Damon Runyon

Wilkes-Barre Evening News/April 17, 1925

Damon Runyon is quoted at odds of 500 to 1 in the future books on the Kentucky Derby, which will be run at Churchill Downs May 16. 

That is to say,  the bookmakers will bet you $500 against $1 at the present time that Damon Runyon WON’T win the race. Of course the Damon Runyon they are talking about is not the writer of these lines. Their Damon Runyon is a horse. 

Damon Runyon, the horse, was so named by John E. Madden, famous turfman, as a compliment to the writer. Sometimes this naming of a. horse for a man is a dubious compliment, though well meant. The horse may turn out to be a total failure. Still, so may the man. 

The horse owner who wishes to compliment a friend in this manner goes out into his paddock, looks over the unnamed yearlings careening about and picks out one that in his judgment is a likely looking animal of good breeding, one that strikes him as having a future.

The rest is on the knees of the turf gods. The equine race is as uncertain as the human race. If you went into a foundling asylum and picked out a baby that in your judgment was the most promising looking one there, and gave it your name, or the name of a friend, you would be taking more chances than the horseman.

At least the horseman can be guided to some extent by breeding when he selects his yearling. 

The blood lines in horses are more apt to eventually tell than in human beings. The sons and daughters of great horses nearly always retain some of the finer attributes of their sires and dams. 

That is not true of humans, as you know. The horseman is more apt to pick out a Man o’ War than you are to select an Abraham Lincoln. 

After contemplating the career of Damon Runyon, the horse, to date, the writer isn’t so sure that it hasn’t done proportionately as well—that it hasn’t scored proportionately as many successes as the other Damon Runyon. 

Damon Runyon, the horse, ran last summer on the tracks of Canada and Maryland as a two-year-old, finishing first in a couple of races and being second or third—“in the money”—in several others. Damon Runyon, the horse, started about ten times in all. 

That other Damon Runyon has made far more starts in various forms of races on life’s soggy track. He has finished “outside the money” oftener than Damon Runyon, the horse, proportionately to the number of starts. 

The writer was at first somewhat mortified by the odds against Damon Runyon in the famous Kentucky Derby. A price of 500 to 1 would argue scant respect for Damon Runyon in the minds of the bookmakers.

The prices in the Derby future book are predicted not only on the performances of a horse as a two-year-old, but on the prospect, always vague, of a horse going to the post. 

If you make a wager in the future book, and your horse doesn’t start, you lose your money. The price of 500 to 1 again Damon Runyon would indicate that the bookmakers not only question Damon Runyon’s ability. They doubt that Damon Runyon will get to the post. 

Mature reflection convinces the writer that it is a fair price on the last count alone. The race is some weeks away.

It would be a fair price against a human being arriving at a certain place at a certain time and accomplishing some great feat, such as winning a rich Derby prize in life’s dizzy competition.

The Kentucky Derby is worth close to $50,000 to the winner. The price of 500 to 1 against Damon Runyon, the horse, winning that $50,000 is far shorter than the natural price against that other Damon Runyon winning the same amount in the next few weeks. THAT price is easily 1,000,000 to 1.

The writer is somewhat mollified by the price of 1,000 to 1 against John F. Kleaver and Captain Donan in the Derby futures, if only for one reason. 

It is a comforting thought that Damon Runyon isn’t considered the WORST horse in the world. It would make him very sad to think that the WORST horse in the world is named for him. 

There is further consolation in the price against the horse Swope, the namesake of which would be that virile gentleman Herbert Bayard Swope. Swope is only slightly more respected than Damon Runyon by the big-hearted bookmakers at 200 to 1.

Of course the writer would like to see Damon Runyon win the Kentucky Derby. But he will not bet on Damon Runyon, even at the tempting odds of 500 to 1. 

The favourite in the futures is Quatrain at 15 to 1. But the Derby many be won by Hedge Fence, quoted at 300 to 1 in the futures. Do not bet on either Quatrain or Hedge Fence, however. Do not bet on ANY horse in ANY race.

