The next epidemic
“It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of 50 million people— with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.”
— Nick Carraway on gambler Meyer Wolfsheim, a fictional alalog to Arnold Rothstein, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
“. . . the majority of the human race are dubs and dumbbells and have rotten judgment and no brains, and if you have a few brains and have learned how to do things and size up people and situations, and dope out methods for yourself, they jump to the conclusion you’re crooked.”
— Arnold Rothstein to Zoe Beckley, published in “The Brooklyn Daily Eagle,” Nov. 27, 1927
Arnold Rothstein died young and welldressed at 46, in a necktie from Paris and a custom-tailored monogrammed silk shirt—an all around good-looking corpse from the waist up.
It was around 10:15 p.m. Nov. 4, 1928, when a phone was brought to his table at Lindy’s, the Times Square delicatessen he (and about half of New York’s actors, gamblers and newspaper reporters) used as an office. His pal Damon Runyon overheard him mutter, as he stood up to leave, that he was going to the Park Central Hotel to meet a guy he’d allegedly lost between $250,000 and $350,000 to in a poker game a couple of months before.
Rothstein hadn’t paid the debt on the grounds that he’d been swindled. And considering that one of the sharks who’d taken him down was infamous Arkansas-born Alvin C. “Titanic” Thompson, who in addition to hustling golf played a little poker to get by, he was probably right.
But Thompson had cashed his chips and got his money—it was the guy who arranged the game that Rothstein wasn’t paying, a humorless thug who called himself George “Hump” McManus. He had another game going, in room 349 of the Park Central. Rothstein would drop by as a courtesy to explain why he wasn’t going to give McManus a dime.
An hour later, the man who fixed the World Series was bleeding out, one hand holding in his guts, the other holding his bleeding groin, doubled up near the stairs in the employees’ entrance of the hotel. The police report would say he was shot in room 349 by “an unknown man” who threw the .38 caliber revolver out the window.
“Who shot ya, A.R.?” he asked.
“You know me better than that, Paddy.” It took Rothstein almost two days to die, but before he did, his lawyer pushed an amended will before him, and he groggily made an “X” on it.
McManus was charged with murder, based on a coat found in room 349. Despite the initial police report, there was no evidence Rothstein ever made it to the room. He might have been shot in the street. By anyone.
They rounded up the poker players who’d taken Rothstein’s money, branded them hostile witnesses. When the proscecutor asked Titanic Thompson what he did for a living, introverted Alvin twisted his diamond pinkie ring and allowed, “I play a little golf for money.”
That was as loquacious as any witness got, so on Dec. 5, 1929, Judge Charles C. Nott Jr. directed that Hump McManus be acquitted in the murder of Arnold Rothstein.
Maybe that was fair. Some crime historians have pointed out it would have been stupid to summon Rothstein to a very public place to murder him, and that if their intention was to murder him, then why shoot him in the belly, at a downward angle that sent the bullet through his bladder and prostate, leaving him alive and conscious and able to name names? Two in the head would have been cleaner.
Plus Rothstein was notoriously slow to pay, but he wasn’t a welcher. He had told friends like Runyon that he understood he’d have to eventually pay the debt; he just “wanted to make them sweat” for it. Like a lot of high-value individuals, he wasn’t terrifically liquid; paying a debt of this magnitude required moving things around. He needed some time to get the money together. But dead men don’t have to pay up.
Some historians think what’s most likely is that Rothstein showed up at room 349 and argued with McManus, and either Hump or his bodyguard had brandished a pistol in order to drive home a point. Somehow the gun went off. Maybe we’ll have to live with that.
Anyway, Runyon turned Rothstein into Nathan Detroit (and Titanic Thompson into Sky Masterson). And, as often happens with American horror stories, the myth got set to music.
Everyone knows that the 1919 World Series was fixed. Not everyone knows that Rothstein was partners with fabled New York Giants manager John McGraw in a number of businesses, including a pool hall, and that, during baseball’s so-called “Deadball Era,” fixing games was a pretty common practice.
There is evidence suggesting that the 1905 and 1912 series were also fixed. Anyone who doubts that gambling and throwing games (or “laying down” to help, say, Nap Lajoie win a batting title over Ty Cobb) were not an intrinsic part of baseball culture in the early 20th century should acquaint themselves with the biography of Hal Chase, who might have been the best player who ever lived if he hadn’t been more interested in gaming the game. But that was more than 100 years ago, when ballplayers were relatively well-paid, not multi-millionaires. No one could fix a World Series these days, could they?
Yeah, but maybe an end-of-the-bench NBA player making the league minimum could miss a free throw or airball a corner three so as to not to hit the over-on-a-prop bet offered by FanDuel or Draftkings. Maybe someone could convince 180 subsistence-level tennis players to fix more than 375 matches. Maybe an LPGA player who shoots a 79 in her first round and has little chance of making the 36-hole cut (and therefore making no money for the week) would be tempted if offered $100,000 simply to shoot a higher score than her second-day playing partner.
Some people are incorruptible. Most of us aren’t. I’ve seen newspaper writers go on the take for a free case of Bud Lite.
Gambling by phone app may well be the next opioid crisis in this country, but you ought to have a right to gamble on your phone. The laws in Arkansas are protectionist and unfair. I think adults ought to be able to chase dopamine hits any way they want, so long as they are informed of the risks and . . .
I was about to write “and their behavior doesn’t hurt anyone else.”
But all of our actions have consequences on those around us. Every dollar I spend on bourbon could have been donated to cancer research. Alcoholics and junkies break the hearts of those who love them.
All of us can handle a little action. But the smart money knows it’s not that smart, and budgets accordingly.
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