Spa track historian dies at 75

Edward Hotaling, a Spa native who worked as a newspaper correspondent in Paris and broadcast journalist in the Middle East before returning to his hometown to research a book about the history of Saratoga Race Course, died of a heart attack June 3 on Staten Island.

Ruined my first sports coat, a red corduroy that ran like a champion in the rain, selling tip cards at Saratoga Raceway (trotters).

Got scared of the dark peddling the Pink Sheet, with its nationwide race results, outside Saratoga Lakes's gambling halls.

[...] by the early 1990s, Hotaling, a 1955 graduate of Saratoga Springs High School, succumbed to what he called "Saratoga disease" and returned to research the track he remembered as a kid but did not yet know in a historical sense.

Hotaling was a reporter for WRC-TV, an NBC affiliate in Washignton, D.C., when he interviewed CBS sports commentator Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder on Jan. 15, 1988, for a piece on the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., and the matter of race in professional sports.