-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Interference Dan E. Moldea©1989 William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York, NY ISBN 0-688-08303-X ---[8]-- 9 Winning Some and Losing Some ON DECEMBER 28,1958, nationally televised professional football came of age when Carroll Rosenbloom's Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants, 23-17, for the NFL championship. After missing an earlier attempt, Colts placekicker Steve Myhra booted a twenty-yard field goal with seven seconds left to play in regulation, tying the game at 17-17. The game then went into the first sudden-death play-off in postseason play. The Giants won the toss and chose to receive. However, they failed to make a first down and were forced to punt. The Colts received the Giants' punt and marched eighty yards downfield in thirteen plays. The Colts' Johnny Unitas—a quarterback drafted and released by the Pittsburgh Steelers whom Rosenbloom signed for a mere $7,000 in 1956—completed four passes during the drive. Halfback Alan Ameche also tore off a twenty-three-yard run on a trap play. A few plays later, with second down and goal-to-go on the Giants eight yard line—easy field goal range—the Colts gambled and elected to pass, with Unitas throwing to Jim Mutscheller who was downed on the one yard line. On third down, the Colts' bench again refused to send in kicker Myhra to end the game. Instead, Unitas gave the ball to Ameche, who plunged in for the touchdown and the championship with eight minutes and fifteen seconds elapsed in the sudden-death period. A fourth down decision never had to be made. But, for years, rumors have circulated that the betting line influenced the final play. Johnny Unitas told me that no one had ever told him about any bets on the game. "I called all the plays," he says. "If there were any audibles to be done, I did those at the line of scrimmage. I was responsible for calling for the pass and for calling Ameche's number for the winning touchdown. "Any time there is a field goal situation, the field goal team would be sent in from the bench. But they never sent the field goal team in, so my job was to go for the touchdown." Recalling the final moments of the game, the Colts' head coach, Weeb Ewbank, told me, "We had missed one field goal, and we had luckily gotten one to tie the game to put it in overtime. We did not have a great placekicker. I made the decision not to send the field goal team out there. "In the closing minutes of the game, there was a time-out. John came over and asked, 'What are you thinking?' And I said, 'Alan is a fine ball carrier, and he doesn't fumble the ball.' But the one thing we needed was to have the ball in front of the goalposts because we wanted an opportunity to kick if we had to. "When John faded back to pass, I was afraid that somebody would hook his arm. I have seen too many times where somebody hooks an arm, misses an assignment, or just falls down. Too many things could happen. When anyone asks me why we passed, I tell them, 'Ask John. He was the one who called it."[1] According to author Kay Iselin Gilman, "There was gossip among so-called Football Insiders that owner Carroll Rosenbloom had placed a mammoth bet on the game and that Weeb called for a touchdown to ensure that the Colts would beat the point spread. Weeb termed these innuendos 'So much nonsense, I had no idea what the point spread was and I couldn't have cared less.' "[2] During my interview with Ewbank, he said, "I was with the Colts for nine years, and I never talked to Carroll Rosenbloom or any of his friends during a ball game. I wasn't even conscious of what the line on the game was. Carroll never told me anything like that. He never gambled around me." However, later in the interview, Ewbank complained that he did have trouble with Rosenbloom because of his attempts to interfere with his on-field coaching decisions. But Rosenbloom didn't deal with Ewbank directly in these instances. "He would say it to the general manager, Don Keller. And then Keller would come to me. And I'd say to Keller, 'Do you feel that way?' And Keller would say, 'No, but I have to sit up there with Carroll.' "Of course, I would do what Carroll wanted. And then I'd get in trouble with the players because they thought I had made the decision." However, Ewbank insists that Rosenbloom did not use Keller as his messenger during the final minutes of the 1958 championship game. Nevertheless, according to numerous figures in sports gambling, the decision by the Colts' management to go for the touchdown instead of the field goal was "no decision." One major bookmaker told me, "You have to understand that a week before the game, the Colts were favored by three and a half points. So much money was coming in on them that the point spread in some places really went up to four and a half, five, and even five and a half points. The talk was that Rosenbloom and some bigtime gambling buddy of his had taken the Colts and given the points and bet a million bucks. That's some serious money. If it were your team and you had that kind of money at stake, would you go for the field