-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Interference Dan E. Moldea©1989 William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York, NY ISBN 0-688-08303-X ---[4]-- 5 The Big Fix ALTHOUGH BASEBALL WAS STILL king among sports gamblers, gambling on college and professional football games had increased in popularity after World War II, giving Bert Bell, the new NFL commissioner, more and larger headaches. Bell had replaced Elmer Layden on January 11, 1946. Bellwho received a three-year contract at $20,000 a year-sold his interest in the Pittsburgh Steelers to Art Rooney so that he could accept the position. However, he later moved the NFL's headquarters from Chicago to One Bala Avenue in Bala-Cynwyd, just outside Philadelphia. Action had always seemed to follow Bell, and his role with the NFL would be no different. On December 15, 1946, just hours before the NFL championship game between the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears, New York mayor William O'Dwyer, district attorney Frank S. Hogan, and NFL officials announced that there had been an attempt to fix the game. Gambler Alvin J. Paris of Elizabeth, New Jersey, was immediately arraigned for his attempt to bribe Giants players Merl e Hapes and Frank Filchock, the former backup quarterback for Sammy Baugh in Washington. Baugh told me, "Filchock was a real good football player. We got him on a trade from Pittsburgh. He was a good passer and a smart quarterback. I remember Mr. Marshall was talking about trading him [to the Giants in 1946]. I told him that, no matter what they did, they should never trade Filchock because he was as good a quarterback as anybody in the league at that time." Baugh said that Filchock's role in the attempted fix "surprised" him. "Filchock never got into any trouble at all at Washington as far as I knew. I remember both Filchock and Hapes. We heard they were offered the money and didn't report it." During my interview with Merle Hapes, he told me, "On the day of the championship game, Bell came with some people and picked us up. They put us into a private room. We told them we were innocent, but their announcement had already been made [that an attempt had been made to tamper with the game]. We had been blackballed, and they had to do something. They didn't want to hear what we had to say. "Sure, I knew the man [Alvin Paris], and I couldn't lie about that. His father [Sidney Paris, who had served four years for mail fraud] was a member of the Elks in New York, and I was a member in Mississippi. The son asked me if I would throw the game, and I laughed at him. I said, 'I could never do anything like that. Forget about me.' Bell asked me if I took any money, and I told him, 'I had nothing to do with it."' The attempted fix had been discovered through a wiretap on Paris's telephone. Paris was held on a $25,000 bond and was later convicted for his role in the attempted fix. Paris had actually fronted for three partners who were associates of Frank Erickson and had bet at. least $20,000 on the Bears to win by ten points. Even after the attempted fix had been uncovered, the Bears still won the game, 24-14. Hapes, a fullback, was benched before the game by order of Commissioner Bell. Only Hapes's name appeared in wiretapped conversations conducted by New York law-enforcement officials. The wiretaps indicated that past NFL games, as well as several college basketball games, also may have been successfully fixed. It was known that underworld figures had been wining and dining professional and college athletes at cocktail parties and in local nightclubs. Filchock—who denied being approached and thus was permitted to play nearly the entire game-threw two touchdown passes and six interceptions in the Giants' losing effort, in which the bookmakers' bets were covered. Hapes told me, "I still can't figure out why they didn't let me play. They let Frank play because they needed a quarterback. I was their sucker' and I'm still damn bitter about it." Later, Filchock admitted that he had been made the bribe offer. Each player was to receive $2,500 to throw the game, in addition to $2,000 in bets that would have been placed on their behalf. They were also offered off-season jobs. The situation became the biggest public sports scandal since the fixing of the 1919 World Series. On the basis of Paris's statements to the district attorney, East Coast gamblers David Krakauer, Harvey Stemmer, and Jerome Zarowitz were also indicted and later convicted. At their sentencing, the trial judge scolded them, saying that they had "attempted to destroy the faith and confidence of the public in American sport." Stemmer had been previously convicted for offering bribes to members of the Brooklyn College basketball team. Within twenty-four hours of the sentencing of the conspirators, both Hapes and Filchock were suspended indefinitely by the NFL commissioner. Bell said that the two players were "guilty of actions detrimental to the welfare of the National League and of professional football." Both Filchock and Hapes went to play in the Canadian Football League. Hapes says, "I'm not putting the blame on anybody. It was a screwup. Bell gave us a reprieve, but we were already going to Canada. He told us that we could go to any club we wanted. I went on to Canada anyway to play for five years." In the wake of the bribery scandal, Bell received a five-year contract as commissioner from the NFL team owners, which increased his salary to $30,000 a year; and in 1954 it was extended twelve more years. Bell, who realized that gamblers had taken a major interest in the NFL, said, "Let