Read Ian's Features
In South Africa, Basketball Finds Fertile Soil in Which It Can Take Root
A Magic Man Visits Europe's Sin City
Extreme Makeover
Grizzlies take time to form bond with St. Jude patients
His Brother's Keeper
A Small-Town Tragedy
Oo-La-La, Lenny
The Gang That Beat Las Vegas
A Magic Man Visits Europe's Sin City
Extreme Makeover
Grizzlies take time to form bond with St. Jude patients
His Brother's Keeper
A Small-Town Tragedy
Oo-La-La, Lenny
The Gang That Beat Las Vegas
In South Africa, Basketball Finds Fertile Soil in Which It Can Take Root
While covering the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa, I took a day to report this basketball story.
By Ian Thomsen
June 14, 1995
International Herald Tribune: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/14/sports/14iht-ian_0.html?pagewanted=all
SOWETO, South Africa— For the million people or more who live in the township there are 10 life rafts like this one. It's a bare slab, anchored and unsinkable, with two skeletons that might have been lookout towers. In the morning it belongs to a few of the children who don't go to school. Then more children come after school, and after work, the younger men come for serious sessions, with crowds gathering in the onrushing dusk to watch, their baggy T-shirts filling in the wind.
The basketball court in the Rockville district of Soweto is the color of rubber tires, but the color is betrayed by the harsh slap of bare feet landing. The asphalt was laid unevenly, in sections as large as church doors, and it floats on a bay of playing fields where the earth has been rubbed away. The only real grasses are the high roadside weeds, which are on fire, stoked by children with long sticks and raising an almighty stench.
A study indicated recently that just one-fifth of the township residents in South Africa participate in sport. Albert Mokoena, owner of the local basketball team, believes the numbers are even worse than that, and this late afternoon in the playground would seem to bear him out. There must be hundreds of children squawking on the soccer field, the goalposts slouching as humanly as the structures of Van Gogh's imagination. Nearby the uprights for rugby, the white man's game, rear up like a pair of ladders with the upper rungs missing.
But the only children playing any game of purpose are the ones running back and forth across the slabs, careful not to fall off.
The histories of basketball in South Africa are anecdotal and, until recently, never amounted to much. It is remembered that in 1974 the lily-white Basketball Federation of South Africa hired as its national administrator a man named Bill Shaughnessy, a white American who had been here playing baseball. His job was to create a loose championship for white players, to argue with the richer sports for facilities and teach clinics to bored white students; practically on the side, he was permitted to introduce basketball to the black townships and mining camps. But the game was never going to take off here, and in 1978 he returned to the United States, to Tucson, Arizona, if memories are correct. It is thought that he became a stockbroker.
Now David Mamabolo is trying to explain the development of basketball as he rides bumpily through the early winter smoke of Soweto, past the horse-drawn carts selling coal and the small, proud houses of brick and corrugated steel. He was 15 when Bill Shaughnessy taught a weekend clinic in Atteridgeville, a township near Pretoria, leaving behind basketballs, manuals and a permanent court for children who had never heard of the game. For them, Bill Shaughnessy might as well have been Dr. James Naismith, the inventor himself.
Naturally, says Mamabolo, a club grew around the court in Atteridgeville, and another club grew around the court left by Bill Shaughnessy in Soweto. They were the only teams for black players as far as he knew, and they seemed to play against each other endlessly — leafing through the manuals, trying to match the illustrations against their memories of the strange dance steps the white American had walked them through. Mamabolo was 15 at the time and neither he nor his friends were fluent in English.
"We had a plastic ball," he says. "For us plastic was better, because the rubber ones don't last. We would get from the administrator maybe five balls for the whole year, so you protected them very dearly. In South Africa there wasn't any Nike or Reebok or Converse. For us it was very difficult to get shoes. You would hear someone saying that the local shop had received some of the old canvas shoes, the Charles, the ...”
Chuck Taylors. The old-fashioned, black canvas shoes.
"The Chuck Taylors," he says. "The rubber on those shoes was very thin, so once you would get a pair of those shoes, you had better save them for the game. So in practice you had better go barefoot. That's why today I'm not playing. My knees are all banged up."
The car pulls off a jutted dirt road and into the backyard sanctuary of the local YMCA. "This is the first basketball court in Soweto," Mamabolo says.
It is surprisingly peaceful, at the edge of a hill overlooking the township, behind a firm, low wall of orange brick and trees. It is shadowed and quiet, not at all like the inner-city courts that breed players in America.
"It is all new," Mamabolo says. "The first court was really back there." And he points behind to a slightly inclining yard and a huge demolished bus, inside which children are playing.
"The court was slanting a little, yes," he says, his hands describing everything as Bill Shaughnessy's must have. "There were none of these walls over here, and maybe if someone would shoot the ball too high then we would have to go running into the traffic areas to save it."
He is a young man telling an old man's stories. In those days, he says, television was just arriving in South Africa, but was too expensive for many families in the townships. As it still is. So they would go to see the rare movie about basketball, usually starring white players, and they would study the basketball scenes to learn the rules. They would make friends with the owners of video shops, to watch videotapes in the back rooms.
"There was a film, perhaps you know it, it was called 'One on One,"' Mamabolo says.
Starring Robby Benson. Circa 1977. Terrible white basketball movie.
"We would try to get such films on video," Mamabolo says. "There was an old video of Magic [Johnson] while he was still in Michigan [State University] and he was playing against . . . against . . . who's the white bloke . . ."
Larry Bird.
"Larry Bird," he says. "I think that video we watched 20 times or 50 times, but it wasn't so good. It was just highlights. You couldn't see how the play developed, what all the players were doing."
