Met Steve Crist yesterday

Scav you are way off on this one, way off.
Crist knows this game, and served in NYRA managemnet for a while.
But his immediate contributions to guys like you who love to cap are the innovations in the DRF that wouldn't be there without him. He started a rival to the DRF, the Racing Times, that eventually was bought out by DRF. From this paper came the idea to put Beyers in the Drf, and under Crist's guidance came things now taken for granted in there like mud and turf ratings, lifetime stats for horses on all surfaces, at specific tracks, and at specific distances. Also purchase prices of horses at auction, trainer and jockey stats, trainer switches noted, workouts given in a ranking order as to how many horses worked at that distance and how fast they were compared to others, and many more.
Without Crist you would be reading the DRf in its archaic form without all the stats that you know have and all that info. Hes a horseplayer first and foremost, and has given his share back to the players with all the work he has done making the DRF the info filled publication that it is.