them bet. That's their privilege. My job is to keep it from having an influence on our game. On January 23, 1947, at the NFL owners' meeting in Chicago, Bell was given dictatorial powers designed to crush all future attempts to corrupt professional football. Specifically, Bell ordered that anyone in the league who receives "an offer directly or indirectly, by insinuation or by implication, to control or fix or accepts or bets anything of value on a professional football game in any manner whatsoever" must report to his club officials or the commissioner. Those who failed to comply with Bell's directive could be barred from the game for life. He also ordered all NFL owners and personnel to stay out of gambling casinos in Las Vegas and elsewhere. Bell said that NFL personnel "must be not -only absolutely honest; they must be above suspicion." To ensure this, Bell later hired former lawenforcement officials as consultants in several NFL cities to monitor the behavior of the league's players. But gambling continued and had already become more sophisticated. According to sportswriter William Barry Furlong, the point spread was invented during the early 1940s by University of Chicago-trained mathematical wizard Charles K. McNeil, who was also an obsessive sports fan.[1]This new method of handicapping attempted to attract an equal amount of betting on teams playing uncompetitive games that would otherwise draw little public interest and low-betting volume. Under this system of pricemaking, gamblers could bet on the favorite team and give points to the underdog-or take the underdog and the designated points. Prior to this, bookmakers simply gave odds, like 3 to 2 or 7 to 5, on upcoming games. This traditional practice of making the odds rather than setting the point spreads continues to be used for betting on several sports, including baseball. However, the best evidence is that the point spread began before McNeil. Frank Costello's personal bookmaker, Ed Curd, who was also an influential Kentucky oddsmaker and a close friend of McNeil, told me that McNeil did not invent the point spread. "I don't know of anyone who can take credit for that. McNeil fell into line like everyone else. But in my estimation he was the best handicapper who ever lived. He operated out of the Gym Club in Chicago. While he was there, he was a very active player [gambler]. He was probably more of a player than a bookmaker. He was his own service. Back then, people made out their own prices [point spreads]. There were different prices all over the country." Mort Olshan, who later became one of the most respected sports handicappers in America, told me, "McNeil might not have invented the point spread, but he certainly refined it. There were scattered but reliable reports that point spreads had preceded McNeil in various regions of the country. They were based on regional games, particularly in the South, rather than on national projections. I understand that the point spread was used during the 1930s—before McNeil came along." There were at least two oddsmakers who were using the point spread form of handicapping during the early 1930s in Minneapolis: Darby Hicks and Karl Ersin. During my interview with Ersin, he told me, "It was the Depression, and I needed something to do. I always liked sports very much and used to read everything I could. I kept book after book about football. It just got to be a habit. There was already a handicapper at The Minneapolis Journal name d Darby Hicks. So, during the early 1930s, I went down to the other newspaper, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and said, 'Can you use a handicapper?' And they hired me. I put an article in there every week. Darby and I used the point spread as our way of handicapping, and we had a contest to see who could do better [in picking the games]." Ersin's oddsmaking career did not end there. "Billy Hecht owned a liquor store I used to go in, and we got to talking. He had just started something called the Minneapolis Gorham Press. He didn't know anything about setting a line, and so he hired me and a couple of other guys. I liked handicapping on football best; it's the best betting sport, particularly with the use of the point spread." The Minneapolis Gorham Press, which was created by Hecht in or about 1937, became the first national oddsmaking institution. Many considered its newsletter to be a bible for gamblers, the first national "service" for bookmakers to set and distribute the line a list of point spreads on sporting events. Its subscribers, who numbered only a few hundred, were also invited to telephone in during the week and receive the latest adjustments to the line on the upcoming games. Speaking of the hazards of "suspicious" games, Ersin says, "We suspected that games were fixed in the thirties and forties, but we could never find out for sure. So the games we didn't want much action on we just circled. We always knew what was going on when we got loaded up with bets on them: unnatural money. We were scared of pro games because we didn't know what was going on with them. There were too many winners. We thought the fix was in often enough. Our clients complained that they wanted a line on the pro games, but we wouldn't give it to them very often-because we just didn't trust the games." Five-feet-six Leo Hirschfield—who had lost the hearing in his right ear after a bout with influenza while in the Marine Corps during World War I—bought into the Gorham Press in 1940 and became Hecht's partner. Hirschfield changed the name of the company to Athletic Publications, Inc.; and its newsletter, We