The images that leaked through were usually of college basketball. The professional game was a legend, confirmed by the rare magazine photograph. They would hear of someone called Dr. J. and wonder in group discussion about the things he could do, as if he were the ruler of a distant, mystical kingdom. It was precisely because they could receive so little information about him that they knew they were onto something. They knew that somewhere else, in the world's richest country, the best, wealthiest and most famous basketball players were Africans. In David Mamabolo's imagination he was competing on the same court as Americans he never saw.
That changed for good in 1992, with the broadcasting for the first time of the Olympics, and the attendant basketball Dream Team — aptly named as far as black South Africans were concerned. For the first time the country saw Michael Jordan; whereas experts like Mamabolo recognized Magic and the white bloke right off.
"When we grew up as kids, because of the oppression, we would look up to the black people in America," says Albert Mokoena, who began playing basketball in 1987 when he was 21. "When the TV and the magazines showed good, successful black people, they were always from America. Everybody here believes if you're black in America, you're good. They don't want to know about England or Italy, only America."
He is a business executive as well as owner of the local team — its name is Soweto Liberty's Rhythm Of The Nation — which he envisions as a group of role models. Next season it will join the breakthrough Premier Basketball League, six professional teams of mixed race scattered across this large land. Mokoena insists that his players exhibit a certain style and grace in order to draw more Sowetans to basketball.
Among his best players are three who came from Zambia, where their parents lived in exile because of their involvement with the African National Congress. The team Billy Banda grew up playing for was composed almost entirely of second-generation ANC exiles. Basketball wasn't stunted in Lusaka; it was allowed to prosper there.
Banda and his brother, a teammate, moved to Soweto with the change in South African government. Their father stayed behind to run his workshop in Lusaka, and their mother lives in Tzaneen, in the Northern Transvaal of South Africa. The sons are continuing the work their parents started, continuing it by playing basketball.
"We're just trying to set up a trend for the young ones, to keep them out of the streets," Billy Banda says. "Many of the people smoke drugs in Soweto, or do drugs and nothing else. You have to be careful. You have to get used to those people in the township. You have to really mingle with them before you stay. O.K., they are friendly, but not all of them. I have seen a person get shot while he was playing basketball."
The vast changes in South Africa have opened the gates for basketball. Perhaps because it was seen as an expression of African-American culture, it was never really embraced by the whites, and it was a hushed legend among the blacks. So its political beauty is that it carries none of the baggage of apartheid. It is the fastest-growing sport in the country, popular among all races exposed to the new world culture. Only 35,000 players were registered last year, but by next year there might be 100,000. There are 20 clubs in Soweto sharing the 10 local courts. Next year there should be 20 courts, but Mamabolo will push for more.
For David Mamabolo is now the national development officer for the new Basketball South Africa. His English is perfect, and he knows all of the rules. Last August, a fleet of cars came across the dirt fields to the basketball court in Rockville. Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks and David Mamabolo of Atteridgeville stepped out onto the black slab, careful of their sore knees. There were other American players and coaches with them, black and white, and they looked around in the humbled foreign daze that always greets the ghetto to end all ghettoes. It was quiet for a moment until the children came running, dozens and dozens of them jumping aboard. Then David Mamabolo produced a few basketballs, and they all began to shoot.
By Ian Thomsen
June 14, 1995
International Herald Tribune: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/14/sports/14iht-ian_0.html?pagewanted=all
SOWETO, South Africa— For the million people or more who live in the township there are 10 life rafts like this one. It's a bare slab, anchored and unsinkable, with two skeletons that might have been lookout towers. In the morning it belongs to a few of the children who don't go to school. Then more children come after school, and after work, the younger men come for serious sessions, with crowds gathering in the onrushing dusk to watch, their baggy T-shirts filling in the wind.
The basketball court in the Rockville district of Soweto is the color of rubber tires, but the color is betrayed by the harsh slap of bare feet landing. The asphalt was laid unevenly, in sections as large as church doors, and it floats on a bay of playing fields where the earth has been rubbed away. The only real grasses are the high roadside weeds, which are on fire, stoked by children with long sticks and raising an almighty stench.
A study indicated recently that just one-fifth of the township residents in South Africa participate in sport. Albert Mokoena, owner of the local basketball team, believes the numbers are even worse than that, and this late afternoon in the playground would seem to bear him out. There must be hundreds of children squawking on the soccer field, the goalposts slouching as humanly as the structures of Van Gogh's imagination. Nearby the uprights for rugby, the white man's game, rear up like a pair of ladders with the upper rungs missing.
But the only children playing any game of purpose are the ones running back and forth across the slabs, careful not to fall off.
The histories of basketball in South Africa are anecdotal and, until recently, never amounted to much. It is remembered that in 1974 the lily-white Basketball Federation of South Africa hired as its national administrator a man named Bill Shaughnessy, a white American who had been here playing baseball. His job was to create a loose championship for white players, to argue with the richer sports for facilities and teach clinics to bored white students; practically on the side, he was permitted to introduce basketball to the black townships and mining camps. But the game was never going to take off here, and in 1978 he returned to the United States, to Tucson, Arizona, if memories are correct. It is thought that he became a stockbroker.
Now David Mamabolo is trying to explain the development of basketball as he rides bumpily through the early winter smoke of Soweto, past the horse-drawn carts selling coal and the small, proud houses of brick and corrugated steel. He was 15 when Bill Shaughnessy taught a weekend clinic in Atteridgeville, a township near Pretoria, leaving behind basketballs, manuals and a permanent court for children who had never heard of the game. For them, Bill Shaughnessy might as well have been Dr. James Naismith, the inventor himself.
Naturally, says Mamabolo, a club grew around the court in Atteridgeville, and another club grew around the court left by Bill Shaughnessy in Soweto. They were the only teams for black players as far as he knew, and they seemed to play against each other endlessly — leafing through the manuals, trying to match the illustrations against their memories of the strange dance steps the white American had walked them through. Mamabolo was 15 at the time and neither he nor his friends were fluent in English.
