Add to this the fact that the book is a collection of racing columns written by Damon Runyon nearly 100 years ago when he worked for a newspaper, and you've got a product that will hardly put the capable editor of these columns, Jim Reisler, a communications manager for The New York Racing Association (NYRA), on the morning talk show book tour. Would be nice, though. A good PR team might accomplish it.
It's a substantial book with a great cover of Runyon as a rail bird, probably at Saratoga. He was a tall man, 6'2" and a natty dresser in the style of the day for men: suit, white collared dress shirt, pocket square, tie, tie pin, cuff links, pinkie ring, and of course a hat. Seen on the book's cover this way, he's holding what surely is the Morning Telegraph, the racing broadsheet of the era that was devoted to horses and their past performances. The Telegraph lives on today as The Racing Form.
The Morning Telegraph was the East Coat publication, and the Racing Form was the West Coast publication, both from Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications, the people who also brought us TV Guide. Different owners now, same focus are poured into the Racing Form.
Runyon wasn't born on the East Coast and didn't come from the Lower East Side, or any other confines that produce New Yorkers of a certain character. He was born in Manhattan, Kansas, a birthplace name that proved magnificently prescient because after writing for the papers in the West, he came East and was a New York dandy about Broadway, writing for the Hearst newspaper, The New York American.
He covered baseball and boxing, but grew tired of it, and in 1922 changed his beat to horse racing. One hundred years ago this was not a marginal sport. After boxing and baseball, the country loved horse racing and devoured news of it.
One of Runyon's vignettes from 1933 that struck a particular chord with me revolves around Harry Stevens II, grandson of Harry M. Stevens, the famous concessionaire. Now if the grandson is running around the place in 1933, grandpop obviously goes back further. And of course he does.
Reading a little more context surrounding Runyon's friendship with The Stevens family, it is thoroughly ironic that my posting of June 20 talks of the Harry M. Stevens Charm School because of the surliness of the counter staff and their general inability to pick up their feet and get anything done, Runyon writes of the grandson scooting around the race track, "he is on the job early and keeps moving, which is a Stevens' characteristic. No man that ever lived could move faster than Harry the First. [the grandfather] Too bad they had to hire people.
Another historical note is struck when the starting line, or barrier is described in those pre-starting gate days. An elastic line was stretched across the starting line, with the jockeys expected to keep their charges calm and facing forward. There were no assistant starters pushing rear ends into starting gate stalls.
When the starter felt reasonably confident that a fair start would occur he let the "barrier" snap back, and off they'd go. If you've ever seen a hurdle race you know that the horses approach the starting line trying to be made calm, yet alert, and wait for the flag man to drop the flag to signify the start.
When Runyon started going to the races in 1922, the starter at New York tracks was Marshall "Mars" Cassidy. Mars turned of to be the head of the dynastic Cassidy family that would follow him into the sport, in roles as starter, placing judge, patrol judge and steward. Racing was a family affair.
If a horse was a bad actor at the start he got the equivalent of a soccer referee's red card and had to go to starting school, "before the eyes of Professor Mars Cassidy...that horse is ordered to school for further instruction."
When I started going to the races, there was a descendent of Mars Cassidy who was the starter, George Casssidy, and eventually in the role of announcer there was Marshall Cassidy, a great-grandson of Mars.
Horse racing as experienced by Runyon is not vastly changed from the experience of today. However, there were no photos of the finish then in his era. The placing judges were in a stand at the finish, the Whitney Stand, a wooden tower that gave the judges a straight line view of the finish line, what today is called the "wire."
Racing has always offered the three basic bets: win, place and show. These days there are all sorts of multi-leg bets that were not even around when I started going to the races. The Daily Double was the only so called "exotic" bet in 1968, and that one had been around for quite a while. Exacta wagering started in the early '70s.
With regard to a need to call the finish, the first three places have always been important, but now there is a Superfecta wager that pays if the first four horses across the line are picked in the right order. Non-automated placing would have been further stretched if in Runyon's day they needed to call the fourth place as well. In one portion of Runyon's columns, he goes into the art of keeping a straight line of sight on the finish line. He accords the placing judges a 95% accuracy rate, something that would not be acceptable today.
The term "wire" to denote the finish line was derived out of a physical wire that ran from the stands to a finish line pole and mirror. Nowadays, I think it's wireless. Photos still have to be viewed and ruled on, but there is no more Whitney stand. NYRA built a replica of it at Saratoga's Oklahoma training track that can be climbed.
The biggest change from Runyon's era was the transition from the so-called "hand book" bookie days, to pari-mutuel wagering.