ekly Gridiron Record, became better known as simply The Green Sheet. The whole operation consisted of only eighteen full-time employees but, at its height, annually grossed nearly $10 million. Mort Olshan, who was like a "surrogate son" to Hirschfield, worked on The Green Sheet along with Karl Ersin, Jimmy Harris, and Joe Katzman, who was the senior handicapper. Olshan told me, "There were four handicappers with Leo Herschfield, who was the active partner with a one-third interest and ran the service operation. I never met Billy Hecht in my whole life; he was never around. He had another partner [Joe Numero] in the separate bookmaking part of the operation. They were bookmakers and took the action. They had separate jobs and separate offices from the service activity. "Leo was a totally honest man, and he avoided all the shady associations. He had a mind that worked like a computer. Even though he wasn't a sports fanatic who followed the games religiously, and he didn't have anything to do with the actual handicapping of the games, he knew instinctively when a wrong line was set." Born in 1926, Olshan is a Buffalo native and a Marine combat veteran who saw action in Okinawa in World War II. He attended the University of Buffalo for one year, hoping to become either a sports reporter or play-by-play announcer. He says that he, too, has been collecting newspaper and magazine clippings about football since he was seven years old. "I read an article entitled 'The Wizard of Odds' about Leo and the Minneapolis line in Collier's magazine, and on an impulse I went to Minneapolis to ask Leo for a job. I thought that there was excitement in betting and handicapping, and that there might be a future in it for me. Athletic Publications, Inc., also published player statistics and the schedules for all the games in the entire country, including the rotation of the games-which was crucial to the industry and really united it. "I started working at The Green Sheet in 1948 making ninety dollars a week as a statistician. By the end of my first month, my salary was increased to a hundred. And after a couple more months, I was raised to a hundred and fifteen dollars. I had tears in my eyes when they gave me those raises, because that was big money for a twenty-two-year-old man at the time. When I got there, we expanded The Green Sheet with different features and write-ups, so that it became more of a full-service, multidimensional publication with interesting stories and analyses of games." Olshan says that each of The Green Sheet handicappers worked independently of one another. "We would read everything we could get our hands on-maybe as many as forty daily newspapers each day. Most of our work was done on Saturday and Sunday after we analyzed the college and professional games. On the basis of our information, we would set our own lines. "Every Monday morning, the four of us then went into Leo's office with our own numbers. Because we were trying to equalize or balance the public's money on each game, we would have to carefully assess the strengths and weaknesses of the two teams and the public's perception of the games and then anticipate how the public would bet. It was rare, if ever, that we could achieve a totally even distribution of the betting, but we worked hard to get as close as possible. Joe Katzman would compare our individual point spreads, and we would often argue over the numbers. Joe would arbitrate the differences and would make his own adjustments based on the discussion. He would then set the ultimate line that would then be distributed around the country. The whole idea was to come up with a line that our subscribers could use and profit by."[2] As NFL commissioner, Bert Bell began the process of calling cooperative bookmakers and gamblers, particularly those associated with the Minneapolis line, during the week before NFL games were played. His intent was to discover if there were any unusual fluctuations in the betting line. "He took to the grave with him the names of his contacts in the underworld," Bell's son Upton told me. "My father had three phones. One was for regular use. Another was for the players who could call him at any time. And there was a third phone that he used for the gamblers and the people who were feeding him information about the odds or about a player's behavior. All of these guys had a code name. And Bert Bell was the only one who had these names. "There was a certain honor among them. They wanted the games on the up-and-up because if they placed a bet they wanted to know that some guy down the line wasn't fixing the game. They knew if they told Bert Bell, they could get to the bottom of it. If he saw any great fluctuations from Monday right up to game time on Sunday, he was right on the phone to the team involved." Among other bookmakers Bell kept in touch with were those controlled by Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and the then boss of the New Orleans Mafia, Sylvester Carolla. The three syndicate figures had agreed in 1947 to create "a national communications center in New Orleans to transmit financial information. Such a clearinghouse would, for instance, make it possible for the bookmaking syndicate in New York to know instantly if a horse, ball team, or what have you was being heavily wagered elsewhere in the nation. Any break in the betting patterns would indicate a fix or an attempt to swindle the syndicate."