by Rob Simpson
I also sought outside advice. Not to quit, but to win. For a few football seasons, I actually subscribed to a pick newsletter and phone service run by Phil Steele. Its concept was simple: you pay for him to pick winners, which he provided via newsletter and on subscription phone recordings. He’s a big business with a very large willing customer base. By the end of our three- or four-year business relationship, I was referring to him as Phil “Steal.” After the third consecutive exclusive ultimate “5-star pick” failed during one college football season, whereafter I had to listen to Phil grimly and remorsefully apologize for letting us down on his voice-recorded follow-up message, I quit him. He can brag all he wants about his winning percentages and being a genius — the dude definitely does massive research — but a loss is a loss, and the gambler is ultimately the one paying for it while also paying Phil for his pick service. No hard feelings, though; I was a willing customer.
It’s crazy that I remember gambling moments. Early in my “career,” sitting in a sports bar in Hawaii, I’m one out away from winning a three-team parlay worth about $225. That was a rare large amount of dough at that early stage of my efforts. I was betting on baseball playoff games and had nailed the first two parts of the bet. It was October 4, 1995. The Colorado Rockies led the Atlanta Braves 4–3 in the ninth inning of Game Two of the National League Divisional series. All I needed was Rockies second baseman Eric Young, after fielding a routine grounder, to throw the ball to first base for the final out of the game. That was it: Rockies win, I win. Instead, Young threw the ball away for his second error of the game, the Braves went on to score four runs in the inning and win the game 7–4. It took a while to get over that one — and to not hate Eric Young.
At Game Two of the 1998 Stanley Cup Final with Steve Burchill, Mike Nowland, and Mike’s father-in-law John Hydar. I was wagering in those days, but not on hockey.
August 30, 2002. I’m watching the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes versus Oklahoma Sooners game on ESPN. The Sooners were ranked number-one in the country in college football. Tulsa ends up losing 37–0. No surprise there. But the line must have been 39 or 40, and I must have taken Oklahoma to cover that spread, because when an official on the sideline missed a call that went against the Sooners late in the game, I went ballistic. Replays showed an Oklahoma receiver had caught the ball and moved well up the field for a first down. The linesman blew the call; he thought the player went out of bounds to make the catch. The official’s call nullified what would have been a large gain by Oklahoma, setting them up for another score and thus allowing them to cover the spread. His decision ended the Sooner’s drive. Oklahoma punted while me and countless others on the wrong side of the bet were shit out of luck.
It’s possible it was an over/under bet, and I had taken the over. Over/under is when you predict whether the total number of points scored in a game will be over or under a number set by the bookies. If the Las Vegas line on the over/under was forty-one and only thirty-seven points were scored, the “under” would win. If more than forty-one points were scored, the “over” would win. In this case, it would have been the under that won, and I may have taken the over.
Either way, I remember thinking I needed to find out the name of that football official so I could write him, or the Western Athletic Conference, or whoever, a letter. Or even for a few seconds, threaten him. That’s the mindset of a gambler.
There’s a reason at least one college or professional football game is on TV every day of the week from late August through December, and there’s one reason why those games get viewers every single night of the week. Gambling.
I knew one tragic gambling victim.
I don’t have his kids’ permission, nor do I want it, nor do I want to share his misfortune by name. Let’s call him Ernie. Ernie was a sweetheart, the proverbial man’s man, and a great guy to hang out with. Most of our conversations were about women and football. We’d drink beer, laugh our asses off, watch sports.
Ernie hung out with our little group of fans, commentators, and low-level gamblers. We’d get together and create PGA pools for the major golf tournaments. It was during an era when drawing the right number out of a cap and getting the first overall draft pick meant taking Tiger Woods — it also meant you’d already won. Didn’t matter, it was an excuse for the fellas to get together four times a spring and summer, throw a little money on the table, and drink beer.