Wagering was done by placing bets with the bookmaker of your choice at the track. And there were several that offered sometimes different odds on the same horse. It was possible to "shop" for odds. Europe still uses the "bookie" system.
Pari-mutuel wagering allowed the government to step in an take a share off the top. This is know as "takeout" Runyon writes of the advent of pari-mutuel wagering, which in effect collects the patron's bet and pools it, basically creating odds from one source. The public in effect in effect is betting with or against the other members of the public making wagers on the race. That's the "pari-mutuel" part of the name.
New York State did not adopt pari-mutuel racing until 1940. Churchill Downs had it as early as 1908. Each state then, and now, creates its own rules governing gambling. The system originated in France and was popular with the bettors. In the 1930 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs Gallant Fox won and paid $4.38 to win, an amount today that would be rounded down based on something called "breakage," the amount of rounding down after the payout calculation that are further gravy for the tracks, in addition to the usual upfront takeout. With breakage, that $4.38 payout would decrease to $4.30, or even $4.20. Pennies add up.
Runyon weighed in on the advent of pari-mutuel racing often, changing his views, and ultimately thinking it was bad, since he saw it as catalyst for personal destructive betting by the public. He felt it was going to be the ruin of people.
The origin of the word "chalk" harkens back to the hand book days, when the odds were written in chalk onto a slate at the bookmakers stall. Heavy action on a horse would lead to the bookmaker erasing the quoted odds and rewriting them on the slate. Continued heavy action would lead to more erasures of the chalk, and more rewriting with the chalk. Favorites, with dropping odds, were referred to as "chalk."
Even today, without hand book betting the system reacts to changing amount bets. Continued placing of money on a horse will drop the odds. The difference with the hand book days and the pari-mutuel days is that in pari-mutuel wagering your odds are not finalized until the gates open. Hand-book betting you got the quoted odds when you made the bet.
In hand book days, an early bet on a horse that gets bet heavy while waiting for the race is locked in for the bettor. If the horse was 5/2 when you bet, and it wins, you get 5/2, despite what might have been a drop in the odds due to heavy action that left the quoted odds dropping to maybe 9/5.
Sports reporting is not all Runyon did. He wrote short stories, many of which were turned into movies. His character the Lemon Drop Kid became a movie for Bob Hope, and the name of the winner of the 1999 Belmont Stakes.
The owners of Lemon Drop Kid, Jeannie and Laddie Vance would have known Runyon, so naming a horse after one of his characters was a no brainer. Lemon Drop Kid is a fabulous sire, and guarantees a good turf pedigree.
Runyon wrote screen plays for movies based on his short stories, covered trials, saw a musical Guys and Dolls (still being produced) come to life based on characters in his short stories, covered trials, the Lindbergh trial in particular, and even received a gift from Poncho Villa. The guy got around.
I've seen Guys and Dolls several times, the last one starring Nathan Lane as Nathan Detroit. Notably, I first saw the musical as a teenager in the '60s when a revival was produced at New York's City Center, starring Vivian Blaine, as long-suffering, not married, Adelaide from the original production as, Jan Murray as Nathan, Hugh O'Brien as Sky Masterson, Stubby Kaye, also from the original production, and B.S. Pully, Big Jule, also from the original production.
Big Jule of course could never be beaten at craps, because when he was behind he insisted, at the point of his pistol, that his dice had to be used—dice with no "spots." He of course "remembered" where they used to be when he made a throw, always a winning win. Piece of cake.
Once I helped a female co-worker carry the three boxes of shoes she had just bought at a downtown store on our lunch hour. With the three boxes stacked, and me following her, I distinctly remember I was resembling a character in the Guys and Dolls musical at the opening overture, who is doing the same thing. The difference was, I didn't pay for her shoes.
Runyon himself owned horses, but none that excelled like Lemon Drop Kid. Runyon apparently was a teetotaller, after being a very heavy drinker before coming to New York. That almost belies the image of a man about the confines of partying and gambling Manhattan and Saratoga. He was a heavy smoker, and did pass away from throat cancer at the age of 66 in 1946.
Runyon's ashes were deposited on Broadway, dropped from a plane piloted by the WW I ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Runyon's friend Walter Winchell started the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund, raising millions for research. I once came across where that fund must have been, just west of Lexington Avenue, in a brownstone somewhere in the high '30s. There was a plaque, but it is no longer there.
Certainly a sports writer from 100 years ago is not on many people's minds. Runyon didn't even win a Pulitzer. But the editor Jim Reisler points out that all the works in the book are in the public domain. Imagine that. Just like Chaucer, someone can still market a book of your writings.
Not bad.
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