On the Vet's List

At Chicago's bustling, blustery Loop corner of Clark & Madison, Newsie Sol Bertuca tightened his coat against the cold, and scowled: "It's gone, it's nothing, it's dead." All over the country, the sale of racing forms had dropped as much as 75% --way below seasonal expectations; tip sheets were as badly off or worse. Reason: Bookies had closed shop rather than pay the new federal betting tax and thus face arrest for violating state laws.

Walter Annenberg's far-flung Triangle Publications were hard hit. The antigambling drives, plus the sky-high production costs plaguing all publications, had shuttered two Annenberg turf dailies, Houston's Racing Form and the Cincinnati Record. Chances were odds-on for the merger of two more, the New York Racing Form and the 118-year-old New York Morning Telegraph, which boosted its price a dime to 35-c- a fortnight ago.

Galloping Genesis. But if the tightening on the rein worried the Telegraph (circ. 34,000), it was not saying so. In his sleekly modern Manhattan offices, decorated with sculptures of horses and Dufy racetrack paintings, Publisher J. (for Joseph) Samuel Perlman snorted: "We're not a tip sheet. Selections are a very minor part of our papers . . . We give racing the widest coverage of any sport in the country."

No one would deny that. To horse-race betters, the Telegraph is Genesis. The paper had long been devoted principally to racing and amusements. No news was good news to the old Telegraph unless it had a show-business or racing angle. One old Tele graph headline: CALVIN COOLIDGE DEATH REACTS ON BROADWAY. Its office was a stepping stone for many star newsmen. Among them: Westbrook Pegler, Gene Fowler, Louella Parsons, Heywood Broun, Sime Silverman, who later founded Variety and shoved the Telegraph out of its place as the No. 1 show-business paper.

Walter Annenberg, who also owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Seventeen, brought Perlman in to run his racing news empire in 1943. Perlman, a dressy, 51-year-old Canadian who was once sport editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, and had his own racing paper and horses, beefed up the Telegraph's show-business coverage. But he still yawns at general news, manages to squeeze in less than a column of items, and never tries to compete with the big dailies. Says Perlman: "If war broke out, we'd probably let the other papers handle it."

Feed box. The Telegraph's comprehensive coverage of racing is zealously accurate. It prints past performances, charts and ratings, perhaps half a million digits each day, a printing task which would stagger most newspapers. But its reports seldom err. Most of them are in a jargon no layman can understand. Example: A line on one of the entries in the second race at Florida's Tropical Park one day last week carried this report on Stormy Ruth, a two-year-old bay filly by Little Beans--Witchwater, by St. James, bred by J. Tucci, trained by M. Fife: "23Jy 51-1 Jm fst 5 1/2 f .23 .471/5 1.06 3/5 Cl. $6500 3 3 1 3 3 4 9 17" The knowing reader's translation: On July 23rd, Stormy Ruth ran in the first race at Jamaica, a $6500 claimer, five and a half furlongs, on a fast track. She broke from post position three, was third out of the gate, was in front at the quarter, dropped back to third at the half, was third by four lengths in the stretch, finished ninth, beaten 17 lengths.

Collecting and keeping such an endless stream of racing information is an intricate business. Crews of Perlman's men-- dockers, chart-callers, call-takers, reporters--cover every major North American race. To transmit the information, the Telegraph has its own teletype circuits. It also keeps in type, ready to print, the up-to-date records of more than 30,000 horses.

Says Sam Perlman: "We're to racing what the Wall Street Journal is to business."

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