[3] Ed Curd, Costello's personal bookmaker, set a major national line on sporting events during the late 1940s that rivaled that published by The Green Sheet. C urd told me that he had met Costello in 1946. "Costello said that he could handicap his own horses and his baseball games, but he wanted me to give him a football team or two. What was I going to say? No? He told me that if I ever needed anything in New York, that I shouldn't hesitate to call on him. "There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me. And we did business together for several years. Later on, he wanted me to go to Vegas, and he would see that I was taken care of. But I turned him down. I always thought that staying in the middle of the road was best for me. I wanted to do my own thing. I didn't want any partners."[4] Operating with two Teletype machines, three telephones strictly for long-distance business, and four secretaries, Curd ran his line out of Kentucky and distributed it across the country. He also was responsible for a new innovation in gambling: 11-10, the bookmaker's standard 10 percent vigorish on all losing bets. "We had so much business on football that we had two ways of dealing," Curd recalls. "We had nine to ten odds for up to fourteen points, that's ninety cents on the dollar. And we had six to five for fourteen and over. And then we had an outcome price on every game-sometimes as ridiculous as one to twenty and fifteen to one. We had a price on every game. Well, we had control of the business. But it was getting awkward handling everything. "So one Monday morning, just before we sent out the line, I said, 'We're going to change things, and see if we can get away with it.' What I wanted to do was get rid of the outcome prices. I wanted to eliminate them altogether. But they were being dealt all over the country. So I knew I had to give the operators around the country something better to work with, more money. So I made up my mind that regardless whether there was a bet on a four-point game or a twenty-point game, I'd put it right on the spot. Let them lay eleven to ten [put up $11 to make $101, and that would be our commission. "When we came out that Monday, each place saw it the way we saw it. Eleven to ten looked more inviting and less trouble for the operator. It was accepted because they could keep their businesses together a lot easier. And eleven to ten has been the standard ever since." Curd also became known for his sixth sense about how the injuries of players would affect the point spreads of the games their teams played. Meantime, when Frank Filchock's NFL suspension was lifted, he joined the Baltimore Colts, which was part of a new, rival football league called the All-American Football Conference (AAFC), which had been founded in June 1944. The new league, fielding eight teams, had been dreamed up by influential Chica go Tribune sports editor Arch Ward. Twice offered the position as NFL commissioner in 1940 and 1941, Ward turned it down both times. Instead he had recommended Elmer Layden for the job. Several early team owners in the AAFC were high-stakes gamblers, including trucking executive John L. Keeshin, who had bought the Chicago Rockets; Indiana oil company president Ray Ryan, who had petitioned for a New York team with the widow of baseball star Lou Gehrig; New York Yankees owner Dan Topping and his minority partner, developer Del E. Webb; racetrack owner Ben Lindheimer of Chicago, who bought the Los Angeles Dons along with actor Don Ameche, who had tried but failed to obtain an NFL team; and cab company owner Mickey McBride, who founded the Cleveland Browns, named after his head coach, Paul Brown.[5] The owner of a Chicago trucking company, Keeshin was known to have made a direct cash "loan" to James R. Hoffa, then the head of the Central Conference of Teamsters.[6] Government investigators later viewed the loan as nothing more than the price for labor peace with the Teamsters. Also a racetrack owner, Keeshin did business with Allen M. Dorfman, Hoffa's handpicked fiduciary manager of the Teamsters' Central States Health and Welfare Fund-and later the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund. Dorfman's stepfather, Paul "Red" Dorfman, had been the head of the corrupt Chicago Wastehandlers Union and was responsible for introducing Hoffa to numerous Midwestern underworld figures. Although both Keeshin and the Dorfmans principally lived in Chicago, they each had second houses in Eagle River, Wisconsin, and were close friends. Ray Ryan proudly proclaimed himself as one of the biggest gamblers in the country, particularly on professional football games. A close associate of Frank Erickson and Texas oil tycoons H. L. Hunt and Jack Davis, Ryan was the co-owner of the Mount Kenya Safari Club in Africa, along with actor William Holden.[7] Members included Erickson, as well as East Coast Mafia figures Gerardo Catena and Tommy and Pasquale Eboli. Ryan had also been a partner in the syndicate that purchased RKO Pictures Corporation from Howard Hughes in 1952. However, after The Wall Street journal reported that Ryan and his partners had all been involved with "organized crime, fraudulent mail-order schemes, and big-time gambling," and Ryan was specifically linked to mobster Frank Costello, the RKO deal collapsed. The studio's ownership reverted back to Hughes-who kept the $1.5 million down payment put up by Ryan and his partners. A onetime associate of Hughes told me, "Howard Hughes knew the kind of people he was dealing with; he always did. He knew their backgrounds, and he knew their associations. That was the way he operated ... He took their down payment and then waited. At the right time, he leaked the story to the press." Ryan was later shaken down for $60,000 by Chicago mobster Marshall Caifano. Ryan