Damon Runyon
Evansville Courier and Press/November 3, 1928
NEW YORK, Nov 2.— Mr. Eddie Burns, a well-known stockbroker who has that old do-re-mi in bales and who is fond of an occasional speculation outside his own field, once said to me:
“There are only two betting propositions on which a man can be dead sure of a square rattle for his money — only two that can’t be framed. One is a national election, the other is a college football game.”
And this is the open season for both. The sucker is enjoying an even break.
I have heard a gabble in the public marts of odds of 4-1/2 to 1 on Herbert Hoover, but I don’t see the boys laying anything on the line. It’s all chatter.
The big gamblers of the town don’t seem to care to speculate on this particular election. Probably one reason is because most of the gamblers are broke. If there is anv big betting it will be done among the Wall Street mob.
The biggest bettor on elections that this town ever knew is dead. He was E. E. Smathers, who owned some well-known harness horses and gallopers in his day. He was one of the biggest bettors the town ever knew on any proposition, for that matter, but he liked elections.
He also bet a lot of money on baseball games. He lost a gob on the crooked series of 1919 between the Black Sox and the Reds. The average “big” bet you hear about today would have represented pin money to Smathers in his heyday.
There has been less betting on football games this year than for many years past. I can think of no particular reason.
A wad of $30,000 lay in a spot In New Haven the other day to be wagered on Yale against the army, but there were no takers of any part of it.
Yale was a 10 to 7 favorite, too. Of course this absence of Army money can be explained. The Army followers haven’t got a great deal of money. A Princeton or a Harvard mob would have eaten it up in no time if they had a team like the Army’s playing dear old Yale.
A Princeton man bets on his team when he thinks it has a fair chance.
A Harvard man bets on his team when he knows it can’t win.
Some transplanted Californians visited Princeton to see the Princeton-Cornell game, and reported to me distinct shocks of surprise and pain over the number of empty bottles that they saw scattered about the premises between halves.
I was somewhat astonished to hear of this. It didn’t figure to be a drinking game. I explained that the bottles may have been leftovers from an old Yale game. The Callfornlans said no. They said the bottles had been emptied into some of the clients right before their very eyes. They said such things didn’t occur at football games out in California.
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