-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Interference Dan E. Moldea©1989 William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York, NY ISBN 0-688-08303-X ---[11]-- 12 The Gambling Scandal Erupts CARROLL ROSENBLOOM WAS FLYING high. By 1962, he, Morris Mac Schwebel, and Lou Chesler were still the three largest stockholders in Seven Arts, which had already purchased the film libraries of Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century-Fox. Also that year, Seven Arts purchased the film library of MCA/ Universal Pictures for $21.5 million with a down payment of $7.5 million.[1] Since the back-to-back NFL championship seasons in 1958 and 1959, Rosenbloom and his Baltimore Colts had barely played .500 ball but were doing so in front of large, enthusiastic crowds. Rosenbloom was making a fortune on his team. Three of the members of that Colts team-Alan Ameche, Joe Campanella, and Gino Marchetti-had come to Rosenbloom to borrow $100,000 to help them finance a local small restaurant. Without flinching, Rosenbloom loaned them the money. It was another good bet. The little restaurant became the first of the Gino's national fast-food franchises. Seeing how successful the experiment was, Rosenbloom continued to loan his players money when they wanted to start their own businesses. Of course, Rosenbloom became a major stockholder in their companies. "Our objective is to help all our players invest their money well," Rosenbloom told reporter Bob Oates. "I don't believe the bromide: 'The only good ball player is a hungry ballplayer.' I don't want any hungry athletes around me. The way to win games and titles is with 40 players who are free to give their undivided attention to football because they don't have a worry in the world." He also saw to it that his players were perennially among the highest-paid in the NFL. Rosenbloom was a close friend of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy and his son Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts, a member of the Senate Rackets Committee who had become the President of the United States in 1961. Young Kennedy was one of Rosenbloom's golf partners. According to author Doris Kearns Goodwin, on the day Kennedy was elected, Rosenbloom was out on the lawn of the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, playing touch football with Kennedy friends and family. At dinner on election night, Rosenbloom was one of only three friends present and had flown in a bushel of hard-shell crabs from the Chesapeake Bay for the occasion.[2] Kennedy family spokesman, Steve Smith, who was also present at the election night dinner, told me that he did not recall Rosenbloom's being there. He did, however, say that Rosenbloom and Joe Kennedy had been members of the same country club in Palm Beach, Florida. "There was never any business relationship between Rosenbloom and any member of the Kennedy family that I'm aware of. He was a friend, and the family liked him," Smith said. Rosenbloom had given Robert F. Kennedy a game ball signed by the members of the 1958 World Champion Colts. Kennedy kept the ball in his office when he became U.S. attorney general under his brother. "Rosenbloom was a great, great friend of Joe Kennedy," says Rosenbloom's longtime friend and business partner Tex McCrary. "And he was a great friend of Jack Kennedy. Carroll worshipped Jack Kennedy. And he used to love quoting old Joe. He used to love telling a joke Joe Kennedy used to tell him: 'Never trust an Irishman with a bottle of booze or a Jew with a pack of matches.’" Ironically, in April 1962, four insurance companies initiated lawsuits against Rosenbloom, charging that he had filed false reports about a fire at his Margate, New Jersey, house on September 5, 1950. The companies hired a Miami private investigator, Sam Benton, to look into the charges that Rosenbloom had hired an arsonist to burn down his house in order to collect the fire insurance. The companies charged that Rosenbloom had received $152,529 on the basis of the false reports. The companies accused Rosenbloom of making "false statements intending to deceive and defraud" them. The suit demanded repayment of the amount given to Rosenbloom, along with 6 percent interest and $500,000 in punitive damages. And that was only the beginning. Rosenbloom's old friend Mike McLaney still had been experiencing severe financial troubles a year after Castro took over Cuba and closed down the casinos, which cost McLaney and his two partners, Rosenbloom and Chesler, a fortune. Rosenbloom and Chesler could afford it, but McLaney could not. In the wake of the fall of Cuba, McLaney claimed that Rosenbloom had reneged