Damon Runyon

Tulsa Tribune/February 1, 1929

NEW YORK, Jan. 26 — The don’t-be-surprised boys may now retire to their igloos for the balance of the semester. Their most recent don’t-be-surprised enterprise was in the nature of a complete bust.

“Don’t be surprised if this Christner flattens the terrible Sharkey man,” they were around saying. “Don’t be surprised if Christner hits that guy on the whiskers, and knocks him bow-legged. Don’t be surprised.’’

Well I would have been surprised. Greatly surprised. And so would the don’t-by-surprised boys though doubtless they would have been able to conceal their surprise better than me and would have been shrilling:

“Didn’t I tell you not to be surprised? Didn’t I tell you?”

They’re Always There

The don’t-be-surprised boys are always around prior to any sports event don’t-be-surprising us within an inch of our lives. They pick out the short end of a 10 to 1 shot as a possible winner on the don’t-be-surprised basis, as they picked Christner to beat the terrible Sharkey man the other night.

It costs them nothing. If they put over a don’t-be-surprised winner once every two or three years that seems to be sufficient satisfaction to them. The cheapest prophecy and one with an escape at either end is that old “I-wouldn’t-be-surprised-if.’’

The don’t-be-surprised boys make me very tired, indeed. Still, I suppose they are merely suffering from some form of disease.

 The don’t-be-surprised boys were among the heartiest and most sincere of the booers at Madison Square Garden Friday night when they saw one of their best don’t-be-surprised things of the season go glimmering with the award of the decision over Christner to the terrible Sharkey man.

The don’t-be-surprised boys seem to take the fact that Sharkey didn’t knock out Christner as a moral victory. I didn’t think the Sharkey man figured to knock out Christner, but I did think Sharkey figured to give the old former rubber worker from Akron a jolly good shellacking, and that’s exactly what he did give him.

Christner a Gallant Warrior

However, I was don’t-be-surprised all week by don’t-be-surprisers that I know never saw Christner In action. They were taking him oft his knockout of the tin-chinned melancholic Dane, Knute Hansen. They were stabbing, as we say at the club.

Now Christner impressed me as a willing, game old galloper, with a dangerous punch against any guy who can’t take ’em, but a punch of a nature that shouldn’t land on a fellow who knows anything about the finer points of the sour science. Even so, he landed his best punch ka-zlp on the Sharkey’s man chin, and what happened? Did any of the don’t-be-surprised boys see Sharkey cave? And were they by any chance surprised that he didn’t?

The Sharkey chin isn’t the stoutest chin in all the world, either. It collapsed under a punch from Quentin Roll over Rojas for the full count, and it gave way for a spell under a swipe from the right duke of one Orlando Rlverberi, a party that you perhaps never heard of. The Sharkey man was on the floor from that smash for some seconds. Moreover, the wallop that the Manassa Mauler hung on that chin up at the Yankee Stadium did not reinforce it any.

So then I cannot believe that the stolid-looking former rubber worker, with the bald pate, is the puncher I was warned by the don’t-be-surprised boys He is just a gallant old warrior who is always trying, and for that he has my respect in a day and age when half the exponents of the sour science don’t even try.

He was pretty lucky to get on top in Madison Square Garden and get the kind of money he did. There are a score of better fighters scattered around the country who never get that sort of a break, and who probably never will.