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Originally Posted by Indian Charlie
People complaining about track callers, they've obviously never been graced by any single race call from Bill Gahr. Ghar? Gar?
I remember listening to him in the car when I had a bet and thinking how useless it all was. He was so bad, that one time he called my horse finishing third. I was so suspicious that I called one of those result lines (1980s) a few minutes later and found out that my horse had indeed won!
The day I heard my last Bill Gahr race call on KIEV, with it's compulsory Lathrop Hoffman car ads, well, that was a glorious day!
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Bill Garr was a piece of work. He has got to be the worst of all times. A race caller is obviously very important when you are listening on the radio because you can't see the race. You are depending on the race-caller to describe what is happening. With Garr, even after the horses had past the 1/16th pole you had no idea what was going on. He would say, "And as they come down to the wire it will be.........". And you would have no idea who he was going to call. Sometimes he would say, "As they come down to the wire, it is so-and-so quickly pulling away to win by 8 lengths." And you had no idea that the horse that was pulling away by 8 was even winning the race until Garr called him in front by 8 at the wire.
Old English Rancho was one of the regular sponsors of the show. They always had commercials on there every week. If my memory is correct, the law offices of Dirnfeld and Zelner had commercials on there too. Bill Garr seemed like a nice old guy. He just couldn't call a race. I'm not sure whether he is still alive. If he is, he must be well into his 80s.