on a deal to permit him to repurchase his stock in Universal Controls at the original sale price. Consequently, McLaney sued Rosenbloom in September 1960 for $4.25 million. U.S. District judge Joseph Lieb of Miami dismissed McLaney's suit and sealed all the evidence in the case, which included a series of damaging affidavits and depositions filed against Rosenbloom. In October 1962, private investigator Benton, a close friend of McLaney, went to Rozelle with a new, reconstructed version of the sealed material against Rosenbloom. The documents had been obtained while Benton was working for the insurance companies that had accused Rosenbloom of fraud. On December 6, 1962, in the midst of Rozelle's cursory investigation of Rosenbloom, the Colts' owner authorized his attorneys to turn over the remaining sealed documents in the case to Rozelle for a private review. However, Rosenbloom's attorneys warned that the public release of the document s "would be scandalous in nature." Rosenbloom threatened a $7.5 million lawsuit if they were revealed. The figure was based on the 1963 estimated worth of the Colts. Rosenbloom believed that McLaney's charges could jeopardize his ownership of the franchise. Nevertheless, believing that Rozelle was not taking the evidence seriously, and in defiance of Rosenbloom's threat, Benton and McLaney then circulated forty copies of the affidavits and depositions at the annual meeting of the NFL owners at the Kenilworth Hotel in Bal Harbour in January 1963.[3] Among these depositions was one filed by Miami restaurant owner Charles Schwartz, who had known Rosenbloom for twenty years and had been McLaney's operating partner in the Havana casino. Schwartz stated that he had received a telephone call from Beldon Katleman, the owner of the El Rancho Vegas, a casino in Las Vegas. Katleman had won "a lot of money" from Rosenbloom playing gin rummy and had called Schwartz to complain that Rosenbloom had been avoiding him. When Schwartz called Rosenbloom and gave him Katleman's message, Rosenbloom replied, "Oh, I was playing gin, and I had to make a plane, and we never finished the game. It's an unfinished game, and we are supposed to continue it." Eventually, the two men settled the debt. Rosenbloom in his 1960 deposition confirmed that he had owed the money to Katleman and that McLaney and Schwartz had served as intermediaries. He said that he settled with Katleman for $25,000 and added that the original debt was $600,000—but that they had been playing "for fun." McLaney, who was having additional financial difficulties at the time of his suit against Rosenbloom and was claiming nearly $164,000 in debts, also filed more serious charges against Rosenbloom, alleging that the Colts' owner had bet against his own team in a 1953 game between Baltimore and the San Francisco 49ers. In a pretrial deposition in his case against Rosenbloom, McLaney said of his business relationship with the Colts' owner, "One of the other transactions was my betting knowledge and background, and a business relationship was formed for the purpose of betting large sums of money on football games ... On some occasions we would not be equal partners because Mr. Rosenbloom had mu ch more money than I had and was able to bet higher, On one occasion, for instance, he bet as high as fiftyfive thousand dollars against his own team, the Baltimore Colts, against the [San Francisco 49ers]."[4] How credible was McLaney's statement? Robert J. McGarvey was an-eleven-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department and Rosenbloom's personal aide from 1951 to 1954. McGarvey claimed, "After Mr. Rosenbloom purchased the Baltimore Colts ... one of the services I performed for him during 1953-54 was placing his bets, or assisting in the placing of his bets on professional football games. During this period Mr. Rosenbloom bet frequently and in large amounts ... Mr. Rosenbloom wagered to win and, when he felt his own team would not win, bet against the Colts on such occasions. "I remember that in the last game in the 1953 season, when his Colts were playing the Forty-niners on the West Coast, Mr. Rosenbloom bet a large sum of money against his own team and won. In another affidavit, Larry E. Murphy, a former caddy who had met Rosenbloom and McGarvey at the LaGorce Country Club in Miami Beach, confirmed this and also stated, "I know that he frequently bet on professional football games and many times bet against his own team." In still another affidavit, Florida businessman Richard Melvin, a golfing partner of Rosenbloom and the husband of bandleader Tommy Dorsey's widow, said, "I distinctly remember that during one professional