The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-12-13
IF | It's II E r e
IT'S RIGHT
SPR|NT|NG GAME
FOREVER DEAD
Crooked" Contest Marked
Finish of 0ne-Time Pop
uIar Sport.

Cleveland, Dec. Hilary Bethune.
of his day. is in the city looking for
job He may go TO work as a motor
man or a conductor
But of all the dead and buried sports
sprinting Is the deadest and deepest
buried. No attempt is made nowadays
to revive the old-time game, the game
whose followers We're SO often crossed,
dou ble-crOSSed and triple-crosSed.
The common custom in the way-back
days was for "stool-pigeon" 10 come
to town, obtain employment in some
shop or mill. exhibit flashes of speed.
talk in whispers of the races he has,
won, get everybody about him into
fever of excitement-and then propose a
race.
Next, his partner would come
along. looking for a race, The partner
would be a man in boots and overalls
a clumsy rustic with pompous swag-
ger and q dense indifference TO every
body except himself
Out of 1t all would come race. And,
always, or almost always, the man who
should have won would fall down in
the stretch and the money would go
to the mysterious stranger and his
backers-who, of course, were posted
long in advance
Rolling Mill Sports Trimmed.
Perhaps the most famous race in the
sprinting track history of Cleveland
was the match in which Billy Boyd of
Woodstock, Ont, was beaten on the old
Newburg track years ago.
Boyd came to Cleveland, unclaimed
and unknown. He got a job as wire
drawer in the Newburg mills. All the
time he kept talking of his sprinting
abilities. In off hours he would go out
and do the hundred" in eleven seconds
and under. The mill employees idolized
him. The foreman and the superin-
tendents made him a pet.
One day a stranger doomed up at
the Striebinger house.
Amy good runners in town." he
asked indifferently.
The clerk would find out.
Yes, there was Billy Boyd out at the
Newburg mills.
The Striebinger house man would run
him. The losers end of the purse
would help out a lot.
So a race was arranged and all the
money in Newburg and pretty near all
the money in Cleveland went on Boyd
to win But ten yards from the tape
Boyd fell down and the stakes went to
his partner-the mysterious guest at the
Striebinger house. And. later, Boyd
and the mysterious stranger" met
down town and divided up between
$4,000 and $4,000 which had gone the
wrong way when Boyd, the rolling mill
pet, fell down"
The race at Canton in which Skates"
Breen figured was one of the big events
in the days when sprinting races -four
iShed.
Harry Nichols. of the old firm of
Robinson & Nichols, plungers on every
thing. lost $500 roll on this race. He
got the right tip, but the tip was
changed at the last minute, and the
sprinters made a tremendous killing.
Nichols, in telling of the race after
wards, said: Gentlemen, I'll bet on a
dog fight, cock fight. or horse race
but I'll never bet again on anything
that can talk, not even on a parrot"
Bethune did not need to resort to
deals and frame-ups in his palrny days,
for he had the speed to carry him
along. He won big money, and he
spent his winnings lavishly He was a
natural born sport and plunger, and he
was courted and admired by the men
who liked to risk their money on anv
kind of a hazard 10 to Is years ago.
Many great sprinters came to CIeve-
land in the old days. Johnson, Kittle-
man, Llewellyn, Hapeny and George
Forbes among them, but of all the num-
Der George Forbes is perhaps best re-
membered. Best remembered because
although close to a 10-second mantle
old Oyster Ocean proprietor insis ted
on running all his matches on the
S0uare