"We had a plastic ball," he says. "For us plastic was better, because the rubber ones don't last. We would get from the administrator maybe five balls for the whole year, so you protected them very dearly. In South Africa there wasn't any Nike or Reebok or Converse. For us it was very difficult to get shoes. You would hear someone saying that the local shop had received some of the old canvas shoes, the Charles, the ...”
Chuck Taylors. The old-fashioned, black canvas shoes.
"The Chuck Taylors," he says. "The rubber on those shoes was very thin, so once you would get a pair of those shoes, you had better save them for the game. So in practice you had better go barefoot. That's why today I'm not playing. My knees are all banged up."
The car pulls off a jutted dirt road and into the backyard sanctuary of the local YMCA. "This is the first basketball court in Soweto," Mamabolo says.
It is surprisingly peaceful, at the edge of a hill overlooking the township, behind a firm, low wall of orange brick and trees. It is shadowed and quiet, not at all like the inner-city courts that breed players in America.
"It is all new," Mamabolo says. "The first court was really back there." And he points behind to a slightly inclining yard and a huge demolished bus, inside which children are playing.
"The court was slanting a little, yes," he says, his hands describing everything as Bill Shaughnessy's must have. "There were none of these walls over here, and maybe if someone would shoot the ball too high then we would have to go running into the traffic areas to save it."
He is a young man telling an old man's stories. In those days, he says, television was just arriving in South Africa, but was too expensive for many families in the townships. As it still is. So they would go to see the rare movie about basketball, usually starring white players, and they would study the basketball scenes to learn the rules. They would make friends with the owners of video shops, to watch videotapes in the back rooms.
"There was a film, perhaps you know it, it was called 'One on One,"' Mamabolo says.
Starring Robby Benson. Circa 1977. Terrible white basketball movie.
"We would try to get such films on video," Mamabolo says. "There was an old video of Magic [Johnson] while he was still in Michigan [State University] and he was playing against . . . against . . . who's the white bloke . . ."
Larry Bird.
"Larry Bird," he says. "I think that video we watched 20 times or 50 times, but it wasn't so good. It was just highlights. You couldn't see how the play developed, what all the players were doing."
The images that leaked through were usually of college basketball. The professional game was a legend, confirmed by the rare magazine photograph. They would hear of someone called Dr. J. and wonder in group discussion about the things he could do, as if he were the ruler of a distant, mystical kingdom. It was precisely because they could receive so little information about him that they knew they were onto something. They knew that somewhere else, in the world's richest country, the best, wealthiest and most famous basketball players were Africans. In David Mamabolo's imagination he was competing on the same court as Americans he never saw.
That changed for good in 1992, with the broadcasting for the first time of the Olympics, and the attendant basketball Dream Team — aptly named as far as black South Africans were concerned. For the first time the country saw Michael Jordan; whereas experts like Mamabolo recognized Magic and the white bloke right off.
"When we grew up as kids, because of the oppression, we would look up to the black people in America," says Albert Mokoena, who began playing basketball in 1987 when he was 21. "When the TV and the magazines showed good, successful black people, they were always from America. Everybody here believes if you're black in America, you're good. They don't want to know about England or Italy, only America."
He is a business executive as well as owner of the local team — its name is Soweto Liberty's Rhythm Of The Nation — which he envisions as a group of role models. Next season it will join the breakthrough Premier Basketball League, six professional teams of mixed race scattered across this large land. Mokoena insists that his players exhibit a certain style and grace in order to draw more Sowetans to basketball.
Among his best players are three who came from Zambia, where their parents lived in exile because of their involvement with the African National Congress. The team Billy Banda grew up playing for was composed almost entirely of second-generation ANC exiles. Basketball wasn't stunted in Lusaka; it was allowed to prosper there.
Banda and his brother, a teammate, moved to Soweto with the change in South African government. Their father stayed behind to run his workshop in Lusaka, and their mother lives in Tzaneen, in the Northern Transvaal of South Africa. The sons are continuing the work their parents started, continuing it by playing basketball.
"We're just trying to set up a trend for the young ones, to keep them out of the streets," Billy Banda says. "Many of the people smoke drugs in Soweto, or do drugs and nothing else. You have to be careful. You have to get used to those people in the township. You have to really mingle with them before you stay. O.K., they are friendly, but not all of them. I have seen a person get shot while he was playing basketball."
The vast changes in South Africa have opened the gates for basketball. Perhaps because it was seen as an expression of African-American culture, it was never really embraced by the whites, and it was a hushed legend among the blacks. So its political beauty is that it carries none of the baggage of apartheid. It is the fastest-growing sport in the country, popular among all races exposed to the new world culture. Only 35,000 players were registered last year, but by next year there might be 100,000. There are 20 clubs in Soweto sharing the 10 local courts. Next year there should be 20 courts, but Mamabolo will push for more.
For David Mamabolo is now the national development officer for the new Basketball South Africa. His English is perfect, and he knows all of the rules. Last August, a fleet of cars came across the dirt fields to the basketball court in Rockville. Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks and David Mamabolo of Atteridgeville stepped out onto the black slab, careful of their sore knees. There were other American players and coaches with them, black and white, and they looked around in the humbled foreign daze that always greets the ghetto to end all ghettoes. It was quiet for a moment until the children came running, dozens and dozens of them jumping aboard. Then David Mamabolo produced a few basketballs, and they all began to shoot.