goal and win the game but lose the bet? Or would you risk everything, go for the touchdown to win it all?" Once and for all, Rosenbloom did indeed bet on the game, and it was for a million dollars, which he split with a friend. Oddsmaker Bobby Martin confirmed the wager to me. "We knew that there was unnatural money showing up and driving the spread up," Martin says. "We ascertained that Lou Chesler and another guy were making bets for and with Carroll Rosenbloom. Chesler was known as a big gambler." Ed Curd also knew about the Rosenbloom bet. "[Bookmaker] Gil Beckley was one of my best friends, and he always wanted to get my opinion on things. He told me about the 1958 championship game. Carroll had done his business with Gil. And Carroll was quite a player." Gene Nolan of Baton Rouge, another major bookmaker and close associate of Beckley, confirmed, "Gil handled that overtime game bet." Also, an official with the NFL told me that Bert Bell knew about the bet and had scolded Rosenbloom for his gambling activities. The Colts repeated as NFL champions in 1959, again defeating the Giants, this time, 31-16. It is not known whether Rosenbloom bet heavily or not* on that game. No unnatural money appeared-although, as any gambler knows, Rosenbloom could have learned his lesson and had his bookmaker lay off his large bet in small increments all over the country. Numerous people who knew Rosenbloom also knew that he gambled heavily with Chesler, his business partner. Lou Chesler, a three-hundred-pound Toronto financier, was also a business associate of and occasional bagman for crime-syndicate financier Meyer Lansky of Florida. Chesler made his millions by purchasing Canadian mining stocks, especially Loredo Uranium Mines-through which he had met Lansky and, later, New York mobster "Trigger" Mike Coppola, a major banker in the Mafia's national bookmaking operations. Chesler had met Coppola through Gil Beckley, who had succeeded Frank Erickson as the crime syndicate's top layoff bookmaker during the 1950s after Erickson went to prison. Chesler and Beckley had met while Beckley was operating out of New York; Chesler also made bets with Beckley's bookmaker friends Max Courtney and Frank Ritter, the founders of the Courtney-Reed Sports Service of New York and later Montreal.[3] Courtney and Ritter, both former associates of Erickson and New York underworld figure Dutch Schultz, were later expelled from Canada and returned to the United States where they were joined by a third bookmaker, Charles Brudner. Everyone in the Montreal crowd worked alongside Charles Gordon, formerly of the Louisiana/ Texas Gulf Coast region, who was described by the Kefauver Committee as "a main cog in a national football betting syndicate." In 1956, Chesler, who was then operating in the United States, became part of the investment syndicate that took over the Florida-based Chemical Research Company and renamed it the General Development Corporation, a home-building and financing firm that developed three small Florida communities.[4] Carroll Rosenbloom was among the major stockholders in General Development, along with publisher Gardner Cowles and investment banker John Weinberg. Another big stockholder was Miami businessman Max Orovitz, also a longtime associate of Meyer Lansky. Public-relations man John Reagan "Tex" McCrary, a business partner of Rosenbloom and Chesler, told me, "I knew Carroll very well. I first met him through Chesler. He was Chesler's best friend. And they were clients of my PR firm. We handled public relations for the General Development Corporation." Another associate of Chesler and Rosenbloom explains, "Chesler didn't control General Development, but he brought the company the money with which it could go forward and develop these various parts of Florida. Chesler was way ahead of that parade. The trouble with Chesler was that he loved to get drunk at night, and that was dangerous." That same year, Chesler began to purchase failed companies and use them to obtain millions of dollars in bank loans. Along with Carroll Rosenbloom and New York attorney Morris Mac Schwebel, he rebuilt one of these companies, Universal Products, and renamed it Universal Controls—a company then listed on the New York Stock Exchange that specialized in the leasing of pari-mutuel equipment for racetracks through its American Totalizator subsidiary. Schwebel told me, "Carroll was an extremely competent businessman. He was a man of his word. Chesler brought Carroll along as an additional investor [in Universal Controls]. I was Carroll's guest on many occasions in his box at the Colts games." In 1956—through another shell company renamed Associated Artists-the Chesler-Rosenbloom-Schwebel group moved into show business. Schwebel continues, "The motion picture studios did not want to invite the wrath of the theater operators if they gave movies to that horrible thing called 'television.' There were simply no movies around for television. Through negotiations that took place between Lou Chesler, Eliot Hyman, myself, and the Warner people, we were able to buy the pre1948 library from Warner Brothers for twenty-one million dollars. Once we got those pictures-all the Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet films-in no time did we pay off the debt incurred. And all of the shareholders made substantial profits. That was the beginning of any decent pictures for television."