TOD SLOAN 



picture one day of some horses, owned by the Brothers 

 Dwyer, which had won. There was a lot about them 

 that morning, and then the next day he saw that 

 another horse, owned by the same stable and ridden 

 by the same jockey, Jimmy McLaughlin, had won. 

 This gave him an interest in the subject and he would 

 never miss the racing news. He noted what owners 

 and jockeys were winning, and he determined finally 

 to have a try at betting himself and went to a pool- 

 room, which may be described, for those who don't 

 know, as an open betting " Club." 



Well, Phil backed the Dwyer horses, and at the end 

 of the first week he had cleaned up over a hundred 

 dollars. After that, he told me, " I came to the con- 

 clusion that betting on the races was a hell of a game, 

 and a darn sight better than cutting corks, so I threw 

 up my job and told my mother I was going to follow 

 the races." 



The way Phil got his nickname came about as 

 follows. In those days in America it wasn't usual 

 to give in betting more than just a short anything in 

 the way of identity, so he gave his name simply as 

 " Phil," and when he landed in New York with forty 

 dollars in his pocket, and went to the pool-rooms, the 

 name stuck to him ; on the race-tracks he was known 

 as " Phil from Pittsburg." He went right ahead, and 

 left over three million dollars when he died. For 

 fifteen years he was always plunging, and in his time 

 he pulled off the biggest strokes in the country, betting 

 as much sometimes as fifty thousand dollars on a race. 

 Bookmakers became afraid of him, and he had to be 

 a bit clever in the way of putting his money down. 

 One day out in California, when he wanted to make 

 a big bet on a certain horse, I saw him climb up behind 

 Johnny Coleman's book. " I want to bet a thousand 



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