A Magic Man Visits Europe's Sin City
In Amsterdam, Johnson Turns Teacher On the Subject of AIDS and Safe Sex
Less than two years after he had been diagnosed with HIV, forcing him to retire from the Los Angeles Lakers, Magic Johnson was wandering through the Red Light district of Amsterdam. There he was beckoned by a prostitute, in makeup and lingerie on the other side of her glass door, pretending to shoot a basketball. When he met with hundreds of students at their school gymnasium to discuss HIV/AIDS, Magic recognized that he was no longer in America. He told them, bluntly, ``I’m not allowed to come in my wife,’’ and there was no giggling or moralistic uproar. He preached the truth about the need to use condoms, and they respected him for it.
May 14, 1993
International Herald Tribune: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/14/sports/14iht-magi.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print
DEN BOSCH, the Netherlands— Magic, hey Magic Johnson: Looking for some hashish?
What? No! No, thanks.
For you the best price, Magic.
No thank you, Magic Johnson said, as he walked the unscrubbed morning streets of Amsterdam. The city is a red-lit museum to his past - not the stranger offering hashish, for no one has ever implied that Magic used drugs - but the women. They were on exhibit, by the dozens.
Magic! Hey there honey.
Hello, Magic.
Posing inside doorway after doorway along the sidewalk, hair obscuring a bare shoulder, lipstick to smear, and a shadowed bed in the narrow room behind.
Didn't they know?
There are times, in his newfound dedication to the most important things, when Magic Johnson is like the camera overhead, and he is viewing himself below. And that is his new job. To keep an eye on himself, and how he mixes. But then sometimes the poetic glare brakes him to a halt, like this woman with the lips, neither dressed yet tantalizingly not undressed, she straddling the entrance between him and that bed - and silently making that motion with her arm of shooting a basketball.
That he could just wake up in a sweat and she would vanish.
But he laughed and continued on past.
"To see some of these situations, how far behind we are, as far as their openness," said Magic Johnson, the American tourist. "As a young man I would have just been saying: 'Wow!' You know what I'm saying?" He laughed. "It's really something to sit there and see it, but then you don't gawk at it anymore. You study it.
"They control a problem that we've been trying to control. That's what went through my mind. Here they are, men want it, they can't get it no other way but to pay for it, so they legalized it. But then they put it in this one area. I said, wow, these people are smart. If they're going to do it anyway, just go ahead and let them do it, but keep it right here. It's really something. Then they make them, I guess the way they explained it to me, you've got to have your health card and all that, so it was really weird. It makes you think about different things.
"I thought, this is really, I tell you what, this is an education coming over here. It really educates you."
Magic Johnson came to Europe this week to play basketball. Of course, the basketball is only the source of his light. He is more concerned now with the illumination. In the United States, controversy lurks about his message like the disease itself. A $2 million lawsuit has claimed that he knew he had the HIV virus that causes AIDS when he infected a woman from his hometown of East Lansing, Michigan. Johnson, who revealed his infection while retiring from the National Basketball Association in November 1991, has said, "They have no case."
Beyond that, he is having trouble reaching those who need to hear him. Americans have not yet decided how their children should be schooled in HIV and AIDS prevention. The religious conservatives worry that his outreach ultimately promotes teenage sex. Part of Johnson's message is that the safest sex of all is no sex. It is not, he admits, the most realistic part.
On Wednesday afternoon, having returned from a little window shopping in Amsterdam, he appeared at an hour-long forum for some 300 high school students here. Sponsored by Pepsi and the local Red Cross Youth, they were going to talk sex inside a small basketball gymnasium. The wood floor was cloaked with gray carpet. Between the six baskets were posters from Magic's past, and blurred, blown-up photos of lovers in the throes, the difference being that each couple held in their fingers not a fashionable cigarette but a condom.
The Boston Garden, in June, was only slightly more hot. Johnson sat on the stage beneath one of the baskets, whose white net hung above him like a chef's hat. Four students were flanking him, each half his age or younger. Magic is just 34. He wore a black T-shirt.
The conversation was necessarily explicit. If Earvin Johnson ever sounds like a 1950s health movie, if he's yesterday, then that's the day Magic has died. It's no easy thing to discuss in everyday terms what he does in order to make love to his wife, inviting an audience to envision him in that way. A boy in the audience stood and announced it was not his business to ask whether his friend used a condom during sex.
"Never mind sex," Magic said. "If I'm your friend, and I hear you're going to some place dangerous, I've got to say to you: 'Look. Don't go there. It's dangerous.'
"I could've just said it's not my business to tell everybody I had this," he went on. "I could have just said, I'm retiring from sports and I'm not going to really worry about everybody else. I couldn't do that. I came out here because I'm worried about you guys. It's important for you to understand the lifestyle we live in and how the virus is spread. I don't want what happened to me to happen to you. You have to talk about it. You've got to ask the question. Don't be afraid to ask it. Your life is in danger.
"Then we who have the virus," he continued, because he knew for some that he had arrived too late - that, statistically, it might be circulating through the audience already, "we've got to live on, too. I'm not dead by no means. Not yet anyway. I'm going to keep going on. I'm still having sex, I'm still running, jumping, playing. Life doesn't change."
He listened to the back and forth between the students and the mingling AIDS experts. How do you ask whether your partner has had unprotected sex? Magic, apparently, never raised that question when he could have, and how many times must he have excoriated himself for that. But then he waved away the debate.
"Whatever you ask him," he said to a teenage girl, "it really doesn't matter. If you like him, you're going to sleep with him. Really. If you have feelings for him, you're going to sleep with him. So then, if you ask me if I've ever done it without a condom, and if I want you, then I'm going to lie to you. Right? Especially when you're this young. We're lying there together, and I'm going to say: 'But I haven't slept with anybody before you. You're the first one, the only one. You're the prettiest girl in school.'
"I've been there before. I know. No matter what's happened in the past, it doesn't matter, because you can't trust them. If they don't have the condom, then they're waiting. It's just kissing and hugging. If they don't produce that condom, you don't, you don't, you don't. There's always the next day. You can always pick up where you left off."