football season he made nine straight winning bets on professional football games." The Colts and the 49ers game in question was played on December 13, 1953, at San Francisco's Kezar Stadium. The Colts, who were twenty-three-point underdogs, lost the game, 45-14. It was the last game of the regular season for both teams. The Colts' record that year—Rosenbloom's first in the NFL—was three wins and nine losses. In the Colts' first possession of the game, Buddy Young, fielding a punt, ran ninety-two yards for what appeared to be the first score of the game. But the play was called back because Baltimore had too many men on the field. The twelfth man was not identified by officials. In its report on the game, The San Francisco Examiner wrote: "That delay by the Colts' unidentified twelfth man in clearing the premises, and the loss of the squirming [sic] touchdown could have altered the course of the game. It might have set the Colts afire for an upset. "However, that was only a longshot possibility because of the Colts' lack of man power." The Colts racked up only two yards passing and twenty-two yards rushing in the first half. Down 31-7 at halftime-and 31-30 against the spread-the Colts totaled only 136 yards for the entire game. The 49ers completely outmanned the Colts and dominated the contest. McLaney had charged that Rosenbloom had intentionally "decided to leave several of his fine players at home." In fact, the Colts played the game without their starting quarterback, Fred Enke, and their best running back, George Taliaferro, as well as other starters. However, in Rosenbloom's defense, Taliaferro told me, "There was Fred Enke, Dick Flowers, and Jack DelBello. Those were the quarterbacks. They couldn't play. Each of them was injured. That prompted -Keith Molesworth, the Colts' head coach, to ask me if I could play quarterback. But I had never taken a snap directly from the center-where I had to put my hands right under his hind end. "So I played quarterback when the Colts played the Los Angeles Rams in Baltimore, two weeks before the Forty-niners game. We lost that one, twenty-one to thirteen. The week before the Forty-niners game, we played the Rams again-this time in Los Angeles. During that game, I snapped the cartilage in the interior portion of my right knee.[5 ]There was no way that I could play in the Forty-niners game. Fred Enke was not able to play either. "Molesworth was so desperate for a quarterback that he just asked everyone, 'Is there anyone on this team who can throw a football?' So we had a small halfback. He was the guy who played quarterback in the San Francisco game. He had never played quarterback in his life. But we didn't have anyone else." Under oath in 1960, Rosenbloom denied all charges of gambling on or against the Colts. The Colts' owner added that although he was a gambler and had made numerous wagers on the golf course with McLaney, he had never made a bet on a professional football game since buying the Colts in 1953. To say or do anything to the contrary would have violated NFL rules and could have cost him his franchise. After Benton had circulated the documents, Rozelle was asked by reporters why the case had lain dormant for so long. Rozelle simply replied, "We are exploring the allegations. We do not comment publicly on specific matters we are exploring." Rozelle also said that there had been a time problem-because the 1962 football season had just ended and other investigations were being carried on. In the midst of the Rosenbloom investigation, another unrelated betting scandal suddenly went public. On January 4, 1963, Chicago Bears owner George Halas, a friend of Rosenbloom, was quoted in The Chicago Tribune, saying that the NFL was investigating the possible gambling activities by "a member of a Midwest team." Halas added that he had given the information to Rozelle, who was investigating the charges.[6] Rumors about possible widespread gambling among NFL players had begun early in the 1962 season after the heavily favored Green Bay Packers did not cover the spread in its 9-7 defeat of the Detroit Lions in a contest played in Green Bay. Large bets and unnatural money had appeared on this game, which had been placed by beards who had received money from supposedly untraceable sources. Consequently, East Coast bookmakers took several subsequent NFL games off the boards. After Halas made his statement, Rozelle confirmed that several members of the Bears team, along with players from as many as four other teams, were being investigated-because they "associated with undesirable types." Rozelle added, "We haven't found any fire, but anytime we see any smoke we look fast." He also