The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-10-23
REAL THING IN RINGING.
HoW IT USED TO BE DONE AT
 IRON HILL.

Kept Up the Price of Paint-A Veteran Trainer Lets Ont some Remini,-.
 cence.-Thrse Ringers in a Single
 Race.
 They'll ring 'em as long as they race 'em," sardonicalIy remarked a veteran trainer of thoroughbreds in commenting upon the stories about the Fiddler's race at Morris Park a week ago. "Just as long as racehorses are bred that look alive and have similar gaits, just so long will the sure-spikers with the know-how be making the bookmakers bIeat over these ringer killings.
 "These smarties who think they know the cut of the jib and the texture of the hide of every horse in training in the country are never by any chance the people to nail the ringers. They never land on the right ones.
 "A year ago last summer, when Cap tain Gaston won at Sheepshead Bay with such a foolshness as two hundred. to one painted about his chance on all of the bookies slates-and their chalk set them back a little smudge of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or so that tiine-a crafty coterie of these deep ones made three jumps of 1t to get under the spot light and then delivered themselves of the much up stage opin- ion that Captain Gaston was a ringer. But he wasn't. He was the captain, all correct st ;&s
 .Expecting that some such crack would be made about the horse if the great thing went through, his people had about a dray-load of parchments all ready, giving a tabulation of every bran mash and bucket of water that Captain Gaston had taken since a year Hing, and containing about forty seven different Bertillons of him as set down by the most reputable veterinarians of the west. The stewards took just one glance at the first few papers on the top of that heap, and then they knew that Captain Gaston was himself and not another one.
 '.And that's the way the foxy ones with an eye out for ringers generally pick them. There may have been an actual winner on the very day of the Captain Gaston shoat sticking, for all they found out.
 "The old outlaw tracks in Maryland were the great training grounds for the ringer operators. It was sleety weather on the Chesapeake when they didn't pull a few ringers a week through on those old loop-the-loops
 Mural decorators out O work fell into the habit, when Iron Hill and the rest of the Maryland outlaws were a. running, of dropping down there to get swell wages frescoing ringers. They slid every old thing except a goat over the plate in ringer form down there, and they'd have tried the goats, too, if tn billies d have stood still long enough to have their horns sawed off. The stew ards had an accommod dating manner of looking the other way to, see how the evening was holding up when the nav ericks, painted up impressionist style
 
 under the wire, and the ringer people found 1t Just like wheedling gran'ma out of the marshmallow money.
 T remember once when a bunned-up owner of a ringer that was just edging along to the wire at Iron Hill about forty lengths in the lead lost track of his ringers name in his runmy and other enthusiasm. He stood right be- low the judges stand. swaying like a Colorado aspen In half gale of wind, and roofing his money home. . Come on, you spawned old ring boner of plum-duff horse!" he bawled. Inadvertently using the real name of the ringer, a horse as well known at the time on the legitimate tracks of the east as the valves of Jack Adler, the calliope of the betting ring, are known to race-goers now.
 "The horse was running under the name of Jim B., or something like that,