_A Bottled-up Cinch That Came Off at One of the Chicago Tracks._
"The first bet that I ever put down on a horse race," said a horse owner
and trainer at an uptown cafe the other night, "was on a horse that
stood at 100 to 1 in the betting. It was also the first race I ever saw
run by thoroughbreds. I was clerking in a Long Island City grocery store
for $8 a week at the time, and I didn't know a race-horse from a ton of
coal. I got a couple of my fingers crushed between two salt fish boxes
one morning, and I had to lay off from work. I didn't want to hang
around my room, and didn't know what to do with myself, and so when a
no-account young fellow I knew suggested that I go over with him to
Monmouth Park and have a look at the races, I fell in with the
proposition. Besides the remains of my previous week's pay, about $3, I
had $20 saved up out of my wages, and I kept this in one $20 note in my
inside vest pocket. After paying for round-trip tickets for my friend
and myself, and for two tickets of admission to the race grounds, I was
practically broke with the exception of a few cents, for I didn't count
the $20 as available assets. I intended to hang on to that unbroken.
Well, I found that all my sporty friend wanted of me was to have me pay
his way on the train and into the grounds, for he promptly lost me as
soon as we got by the gate. I felt pretty sore at this treatment, not
that I wanted his help, for I hadn't the least idea of doing any betting
with my savings, but I didn't cotton to the notion of being played for a
good thing and then thrown that way.
"I walked around among the crowd with my hands in my pockets, wondering
a good deal over the dope talk of the ducks that knew all about the
horses and their preferred weights, distances, riders, and so on; it was
all Greek to me then. Finally I was shouldered and jostled into the
betting ring. It wasn't long before I began to rubberneck at the prices
laid against the horses on the bookies' blackboards. Although I didn't
know anything about the nags then, I found out afterward, when I had
made a study of the game and got a little next to it, that this race I
made my first bet on was composed of a cheap mess of fourteen selling
platers. They were at all kinds of prices, from 4 to 5 on to 100 to 1
against. The latter price was laid about three of 'em. I didn't exactly
understand what the 100 to 1 meant, and so I asked a fellow standing
near by to explain it. He looked me over out of the slants of his lamps,
thinking, probably, that I was stringing him. When he saw that I was a
green one he told me that the 100 to 1 meant that if a 100 to 1 shot won
that I had put a dollar on I'd be $100 ahead of the game. This looked
pretty good to me. I didn't know anything about horse form or horse
quality then, and I thought that one of 'em had just as much chance as
another to win. So I picked out the 100 to 1 shot whose name I liked
best and elbowed my way up to a booky's stand to put a dollar down on
it, holding my $20 bill tightly gripped in my hand. I passed the twenty
up to the bookmaker--he went broke, and has been a dead 'un for a good
many years now--and said:
"'Give me a dollar's worth of that fourth horse from the top--that one
with the 100 to 1 chalked before his name.'
"The booky looked down at me contemptuously, without accepting the
twenty I proffered him, and said:
"'I don't want no dollar bets.'
"Well, this made me feel pretty cheap, especially as all of the ducks
back of me, waiting to pass up their fifties and hundreds gave me the
laugh. I didn't like to be shown up in that public way. I was just as
sore at that time about being made to look like thirty cents as I am
to-day. So I did a bit of lightning thinking. 'Twenty's a big bunch to
me,' I thought, 'and I've had to hop out of bed at half past 3 in the
morning to go to meat market a good many times to get it together; but
I'll be hanged if I'm going to let this fellow get away with his idea of
making me look small, even if I haven't got a show on earth.' So I
passed the bill up to him again, saying:
"'All right, there, billionaire. Just gimme $20 worth of that fourth
horse from the top, with 100 to 1 chalked before his name.'
"I was chagrined to find that this strong play didn't help me a little
bit. The booky only grinned as he chanted, 'Two thousand dollars to $20
on the fourth one from the top,' and the chap that wrote me the ticket
grinned back at him, and the crowd behind me again gave me the hoarse
hoot, loud and long continued. I'll bet I was blushing on the bottom of
my feet when I snatched the ticket and hurried away from that booky's
stall, with the chuckles of the hot-looking members ringing in my ears.
Well, my horse walked in.
