Frankie Goes to Tchoupitoulas

Frankie Mazzanti. Doesn’t that just sound like a dude who should be a great gambler? I bet if they sold a Frankie Mazzanti tip sheet at Fair Grounds he could put that Black Gold sucker out of business just by having the far superior name for a racetrack tout.

Of course, a cool hit man name isn’t the only reason Frankie would give me a run for my money. He’s also a very good handicapper. Actually, I don’t know that for certain. But on one day in particular he was an amazing handicapper and that’s why he’s my newest hero. On May 6, 2006, the longtime bartender at Parasol’s here in New Orleans nailed the Kentucky Derby, taking down the superfecta, the trifecta and, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, the exacta five times. The amount of money he took home was enough that Frankie was able to open his own perfect neighborhood bar, 45 Tchoup. If opening your own joint in New Orleans with the pile of money you made betting the races isn’t living the dream, then I don’t know what is.

Frankie’s investment that day was a mere $180—not a small amount, but far less than I would ever guess it might have taken to hit those bets. You’ll probably recall the winner of the race was a horse named Barbaro, the most impressive Derby winner of my adult life. Barbaro romped by 6 1/2, convincing most of us that a Triple Crown was finally at hand. He was the favorite, but in a contentious 20-horse race even the chalk was 6-1. Beyond the legendary Barbaro, though, the order of finish is tough. Can you remember who finished second? I was there and I still needed Frankie Mazzanti to tell me. I know now that if there’s one person out there who will never forget the answer to that question, aside from Todd Pletcher, it’s Frankie.

The correct response is Bluegrass Cat, the Pletcher-trained colt who was a multiple stakes winner as a juvenile, prepped that spring in two races at Tampa Bay Downs, then bombed as the favorite in the Blue Grass Stakes. He went off in the Derby at 30-1, the 14th choice in a full field of 20. At that price, he was good for rounding out a tidy little $587 exacta, or if you had it five times like Frankie, that’s $2,935, and you’re just getting started.

Now how about the third-place finisher, who checked in two lengths behind Bluegrass Cat? Think Danny Peitz and Robby Albarado. Think Oaklawn Park. Or, think “Born to be Wild.”

Steppenwolfer rallied from off the pace at 16-1, rounding out a sweet trifecta worth $11,418 for $2, which Frankie had, of course.

A fraction of a second later, two horses battling for fourth, morning line favorite Brother Derek and longshot Jazil, hit the wire together. On his superfecta ticket, Frankie had one of them but not the other. The wait for the final order was excruciating, but he had some luck to go with his handicapping prowess—it was a dead heat.

I can’t tell you exactly how much Frankie Mazzanti cashed the super for because here the memory gets a little foggy. Not his memory, mine. You’ll have to forgive me for not having all the details, as I met Frankie at his bar on the final Saturday of Carnival, a few hours after the biggest parade of the season. I wasn’t exactly in reporter mode, you know, with a tape recorder or anything. Somebody did pass me a coaster on which I scribbled down some notes about Frankie’s various tickets, but I haven’t seen that coaster since. So I can’t recall now if Frankie had Jazil (good for a $84,860.40 super) or Brother Derek ($59,839), but what’s the difference? Point is, he made more money on the Derby than the average American earns in a year.

Frankie, by the way, is not at all like a hit man. He's friendly, chill, unassuming. All words that could just as easily be used to describe this bar on Tchoupitoulas. The other words that describe Frankie are "extremely tall," but those don't apply to the bar. It’s tempting to say that his establishment is a Cheers kind of place, but it’s actually way better than that because there’s David Bowie playing, the crowd is far more attractive and, most importantly, we’re on a dark corner just across the train tracks from the Mississippi River in Uptown New Orleans at the height of Carnival season and not in some boring place like Boston where people don’t dress up like Aretha Franklin’s hat (that was an actual costume I saw—not Aretha Franklin, just her big ol’ hat from the inauguration) or dance in the street to the Nevilles or take their drinks home from the bar in plastic go-cups.

It turns out Frankie doesn’t even make it out to the track all that often. But he always bets the Derby, and when he worked at Parasol’s he gladly took it upon himself to annually place wagers across the river at the Gretna OTB for several regular customers, who then would watch the race at the bar. Frankie was especially happy to do this in 2006 because there was a longshot he wanted to bet. Here’s a made up quote that sort of resembles what Frankie told me at the bar as best I can remember: “I had seen Bluegrass Cat earlier in the spring and really liked him. Keeneland is such a weird track so when he ran so poorly there I didn’t hold it against him. That kind of thing happens there all the time because a lot of horses just don’t like that surface.”

The Florida Derby winner and the Sam F. Davis winner were the only horses that Frankie had finishing first or second in any of his bets. He had a handful of horses in third and fourth. Every ticket he held was a winner.

Sitting at 45 Tchoup listening to Frankie’s story was reassuring. Sometimes I see massive payoffs on supers and Pick Sixes and I wonder if anyone like me could possibly have had it. By “anyone like me,” I just mean a dude who bets with some amount of restraint using real currency and isn’t playing hundreds of combinations with an illegal offshore account. Even after all these years of following racing and working in racing, I still have no idea who the folks are who cash the really huge tickets, especially on, say, a Monday or a Tuesday. In my mind I just imagine that they’re either A) a pro in Las Vegas, B) a genius recluse who bets based on the recommendations of a computer program he wrote and which links directly into the tote system in South Dakota or some other sparsely populated state I’ve never been to, or C) Steve Crist.

Frankie’s story reminded me that the small-time player can and does win big. He had the right angle, and it’s not even like it was based on some screwball idea that the rest of us would never think of. Everyone back then knew that something about the Keeneland surface was goofy and certain horses just didn’t like it. When you think about it, the same could be said about any surface anywhere, but for whatever reason we all had it drilled into our head that Keeneland was especially unpredicatable. In any case, Frankie saw the horse he liked in March and when the first Saturday in May came around he was happy to overlook the poor effort in Lexington. He believed what his eyes had seen and was richly rewarded for it.

If you want to hear the story for yourself, just head over to 45 Tchoup some Friday or Saturday night when Frankie is tending bar. He’ll tell you all about it, and maybe he’ll also tell you about the actual bar (as in the structure that separates you from Frankie, upon which you set your beer), built from salvaged Katrina debris. And maybe he’ll tell you what it feels like to win tens of thousands of dollars at the races and start your own business (from what I gathered it apparently feels pretty darn good). I know I’ll be stopping by again soon, because I forgot to ask Frankie who he likes this year.