!)

So, Casino Drive has been scratched from the Belmont Stakes. Do you know what that means?

Ah! Shit. That hurt.

Oh, did I mention I went to the Emergency Room and got stitches last night? (Ouch) How could I? (Fuck) I've barely written anything. If you'll indulge me, I'll tell you my harrowing tale.

So I was washing dishes...

*Hangs head in shame*

I'm a woman.

So I put my hand inside a drinking glass to wash it and the sheer force of my massive hands meat hooks caused the glass to burst slicing my pinky finger from my second to third knuckle. There was a lot of blood.

I walked next door and politely asked Lauren to drive me to the hospital. She's says I was as white as a ghost, but I'm pretty sure I looked really cool.

We got to the hospital and waited. The wait wasn't too long because it was early evening - before all the Arbor Hill gun shot victims start to roll in. Let me tell you, the Albany Memorial Emergency Room has changed a lot since the last time I was there.

The last time was, oh - 4 years ago? Yeah around there. It was after Alive at 5 and we were at Jillian's to see Vanilla Ice preform. Seriously. Of course, it wasn't the Ice-Ice- Ninja-Rap-Vanilla Ice. It was the hardcore- Limp-Bizkit -sounding -Vanilla Ice. Needless to say, it was a hell of a show. From what we saw anyway.

My buddy Joe got into an altercation with some douche bag and was hit in the head with a bottle. We got to go to the hospital and the other kid got to go with the cops.

Anyway, since it was at night, the waiting room was packed and we even got to interact with a crazy woman in a wheelchair who may have been there for head trauma. She took quite a liking to Joe. And quite frankly, I have to say that they would have made quite a couple.

Back then the ER was pretty dingy. Yesterday - huge window-walls. A flat screen television hanging form the ceiling showing the College World Series. Good times all around.

After a few minutes of waiting I was taken into a room and received 8 stitches. Luckily, it was just a lot of skin that got cut and pushed to the side. It still looked extremely gnarly. The weirdest part about the entire ordeal was that I started to say things like "gnarly" and "funky." See, I don't usually say things like this. The injury changed my vocabulary. I described it with words that were out of character for me enough to make Lauren tell me to "stop talking like that."

Anyway, I'm OK. As you can see the injury wasn't too devestating to my blogging abilities. Though it does kind of hurt whenever I hit the question mark button.

Watch.

?

Fuck! That hurts! No interviews for me today.

Oh yeah! Back to Casino Drive! Casino Drive is the horse that is supposedly Big Brown's only real competition in the Belmont today, has been scratched from the race. That leaves us with Big Brown - who is nursing his own hoof injury - and the field. A field of 8 horses with odds (as of yesterday) that are all between 12-1 and 50-1. Big Brown's status as such a huge favorite (2/5) combined with his injury are just screaming for you to box the field. I really don't know how much that would cost. You'd have to do a permutation or something.

Or you could use the OTB betting machine to figure it out. It's been awhile since math class, so that's probably what I'll end up doing. Happy betting!

Update: I went out to grab some lunch and go to the bank so I stopped at my local OTB. I ran up to one of the machines and punched in the trifecta box for the Stakes - $1008. I cannot for the life of me remember what this mathematical action is called = 9x8x7. That's how you figure it out.

I guess the moral of the story (Besides my days as a top math student are long gone) is that it's butt expensive to box the field in a race. Besides, Big Brown would probably still win and fuck everything up anyway. Bastard.

Update 2: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.