Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-04-30
VETERAN OF THE GAME.
Some Nominations of an Old
Race Track Sport
ON MODERN PLUNGERS
DISSERTATION ON THE BETTING
OF TODAY AND LONG AGO,
Some Amusing Experiences of Racing
in Earlier Days in Closing Event
at Gravesend.
cial Correspondence of The Star.

Special Correspondence of The Star.
NEW YORK, April ~, 1905.
The ruminative straw-chewer of the sheds
hes a grizzled veteran of the game, who
saw Ten Brock a furry, leggy yearling-
leaned against a paddock stall after the
races on Tuesday last, the opening day at
Jamaica.
'One of the plunging boys was In the
stand this afternoon with souse on he
observed. He wasn't playing them, though
he was just nursing and enjoying his still.
When he gets ready to play them, after
the good ones are tuned up, he'll light on
the aqua vehicle with a thump that will
loosen the hoops around the reservoir.
When he's gambling, he'd no more think of
inserting a short sarsaparilla with a stick
in it into his system than he would of ac-
cepting 1 to against legitimate 10 to l
chance
Which" went on the veteran of the
game sis about the way it stands with all
of these modern plunging chaps. They
don't rum up while they're riskng their
coin on the horses. a good many of the
headliners among the big bettors, when it
comes to that, are teetotalers all the year
'round-not so much from principle as from
habit.
1.-The plungers of another day that l can
well remember were Snowy and ostenta-
are doing the ground-and-lofty gambling on
the horses nowadays. Most of them were
the heaviest kind of drinkers. and their
plunging. for all of the dream stories of
their acumen, was done the bull-head
luck basis.
They weren't the cod-as-ce PROPOSE
tons, the self-controlled business men of
the betting ring, that the plungers of today
are.
when their horse would drop out of the
clouds and cop for them, the old-time
plungers-the chaps who did the big bet
ting a couple of decades ago. | mean
would wait all hands within sound of their
voices up TO the long bar and do that open
in wine thing.
Have you ever seen a modern plunger
do that? Not SOS you could observe it,
matey.
That sort of thing had a gleamy look
to it. and II furnished good line on the
makeup of the plungers of the other day.
They weren't the real chilled-steel goods,
and they didn't last-none of them. They
all went on the rocks, without exception.
III the course of time.
1.-The old-time plunger was tickled foolish
when the public accounts of his winnings
were magnified three four times their
real size The boy who's putting the gray
in the heads Of the bookmakers of today
Isn't taking the public into his confidence
as to the size of his yank- downs He'd a
good deal rather, in fact, have you take it
for granted that he's losing every day at
the track.
Some of the Plungers.
But even some of the plungers who are
still in the game, and hourishing. had to
have the little lesson burnt into them be-
fore they settled down to the mineral water
system during their betting ring seasons
.sFor instance one of the big digit bettors
who has been winding up every season for
years past tens of thousands to the good
and who is solid for his million or 50 any
balmy morning he cares to stroll to the
places where he has it sailed. was, in the
earlier days of his plungIng, a winerne
from away back.
For nearly ten years now, however he
hasn't had that Gaul-glow on him, and be-
hind that there's little bit of a story
This plunger, with a couple of owners
and trainers, had a thing fixed up for the
closing day at Gravesend coming ten
years now, that was meant. to drive all of
the bookmakers to the ragbag and to make
all of the pool room proprtetors in North
America fall so hard that they'd have to
mace their sheet writers for car fare nick
els on the evening OF the day the grand
good thing was to slide through
1.-The people with the horse were to ar
range the little matter of winning with him.
and the plunger was to get the sepia- tinted
bundles down.
'"fhe four-footed article that they were
going to use wherewith to stampede the
layers and the pool room people to the sog-