said that the NFL looked into at least fifteen such cases each year. "Normally the only thing they produce is misjudgment on the part of players who are seen in the wrong places talking perhaps with the wrong kinds of people. We have not found a basis for any criminal prosecution. Usually the players are warned, and they immediately get back into line." Reportedly, Halas had been miffed because similar charges had been made against the Bears' star fullback, thirty-one-year-old Rick Casares. Supposedly cleared in a probe of his associations with a gambler by passing two polygraph tests, Casares, who liked to gamble in Las Vegas, had admitted a relationship with a Chicago gambler, known only as Zaza, which continued after the Bears and the NFL had instructed him to end it. The first lie detector test had been administered after Casares fumbled twice in a game between the Bears and the Los Angeles Rams in October 1961. He took the second test only a few weeks before the 1963 betting scandal had flared up-in the midst of dramatic changes in the point spreads of recent games. During the polygraph examination, Casares was specifically asked: "Did you ever attempt to shave points?" "Did you deliberately fumble?" "Have you ever been offered money to shave points?" Casares answered no to all three questions and passed. However, when he answered no to the fourth question, "Is there anything in your personal life for which you could be pressured?" the needle of the polygraph jumped off the page. Casares explained that he had been the driver of a car in 1953 that crashed head-on into another vehicle. His female companion had been killed. After Casares passed the second test, Halas declared, "The investigation can end right now because I'm convinced not a single one of the Bears has ever tried to shave points or otherwise fix an NFL game." What was not publicly known at the time was that Casares's "godfather" was Florida Mafia boss Santos Trafficante of Tampa, according to two of the player's close friends. One of these friends alleged, "Rick Casares bet. I remember in one particular game. All of the players, the water boys, everybody was standing on the sideline, totally involved with the game, except Rick-who was sitting alone on the bench with his eye on the scoreboard and the clock. He wasn't paying a bit of attention to the game. He was a total character, and he loved to gamble. He loved to gamble!" Also investigated was Bob St. Clair, a star tackle for the San Francisco 49ers, who in 1956 had been loaned $6,000 against his salary and, along with several unknown people, had invested in a failed oil project that cost the player $7,000. St. Clair insisted that he had not known that several of those involved in the deal were heavy gamblers with ties to major underworld figures. Reporter Bob Curran wrote, "St. Clair, Rozelle's friend when they were undergraduates at San Francisco, phoned Rozelle and said, 'They're crucifying me in the papers out here, calling me a crook and rat without even benefit of a trial. You've got to announce your findings that I'm not guilty.' "Rozelle told him, 'Sorry, Bob, we're going to have to make one announcement that will cover every case we've investigated that has been made public.' "[7] AFL commissioner Joe Foss told reporters that his league was not the target of any investigations. "I'm not so naive, however, to think that in any league of this kind, with so many players, there may not be a few boys who would have some contact or association with people who might be considered tainted." Meantime, yet another NFL investigation concentrated on Detroit Lions star defensive tackle Alex Karras, who was accused of being seen with several Detroit gamblers in a front-page report in The Detroit News on January 7, 1963. Karras initially had become a target because of his part ownership in the Lindell Bar with a known gambler and the gambler's brother. The all-pro tackle simply announced that he would quit football before selling his interest in the bar, and his colorful defiance brought him even more attention. Karras told me, "The NFL asked me to leave the bar because of the unsavory characters who walked into the bar. I said, 'Fine, I'll do that, just as long as you don't let the unsavory characters come into the stadium.' The NFL did not reply to that. I never worried about whether the league gave me permission or not. I was making nine thousand dollars a year playing football and eighteen thousand with the bar. It didn't make much sense to leave the bar to go play football." Then, Karras was interviewed by NBC reporter David Burke on January 13. Early in the interview, Karras stated, "I enjoy