"When I went to cash my ticket for $2,020 the booky sized me up, with
all kinds of wrath in his eyes.
"'A good make-up you've got for a Rube,' he said to me. 'You're good.
That's the most scientific commissioner act I've seen pulled off up to
date, and I've been at this game ever since Hickory Jim was a
two-year-old.'
"I didn't know what he was talking about. The word commissioner was
particularly mysterious to me, but I wasn't going to let him put it on
me again, and I like to have drove him crazy with the slow grin I gave
him. He chucked the bundle of $2,020 at me, and I just walked backward
with it in my hands and grinning at him. He was the maddest-looking man
I ever saw, before or since. I didn't go back to my grocery job, nor did
I hop in and slough off my $2,000 on a game I didn't know anything
about. I didn't play another horse that year, but went in and made a
study of the game, going to the tracks every day to see 'em run and to
think the whole institution over. It has taken me all of the years that
have passed since to find out that the study of horse racing don't
amount to a row of spuds, that study doesn't beat the game. I simply had
a series of lucky plays after I figured it that I knew all there was to
be learned about horse racing, and those plays put me on the velvet I've
had to a greater or less extent ever since. I don't often play them
now--I've got a fairly nifty string, and I run 'em and let the other
fellows do the guessing.
"What set me to thinking about this first play of mine was a letter I
received the other day from an owner, who's racing his string down at
New Orleans, about the win of that plug Covington, Ky., the other day.
The price laid against Covington, Ky., was at first 150 to 1, and the
rail birds in the know battered it down to 60 to 1 at post time,
throwing all kinds of misery into the layers when the plater romped in,
after being practically left at the post. My friend says in his letter
that a big bookmaker declined to take a dollar bet from one of the wise
rail birds on Covington, Ky., at 150 to 1, and that the young fellow got
chesty, dug into the pocket where he kept his silver, found $2 in
quarters and halves, and handed the $3 to the bookie on Covington, Ky.,
to win. The layer took the money and it cost him $450. The bookie, my
friend writes me, has been poked in the ribs over the thing by his
fellow-layers ever since.
"I don't often pay any attention to good things," continued the turfman,
"and it's rarer still that I am compelled to regret my indifference to
the bottled-up cinches, but, in common with about 3,000 other people, I
overlooked a proposition at Lakeside last fall that caused me several
minutes' hard thinking. I didn't lose any money over it, but it's hard
to think of the inside chance I neglected on that occasion to make an
old-fashioned hog killing. I had four or five of my three-year-olds out
at Lakeside and was pulling a purse down with 'em once in a while, and
depending on the purses to keep me even with the game and strong for hay
money. I wasn't doing any betting; I took my confirmed indifference to
good things along with me to Chicago, and I think now, looking back at
the season, that I made a bit of a mistake in doing so, for if there's
any place in the country outside of the outlaw tracks where good things
do have a habit of going through right often, then that place is
Chicago. I didn't profit by any of 'em that were made to stick last
fall, however, although I saw many a sure thing soaked down from 20 to 1
to 4 to 1 at post time, and then come in romping with all the money. A
lot of men I knew out at Lakeside--fellows with small strings, none of
which ever won or got in the money--were on all kinds of velvet by
giving ear to the inside good things, but they didn't make me jealous a
little bit. I'm in the game for keeps, and that's more than can be said
for the good-thing players.
"Anyhow, for all that, I'm still regretting that I overlooked this
chance I'm speaking of. I was in a Dearborn street hang-out for racing
men one night, along toward the wind-up of the racing season, when a boy
came inside and told me a man out at the front door wanted to see me. I
went out and found a drunken stable hand waiting for me. He was employed
as a general stable roustabout by the owner of a California string, and
I had befriended the man in the paddock a few days before when he was
engaged in a rum fight with another stable hand. He was getting the
worst of the scrap when I stepped in and pulled his antagonist off of
him. It didn't amount to anything, this, but the tank stable hand that
was waiting for me outside of the Dearborn street place in the rain
seemed to feel grateful to me for it.
"'Hello, Bill,' said I to him, 'what's up?'
"'Got fired this afternoon,' he replied.
"'Broke?' I asked him.