The gentlemen who make up the future book, who figure the odds, know their business. They are not offering FOOLISH odds. There are 139 three-year-olds officially entered in the Kentucky Derby. The gentlemen who make up the book will probably tell you that they could lay 10,000 to 1 against nearly every horse and not lose any sleep worrying about their money. 

But it would be a nice thing if Damon Runyon could win.

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/July 8, 1935

WASHINGTON, D.C. July 7. WE REGRET our inability to present at the Polo Grounds in New York Monday night when the good M. Jacques Armand Curley sets Danno O’Mahoney, of Ireland, to pulling and hauling with Chief Little Wolf, otherwise Benjamin Tenario, the Navajo Ingine.

The loyal Irish of Gotham will doubtless be out in what is know as force, egging on the new pride of Old Erin. If as many Irish attend the good M. Jacques wrestling presentation as wrote letters to the sports columnists saying bah-you-bum when James J. Braddock out-fumbled Max Baer, there should be a banner house.

CHIEF GENE FOWLER is leading the Fire Island Ingines for the Polo Grounds festivities. Chief Gene Fowler is an old time Ingine from the Colorado reservation, who retreated to Fire Island years ago when the western hunting grounds played out.

Chief Gene Fowler is one of our greatest wrestling enthusiasts. His fine Roman nose is ever hung on the edge of the ring when the big grapplers begin moaning. In moments of excitement, Chief Gene Fowler can rarely control himself. He stands up, his eyes gleaming, his nostrils dilated, and emits the strange war cry of his tribe, which sounds like the scream of an eel in distress.

The good M. Jacques Armand Curley usually requests Chief Gene Fowler to remain away from his more important wrestling contests. M. Jacques says the cry alarms his wrestlers, and besides he can always save an Annie Oakley if Chief Gene Fowler is absent.

THE good M. Jacques Armand Curley is not personally an Ingine, but he is a rare character. We are very fond of the good M. Jacques, because he is one man who always takes his business seriously, whether he is presenting an Ingine, a masked marvel, or a human mattress in wrestling guise.

In all the now considerable number of years we have known the good M. Jacques Armand Curley, we have never heard him utter a word, or seen him evolve a gesture that might suggest that he was offering his wares with his tongue in nis cheek, so to speak.

He has always been serious about it. He sees real drama in his game, and has the knack of putting the drama into words. He will tell you about bouts that to him were spectacles of thrills, and desperate conflict, yet which were accepted by writers as mere shows, and after listening to the good M. Jacques awhile, you commence to see his game as something more than burlesque.

THE late George Tex Rickard, the boxing promoter, was the same way. Boxing was a very serious business with Rickard.

Perhaps that is why Rickard was the greatest of the boxing promoters, as the good M. Jacques Armand Curley is the greatest of the wrestling entrepreneurs.

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/July 6, 1935

NEW YORK, July 5. The good M. Jacques Armand Curley, wrestling entrepreneur, is all a-flutter because it looks as if Danno O’Mahoney, the new wrestling champion, is going to get the lads and lassies out in goodly numbers for M. Jacques’ show at the Polo Ground Monday night.

Danno O’Mahoney, as you may recall, is the son of the oul’ sod who tossed the mighty Jeems Londos on one of his well curled ears in Boston last week, an incident that was a veritable toupee-raiser for the wrestling world.

It came at a moment when the good M. Jacques Armand Curley had our city well plastered with proclamations about Jeems and Chief Little Wolf, the terrific Ingine from the tourist camps of the wide open spaces. By the time we got downtown, however, M. Jacques Armand Curley had penciled in the name of Danno O’Mahoney as a substitute for Jeems. M. Jacques is nothing if not a quick thinker.

He anticipates a gate of upwards of $50,000 for the affair Monday night.

Danno O’Mahoney, who specializes in a hold called “the Irish whip,” is declared by experts to be quite a wrestler, as well as a great showman. Mr Jacques Armand Curley, who could not deceive us for the world, says the victory of the Irishman over Londos was merely the old, old, old tale of youth and ambition against a tired veteran.