testified against him in court and helped send him to jail for ten years. Ryan was later killed in Evansville, Indiana, when his car was bombed. Caifano was suspected of ordering the murder but was never prosecuted. Ryan and Mrs. Gehrig had withdrawn their interests in the AAFC franchise before league play began. The New York franchise then went to Dan Topping, the president of the New York Yankees baseball team. Topping had owned the Brooklyn Dodgers franchise of the NFL but switched to the AAFC, also calling his new team the New York Yankees. Topping's partner in the Yankees baseball and football franchises was Del E. Webb, an associate of numerous organizedcrime figures. A builder from Phoenix, Webb was the contractor selected by gangster Bugsy Siegel to build the Flamingo, the first major hotel/casino in Las Vegas. Along with his building contract, Webb also received a 10 percent interest in Siegel's hotel. Later, Webb built and owned the Sahara hotel/casino and had other casino holdings in Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe. Ben Lindheimer bought the Los Angeles franchise and called it the Los Angeles Dons, named after his partner, actor Don Ameche. Lindheimer was the overlord of Chicago's racetracks. He was closely associated with the Chicago underworld. His personal attorney was Sidney Korshak, a young mouthpiece for the old Capone mob, who had also been hired by Ray Ryan to handle labor negoti ations for RKO before the deal with Hughes collapsed. Through political favors and payoffs, Lindheimer was principally responsible for the creation of the Illinois Racing Commission and was appointed as the chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. In an attempt to legalize the state's three thousand bookmakers, Lindheimer later led the lobby to legalize offtrack betting. He was supported by the state attorney general Otto Kerner.[8] However, the governor vetoed the bill. pps. 57-67 -[notes]— CHAPTER 5 1. See William Barry Furlong's article "Of 'lines,' 'point spreads' and middles,'" The New York Times Magazine, 2 January 1977. Furlong also quotes oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek as saying, "I used to go to Chicago just to watch him [McNeil] work." Also, the March 10, 1986, issue of Sports Illustrated feat ured a special report on gambling, which included a sidebar story, "The Brain That Gave Us the Point Spread," that gave McNeil the credit. "In 1950, McNeil suddenly quit bookmaking," reported SI's Robert H. Boyle. "He later told a friend he did so because the Mob wanted 'to go partners with my brain.'" 2. Olshan peeled off from The Green Sheet in 1952 and began his own publication. In 1957, he founded Nation- Wide Football, a six-panel publication that covered college and professional football games. In 1966, Nat ion-Wide Football became known as The Gold Sheet, with Olshan as its publisher. It has become the premier handicapping service in the United States. 3. David Leon Chandler, Brothers in Blood: The Rise of the Criminal Brotherhoods (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1975), pp. 181-82. Carolla, who was deported to Sicily in April 1947, was succeeded as the boss of the New Orleans Mafia by Carlos Marcello. 4. According to the FBI, through Curd, Costello won a traceable $26,000 on football games in 1950 alone. During the Kefauver Committee hearings, Costello slipped up and identified Curd as the bookmaker who handled his bets on football games. Curd, who owned a large horse-breeding farm in Lexington and was viewed by all who knew him as a genuine "Southern gentleman," sold his house and fled the country before being indicted for federal tax evasion. Curd first went to Montreal but was expelled by the Canadian government. He later surrendered to authorities in Detroit, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $400,000. After being released from prison in 1959, Curd moved to the Bahamas. Curd told me that he has forgiven Costello for fingering him. "I was really upset at the time, but he never dreamed that anything would come of it." 5. Other AAFC owners were baseball legend Branch Rickey and publisher Gerald Smith of the Brooklyn Dodgers, oil company executives James Brueil and Will Bennett of the Buffalo Bisons (the Buffalo Bills in 1947), Harvey Hester of the Miami Seahawks, and lumber company executive Tony Morabito of the San Francisco 49ers. After the 1946 season, the Miami team was replaced by the Baltimore Colts, owned by Washington businessman Robert H. Rodenberg. James Crowley was selected as the first AAFC commissioner but later resigned to take over the Chicago Rockets. 6. Hoffa became an international vice president of the union in 1952 under Teamsters president Dave Beck. In 1957, after Beck's indictment for theft, Hoffa was elected general president. Hoffa's election contributed to the decision to expel the Teamsters from the AFL-CIO. 7. Ryan also had some oil investments with oddsmaker Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder. 8. Ben Lindheimer's daughter is Marjorie Everett, who took over his racing empire after his death in 1960. She blamed Korshak for her father's fatal heart attack because the attorney had failed to head off a strike at one of Lindheimer's Illinois racetracks. State attorney general Otto Kerner, who later became Illinois' governor, was convicted on bribery, perjury, tax evasion, and mail fraud charges after he received stock at a cut-rate price from Everett's racetracks in return for favorable treatment. Everett was not charged with any wrongdoing. --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
