Book excerpt: Getting Down is not a typical racetrack story. Seabiscuit, Swaps, Man o War, John Henry, Secretariat, and Zenyatta may well be mentioned, but this story is about the people of racing, not the horses. Its about racetrack workers, on both the back and front sides of the track. Its about racetrack owners and managers. Its about those who own the horses and train them, and its about the people who ride them. Its also about the people who pay to go to the races - the patrons, including the rich and famous, along with the not so rich and famous, all the way down the economic ladder to the out and out homeless. The above categories include some of the strangest, meanest, most dangerous, most pathetic, most ruthless people on the face of this earth. Yet, my list of characters also includes some of the nicest, kindest, most generous, funniest, happiest people one could ever hope to meet. And since this book is also about me and my over fifty yeras working in this industry, Im going to let you decide in which of the above categories you think I might best fit. Getting Down is about getting down. The term, getting down, is racetrack lingo having to do with the process of successfully putting ones wager on a given horse, in the right race, before getting shut out. In other words, its about successfully making ones bet before the race begins and betting for that race But the scope of this story is, as you will see, much broader than that. Indeed, it is a story about life, because in one way or another, in one form or another, life itself is about getting down.