Gaming the Game

by Sean Patrick Griffin

  “I had the bookmakers ranked based on sharpness, knew who took big money bets, and factored that into my decision making when I was looking at the lines. So, if a sharp book-maker had a different line than some other guys, I’d immediately tell everyone to go to those other bookmakers and get what I needed because those other guys had the wrong line. Back then, the market was so slow and so weak; those local bookmakers didn’t get updates on the lines. They’d get their lines at five or six o’clock at night and took bets until the game started at seven or eight. Well, the sharp money out in Vegas and other places was moving the lines in Vegas, but the local bookies were still using whatever number they started with that night. It was stealing money.”

  “There were two of us who were doing the rundowns,” Battista says, “and we each had fifteen stores. So, Tiger was processing the lines for around thirty books, looking for certain changes and numbers. We were constantly updating our charts, tracking all the line changes, our bets, and how much money we had in play. Years later, all those sheets and charts would turn into computerized screens and they’d change themselves, but back in the day, we were doing all that by hand, over the phone, with hundreds—maybe thousands—of phone calls every work shift. Back then, bookmakers weren’t fast enough to get the line changes. These were all old-timers, and they’d be like, ‘Sure, I can give you that number,’ not having a fucking clue why we wanted that number. The technology that evolved later made our lives easier, obviously, but it also hurt us because it took away one of our key advantages in the rundowns. Nobody did what we did, and computers eventually allowed everyone to have all that line info that we used to hustle to get. Back then, we had one guy assigned to update the chart. He had a tough fucking job, because we were constantly handing him our cards—the tickets for our bets, and he had to keep everything straight. His job was made even more difficult because you had a bunch of guys writing fast and a lot of the tickets were tough to read, but he had to get everything right or we would have been fucked.

  “I am telling you, people couldn’t believe what the office activity looked like. It was fucking crazy. We really should have filmed our outfit, especially on a football Sunday, because anybody who ever saw it was blown away by what we were doing. That’s why people respected us so much, because we knew what we were doing and we worked like fucking dogs. We were beaten down after a shift of betting—totally exhausted, but we were in it for the kill and that’s what it took. I honestly think we were the best in the country at what we did back then. We were on top of everything and we were so hungry. In the last ten minutes before a kickoff, I’d call fifty to sixty times for rundowns because numbers would be popping and there were earners all over the place. The only break we got on a football Sunday was just after the one o’clock games kicked off, when we would have food ordered in. Once we got done eating, though, we got geared up for betting the second halves of the one o’clock games and for the four o’clocks. There was such an art to what we were doing. I still get chills thinking about those times, they were so fucking exciting.1

  “There was no such thing as being late for work, especially in the morning on a Saturday or a Sunday during football season. You had to be in that chair and ready to go. You better have eaten, gone to the bathroom, everything, because you couldn’t leave the chair and miss the right numbers. Some of the old school bookmakers in New York would use the line that they went to bed with the night before. Well, they didn’t know that The Computer fucking destroyed the market out in Vegas since then, so we were there first thing in the morning to sap up the changes.

  “We were a herd of young, hungry Animals. It didn’t take long for people to realize that we weren’t fucking around, and that they better respect us or they’d get burned. The other thing that distinguished us from other gamblers and bettors was that by the time the day was done, we were dead tired, and didn’t go out much. Other guys would be partying all the time, hungover, whatever. We weren’t into burning hundred dollar bills and acting like big shots in bars or strip clubs. We were focused on being productive the next day, which meant being on time and ready to go, and you couldn’t do that if you were out late every night.

  “I learned a lot from Tiger, and with him more in charge of the betting, we were putting a lot of books out of business. We were sucking big money out of the market, because we had Tiger’s handicapping and we had all kinds of inside information. The inside information was always the key. So, whether that meant buying someone or being someone’s friend and being there for them, that was the business of getting the right information. Our information was coming from all sorts of people all around the country, whether it was about the betting lines or sharp bets in Vegas, or inside stuff about players, coaches, or refs and stuff like that.