Londos says he is quitting the game. He is accounted a millionaire. He may not be the greatest wrestler that ever lived, but certainly he has been one of the greatest showmen.

Chief Little Wolf comes to our town with blankets, war feathers, tomahawks, and all the other paraphernalia of the noble redskin, and also with an excellent knowledge of the English tongue. Indeed, Chief Little Wolf, whose right name is Ben Tenario, was educated at Haskell.

The Chief had been uttering war whoops at Londos for a long time before Jeems came his cropper, but it did not take him long to readjust his sights and take aim at Danno O’Mahoney.

The good M. Jacques Armand Curley is going to display another Dartmouth grappler Monday night in Hank Barber, a Jewish young man from Cambridge. Dartmouth College is practically the mother of wrestlers, for it was from that institution that we had Gus Sonnenberg, whose billy-goat plunge was long our greatest wrestling thrill.

Gus won the world title from Ed “Strangler” Lewis in Boston in 1928. Barber graduated from Sonnenberg’s old college in 1932. Like Sonnenberg, Barber played tackle on the Dartmouth football team.

Also Hank was a first baseman for three years, a track man, a water polo player, and a basketball player. He made the all-American college nine of 1932, and the same year was the eastern intercollegiate batting champion.

After leaving college, Barber tried his hand at pro baseball. He tried out with the Boston Braves, and was farmed out to Lowell, of the Northeastern league, the old New England league of bygone years.

He was recalled to the Braves in the spring of 1933, but Paul Bowser, the New England wrestling promotor, showed Barber where he was wasting his time fooling with baseball.

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/July 10, 1935

“The will to win” has long been recognized by sports observers as fully 50 percent of the competitive game.

“The will to win,” highly developed in an individual or a team, will frequently overwhelm much greater strength and skill.

“The will to win” is mental, entirely mental. It is a far better asset than the purely physical, than the purely mechanical. “The will to win” is courage, perseverance, determination.

It is the thing that in a prize fight keeps a man getting up off the floor time and again, and plugging along; that, in a football game, causes a team to disregard a big score against it and to continue pounding.

“The will to win” has produced more spectacular victories in war than force of numbers, or military genius. “The will to win” in war carries to triumph the forlorn-hope charge. It holds desperate positions.

In sport, “the will to win” is what makes our greatest champions. It is true that a person may occasionally become a champion through sheer physical or mechanical superiority, without much of “the will to win,” but that person is never a great champion, never a Ty Cobb, a Babe Ruth, a Jack Dempsey, a Man O’ War.

Yes, even a horse can have “the will to win,” as anyone that ever saw Man O’ War will tell you. He refused to be beaten.

BUT it has taken a frail-looking woman to give us our finest exemplification of “the will to win.” It has taken Mrs. Helen Wills Moody, whose exploit at Wimbledon in defeating Helen Jacobs will undoubtedly be written into history at the close of 1935 as the highlight of sport for the year, if not of all time.

We have always thought that women develop “the will to win” to a greater extent than men, anyway. They do it in everyday life. A woman always battles more bravely against adversity than a man. A woman sees no obstacle too great to overcome. Barriers that cause a man to sit down and fold his hands, to “dog it,” as we say, only make a woman fight all the harder.

That is because they have more natural mental courage to begin with. The greatest prizefighter the world has ever seen would be a man gifted with Max Baer’s physical attainments, and “the will to win” of Helen Wills Moody, the tennis player.

Two years ago, at Forest Hills, Mrs. Moody, after dropping the first set to Helen Jacobs, and while she was trailing in the second, suddenly walked off the court, passing her championship on to Miss Jacobs by default, one of the most astounding incidents in sporting history.

IT was explained that Mrs. Moody was suffering from a spinal injury, that she was physically unable to go on, but this explanation was accepted by the skeptics with knowing smiles.

Presently they began whispering that this lady, whose natural diffidence in her many moments of victory had been construed by some as hauteur, as “swell-headedness,” was a quitter. They were only too ready to disbelieve the stories of those who really knew that she had spent many hours before the incident at Forest Hills in bitter physical pain.

