view raw text
BAD FOR PLUNGERS. Bernard J. "Kid" Weller leaves for Hot Springs, Ark., in a day or two, and his excellent string of horses is likely to be sent eastward, too. Mr. Weller came here with the reputation of being a plunger among plungers, a solver of all the curves of the racing game in the southwest and middle west, a winner of over 00,000 during the racing season of 1898, a successful delver in "dope," a man that not only won "on the inside," or when he made book, but "on the outside," when he didnt bane up his slate. But he couldnt make a hit at either Oakland or Ingleside, and "struck out," as it were, with great regularity. Now his hopes of getting-even have gone glimmering, and he has concluded to strike out for a country where the picking is easier, where the curves do not make a form student cross-eyed. Mr. Wellers losses are placed at all the way from 0,000 to 5,000, but as the little Bismarck of the betting arena does not tell his business to every man he meets, it might be safe to put him 0,000 "to the bad" in less than ten weeks time. The fate of Welier is the fate of every plunger that ever battled in the waves of speculation on the Californian shore. Ed Purser heads the list of losers. He was heard to say one day last season that 50,000 wonld scarcely make good his losses since he first came to San Francisco about five years ago. Every season regularly he has come to the coast with a well-filled purse, has Purser, and when the 15th of May rolled around said purse always looked as if Jumbo had jumped on it. Then he would hie himself to his home in the far east and again run a shoestring into the proverbial tannery, but the establishment would be badly plastered with mortgage 3 after he got through his winter-spring struggle with the Golden Gate bookies. "Pittsburg Phil" Smith made three or four pilgrimages to San Francisco, and every time they had the cool plunger with the ministerial look oozing gore in his attempt to "get even." Twice they had 0,000 of his good money. The last time he was here he got it all back but 0,000, and declared that he had enough for good and all. Dave Gideon is considered a very shrewd man in the countrys metropolis, but his coast trip last year cost him about 2,000, and he did not come out this year. To his friends around New York he remarks: "The game around Frisco is too hard for me." Riley Grannan, George Wheelock, Jack Newman, Eddie Gaines and many other close followers of the flyers with a penchant for rolling em high, have touching tales of woe to tell of their coin that never came back in California, and the first-named has invariably left from 0,000 to 00,000 every season he has visited us, though he gamely keeps a-going. San Francisco Examiner.
