Thirty Tons a Day: The Rough-Riding Education of a Neophyte Racetrack Operator

From dust jacket notes: "'Being of sound mind and in reasonable possession of my faculties, I marshaled my forces, at the tender age of fifty-four, and marched upon the city of Boston, Massachusetts, like a latter-day Ben Franklin, to seek my fame and fortune as the operator of a racetrack. Two years later, fortune having taken one look at my weathered features and shaken its hoary locks, I retreated, smiling gamely.' -Bill Veeck- The title of this book has to do with what its author calls 'the end product of the romance of horseracing.' When Bill Veeck, the famous maverick from baseball, took up the challenge of managing Boston's semi-moribund Suffolk Downs racetrack in early 1969, he had yet to learn that the normal daily output of some sixteen hundred horses (including straw) would amount to so much, or be so hard to dispose of....In the tough-minded and tabasco-tongued prose that is his trademark, Bill Veeck lines out the battles he won and lost, the fun he had, what he discovered about horseracing at 'Sufferin' Downs,' and the friends and enemies he so open-handedly made. With wry elan he provides a wealth of track lore - about Joe Fan, the first all-girl-jockey pari-mutuel race, the re-enactment of the chariot race in Ben Hur, and more - opening the reader's eyes to the fact that flat racing has more ups and down than a cordillera...."

Bill Veeck (1914–1986) brought a flamboyant, fan–oriented entrepreneurship to his ownership of the Cleveland Indians, the St. Louis Browns, and the Chicago White Sox. He is best remembered for the innovations he brought to the game and for his publicity stunts that brought fans to the ball park. He also wrote Veeck as in Wreck and The Hustler's Handbook.