The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-11-18
RACNG'S ARMY OF REGULARS.
TRAITS OF MEN WHO MAKE A
BUSINESS or BETTING.


a man who knows the horse game inside
and out. "A good many Of them dropped
out at the Belmont windup. Another
crowd quit when Jamaica closed it's gates
for the season. Those who remained for
the Aqueduct meeting began to dispense
a week ago. Poolroom conditions are
going to be bad in New York his winter,
and very few Of the regulars will remain
behind here for that reeeon.
Virtually the whole outfit Of regulars
who q get away will make for the winter
tracks this year. Some thousands Of them
are at Bennings now. After Bennings
they'll break up and make the scoot either
for New Orleans or the Coast. There1l
be enough of the Eastern regulars at each
Of the winter tracks to make racing profit
able from the point Of view Of gate receipts
without any other patronage at all.
~ year makes for a big shifting aroun
in the circumstances Of the regulars who
make for the winter tracks at the windup
here. Plenty Of chaps who went to their
winter track last year in the drawing room
OF he sleeper. with pockets bullying with
yellowbacks. will be glad enough this year
to take plain day coach transportation.
without any frills, and with a shoemaker's
o"AAh - nv y cC6hh OPo
after their arrival.
who are these regulars that We hear
so much about, anyhow! That's a qiies-
ton often asked. And it isn't easy to get
an answer to the question. The regulars
Of the New York tracks make up a body Of
from 5000 to 1000 men. I Won't go so far
as to say that I am personally acquainted
with au of them, but I verify believe that I
1yp1u, AhA faoA - ~ - khA rannlar@
who has been at the game for as long a
time as five years. 1t takes Ave years at
least for a mar to become a regular. And
he has got to play the game practically
every day during the five years, at that, to
be considered one Of the regular fold. You
see the faces Of these New York regulars
at Los Angeles and San Francisco and New
Orleans and Hot Springs during the winter
SEQ them in such numbers that you can
almost imagine yourself back on Long
Island.
4 don't know Of any game in which the
survival Of the ittest doctrine is more
amply proved than in this racing game.
Out Of q hundred men who, at one time or
another, become interested in or addicted
to the racing thing, I should say, and /
believe my estimate to be conservative.
that only one sticks long enough to be tacitly
taken into the ranks Of the regulars.
1T takes a certain temperament to be a
racing regular, and the fellows who possess
that temperament are few and far between.
Plenty Of men get into the game, stick to IL
for a few months, with varying success,
and then drop out. Generally they are not
cautious enough. They are men never
meant by Providence to play the horses.
They overbet. They take o manv tips.
They play too many races. They have no
real perception Of racing conditions. They
a stand prosperity, or, on the other
hand, they are bad losers. They are too
laxative. They don't understand the art
Of profitable mixing. They futter along,
making wins and taking losses, until finally
their little hour to be wholly eliminated
streaks along, and they disappear.
The drink takes a good many OF them.
A good many of these turf recr uits i'm
agine that drinking and horse playing
must necessarily go together. That's a
bad mistake. Very few OF the regulars
drink at all, and never while they are en-
gagged in figuring out the chances Of horses
at a raoetrack. Whenever you see a happy
looking chap lining his friends up at the
track bar after a race and ordering cham
payne for them because he has lust won a
bet. you can put it down as a certainty that
he isn't a racing regular. Only a few days
ago, at Aqueduct, I heard a man ask his
friend, one of the big ~plungers, what he
liked on the days card
Nothing replied the ~plunger. I'm
lust looking on to-day-I'm not going
to play a thing Two or three things look
like they stand out. but l had a bad night
last night, and I've got a few drinks in me
row., and I'm not going to try to pick 'em.
I'm going up into the stand and take il out
in looking
"A lot Of men who get into the game
after an anspicious beginning and who
might eventually be taken into the regular
~ranks-which Is a profitable thing for a
man following racing, il should be under
~stood-queer themselves by talking too
much.
They reveal condolences. They dissent
naie news not meant to be disseminated.
Thus they lose out. The eyes Of the
bona flde regulars are on them all the time,
and when these regulars overhear a man
ambitious to b considered a regular fol-
lower Of the game talking wildly through
his hat about what he has seen or heard
they sort Of nudge away from him and
gradually freeze him out OF the inner circle.
| The regulars are the least laxative men on
earth themselves, and they haven't a particle
OF use for the chinner.
"The thing, however, which chokes OF
most of the men eager to get in good in the
racing game, and ch Okes them of early,
is their overeagerness to get hold OF most
OF the money in the world in the shortest
imaginable space of time. They play all
the races. No racing regular on the
globe ever tried to do that. They know
as well that IL can't be successfully done
az they know that they are wearing
shoes. Pittsburg Phil used to say that II
he could peat the card three days running,
as some fellows actually expect to beat Il
the entire season running, he would make
Rockefeller look like the man selling lead
pencils outside the track gate.
"Phil himself rarely or never played
more than two horses in one afternoon.
One was generally his limit. And he used
to let days go by without ever making a
ret. Once he sat in the grand stand at a
lew York racetrack for three weeks boxing
at 'em run, and never getting a dollar down.
There wasn't anything running that he
liked, that's all, and he didn't play 'em
unless he liked EN-.
"The bulk OF the regulars. the year in