The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-10-14
CAN'T BEAT THE RING.
THIS IS MIKE DWYER'S ASSERTION
AFTER YEARS OFF EFFORT.

All Plungers Go BrOke-Game Is Too
Hard for Men Who Bet Money
LiberaIIy-Fate of Riley Grammar
and Chris Smith Awaits All who
Lay RecIxIessIy Big Wagers.
From the New York World.
AS blows the summer wind, vagrant as
the fitting of a butterfly, is the fortune of
the plunger who makes a business of play
ing the races and a pleasure of startling
the world by his betting methods.
The Dryers have been good, game men
at this hardest of games, and there have
been times when they were reckoned as
millionaires, but the tether which guided
them had its end like all others, and the
Dryers days have gone like the Walton
days and the Grammar days.
The plunger, as the race people knew
him, is an Individual of humble origin and
large ideas. He may or may not know
horses, but he is game as gameness goes
on the Interchangeable the gamblers
call it. He is the fellow that does that piece
of legerdemain known as running a shoe
string into fortune.
them, but one day he will drift out of the
ken of men, and then the fellows who fol-
low the game know that another racing
rocket has shot its bolt and gone into
the darkness of financial oblivion.
There a dozen poverty-ridden plungcrs
in New York now. They never quit as long
as luck lasts or there is a dollar in hand,
but somehow luck goes as it came, and
the plunger drops down and out like a
steeplechaser over a Jump-and he never
rises again.
These Dryers are good racing men.
Phil has made money and kept it, for Phil
is cautious and knows horses and thinks
a whole lot of purses and stakes and that
sort of thing. But Mike,-"Misther Moike,"
as they used to call him IN the butcher
shop period of his plunging-has made
money, heaps of it, nobody knows how
much, but he has not held tightly to IL.
He has tried to run the thing out of exist
ence.
Phil is going along accommodating Jockey
club money with his horses. Mike is doing
a trick or two of that kind shimself but
he wanted bookmakers' money besides, and
the bookmaxers have disappointed him and
outraged his plunger's feelings by taking
his. This is what he says about the game:
From my own bitter experience after
more than twenty years of racing / say
that it is beyond human power to beat the
ring Betting is, after all, a question of
figures, or rather of mathematical proper
ton On a moderate estimate 1 should say
that there are thirty-two chances against
the hacker in every race that is run. 1t is
not 10 be supposed that I am advising
young men to stay away from the races
or not to bet. / am in no mood for giving
advice, and l don't suppose that anybody
would take it if 1 did. If there are any
ol1 bO balf
have a divine mission TO break the ring
let them go ahead and take their chances,
as | have done"
But "Msther Moike" has a numerous
and brilliant company with whom to go
when the last prosperous season comes 10
him.
There Is Riley Grammar, for instance You
don't hear much about him now Two
years ago no big race was well run without
Grannan's presence. No story of it was
complete without the tale of Grannan's
transactions.
The first lesson Grammar learned when
he went on the turf was to keep his mouth
shut well, and he has obeyed the precepts
of his teachers
Grammar is a Kentuckian. Not so long
ago he was slender lad earning dairy
wages at Louisville. 1t has been variously
stated that he sold cigars, that he ran
an elevator that he was all sorts of juVe-
nile mental; but, anyhow when Grammar
began to play the horses in the poolrooms
and at Old Churchill Downs he was not
a gentleman of financial probabilities.
Just when ne began to make big bets
nobody knows or cares, but in a single
season he made himself the most talked
of man on the American turf. Grammar
has bet $4,000 on a race, and Outlines has
taken that much to himself on one action
of the gallopers.
When Grammar invaded New York he
was purse-proud and confident. The West
had been easy money to him, and he came
here to pick up fortune or two for the
winters spending.
He played hard very hard, but he did
not prosper Almost from the first his
luck was against him. He lost enough
money to build town, and then got him
self into trouble with the Jockey Club for
transactions with the Jockeys, and the
privileges of the track were denied him.
He drought surcease to his sorroWing
soul with trip to the holy land that he
used to read about down in Kentucky, and
now he is back again on the track mild
and inconsequential as ever, but with a
bank roll that does not bulge his pockets.
one hears no more of Grammar the
plunger. He is just betting man now,