Waiting outside the gym, in the 10 feet between the door and his car, were two dozen people. He could only sign a few of their autograph requests. "I'm sorry," he yelled out from the crack of the Mercedes' tinted window, "but I've got a game tonight and I've got to go." Inside with his three bodyguards, he rode toward his next appointment.
There he talked about the difference in the United States, where, he said, such a conversation could "only be so open. You know? They won't talk about it. Instead of, 'Come on and get the condom' - they'd never let that happen back home. Let it be open like it is over here. Because one thing they don't understand is, kids want to have sex, no matter what parents are thinking. They're going to have it. I don't care. You can't stop 'em."
He laughed at the thought of anyone trying.
The next appointment was a basketball game. If ever there was proof that someone with HIV can mix with society, this was it, for Magic's opponents from the Dutch national team hacked and clawed at him like the briar patch assaulting Br'er Fox. It was an honorable setting, but not worthy somehow. These weren't the Olympic Games. His three-game tour of Europe - beginning last weekend in Finland and concluding Thursday in Belgium - had merged him with a "Legend Team," made up of Moses Malone, Alex English, Kyle Macy and Marques Johnson, plus the Brazilian star Oscar Schmidt, all 35 or older and showing it. The effect was not unlike watching the Star Trek movies.
It was some time ago that Magic was winning NBA titles for the Los Angeles Lakers with Legend teammates Bob McAdoo, who is 42, Kurt Rambis (35) and Michael Cooper (36). They each carry obvious deficiencies, except for Magic, the youngest among them. You can't see what's wrong with him yet.
Which makes it all the more frightening, for the millions who care, to see him expending himself. The game itself doesn't matter. Where does he get the energy? Shouldn't he save it? Forestalling such questions, he produced a rusty triple-double of 30 points, 16 assists and 10 turnovers - but, Lord, he was awesome.
"I would think, just the thought of having it, the idea that it can go bad for him any day," said Chris van Dinten, who played for Monmouth College in West Long Branch, New Jersey, during Magic's NBA prime, and who guarded him Wednesday night. "The guy knows he's going to die, he knows he's going to die earlier than probably anybody else, but he's not going to be depressed about it. I bet he has a lot of personal lapses, but he doesn't show the world. He just keeps going. This is, like, his destiny."
For once, no carpet was hiding the floor, and none of the shooters wore lingerie or lipstick. The young Dutch led, 31-20, after the opening quarter, but then Magic began slashing, slaloming, twisting, spread-eagled like a dancer, and the scoreboard numbers increased on the old men's side like time replacing itself.
They were going to win by a score of 142-128, but the game was effectively over with 13 seconds remaining in the half, when Magic grabbed the ball at the right elbow of the floor.
"Don't throw the hook," van Dinten warned him. A challenge. Magic's cheeks puffed, and his eyes filled like Dizzy Gillespie's as he crouched before the solo. Thud, thud, the ball like a drum beat, thud-thud, faster and faster. "You're not going to take the hook," van Dinten shouted, dancing in place, four seconds and three, when Magic hoisted himself behind his shielding shoulder, spun and tossed the hook - the hook - from 20 feet and ran away like it was a grenade.
Swish.
Buzzer.
He shot his index fingers like a pair of revolvers at his teammates. They were all falling back in the chairs, kicking up their feet. The scoreboard said so: He made his points.
May 14, 1993
International Herald Tribune: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/14/sports/14iht-magi.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print
DEN BOSCH, the Netherlands— Magic, hey Magic Johnson: Looking for some hashish?
What? No! No, thanks.
For you the best price, Magic.
No thank you, Magic Johnson said, as he walked the unscrubbed morning streets of Amsterdam. The city is a red-lit museum to his past - not the stranger offering hashish, for no one has ever implied that Magic used drugs - but the women. They were on exhibit, by the dozens.
Magic! Hey there honey.
Hello, Magic.
Posing inside doorway after doorway along the sidewalk, hair obscuring a bare shoulder, lipstick to smear, and a shadowed bed in the narrow room behind.
Didn't they know?
There are times, in his newfound dedication to the most important things, when Magic Johnson is like the camera overhead, and he is viewing himself below. And that is his new job. To keep an eye on himself, and how he mixes. But then sometimes the poetic glare brakes him to a halt, like this woman with the lips, neither dressed yet tantalizingly not undressed, she straddling the entrance between him and that bed - and silently making that motion with her arm of shooting a basketball.
That he could just wake up in a sweat and she would vanish.
But he laughed and continued on past.
"To see some of these situations, how far behind we are, as far as their openness," said Magic Johnson, the American tourist. "As a young man I would have just been saying: 'Wow!' You know what I'm saying?" He laughed. "It's really something to sit there and see it, but then you don't gawk at it anymore. You study it.
"They control a problem that we've been trying to control. That's what went through my mind. Here they are, men want it, they can't get it no other way but to pay for it, so they legalized it. But then they put it in this one area. I said, wow, these people are smart. If they're going to do it anyway, just go ahead and let them do it, but keep it right here. It's really something. Then they make them, I guess the way they explained it to me, you've got to have your health card and all that, so it was really weird. It makes you think about different things.
"I thought, this is really, I tell you what, this is an education coming over here. It really educates you."
Magic Johnson came to Europe this week to play basketball. Of course, the basketball is only the source of his light. He is more concerned now with the illumination. In the United States, controversy lurks about his message like the disease itself. A $2 million lawsuit has claimed that he knew he had the HIV virus that causes AIDS when he infected a woman from his hometown of East Lansing, Michigan. Johnson, who revealed his infection while retiring from the National Basketball Association in November 1991, has said, "They have no case."