  “We really started developing a network of people giving us information, especially people who owed us money. A lot of times you’d have somebody owe money who couldn’t pay off their debt in cash, so they’d offer something else instead. So, if somebody owned a restaurant or a bar, they’d take care of you in some way relating to their establishment. Caterers would take care of special functions for free, people would give us tickets to events, stuff like that. We started getting all sorts of stuff as currency for bets. Sometimes, people could help us get inside information, like this guy who delivered food into Veteran’s Stadium. His way of paying us back was relaying back certain information from inside the stadium. Another time, we had this guy who owed us money report to us just before a Chicago Cubs baseball game at Wrigley Field. We needed to know whether the wind was blowing out or blowing in before the first pitch, and that was his only job—call us with a report about the outfield flags and the wind.2 Shit like that was pretty common after so many people owed us money.”

  With Tiger at the helm, Rinnier’s operation was a well-oiled betting machine. Their main office was located in an apartment complex directly across the street from the popular Lamb Tavern in Springfield. It apparently never dawned on the other complex residents what activity was taking place above them. Populated exclusively with hyper-aggressive young men, the office operated much like the infamous penny-stock boiler rooms of the same era. “We rented out the entire top floor,” Battista says. “It was a wraparound, which was really three apartments that we connected. Between booking and betting, there were always twenty to thirty of us working in the office. There were work shifts for everybody that depended on what betting season it was.

  “There were four rooms total. The main room had sixteen to eighteen people, including me and Tiger, then two offices off of that, then a bathroom and another long office with ‘floaters’ in it. The floaters were pretty much there for low-level booking and betting from different neighborhoods; they worked in the office and turned their action in to Mike. One of the other offices was essentially a bedroom that had four desks and phones and was used by a group of movers who were betting with local bookmakers who didn’t know about Mike or Tiger. The movers had to be alone in that office off of the war room [main office] so that all the fucking noise wouldn’t be heard on the other end of the phones, because if those bookmakers heard all the commotion they would have realized they were dealing with something bigger than just Joe Schmo calling in a bet, and who knows what they would have done. At a minimum, they would have stopped taking the calls and the bets.

  “I sat at the main, really long desk directly across from Tiger, because I was the fastest and the one who could help him the most. There were workstations for most of us, each of them with their own phone, and I took mine pretty seriously. I had my sheets, which were college and pro football schedules with my handwritten betting lines from different books. I did everything by hand. We subscribed to the sportsticker that came from a sportsbook and we would take the sports form sheets off the ticker so that we would have the same game number as everybody else. When you bet a game, you didn’t just say ‘I’ll take the Eagles minus five’ or whatever. Every bet had a number, so the ‘Eagles minus five�
� might have been number ‘three-sixty-nine,’ and for clarity you’d say, ‘Give me three-sixty-nine, Eagles minus five, for ten dimes.’ They would then repeat that back to you so there was no confusion. So, on my desk, from left to right, I would have the ticker sheets for pro football, college football, and the NBA [if these were in season, say in the fall or winter]. I’d have three or four Ticonderoga number two pencils with good erasers, and some Bic number ten blue pens, because they were the sharpest and quickest pens to write with. I’d have about four hundred three-by-five index cards in front of me for my tickets. There were always three phones on my desk; I worked all of them all the time, and sometimes I’d have one in each hand and one hanging from my neck.

  “We had Bell Telephone hook up something like twenty-five lines for our phones that were on speed dial to our outs. Time was money, and you didn’t want to miss line moves and all the earners sitting there to be had. We taped all our phone calls and almost all of the books taped their calls, so that there was never a debate about a bet. The moment you picked up a phone in our office, it was taping. Obviously, we weren’t doing this to take people to court or anything like that, but in our business your word was key and you didn’t want people bad-mouthing you that you didn’t pay, that you fucked people over, whatever. We had three or four televisions back then, all connected to the best sports packages we could get on satellite or cable. The other rooms were quiet, but our room was usually pretty loud, depending on what was going on. Sometimes it was pretty quiet, but on a football Sunday up until one o’clock, it was fucking loud! All our offices were sound-proofed, and there was never an open window, so that nobody outside could hear us. Our betting sessions were loud and violent, and we didn’t want anyone to know what we were up to.