Gradually, unbeknownst to us, Ernie was betting more and losing more. To deal with it, he was drinking more, as in, smelly-breath-at-lunchtime type drinking. This wasn’t the Ernie we knew. Ernie lost a lot wagering on his alma mater, a football program that had flared for a decade as a powerhouse, only to fizzle out. He lost to the point of
having to get a total of four different mortgages/lines
of credit on his home. How did he pull that off? He was a widely respected member of the community, he was a legit business guy, and most of all, he was just Ernie.
It was in that home that Ernie drank himself to death. Bled his liver. A crown and coke in his clutches while sitting at his desk, a gallon-drum of empty half gallons
sitting in the garage. While hiding behind sunglasses, I cried like a child at his memorial service, looking at photos of Ernie riding a horse as a kid and floating in the river with his own kids. Fighting the lump in my throat was actually painful; mostly because his death was completely unnecessary. Gambling had beaten him literally into the ground.
Other friends I know didn’t take it that far: they went bankrupt — or just short of it — joined a support group, and quit with the help of peers. One buddy I have has been going to a group for almost two decades. Not only has it kept him from placing a wager, it’s also brought him another group of close friends to hang out with and . . . not gamble.
I’ve known a few small-time bookies and one big-time bookie. He just smiled as he backpacked around the big city, collecting thousands from businessmen who blew wads of cash over the weekend. When they win, he also smiles, cordially handing over their winnings into excited hands. He knows he’ll be back.
When a “player” wins a $100 bet, he wins $100. When he loses, he loses $110. This is called the “juice.” Add 10 percent to all of your losing wagers. That’s how it works and how the house money adds up. For the big bookmakers who control the betting lines, or the ones below that who modify their lines based on the wagers from their clientele, the idea is to get half the gamblers to bet one way and the other half to bet the opposite. That’s why lines change during the week. If it’s Kentucky six points over Purdue, and everyone is betting Purdue, then as the days go by leading up to the game, the line might move to Kentucky by four. They’re trying to entice more people to bet on Kentucky. In the perfect world, if $100,000 is bet on Kentucky, and $100,000 is bet on Purdue, the bookie knows the bet is a wash for them, or a break even. But they still make the $10,000 in juice from the side that lost.
Naturally, it would be rare to see almost the exact amount bet on each side, but the closer they can get to half and half on a specific wager, the more the juice is worth. Then multiply that times sixty college games and fifteen or sixteen pro games every week, and you get volume. Some estimate as much as $380 billion changes hands illegally per year on sports in North America, mostly out of the hands of the gamblers.
For an individual bettor, the juice adds up. Five dollars on fifty dollars doesn’t sound like a lot, but amateur gamblers tend to always bet a handful of games. It’s more fun that way. So if they bet eight games at fifty bucks each and go four and four, they’ve broken even on the wagers but lost twenty dollars on juice. If they go five wins and three losses, they’d win $100, minus the fifteen dollars juice on the losses, and end up winning eighty-five dollars.
I never think about it. It’s water under the bridge, and I can’t change the past. If you’re someone who is in the middle of a struggle like this, quit now and don’t look back. Don’t think you’ll win it back eith
er. That’s the mentality of a man or woman sitting in a casino at a blackjack table who keeps getting free drinks and buying chips. Forget it. Learn the guitar, teach yourself French, spend more time with your kid(s). You’ll be glad you did. Don’t ruin your family, don’t kill yourself, and don’t be so freaking selfish. If you’re trying to make a quick buck, don’t. Work, and make a bunch of slow ones.
And if you stop watching games because of this, you’re not really missing out. Watching your favourite sport or team is one thing, to most everyone else involved it’s just a business.
~
Problem with gambling? Find help 24/7 in the U.S., Canada, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. 1-800-522-4700.
BACK SPASMS
“You’re gonna be drinkin’ water out of a dog dish.”
Work cohort Ryan Brach, as I crawled through a hotel lobby
The common medical malady “back spasms” is the most anemic, misleading term in sports medicine history. They should be called “twisting knife in the spine-asms,” or “oh my God, it hurts to cough-asms.” I had them pretty good the summer of 1997.