Beyond that, he is having trouble reaching those who need to hear him. Americans have not yet decided how their children should be schooled in HIV and AIDS prevention. The religious conservatives worry that his outreach ultimately promotes teenage sex. Part of Johnson's message is that the safest sex of all is no sex. It is not, he admits, the most realistic part.
On Wednesday afternoon, having returned from a little window shopping in Amsterdam, he appeared at an hour-long forum for some 300 high school students here. Sponsored by Pepsi and the local Red Cross Youth, they were going to talk sex inside a small basketball gymnasium. The wood floor was cloaked with gray carpet. Between the six baskets were posters from Magic's past, and blurred, blown-up photos of lovers in the throes, the difference being that each couple held in their fingers not a fashionable cigarette but a condom.
The Boston Garden, in June, was only slightly more hot. Johnson sat on the stage beneath one of the baskets, whose white net hung above him like a chef's hat. Four students were flanking him, each half his age or younger. Magic is just 34. He wore a black T-shirt.
The conversation was necessarily explicit. If Earvin Johnson ever sounds like a 1950s health movie, if he's yesterday, then that's the day Magic has died. It's no easy thing to discuss in everyday terms what he does in order to make love to his wife, inviting an audience to envision him in that way. A boy in the audience stood and announced it was not his business to ask whether his friend used a condom during sex.
"Never mind sex," Magic said. "If I'm your friend, and I hear you're going to some place dangerous, I've got to say to you: 'Look. Don't go there. It's dangerous.'
"I could've just said it's not my business to tell everybody I had this," he went on. "I could have just said, I'm retiring from sports and I'm not going to really worry about everybody else. I couldn't do that. I came out here because I'm worried about you guys. It's important for you to understand the lifestyle we live in and how the virus is spread. I don't want what happened to me to happen to you. You have to talk about it. You've got to ask the question. Don't be afraid to ask it. Your life is in danger.
"Then we who have the virus," he continued, because he knew for some that he had arrived too late - that, statistically, it might be circulating through the audience already, "we've got to live on, too. I'm not dead by no means. Not yet anyway. I'm going to keep going on. I'm still having sex, I'm still running, jumping, playing. Life doesn't change."
He listened to the back and forth between the students and the mingling AIDS experts. How do you ask whether your partner has had unprotected sex? Magic, apparently, never raised that question when he could have, and how many times must he have excoriated himself for that. But then he waved away the debate.
"Whatever you ask him," he said to a teenage girl, "it really doesn't matter. If you like him, you're going to sleep with him. Really. If you have feelings for him, you're going to sleep with him. So then, if you ask me if I've ever done it without a condom, and if I want you, then I'm going to lie to you. Right? Especially when you're this young. We're lying there together, and I'm going to say: 'But I haven't slept with anybody before you. You're the first one, the only one. You're the prettiest girl in school.'
"I've been there before. I know. No matter what's happened in the past, it doesn't matter, because you can't trust them. If they don't have the condom, then they're waiting. It's just kissing and hugging. If they don't produce that condom, you don't, you don't, you don't. There's always the next day. You can always pick up where you left off."
Waiting outside the gym, in the 10 feet between the door and his car, were two dozen people. He could only sign a few of their autograph requests. "I'm sorry," he yelled out from the crack of the Mercedes' tinted window, "but I've got a game tonight and I've got to go." Inside with his three bodyguards, he rode toward his next appointment.
There he talked about the difference in the United States, where, he said, such a conversation could "only be so open. You know? They won't talk about it. Instead of, 'Come on and get the condom' - they'd never let that happen back home. Let it be open like it is over here. Because one thing they don't understand is, kids want to have sex, no matter what parents are thinking. They're going to have it. I don't care. You can't stop 'em."
He laughed at the thought of anyone trying.
The next appointment was a basketball game. If ever there was proof that someone with HIV can mix with society, this was it, for Magic's opponents from the Dutch national team hacked and clawed at him like the briar patch assaulting Br'er Fox. It was an honorable setting, but not worthy somehow. These weren't the Olympic Games. His three-game tour of Europe - beginning last weekend in Finland and concluding Thursday in Belgium - had merged him with a "Legend Team," made up of Moses Malone, Alex English, Kyle Macy and Marques Johnson, plus the Brazilian star Oscar Schmidt, all 35 or older and showing it. The effect was not unlike watching the Star Trek movies.
It was some time ago that Magic was winning NBA titles for the Los Angeles Lakers with Legend teammates Bob McAdoo, who is 42, Kurt Rambis (35) and Michael Cooper (36). They each carry obvious deficiencies, except for Magic, the youngest among them. You can't see what's wrong with him yet.
Which makes it all the more frightening, for the millions who care, to see him expending himself. The game itself doesn't matter. Where does he get the energy? Shouldn't he save it? Forestalling such questions, he produced a rusty triple-double of 30 points, 16 assists and 10 turnovers - but, Lord, he was awesome.
"I would think, just the thought of having it, the idea that it can go bad for him any day," said Chris van Dinten, who played for Monmouth College in West Long Branch, New Jersey, during Magic's NBA prime, and who guarded him Wednesday night. "The guy knows he's going to die, he knows he's going to die earlier than probably anybody else, but he's not going to be depressed about it. I bet he has a lot of personal lapses, but he doesn't show the world. He just keeps going. This is, like, his destiny."
For once, no carpet was hiding the floor, and none of the shooters wore lingerie or lipstick. The young Dutch led, 31-20, after the opening quarter, but then Magic began slashing, slaloming, twisting, spread-eagled like a dancer, and the scoreboard numbers increased on the old men's side like time replacing itself.
They were going to win by a score of 142-128, but the game was effectively over with 13 seconds remaining in the half, when Magic grabbed the ball at the right elbow of the floor.