  “We had thirty clerks going out and tormenting the market, invading America’s bookies and bettors and they didn’t even know what was happening. Mike was making so much money booking and betting that he was feeding his other businesses like restaurants and hotels. The gambling operation was making him millions and millions of dollars in cash. He claimed it on his taxes, though; he didn’t screw Uncle Sam. Now, I don’t know if Uncle Sam got the right number, but he paid taxes on his gambling earnings! He used to tell anyone who worked for him that they had to pay gambling taxes. That advice saved me when I got busted several times through the years because you can take a gambling charge, but tax evasion is a whole different thing.

  “Meanwhile, the Philly mob was really trying to get into us. They were trying to shake us down for money and for our information, because they knew we were destroying all their local outs. I got sent out to Las Vegas because the situation with the mob was so hot. They were looking all over for me. Mike and Tiger put me up in hotels out there, and I was running around again in my heaven. I was partying and having a good time. One night, I got done my shift and I was out drinking and started playing blackjack. I blew out—I lost thirty-eight grand of Mike’s and Tiger’s money in a few hours. They were really mad at me—for good reason, but they couldn’t bring me back to Philly, so they sent me down to Santo Domingo.

  “At roughly the same time, Mike and Tiger realized they had to get out of the Philadelphia area because the boys downtown were trying to shake them down. Everyone agreed that we had to keep a really low profile around the city. This was in the early 90s, and Santo Domingo was where everyone was going. The Dominican Republic was where people were opening up offshore book joints. The water was blue, the food was terrible, and we booked. There were ten or fifteen of us, all working for Mike and Tiger. We were treated like kings. We booked all day, and gambled at nighttime. Six or seven months into it, though, the Dominicans started shutting all the sportsbooks down. We had to get out of Santo Domingo because if you went to prison down there, you didn’t know if you were getting out!

  “We came back to the Philadelphia area, but had to stay almost in hiding because we didn’t want anyone to know we were back. We were really worried about the Philly wiseguys. There was a mob war, and there was a lot of shit going on. It was so bad that we were taking bets in the office on who was going to be killed next. I was back in the gambling office working for Mike and Tiger as a clerk, but Mike was starting to get pissed because more and more I was showing my allegiance to Tiger. I saw that Tiger was much more brilliant than Mike was. Tiger was also very street-savvy and wasn’t going to let anyone take advantage of him. He knew that Mike could never survive because he wasn’t a handicapper or a sharp bettor; whatever success Mike had was because of who he knew and he was just copying other bets. It was obvious that Tiger would be breaking away from Mike sooner or later.”

  It was Battista’s relationship with Mike Rinnier, however, which introduced him to a burgeoning gambling superstar who would be a key part of The Sheep’s story for decades to come.

  Footnotes

  During what little down time existed in the office, the Animals ate—a lot—and bet on anything and everything. Often, the wagers centered on eating and other contests involving bodily functions among the staff. Revisiting these events many years later evokes laughter and remains a source of pride for The Animals, who were each rotund to some degree in their booking and betting heyday because of their career-dominated lifestyle.

  The wind reports from Wrigley were useful in betting the over/under on total runs scored in a game. If the wind was blowing out, for instance, this would often dictate a bet on the over.

