The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-11

Tt was idle to ask him why he con- sidered that that horse stood out He'd | merely fan the fellows who asked him
 the reason why. But when Riley was at | the top of his career, and before home l troubles tapped his nerve and bewildered | his judgment his friends fell into the 1 habit of going to the thing that he picked
 out in that swift way, and there are
 scores of these men who today are fixed | Tor life because they did have the sense | to lean on Grannan's judgment l Grannan's immense splurge on the l Domino-Henry of Navarro match was
 characteristic of him. You'll recall how l on that occasion as bookmalxer he laid
 against Domino until the cows came home and went out again, and how he stood to
 pay out between $150,00O and $200,OOO in
 case Domino did the trick He simply would not have it that l Domino could beat Henry of Navarro. Of ] all the big ring men Of that time, Gran
 nan was practically alone in believing
 that Henry of Navarro could put it on | the mighty Domino. He was utterly un- | reasonable about the thing. 1 tried to tell | him how much more of 2 horse Domino 1 had shown himself to be than Henry of
 Navarro He would listen without
 word, and when I got through he'd say ! every time:
 1 "'All right, have it that way if YOU l
 going to take out of Domino, that's
 all.'
 ' !" And go broke said to him with ' some impatince. Tt would be just like 1 your pigheadedness to tap yourself on 1 such a fool proposition as that when
 any smudge of dinge stable boy knows
 that Domino will walk away and hide | from Henry of Navarro
 That only got laugh out of him. He wasn't accustomed to getting worked up | over race horses, but Henry of Navarro !, was the equine idol of his life. Down l to the finish of his turf career around New York, he stuck it out that Henry 1 of Navarro was the greatest horse that | ever stood on iron
 But Grammar sure had his hunch clothes on when he decided to take a
 wallop out of Domino. While everybody 1 else was amazed he wasn't even little 1 bit surprised when Henry of Navarro. l fighting it out like a cornered bobcat to | the wire, ran the beautiful Domino to a ! dead heat. He beat the race, of course, | by the splitting of the bets on the dead | heat pay-off. It was on that day that I l was forced to acknowledge to myself l that Grannan's way was something a 1 notch above mere horse sense. | Riley and Phil were close friends 1 They never indulged in argument as to ! their different methods of going at the | betting game, but they bantered each other good deal at times. Go ahead and wear yourself to the i bone, Phil, framing up that inside dope ] of yours I heard Grammar say to Phil [ one day Some of these days I expect to see you trying to tell us that there's | system to beat the wheel or bank Keep on playing them like an old 1 woman in a sunbonnet,' Phil got back, and some day I'll see you driving l hack outside the track grounds and smok- 1 ing corncob pipe
 And right here is the place to say that Phils way of doing certainly did prove to be the right one in the long run. They got Riley for his in time, but they never took Phil. But I'm staying with it that Grammar never went to the bad with his hunch plan of doing it until his judgment became fevered and clouded by affairs that happened away from the track. "'Phil, just to give the thing try-out as to whether you've got the right end of it or not Grammar said to Pittsburg Phil on another occasion. I'm going to copper you for a spell and see how the thing breaks
 "'Copper your head off, replied Phi
 not thinking that Grammar meant his suggestion seriously
 "Rut Grammar did mean it. He coppered PhiPs bets for more than a week run ming and he cleaned up nearly $200,000 do- ing it By some miracle Grammar just happened to light on one of the most dis astrous weeks of Phls betting career a good time to do that coppering thing Phil lost 26 straight bets during that period which was the olsing record of his life Grammar won on 10 of those bets by playing the next closest contender in accordance with his plan to keep on coppering Phil, and the remaining seven races were won by long shots that nobody could consider.
 "Phil put both hands up at the end of that disastrous coppering period-he was aware. of course, of what Grammar was doing.
 stop that stuff, Riley he said to Grammar You're hoodooing me- Grammar stopped it, and it is matter of common knowledge among ring men who aren't a little bit superstitious that Phil promptly proceeded to win again as soon as Grammar quit that copperng busis ness.
 Grammar, while never garrulous never theless did not have Phils taciturnity. He would tell his friends what he was betting on even if he didn't and couldn't tell them why he was betting on such and such horse. Of course he got his | own big bets spraddled around first. A Phil never cared to tell anybody ahead of time what he was playing. This isn't saying that Phil wasn't generous almost to a fault and man who would give his I final shirt to a sure enough friend But | that was a trait of Grannan's, too, and l if he had ever been of a sort to press for | repayment of the scores of heavy loans | he made to embarrassed friends-most of 1 them now on top again-when he was at 1 the crest of his plunging career, it would never have been recorded that he died in | a place like Rawhide while seeking to ! shore up his broken fortunes"