"Don't throw the hook," van Dinten warned him. A challenge. Magic's cheeks puffed, and his eyes filled like Dizzy Gillespie's as he crouched before the solo. Thud, thud, the ball like a drum beat, thud-thud, faster and faster. "You're not going to take the hook," van Dinten shouted, dancing in place, four seconds and three, when Magic hoisted himself behind his shielding shoulder, spun and tossed the hook - the hook - from 20 feet and ran away like it was a grenade.
Swish.
Buzzer.
He shot his index fingers like a pair of revolvers at his teammates. They were all falling back in the chairs, kicking up their feet. The scoreboard said so: He made his points.
Extreme Makeover
In a span of 33 days this summer Celtics G.M. Danny Ainge pulled off two megadeals that reversed the course of his stumbling franchise, bringing together three All-Stars who have Boston thinking championship again. Here's how he did it
In the new millennium, the disturbing trend was for NBA stars to become `The Man’ of his own team. This trade reversed course, with many stars preferring to pool their talents – even if it means sacrificing personal stats.
By Ian Thomsen
Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/vault/2007/10/29/100910652/extreme-makeover
Oct. 23, 2007
Paul Pierce slowly walked into the Celtics' locker room after another loss last March, head down, wondering how his career had taken such a wrong turn. The 29-year-old small forward was the lone All-Star on a roster of novices, five of whom were young enough to be in college; he was 10 pounds too heavy; and, worst of all, he feared that he would never accomplish anything of lasting value in the NBA, at least with Boston. "I had pretty strong thoughts that I wouldn't even be here this year," Pierce says now. "I was wondering what the plan was, and I was wondering if I was in the plan."
A new ownership group, which had taken control in September 2002, hired former Celtics guard Danny Ainge as executive director of basketball operations the following May, and over the next four years Ainge shrewdly drafted Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Gerald Green, Ryan Gomes and Rajon Rondo without benefit of a lottery pick -- only to undermine that strategy with questionable trades for Raef LaFrentz, Ricky Davis, Wally Szczerbiak and Sebastian Telfair. As Pierce was maturing into one of the NBA's finest all-around players (with career averages of 23.6 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.66 steals), his supporting cast was growing progressively younger and becoming less supportive with each passing year.
The Celtics' 24-58 record last season was their worst in 10 years and included a franchise-record 18-game losing streak while a demoralized Pierce watched from the bench with a left foot injury. "We're going through 10, 11, 12 games in a row lost, 13," recalls Pierce, who missed the first 16 of those losses. "I was thinking, This team really has a future?"
Yet Ainge was not discouraged. Despite taking heat in Boston for his regular overhauls of the team, he felt he had accumulated enough assets to pull off a blockbuster trade. But even Ainge didn't imagine last March that he would swing two significant deals that have dramatically revived the championship hopes of a franchise that had won only three playoff series since Larry Bird's retirement in 1992.
By acquiring shooting guard Ray Allen from the Seattle SuperSonics and power forward Kevin Garnett from the Minnesota Timberwolves without relinquishing Pierce -- forming an unparalleled trio of still-in-its prime NBA talent, with a cumulative 21 All-Star appearances and career scoring average of 65.6 points -- Ainge made the Celtics relevant again.
As both a Boston player and executive, Ainge has not been afraid of the risks involved in acting boldly. Back in 1988, when he was one of the Celtics' backcourt starters, he was seated at a table with Bird, forward Kevin McHale and team president Red Auerbach during the organization's Christmas party. At the time Boston was reportedly considering trades that would have sent Bird and McHale to the Indiana Pacers and Dallas Mavericks, respectively. "Look at these two guys," Ainge told Auerbach, over the surrounding conversations of other players and their families. "Larry's got casts on his feet [from surgery to remove bone spurs in both heels], Kevin's got a screw in his foot [to repair a stress fracture] -- you've got to trade these guys." Everyone laughed at Ainge's typical audacity, but he wasn't joking. "I would have traded Larry Bird," he insists today.
Fifteen years later Ainge sits in Auerbach's old chair. He was hired to set the franchise on a fresh course in search of Banner 17, as new managing partner Wyc Grousbeck referred to the NBA championship that had eluded the Celtics since they won 16 titles in a 30-year span through 1985-86. Within five months Ainge had completed his first major deal, sending All-Star forward Antoine Walker to Dallas for a package that included LaFrentz and thrusting leadership of the team upon Pierce.
But postseason appearances in 2004 and '05 -- plus an Atlantic Division title in '05, when Walker was reacquired for the stretch run -- did not change the fact that Ainge was learning on the job. Many of Ainge's trades seemed to be attempts at rectifying earlier misjudgments. As he invested more and more in young players who were long-term projects, Boston slumped from 45 wins in 2004-05 to 33 to 24, missing the playoffs the last two years.
And yet, as the horrendous 2006-07 season wound down, Celtics fans were nonetheless enticed by hopes of landing one of the top two prospects in the draft, Ohio State center Greg Oden or Texas forward Kevin Durant, though Boston would enter the lottery with less than a 40% chance of winning one of the first two picks. Pierce was certain that either teenager would need years to mature into a player capable of turning the Celtics into an NBA champion, and that Pierce would be long gone by then. But the team's TV ratings in Boston increased during the 18-game losing streak, with fans perversely celebrating each loss as improving Boston's chances of landing Oden or Durant.
The Celtics' lead owners, investment bankers Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca, are longtime eastern Massachusetts residents and fans of the team their group bought five years ago for $360 million. Along with Ainge, they continually offered encouragement to Pierce, telling him that they shared his passion for winning in spite of the results. "I could see that Paul's spirit was kind of lost," says Ainge. "He wasn't the player that he could be, and I understood it."