  Sharpening Up

  JOSEPH “JOE VITO” Mastronardo was a legend among bookies and bettors in the Greater Philadelphia area, and would be among the most consequential bookmakers and pro gamblers on the East Coast for three decades. On this, bookmakers, bettors, and law enforcement officials are in universal agreement. Like many of his big-time betting peers, he came from a middle-class environment and was considered a “white-collar” bookmaker. In fact, Mastronardo’s defense attorney once famously called him a “gentleman gambler” in reference to Mastronardo’s nonviolence policy for deadbeats (who were simply cut off from further action). Joe Vito’s exploits dated back to the mid-1970s, but he rose to the top of the Philly bookmaking scene in the 1980s by exploiting his brilliant mind for numbers and for business. He was also known for honoring his “action” and for employing cutting-edge technology ahead of his competitors. In sum, he was “it” when it came to booking and betting by the time he turned forty. Adding to his fascinating story, in 1978 Mastronardo married Joanna Rizzo, the only daughter of Frank Rizzo, who had served four years as Philadelphia police commissioner before being elected mayor in 1971.1 Mastronardo’s marriage created more than a few street rumors over the years when it came to his ability to stay out of prison, despite being so widely known as the area’s booking big shot.

  “A bunch of us in the office were booking and turning our stuff in to Mike Rinnier,” Battista says, “so in essence he was controlling a pretty big part of the market. Mike had us as his warriors to go get the customers, get the outs. Well, Joe Vito was the biggest bookmaker in Philadelphia at the time. Even though Joe controlled Philadelphia, which was a big market, we controlled South Jersey, Delaware, and a lot of the Philly suburbs. Mike and Joe weren’t really competitors. Joe Vito was The Prince of the City, and Mike just wanted to grow and control more of the market outside the city. I had heard about Joe, simply because he was such a big deal. He was extremely— extremely —bright. Of all the people I have met over the years, Joe Vito is easily one of the five sharpest guys. Not just in math and in sports, but business-wise. A lot of people didn’t like him because he was opinionated and spoke his mind, but he was usually right.” “Joe Vito was a pure genius when it came to gambling,” Tiger says, “and he taught me a lot. I used to sit with him for hours drinking coffee, just picking his brain and listening. Being around Joe so much brought me to another level. His respect for math affirmed much of what I already believed, and now I knew I was right.”

  “Word on the street was that the mob was always after Joe,” Batti
sta says, “but that Rizzo always protected him. Joe and his brother, John, hooked up with Mike Rinnier in the early 80s.2 Mike always wanted to be Joe; Joe had the street sense and was smart. Well, we heard that Rizzo always wanted Mike to take Joe and make him into a businessman, but Joe didn’t want that at all; he was a gambler. Mike was a good businessman, and I thought he was good with numbers, but he was just stealing all the numbers. It was Joe who knew the right numbers , and Mike was just taking the information, giving it to us, and we’d be taking all the right numbers elsewhere.”

  Joe Vito’s bookmaking operation was described in a 1988 Pennsylvania Crime Commission (PCC) report as “strong” and “independent” of Philadelphia’s predominant Italian-American crime syndicate at the time, the Bruno/Scarfo family. Mastronardo, then in his late thirties, lived just outside the city in Huntingdon Valley and headed the operation with the assistance of his brother, John (who was six years younger) and their father, Joseph Mastronardo Sr. John ran the ring’s Philadelphia office, which was located in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, while Joseph Sr. oversaw an office in Boca Raton, Florida. As the PCC noted in 1990: “The Mastronardo bookmaking operation was a credit business. Bets were taken over the telephone on a toll free number, and all calls were recorded by the organization. Computerized statements or billings were prepared for clients (bettors) every few days. Strong-arm tactics or violence were not used to collect debts. If a client reneged on a bet, Mastronardo would no longer do business with the bettor.” In this regard, the Commission added, “[Mob] member Nicholas “Nicky Crow” Caramandi bilked Mastronardo out of thousands of dollars. Caramandi refused to pay his gambling debts because Mastronardo was not one of the ‘mob’s protected bookies.’ The Mastronardo operation apparently did not pay ‘street tax’ to the Philadelphia Family.”