From Mrs. Moody herself came no defense to the whisperings that eventually swelled to a vicious outcry. She had a dislocated spine, a fact well known to her physicians, and her friends, and the wonder among them was that she had been able to play as well as she did, but Mrs. Moody declined to elaborate on the statement of her injury, declined to pay any attention to her detractors.

She went back home to California, and for two years she devoted herself to getting well, perhaps always dreaming of the moment when she could demonstrate to the world that she had been cruelly misjudged. The moment came at Wimbledon, when she was within one point of defeat, and “the will to win” drove her on, and on to the sweetest victory of her lifetime, fraught with many victories.

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/July 5, 1935

Mr. Marcus Aurelius Kelly,Los Angeles’ favorite sport writer, familiarly known as “the red-headed rooster of Arroyas,” who was here recently for the Louis-Carnera fight, labors under the singular delusion that anything on the Pacific coast is better than a corresponding anything anywhere else in the country.

For example, Mr. Kelly happened into a meeting of the committee that was going over the selections for the 1935 All-American Heel team, and immediately began claiming places in the team for members of the All-Pacific Coast Heels, asserting with all his well known truculence that they have bigger and better heels out there than in any other section of these United States.

A heel, as you are well aware, is a—well, a heel is a heel.

However, the names mentioned by Mr. Kelly as qualified for All American honors merely raised a laugh among the committee members. They might be all right for an All-Pacific Coast Heel team, but they are scarcely important enough for the All-American. Some of them could not even make the All-Eastern.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Kelly was bringing forward names that belong to the east as much as they do the west. It is a favorite ruse of the Pacific coasters to claim anybody that is out there long enough to change shirts.

ANYWAY, most of those suggested by Mr. Kelly are little heels—smallies. He named only a couple that were regarded by the committee as possessing potentialities as real big heels, fellows who bid fair to develop into All-American material one of these days unless something happens to slow them up.

Taking his All-Pacific Coast team as a whole, the committee showed Mr. Kelly that it probably could not make a single first down against the All-Americans, who are captained by a heel who is admittedly, all-time, all-wood heel material. Even Mr. Kelly admitted that he was impressed by the recital of the captain’s prowess as a heel. Mr. Kelly agreed, too, that the east has a better developing ground for heels in Old Broadway, but he pointed out that Hollywood is coming along very rapidly, especially as it is commencing to get the transplanted heel genius of Broadway, and fusing it with the home grown germ.

“You have no right to idly dismiss my candidates,” argued Mr. Kelly. “It is rank discrimination. Our heels have worked hard for recognition, and while I concede the tremendous strength of the All-Americans, I feel that we are entitled to at least a couple of heels in the line.”

The committee finally tossed Mr, Kelly a sop by admitting one of his star Pacific coast heels as water boy for the All-Americans.

Mr. Kelly does not seem to realize the care that enters into the advancement of a heel to All-American honors. The committee studies every section of the country with great care, and cons the record of every candidate presented for a long time. The all-time, all-world team is drawn up by an international board, and it goes away back into history.

A heel has to be a super-heel to gain place in the all-time, all-world lineup. For instance, the Emperor Nero has never yet been displaced as a guard. You may realize something of the present All-American team by the statement above that the captain is considered of all-time, all-world calibre.

The development of a heel usually begins in infancy, though sometimes one springs up overnight from an utterly unexpected source. Coaches of heel teams agree, however, that the greatest heels are born that way, though they add that if you have the right material they are easily made. They come from all walks of life.

Incidentally, there is a ladies’ auixiliary to the All American heel team, and some of the members thereof could probably make the big team if the committee recognized equal rights. The ladies say the committee members are themselves heels for not doing so.

During Mr. Kelly’s presence in New York, there was a tacit understanding among his eastern friends that college football should not be mentioned in his hearing.

Word had been received from Dr. Harry Martin, of Mr. Kelly’s hometown, the affable physician who is head of the California Boxing commission, that the topic is very painful to Mr. Kelly, and might indeed cause him to have a spell, especially the matter of Pacific Coast football as opposed to the eastern, or southern variety, or even the mid-western.

