Clipping:Pool room manipulation

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Date Sunday, December 24, 1876
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A sample of the work done by the pool manipulators was shown at an establishment in New York recently. It was on the occasion of the match at Chicago, between the Boston and Chicago clubs. It seems that a number of betting men were getting the score by innings before it was received in the pool rooms, they having received the first three innings before any had been received by the pool sellers. Knowing that the score was 7 to 1 in favor of the Bostons, they bet heavily on the Bostons, the pools selling at the rate of 50 to 25, and 25 to 14. In the next two innings, however, the tide changed, the Chicagos scoring five in the fourth and one in the fifth, which tied the score. It was then announced that the score was being received outside before it was in the rooms, consequently all bets were declared off. At the close of the game the winners claimed their money, on the ground that they had bet in good faith.

An operator in Chicago pools said to one of the interviewers from the Times that he “lay awake nights trying to devise some scheme by which I could get the best of the games. I agreed to pay the Atlantic and Pacific Co. $10 for dispatches of every game played in Philadelphia provided they delivered them a few minutes earlier than the Western Union could. They entered into the agreement, and for a time I got my work in so effectually that Joe Mackin complimented me by saying that I was a ‘d----d good guesser.’ During the progress of a game in Philadelphia I found about the middle of the game I was getting left, and that somebody was slipping in ahead of me. I went to the Atlantic and Pacific office and raised a row about it, and they brought up some of the operators with a sharp turn. Neither of the telegraph companies had any intelligent hand in working these matters. I don’t care a continental now who knows what made me a good guesser on innings. Every man who goes into base ball business to win must be ‘steered’ some way. It is a game in which the sharps gobble the flats, and then go for each other.” “Do you know anything about that Cincinnati game?” “I ought to. This talk about the game having been fixed for the Cincinnatis to wi is all bosh. The report was a magnificent ‘stiff,’ planned here in Chicago. It was a dead sure thing that the Mutuals would win on their merits, so a shrewd operator had dispatches sent to him from confederates in Cincinnati announcing that the Mutuals had been fixed to drop the game. He took good care that the dispatches should be shown confidentially to the right parties here, and the result was that they not only fell into the trap, but steered some of their friends in. That’s what makes them so sure.” Philadelphia Sunday Mercury December 24, 1876

Source Philadelphia Sunday Mercury
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Submitted by Richard Hershberger
Origin Initial Hershberger Clippings

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