As part of my duties with the Boise Hawks baseball club, Idaho’s short-season, A-ball farm team for the California Angels, I produced, wrote, and hosted twenty episodes of a weekly thirty-minute TV show called Hawk Talk. For episode one in 1996, I decided to go big: skydiving with the coaching staff.
Manager Tom “Kotch” Kotchman would have nothing to do with it; I believe his exact words were “Fuck off” while pitching coach Jim “Benny” Bennett and hitting instructor Todd “Clausy” Claus said yes. We were off to Snake River Skydive with cameraman Dave “Go F’ Yourself” Falcone.
Having jumped from a not-so-perfectly-good airplane in Hawaii two years prior, I did my best to reassure the fellas that everything would be just fine. Clausy asked legitimate questions and seemed to show no fear. Benny, the Northwest League’s answer to Sam Malone from Cheers, started to get very quiet. He wasn’t about to back out, but as the airplane motor fired up, his face went completely blank and I honestly thought he might faint.
I went first. The plane wasn’t big enough to handle more than one tandem pair at a time. I would be leaping with a guy named Larry strapped to my back. Larry suggested that since I had jumped before, I should be able to handle pulling the rip cord on his signal. I agreed.
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
Dave attached a wireless microphone to my lapel and taped it down, zipping the jumpsuit up over most of the cord. Based on distance and reception, he’d only be able to hear what I was saying during the final stages of descent, maybe the last couple hundred feet. The idea was for me to do a flying stand-up, an on-camera hit describing part of the show. I think in this case I was supposed to say something like, “When we come back, Jim Bennett and Todd Claus take the plunge.” Then we’d land.
I was a wee bit nervous as the plane climbed but, honestly, much of the lustre was gone. They say you never forget the first time. No doubt about it. During the Hawaii jump in March 1994, I was freaked out and speechless during the climb, and I remember practically every little detail. This time, I was slightly blasé, the old “been there, done that.” Plus, while this section of Idaho was rather scenic, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic from the air as the rest of the state, and not nearly as delightful as the North Shore of Oahu.
We jumped. We dropped at about a hundred miles per hour for thirty-five seconds or so, and then Larry signalled in front of my face for me to pull the chute. Of course, I wasn’t paying any attention. I was looking all over the place, turning my head to the right and left and checking out the scenery. To avoid us becoming a human puddle, Larry had no choice but to reach around and rip the cord.
Meanwhile, I, his human air cushion, was in dipshit land. This was exactly why inexperienced skydivers first jump tandem — so someone remembers to pull the chute.
When Larry pulled the cord, I wasn’t quite back in the skydive posture. My head was turned sideways and angled up, my arms not completely extended in the neutral position. When the chute opened, our bodies and legs swung down violently and, with a tremendous yank, we went from falling very fast to hardly moving at all.
“Bddddddddddddd!” Every vertebra in my back cracked. A good crack, the kind you get when someone adjusts it or walks on it. Except near the bottom of my spine; that’s where I had a problem. Something strained and I went, “Ughhh!”
I managed to pull off some on-camera audio as we gradually lost altitude. But as I drifted closer to terra firma, Dave not only heard, “When we come back to the show,” he also heard, “Aw, shit that hurts,” and “Damn, that ain’t right!”
Benny jumped, landed, and immediately wanted to jump again. Clausy jumped, landed, and also wanted to do another jump right away. There’s nothing like plummeting to the Earth like a rock and then suddenly becoming a glider. The sound of air rushing past one’s head is intensely loud until the parachute opens. It’s replaced by almost complete silence. That’s the most dramatic sensation: loud as hell, quiet as heaven, gliding like a bird.
We interviewed the fellas, did some stand-ups to close the show, and drove off with a pretty darn good local TV show in our hands.
As the summer wore on, the bulging disc in my lower back grew larger. As 1996 rolled into 1997, it began to push on my sciatic nerve. By the 1997 baseball season, I was in trouble.