It appears from what Dr. Martin reports that Mr. Kelly has been in a strange mood since the Pittsburgh-Southern California, the Columbia-Stanford, and the Alabama-Stanford games of the past two seasons. He is given to melancholia, and will sit brooding for hours at a time, only to suddenly leap up and cry out in blood-curdling tones:

“It ain’t so! I don’t believe it!”

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/July 2, 1935

WE have a tip right from the old resin box that the British amateurs are apt to knock our golden glovers from under their crew haircuts at the Yankee Stadium tomorrow night.

This tip is somewhat disquieting to one who has long labored under the impression that when it comes to boxing, our lads can always be depended upon to give any invaders plenty of hail Columbia.

But the info that comes to us is that these Britishers are not mere boxers, but fighters, some of whom have belted the daylights out of the best boxers in their class In Europe. Seagoing Americans, who arrived on the same boat that brought over the British team, saw the invaders work out during the voyage, and report the young gladiators the best they have ever seen among amateurs.

There will be eighteen bouts tomorrow night, and eleven of these bouts will figure in a point score to determine the winning team, with victory emblematic of international supremacy. The American golden glovers have been training at Loch Sheldrake, N. Y., where Braddock got ready for his battle with Baer, and while the defending team had not been officially announced as this is written, the American handlers say they have developed a crew of boxers far above the average.

THEY have two heavyweights with the Britishers, H. P. Floyd and V. A. Stuart, and a light heavyweight named T. J. Griffin, and these big fellows will be watched with great interest by the Americans. It has been so long since England developed a good heavyweight fighter that the rumored prowess of these amateurs has aroused considerable curiosity.

The team has two flyweights, one bantam, three feathers, one lightweight, two welters, and two middles, besides those mentioned above. The little fellows are said to be corkers.

WITH the British team as trainers and Instructor is a man who made considerable ring history on his own account some thirty years ago. His name will be remembered by the old time American ringworms. It is Jem Bowker.

He was once bantamweight champion of the world, and a great little fighter. He is now fifty-two years old, but still quite active.

Bowker stood five feet, two and a half inches, and weighed 118 pounds in his fighting prime. He began fighting around 1901. In 1904 he beat the great Owen Moran, one of the best little fighters in English ring history, in twenty rounds.

We had a great bantamweight champion over here in those days in Frankie Neil, of California. It is a pity there are no bantams like Neil around nowadays. That division would be very much alive.

THE mighty Terry McGovern had quit the bantamweight title which he claimed in 1899 when Jimmy Barry, of Chicago, retired, undefeated. As the bantamweight claimant, Terry flattened the Englishman Pedlar Palmer in one round at Tuckahoe, N. Y.

Harry Forbes, of Chicago, claimed the title when McGovern went up among the feathers, and in 1903, Frankie Neil belted Forbes out in two rounds and was recognized as the world champion. He went to London in 1904 and fought Bowker, who jolted him into the featherweight division by a twenty-round victory.

Digger Stanley was Bowker’s great English rival. Jimmy Walsh, of Euston, who was claiming the American title, went over to England and fought Stanley three times, each winning a battle, the third being declared a draw. In 1910, Stanley knocked Bowker out, but in the meantime, Johnny Coulon had come up in this country, and was generally recognized as world champion until Kid Williams knocked him over.

THERE was one fellow in England Bowker couldn’t lick. The fellow was the featherweight Jem Driscoll, who whipped Bowker in fifteen rounds and again in seventeen. Driscoll came to this country and fought Abe Attel, one of the greatest American fighters that ever lived.

It was a no-decision bout and the old timers argue it to this day. Bowker was here after he had commenced to slip and was knocked out by Tommy O’Toole in two heats. None the less, Bowker went on boxing for years afterwards. At his peak, he licked old “Pop” Foster’s favorite fighter, Spike Robson, in twenty rounds, and “Pop” was probably with Spike at the time.