"'I didn't hunt you up to touch you, boss,' he said. 'I got a good thing
I want to give to you. You've been square to me. The good thing's to
come off to-morrow, and nobody's on. I'm preaching on it because I've
been dropped from the track just for getting a skate on, and because I
want to put you next, that's been on the level with me.'
"'You can pass me up,' I told the man. 'I don't play the sure ones, you
know.'
"'But this is ripe, and it's going to happen,' persisted the man. 'It's
a baby. It's a looloo. It's a cachuca. It's that filly Mazie V. in the
two-year-old race to-morrow. You know who's stable she belongs in. I
heard the chaw about it this afternoon before I got fired, and they
didn't get on to it that I was listening. Mazie V.'s going to walk in
to-morrow. No dope, but she's fit. She worked three-quarters in .15 flat
early yesterday morning when nobody was looking, and she's on edge.
They're going to burn up the books with it. I know that nobody can tout
you, and I'm not trying to tout you. But here's a chance, and I came
down to let you know.'
"Well, of course I had to thank the man, but I couldn't help but grin at
him at that.
"'How long have you been rubbing 'em down?' I asked him.
"'I've been around the horses since I was ten years old,' he replied.
"'And still so easy?' I couldn't help but say. 'Well, I won't say
anything of what you've told me so as to queer the price, if there's any
play on Mazie V., but, of course, as for myself, I pass it up; thanks
all the same to you. Need any money?'
"No, he didn't want any money, he said. He had simply hunted me up to
put me on to one of the best things of the meeting, and he shambled off.
"When the books opened for that two-year-old race the next day, Mazie
V., a clean-limbed filly that had never shown a particle of class,
opened up the rank outsider in a big field, which included some very
fairish two-year-olds. I looked the books over, not because I was
betting, but just out of habit, and I saw that every nag in the race was
being played but Mazie V., the 150 to 1 shot.
"'If they're going to burn the bookies out on Mazie V., I thought,
amusedly, 'it's a wonder the stable connections don't take some of this
good 150 to 1.'
"As I was thinking this over, the ex-stableman who had hunted me up with
the Mazie V. good thing the night before plucked me by the sleeve. He
was several times as drunk as an owl, and I didn't care to talk with
him.
"'Are you down?' he asked me, lurching. 'Because 'f you ain't, you're
campin' out, an' that's all there is to it.'
"'Go and take a sleep,' I told him, and passed on. But he didn't want
any sleep. Instead, he drunkenly mounted a box that he found in the
betting ring, and started to make an address to the hustling bettors.
"'Hey!' he shouted, 'if you mugs want to git aboard for the barbecue,
play Mazie V. She's going to be cut loose. She's a 1 to 10 chance. She's
going through. It's a cinch.'
"The crowd guyed him.
"'It's so good,' shouted the poor devil, 'that I just put the last $8 I
got on earth on her to win--not to show, but to win. Hey! I'm not
touting. I'm trying to give you all a win-out chance. You needn't think
because I ain't togged out that I'm a dead one on this. Even if I have
got a load along, why'----
"Just then somebody, probably an interested party, kicked the box from
under the man and he went sprawling. That closed him up. The crowd
roared, but not a man in the gang, of course, put down a dollar on Mazie
V. If any of the pikers had even a dream of doing such a thing the
stable hand's drunken recommendation of the filly switched them off.
Just before the horses went to the post the $5 bills of people that
weren't pikers, but stable connections, went into the ring in such
quantities on Mazie V. that she closed at 100 to 1 in a few of the
books, and at much smaller figures in most of the others.
"Well, the way that little filly Mazie V. put it all over her field was
something ridiculous. The race was something easy for her. There was
nothing to it but Mazie V. She got away from the post almost dead last,
and then picked up her horses at leisure, revelling in the heavy going,
and, loping up in the last sixteenth, walked in with daylight between
her and the favorite. It was one of the killings of the Chicago racing
season, and the books were soaked to over $20,000 on $5 bets.
"'That certainly is hard money to lose, to say the least,' I heard poor
Mike Dwyer mumble on the day that he took 1 to 15 on Hanover, putting
down $45,000 to win $3,000, and Hanover got himself disgracefully beaten
by Laggard. And that's what I think about that Mazie V. good thing--hard
money not to have won."