Ah, sciatica — a dream come true. Pain, constant aggravation, can’t sneeze without swerving off the road, can’t cough without swearing afterwards, wifey always on top. It made the menial tasks like getting out of bed and walking completely miserable.
Our team medical trainer, Todd Hine, who also worked for the local hockey team during the winter, was tremendously helpful and diligent in trying to relieve my pain and discomfort. He gave me stretching exercises, sent me to a therapist, and attempted to stretch me out himself on a regular basis.
Now, I’m familiar with physical therapy, sports trainers, and the concept of doing whatever is necessary to stretch someone out. But “Hiner” took it to the limit. Since we both travelled with the team, we were together with the rest of the baseball staff practically every day for three months. Each and every day before or during batting practice, Hiner would tell me to lie down on the outfield grass in foul territory, and he’d attempt to stretch my legs and back. The idea was to reduce the pressure on my spine and nerves.
At its simplest, it meant pulling my bent leg by the knee up towards my head to work the hamstring. At its worst, it must have resembled a dry hump.
Once, down the left-field line in Salem, Oregon, manager Kotchman, a hard-core, win-at-all-costs baseball man who, when perturbed, used to call me “Moose Breath,” walked by and asked, “What the fuck are you two doing?”
Long-time, very successful Boise Hawks manager Tom Kotchman in Salem, Oregon.
I was on my back, my left leg was somehow up over my chest, and my foot was dangling in the air over my right shoulder. Hiner was lying on top of me.
“Jesus, Hiner, this is ridiculous, careful down there,” I’d say, laughing almost uncontrollably while trying to breathe.
“Quiet,” he’d say. “You gotta stretch. Stretch.” Hiner was five-foot-ten; me, a little over six-foot-six.
“Holy shit, get off me,” I’d beg. The therapy-molestation would last three or four minutes.
The stretching helped for the short term. I was also sneaking off and visiting a couple of chiropractors on the side. The first guy, Victor, a Canadian-born hockey fan, was actually pretty good. He’d give me adjustments and provide relief. The second guy, some Neanderthal recommended to me by the team owner’s son, was not so good. I’d lie on my side and he’d slam down on the back of my rib cage with his chest. This was supposed to “pop” things back into place. I’m pretty sure my bulging disc was on its way to herniating.
Come September, the Hawks were where they
usually were at the end of each season: in first place in the four-team North Division. Their record of fifty-one wins and twenty-five losses earned them the right to play the winner of the South Division in a best-of-five Northwest League championship series. This time around, the Hawks would meet the Portland Rockies.
It’s very rare at the short-season, A-ball level to fly anywhere. Normally, we’d travel overnight by bus. But given the fact that the Hawks were perennial winners, had once again earned a spot in the battle for the title, and had taken a 2–0 series lead on their home field in Boise, owner Bill Pereira bucked up and flew us to Portland. They won Game One 7–5 and Game Two 7–1, so finishing off the Rockies seemed like just a formality. The Hawks would have three chances, if necessary, to pick up the deciding third win on the road. We flew to Portland, Oregon, on September 7. Little did I know that I wouldn’t be flying back.
The Hawks disappointed in Game Three, losing 2–1. Two nights later, they failed to lock up the championship again with a 6–0 loss. The series was tied at two and the collars were getting tight. The soon-to-be winningest manager in Northwest League history and his team were on the precipice of an unfathomable collapse.
After Game Four, my broadcast partner, Tommy Smith, and I headed out for a few beers at the Kingston Bar and Grill, a watering hole best described as a sports pub. It stood across the street from Civic Stadium, the Rockies’ home ballpark, just steps into the hilly, southwest quadrant of Portland. It had great burgers, chicken sandwiches, and microbrews and was just a couple blocks from our hotel.
After lamenting the possibility of the Hawks not winning a championship, yet revelling in the excitement of having the opportunity to call the deciding game of a championship series the next day, Tommy and I went our separate ways. He went drinking with Hiner and Clausy while I headed back to the hotel to drop off our radio equipment and then meet my brother’s brother-in-law, John McDonald.