Bowker is accounted an excellent trainer and instructor. He is quite familiar with the American style of boxing, and is said to have schooled his charges more on that order than anything else. The British amateurs are said to go in for out-and-out battling more than for the finer points of boxing.

The last British amateur we can recall in this country, outside of those at the Olympics, appeared in a celebrated show that was an adjunct to a vast dinner given by the short lived but very swell international sporting club, an appearance that was made historic by the crack one British made when he got a good dab in the stomach from an American:

He said, in a voice that was audible all over the dining hall where the bouts were held:

“Oh—O! That does it!”

Then he calmly walked to his corner and removed his gloves.

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/July 3, 1935

IT APPEARS that we are to have what the boys call a nickel world series for 1936.

The term is no disparagement of the caliber of the series, as in racing, when they speak of a nickel horse. It merely means a New York city series, the nickel reference being to the price of subway transportation to the baseball arbors.

As a matter of fact, it should be called a 10 cent series. The price is a nickel going, and a nickel returning.

The New York Giants are looked upon as a triple-plated cinch to win the National League pennant, unless they all fall dead between now and the end of the season. To be sure they became slightly unconscious on top of a seven game lead last year, but since then a federal law has been passed making it unconstitutional for them to do such a thing again.

The Yankees have commenced to haul ashes away from the rest of their company. They ought to win by four or five lengths, pulled up. Under the rules in such case made and provided, that leaves the world series to the Manhattan and Bronx teams, of the Greater City of New York, and reduces the rest of the baseball land to inoffensive inter-city demonstrations between their home clubs.

In 1921, 1922, 1923 and 1924, the Giants under McGraw won the National League pennant, and in three of those years, ’21, ’22, and ’23, played the series against the Yankees under Miller Huggins.

Both McGraw and Huggins are dead. Much water has run under the baseball bridges since the clubs last met 12 years ago. Those were great teams that McGraw and Huggins led against each other. McGraw’s team, or substantially the same team, won four pennants in a row, a league record that stands to this day.

The third series, that of 1923, between the teams produced the first of the million dollar gates that baseball has always dreamed of. The attendance was 301,430, the receipts $1,063,815. It was the beginning of the gold rush for the national game.

THE series of 1921 and 1922 were played just before the “good time Charley” era. The receipts in the first series was $900,233, but only $605,475 for the second, the attendance dropping to 185,947, mainly because the Giants won in four games, with one a tie.

The first series was won 5 games to 3 by the Giants, the second 4 games to 0, the third, that of 1923, was captured by the Yanks 4 games to 2. Thereafter Huggins’ great team blew up and the American League title passed to Washington for two years.

The 1921 pennant victory was the first for the American League in New York after some 18 years of trying. Since then the Yanks have won a total of seven pennants and a total of four world series. Under McGraw the Giants won 10 pennants and three world titles. The Yanks have three times won the big series in four consecutive games.

Joe McCarthy has won one American League pennant with the Yanks, and Bill Terry one National League pennant with the Giants. It looks as if they will be peering at each other from the rival dugouts.

From the peak of $1,207,864 in 1926, the series between Washington and the Yanks, the series money fell with the depression to below a million for four years, then perked up in 1931 to $1,030,723 for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Athletics. It fell again below a million for the next two years, going down to under $700,000 in 1933, when the Giants and Washington played.

The good, glad times returned last year with the greatest autumn baseball battle in many years. The Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals played to 281,510 spectators, for a total gate of $1,031,341, of which the players got $299,785, or $5,941 to each winner, and $4,313 to each loser.

Now that wasn’t a record attendance or a record gate by a long ways, but under the division, the individual players got more money than in other series save one. That was the 1923 series when each Yank got $6,000 though the Giants’ individual end of $4,112 was smaller than the Tigers’.

You see, last year, Henry Ford added $100,000 to the pot for the broadcast.

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/June 6, 1935

NEW YORK, June 5.

TREVOR WIGNALL, sports writer of the London Daily Express, is here to see the battle between Primo Camera and Joe Louis.

Wignall is accounted one of the foremost boxing authorities in England, and he often comes to this country for a big fight. He has been here so frequently, and has so many friends in America, that he has become about as thoroughly Americanized as it is possible for an Englishman to get.