[5] Along with board chairman Chesler, Schwebel credits Associated Artists president Eliot Hyman with finalizing the deal. "He ended up with Seven Arts, the company that showed the cartoons on television." Seven Arts was founded in 1958 by Hyman and another Associated Artists board member, film producer Ray Stark. It became a motion picture production and distribution firm. The new company then purchased the rights to several movies and cartoons from the Canadian-based Globe Film Productions-in return for nearly 350,000 shares of Seven Arts stock. Soon after, the Chesler-Rosenbloom-Schwebel group purchased Globe's interest in Seven Arts and took control of the company. Chesler became chairman of the board of Seven Arts and its largest stockholder, the second and third largest being directors Mae Schwebel and Carroll Rosenbloom, respectively. Other directors of Seven Arts included Tex McCrary and Maxwell M. Raab, a former Wall Street attorney who, from 1953 to 1958, had served as President Eisenhower's secretary to the Cabinet and a special assistant to Sherman Adams, Eisenhower's political mentor and a Washington powerbroker.[6] Rosenbloom had been a close friend of Florida gambler Michael J. McLaney, a former deputy sheriff in New Orleans who had become a professional golf gambler. McLaney had first introduced the Colts' owner to Chesler, with whom McLaney had owned L'Aiglon, a supper club in Surfside, Miami. In return for that introduction, McLaney was given five thousand shares of stock in Universal Controls as an "introduction fee." "Rosenbloom and Chesler were both criticized for making Christmas presents and birthday presents of stock in General Development and Universal Controls," says McCrary. "And they were accused of touting the stocks [through] the football players on the Colts." McCrary was a regular in Rosenbloom's owner's box during Colts home games; McCrary's son had been the team's water boy. Former Baltimore Colts offensive tackle George Preas, who described Rosenbloom "a super man, top-drawer," told me that he had met both McLaney and Chesler through Rosenbloom. Although he says that he met McLaney only once, "Chesler traveled with the team on occasion. He was a close friend of Carroll." Upton Bell, who later became the Colts' personnel director, says, "When I first went to the Colts' training camp, Lou Chesler and his kids were there." Weeb Ewbank told me that he became acquainted with Chesler through Rosenbloom, too. In September 1958, mobster Morris Dalitz and the Mayfield Road Gang offered to sell their interest in the luxurious, fortresslike, 450-room Hotel Nacional casino in Havana.[7] The sale price was $800,000. McLaney was interested and he immediately went to Rosenbloom and Chesler for financing. Rosenbloom personally gave McLaney $240,000 for his share of the Nacional. To pay for his own interest in the hotel, McLaney sold his stock in Universal for $116,000. After the sale, both Chesler and Rosenbloom began making frequent trips to Cuba.[8] According to numerous government officials, McLaney had sought out and received Lansky's approval to purchase the Nacional. The casino operators enjoyed the cooperation of President Fulgencio Batista, who was nothing more than a Lansky puppet.[9] The Nacional had been the regular meeting place for the Chicago and New York crime syndicates. However, within three months after the sale of the Nacional, Fidel Castro swept down from the Sierra Maestras and overthrew the oppressive, Mafia-controlled Batista regime. After Castro's victory, the underworld-which had hedged its bet and provided support to both sides in the Cuban revolution—believed its investments in Cuba to be safe. However, Castro double-crossed the Mafia the following April. He shut down the gambling and narcotics operations and exiled Lansky; he boarded up the casinos and imprisoned other mobsters.[10] Among the biggest losers in the wake of the Castro betrayal were McLaney, who was one of those imprisoned in Cuba, and his partners, Rosenbloom and Chesler, who were safe in the United States. Also in April 1959, within days after Castro shut down the casinos, Rosenbloom suddenly sold off the bulk of his family's clothing businesses for $7 million in cash and $20 million in stock to the Philadelphia & Reading Corporation, which was a diversified management and holding company with subsidiaries in the apparel, toy, and electrical component industries. [11] pps. 89-95 --[notes]— CHAPTER 9 1. Baltimore, in 1958, had the second worst field goal percentage in the NFL, 35.7 percent, making five of fourteen attempts. On the other hand, Unitas, in 1958, had thrown 263 passes but had only 7 intercepted for a 2.7 percent interception rate, the best in the NFL. And Alan Ameche, in 1958, had fumbled only once in 171 carries; he was second in NFL rushing that year with 791 yards and a 4.6 average per carry. However, during the third quarter of the championship game-with the Colts leading 14-3, and on the Giants one yard line and fourth down—Ameche, after two previous carries on first and second downs, was thrown for a four-yard loss, allowing the Giants to roar back into the game and take the lead, later forcing Myhra to send the game into sudden death. 