betting ... I assume that there is betting going on in the league." During later questioning, Karras was asked, "Have you ever bet on a game in which you were playing?" "Yes, I have," Karras replied. Karras's indiscretion forced the scandal to explode when the interview was aired on January 16 on NBC's evening news program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report. When told of Karras's appearance on the news program, Rozelle said, "If Karras said that, he may have a real problem." pps.109-117 --[notes]— CHAPTER 12 1. The Universal film library had been purchased by MCA, the Hollywood entertainment conglomerate, in 1962 after MCA bought out Decca Records, the parent company of Universal Pictures. The U.S. justice Department, which had filed an antitrust action against MCA, forced the Hollywood company, among other demands, to sell the entire Universal library, with the exception of fourteen movies that MCA was permitted to keep. 2. Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga (N ew York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1987), p. 804. 3. Gene Miller, a reporter for The Miami Herald, also obtained the Benton package and was the first to report its contents. 4. McLaney had originally testified, erroneously, that Rosenbloom had bet on the Colts, whom he claimed had won the game. He also erroneously stated that the opposing team was the Pittsburgh Steelers. Explaining these discrepancies, McLaney's attorney simply said, "He had the wrong game. It was a different one." 5. Taliaferro told me that he was so badly hurt he required surgery. The orthopedic surgeon who handled the knee operation was Danny Fortmann, a former guard with the Chicago Bears. The Colts lost that final game with the Rams of the 1953 season, 45-2. 6. The Tribune story also included a quote from Rozelle—a quote that had been apparently fabricated. Rozelle had supposedly said, "Halas has asked me to track down the validity of these rumors. This we are now doing. We are always alert to protect the honesty of professional football. As of the moment, the investigation continues. There now is nothing to report. When there is, we will make public immediately all the facts." Rozelle denied ever being interviewed by the Tribune and was reportedly upset with Halas's statement because it violated the league's rule that forbid NFL personnel from commenting on internal investigations in progress. 7. Bob Curran, The $400,000 Quarterback On The League That Came in from the Cold (New York: Macmillan Co., 1965), p. 42. CHAPTER 12 1. The Universal film library had been purchased by MCA, the Hollywood entertainment conglomerate, in 1962 after MCA bought out Decca Records, the parent company of Universal Pictures. The U.S. justice Department, which had filed an antitrust action against MCA, forced the Hollywood company, among other demands, to sell the entire Universal library, with the exception of fourteen movies that MCA was permitted to keep. 2. Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga (N ew York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1987), p. 804. 3. Gene Miller, a reporter for The Miami Herald, also obtained the Benton package and was the first to report its contents. 4. McLaney had originally testified, erroneously, that Rosenbloom had bet on the Colts, whom he claimed had won the game. He also erroneously stated that the opposing team was the Pittsburgh Steelers. Explaining these discrepancies, McLaney's attorney simply said, "He had the wrong game. It was a different one." 5. Taliaferro told me that he was so badly hurt he required surgery. The orthopedic surgeon who handled the knee operation was Danny Fortmann, a former guard with the Chicago Bears. The Colts lost that final game with the Rams of the 1953 season, 45-2. 6. The Tribune story also included a quote from Rozelle—a quote that had been apparently fabricated. Rozelle had supposedly said, "Halas has asked me to track down the validity of these rumors. This we are now doing. We are always alert to protect the honesty of professional football. As of the moment, the investigation continues. There now is nothing to report. When there is, we will make public immediately all the facts." Rozelle denied ever being interviewed by the Tribune and was reportedly upset with Halas's statement because it violated the league's rule that forbid NFL personnel from commenting on internal investigations in progress. 7. Bob Curran, The $400,000 Quarterback On The League That Came in from the Cold (New York: Macmillan Co., 1965), p. 42. --[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. 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