They call him “Yank” Wignall because of his regard for Americans. Wignall and Tommy Webster, the great cartoonist of the Mail, are almost as much at home in New York as they are in London, and certainly more active socially.

“Yanks” is anxious to get a peek at Joe Louis, the young Negro sensation of the boxing game. The fame of the former Golden Glover has drifted across the seas, where they follow boxing even more closely than we do in America. They are quite familiar with Carnera over there already, in fact Wignall was writing about him long before Carnera came to the United States.

Several other English writers are coming also, also a number from Germany and France, while the American reservations for press box seats at the Carnera – Louis fight already exceed the top record of the past as far as New York is concerned.

CHAMP SEGAL is a picturesque gent who used to manage fighters, among them Charley Phil Rosenberg, when Rosenberg was bantamweignt champion of the world.

It has been a long time since Champ fussed around the gladiators, but he retains a keen interest in them, and has the reputation along Broadway of rarely failing to pick the winner of a big bout.

The other night, Champ pinned the writer up against the plate glass window of a local restaurant, and orated at length on the coming Carnera – Louis battle.

He said:

“I told you Tunney would lick Dempsey, didn’t I? I told you Schmeling would lick Sharkey in their first fight, didn’t I? I told you Carnera would lick Sharkey, and that Baer would beat Schmeling and Carnera, didn’t I?”

The writer admitted he did.

“All right, then,” said Champ Segal. “I’m telling you now that Carnera will lick Louis and maybe flatten him. No, I haven’t seen Louis. But everybody tells me he is a shuffling fellow, who punches short. I always figures styles. That style isn’t worth a dime against Carnera.”

At least Champ Segal’ discourse was a change from the expertorial chorus from Louis’ camp.

BABE RUTH can follow Dempsey’s example and take to the sticks and make more money in the next few years than he can hope to get out of the best managerial job in the game, allowing that Babe can get a job of that kind, and hold It down after he gets it.

Dempsey gathers in a nice income refereeing boxing and wrestling bouts in small towns, though his new role as a restaurant man has cut down his activity in that respect.

Ruth could go out over the same kind of territory, umpiring, and playing a bit of baseball once or twice a week, and enjoy a royal income. There are millions of people who haven’t seen Ruth play, and they would pay for the privilege.

The best bantamweight fighter the writer has seen in a long time is Sixto Escobar, the brown youth from Porto Rico, who knocked out Joey Archibald on the McLarnin-Ross show. Escobar proved his gameness by getting off the floor that night and going on to victory.

He is a corking puncher for a little man, and a good showman. Lou Salica and Pablo Dano are fighting out on the west coast for what is termed the American bantamweight championship, but the winner cannot have a clear title until he beats Escobar, who is American-born, though he was raised in the island possession.

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/June 7, 1935

NEW YORK, June 5

HERE in New York, the largest city in the United States, a horse race that many turfman say is the most important race on the American turf will be decided Saturday—the Belmont Stakes.

It will bring out the crack three-year-olds of the east. It has a value of $50,000 in money, which is greater than the Kentucky Derby, or the Preakness. It is a race rich in tradition. It goes back to 1867. It has been won by equine immortals like Sar Barton, Man o’ War, Grey Lag, Zev, American Flag, Blue Larkspur, Crusader, Twenty Grand, and Gallant Fox.

Yet, oddly enough, it attracts little of the attention that is bestowed upon the Derby or the Preakness. It will draw perhaps 30,000 spectators at Belmont Park Saturday afternoon, as against the 75,000 for the Derby in Louisville, and the 45,000 at Pimlico, in Maryland.

It will get perhaps a column and a half in the New York newspapers, and maybe half a column in the larger papers outside New York. The Derby is worth several columns in New York, and whole supplements in its home town.

BELMONT is large, Belmont is beautiful, Belmont is very, very fashionable, and in this last word we may find the answer to the lack of interest in Belmont on the part of the proletariat.