2. Kay Iselin Gilman, Inside the Pressure Cooken A Season in the Life of the New York jets (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1974) p. 29. Gilman also is the daughter of Phil Iselin, who later became the president of the New York jets. 3. Courtney's real name is Morris Schmertzler and Ritter's alias is Red Reed. 4. The three communities were Port Charlotte, Port Malabar, and Port St. Lucie. 5. The syndicate later purchased the pre-1948 film library of Twentieth Century-Fox. Along with the Warner Brothers deal, the Chesler-Rosenbloom-Schwebel group owned 340 motion pictures. 6. In 1956, Adams became locked in a scandal involving Bernard Goldfine, a close friend, and was forced to resign from his post. A wealthy industrialist from Boston, who had major ties to organized-crime figures and their racetracks, Goldfine had operated a political slush fund and was caught paying off Adams and a U.S. senator. After refusing to testify about his activities, Goldfine was indicted for contempt of Congress and pleaded guilty. Soon after, he was charged with income-tax evasion. In that trial, he was represented by attorney Edward Bennett Williams, who successfully had Goldfine ruled to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. Later, when the court ruled him competent, he pleaded guilty to the tax charge but received a suspended sentence because of his physical health. Goldfine died from a heart attack in 1967. Raab later became the chairman of the board of the International Airport Hotel Systems, Inc., in which Meyer Lansky was a major stockholder. Under President Ronald Reagan, Raab was appointed as the U.S. ambassador to Italy. 7. In 1948, Dalitz left Cleveland and, after a brief stay in Newport, Kentucky, moved to Nevada, where gambling had been legal since 1931. The earliest Nevada casinos appeared in Reno. Dalitz and several members of the Mayfield Road Gang bought the controlling interest in Las Vegas' Desert Inn hotel/casino, which opened in April 1950. In 1959, the Teamsters Union, headed by general president Jimmy Hoffa of Detroit, began making huge loans from its Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund to several Nevada casinos. Among the biggest beneficiaries was the Desert Inn. In all, for the Desert Inn, the Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, and his La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, California, Dalitz, a longtime ally of Hoffa from their early days in Detroit, received well over $200 million from the fund. 8. Chesler's bookmakers-Courtney, Ritter, and Brudner—were also employees of the Havana casinos. 9. Charles Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Vito Genovese, among other mobsters, had cooperated with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the U.S. Navy in World War II—after the war began to turn against the Axis powers, which the Mafia had initially supported. Luciano, who was in prison during the war, received a pardon in 1946 in return for his cooperation. However, he was immediately deported to Sicily. He and another deported mobster, Frank Coppola of Detroit, a top ally of Jimmy Hoffa, began manufacturing heroin in Sicily and exporting it to Montreal, through a gang of French Corsicans, who then distributed it to their underworld contacts in New York and Detroit. This was the earliest version of the French Connection. Needing a southern route into the United States, Luciano went to Cuba in or about 1947 and created a major narcotics ring on the island. Lansky moved his operations from New York to Miami to oversee the Cuban operations, which also included gambling. Lansky was also responsible for greasing Cuban political leaders whose job was to protect the underworld's interests. By the mid-1950s, Lansky's protege, Santos Trafficante, the Mafia boss of Tampa, and Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss of New Orleans, were running, respectively, the bulk of the mob's gambling and narcotics businesses, in concert with other crime families, that had invested in Cuba. 10. The Castro betrayal led to the CIA/Mafia plots to assassinate the Cuban leader, which were arranged as early as December 1959 and were well under way during the summer of 1960. 11. After the sale of Blue Ridge, Rosenbloom continued as the chairman and president of Blue Ridge and of Imperial Shirt Company. The following year, he yielded the presidencies of both companies-but continued to serve on their corporate boards. Another member of the Philadelphia & Reading board of directors was Laurence A. Tisch, who later became the chairman of the board of the Columbia Broadcasting System. --[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! 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