But that does not fully explain why a great race like the Belmont does not attract at least about a tenth of what is bestowed on the Derby and the Preakness, especially when you consider that half the field that goes on Saturday is made up of horses that came out of the Derby and the Preakness.

OMAHA, winner of both those stakes, is among them, also Whiskolo, third in the Derby, and Firethorn, second in the Preakness. Psychic Bid and Plat Eye are Derby and Preakness horses.

Then we have Rosemont, conqueror of the mighty Omaha at a mile, and there is a hook-up that alone ought to make the Belmont the greatest racing attraction of the day. The Belmont is at a mile and a half, which horsemen say is the distance that determines a real route runner in these times, and you would think the racing public would be very eager to see if Rosemont can carry his speed far enough to again whip the current king of Belair.

Omaha is sure to be favorite. The writer quotes the sprightly New York Press’ advance line in putting Omaha at even money, with Rosemont at 3 to 1. Psychic Bid, Plat Eye, Gillie, Firethorn, Whiskolo, Tweedledee, Esposa and Cold Shoulder, mentioned as other probable starters, are all the way from 8 to 50 to 1, this last price being suggested against Esposa and young Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt’s Cold Shoulder.

The writer would think Whiskolo, if he starts, might be dangerous at the distance. He can go “a fur piece,” as we say in the Everglades.

OMAHA’S paw, Gallant Fox, won the Belmont and $66,040 in 1930. That was top money for the race. Man o’ War, in 1920, won only $7,950.

In the 88 years of the Belmont, and the 60 years of the Derby, and the 62 years of the Preakness, the triple seems to have been tough to get.

Damon Runyon

Reading Times/June 9, 1935

NEW YORK, June 7.

JAKE KARPF, one of New York’s best known sports editors, commenting on the writer’s wonderment that the Belmont Stake does not attract the attention and publicity of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, says:

“It’s because no winter book is made on the race.”

Now this may be the right answer, at least as far as the Kentucky Derby is concerned.

As soon as the entries, which sometimes number as many as 200, are made public, usually in mid-winter, bookmakers in St. Louis and elsewhere open their future books, taking bets on any horse nominated for the race at odds that run anywhere from even money up to 1000 to 1.

The future book is, of course, a delusion and a snare. Horsemen say that it ought to be 20 to 1 against any horse even getting to the barrier at the time the entries are announced, and the future bookmaker keeps the wagers on the non-starters. For example, the winter book favorite for the derby this year was Chance Sun. Considerable money is said to have been wagered on this horse. It was withdrawn shortly before the race and the money went to the bookies.

The gambling fever is so great in this country that the future book prices are always eagerly awaited, and this advance betting on the derby keeps interest in the race red hot from February until May.

Yes, it may be that Jake Karpf has the correct explanation.

In any event, this is Belmont day, and upwards of 30,000 spectators will be at beautiful Belmont Park to see the great Omaha, and Rosemont, and Cold Shoulder, and Plat Eye, and other star three-year-olds compete for the famous old stake.

Cold Shoulder, owned by young Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, turned in a startling work-out for the event the other day, and if he did not leave his race in the work-out, as sometimes happens, may be a formidable contender.

Students of the game have been studying the blood lines of Rosemont, and have decided that there is no reason why the horse that beat Omaha at a mile cannot carry on his speed to a mile and a half.

If a horse called Whiskolo starts in the race, he may be dangerous, as he came from far, far back, and was going great guns in third place at the finish of the Kentucky Derby.

ALFRED GWYNNE VANDERBILT, a handsome, unobtrusive, and very pleasant youth, who came into the ownership of his mother’s Sagamore stable when he reached his majority something over a year ago, is having great racing luck so far this year, though mostly with his two-year-olds.

Under the guidance of his trainer, the able “Bud” Stotler, young Vanderbilt enlarged greatly upon the stable passed on to him by his mother. He began buying and breeding horses to carry his colors. The day will come when he will have the most powerful racing outfit on the American turf.

This young man has a real love for horses and for the racing game. He is the greatest acquisition to the racing game in recent years, because with him racing is just a sport.