Sensing his despair, the two owners and Ainge called Pierce to a meeting in Ainge's office at the team's practice facility in suburban Waltham last April to discuss the player's concerns. While he came away with a renewed belief that Grousbeck and Pagliuca were serious about providing him with veteran help, Pierce remained uncertain that Ainge could follow through. "I had mixed feelings about Danny," admits Pierce. "I didn't know if he could get us back to that [championship] level. What else am I supposed to think? I didn't know what he was trying to do, I didn't know the game plan."
It was apparent to Pierce that the Celtics were counting on rebuilding around Oden or Durant. "I saw the emergence of Al Jefferson and Tony Allen," says Pierce, "and I'm thinking, if they take either Oden or Durant, maybe it will be my time to go because they would have a great foundation." Whereas Pierce once feared being traded to a losing franchise -- he vetoed an attempt by Boston in 2005 to move him to the Portland Trail Blazers for a draft pick the Celtics would have used on Wake Forest guard Chris Paul -- he was now willing to start fresh almost anywhere: "I figured, How much worse could it get?"
On May 22, the day of the lottery, Grousbeck, wearing a green-and-white pinstriped suit, anxiously approached Room 3A at NBA Entertainment studios in Secaucus, N.J. He would serve as the Celtics' representative for the lottery, which was to take place 90 minutes before the ESPN telecast revealing the results. Each of the teams' reps had to turn in his cellphone and other wireless devices after entering the room and were forbidden from communicating with the outside world.
Shortly after 7:30 p.m. balls numbered 1 through 14 were dropped into a tumbler at the front of the room. Grousbeck sat back in his chair, a list of 1,000 possible four-number combinations -- including the 199 assigned to Boston for having the NBA's second-worst record -- upon his lap. When the balls 5, 9, 14 and 13 popped out for the No. 1 pick, Grousbeck didn't bother to review his list. Nor did he do so after 14, 4, 11 and 10 came up for pick No. 2. "I knew [our] numbers," he told reporters in the room. "A 1 or 2 had to show up or we weren't getting a pick, and they didn't show up."
As the telecast began, a brief camera shot of the gathering in Room 3A provided an unfortunate clue to Celtics president Rich Gotham. "I could tell by the way [Grousbeck] was sitting that we didn't get it," says Gotham, who was watching with Ainge and coach Doc Rivers in Ainge's office. "I could read the body language."
Boston ended up with the No. 5 pick, which meant the choice would be shopped. Perhaps the only person in Boston who was happy with this result was Pierce. Ainge would have more work to do.
Ainge and McHale have been friends for more than 25 years. They first met when Ainge, the reigning Wooden Award winner from BYU, joined the Celtics in November 1981 (Ainge had played four seasons in the Toronto Blue Jays' system before Auerbach bought out his baseball contract); McHale was in his second year in the NBA. They remained friends after Ainge was traded to the Sacramento Kings in '89. From there Ainge would play for the Trail Blazers and the Phoenix Suns, retire in '95 and work for TNT and serve as Suns coach before returning to Boston. McHale finished his career with the Celtics in '93, then became the Timberwolves' vice president of basketball operations two years later. "There are really no secrets between Kevin and I," Ainge says. "Kevin and I don't play games, we don't try to trick each other. We've known each other way too long to ever do that."
Ainge had been trying to pry Garnett from Minnesota since late in the 2005-06 season, when the Timberwolves were wrapping up a disappointing 33-win campaign that launched speculation of Garnett's exit. Ainge routinely worked Garnett's name into his conversations with McHale and stubbornly kept it up even after McHale said Garnett wasn't available. But the rapport between the two friends and team execs was of secondary importance; far more crucial to Garnett's future was McHale's failure to maintain a winning combination around the 6' 11" All-Star. After eight successive playoff appearances ending in 2004, Minnesota slumped to 44, 33 and 32 wins over the next three seasons. The franchise became vulnerable to losing Garnett because he could opt out of his contract after the 2007-08 season, and owner Glen Taylor wasn't interested in extending Garnett's deal unless he accepted a cut in his $20 million annual salary.
As it became clear that the Timberwolves might, indeed, part with Garnett, Boston emerged as a possible destination because it had a lottery pick; center Theo Ratliff's large contract that had only one year left; and, most attractive of all, Jefferson, an emerging 22-year-old power forward with the rare low-post and rebounding skills that McHale coveted. A week before the June 28 draft, however, Garnett's agent, Andy Miller, vetoed a potential trade to the Celtics by publicly declaring that Garnett had no interest in either leaving the Twin Cities or in signing an extension with Boston. Over the next few days the Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers became the front-runners in the bidding for the Big Ticket.
Though Ainge was still trying to salvage a deal for Garnett up to the eve of the draft, he was also looking elsewhere. A proposed three-team trade that would have sent Suns forward Shawn Marion to Boston and Garnett to Phoenix crumbled quickly, and another rumored deal for Marcus Camby of the Denver Nuggets didn't have legs either. As draft day approached it appeared as if Ainge might have to use that No. 5 pick after all. He had targeted Chinese forward Yi Jianlian, whom Ainge rated as the player with the most upside in this draft, but the last thing the Celtics needed was another phenom who was two or three years away.
On the morning of the draft, in the midst of making and taking scores of calls at the team's Waltham offices, Ainge found an apparent trading partner: Sam Presti, the Sonics' new general manager, who told Ainge that he was willing to move Allen, with the three years and $52 million remaining on his contract, in exchange for young talent and cap flexibility -- needs similar to those of the Timberwolves. While his staff quickly ran a background check to verify Allen's health (he had had surgery in April to remove bone spurs in both ankles), Ainge hit a wall in his negotiations with Presti: The Seattle G.M. said he wouldn't consummate the deal without including Rondo. "I was never going to do that," says Ainge, who values the athleticism, defense and potential leadership of his second-year point guard.
Several hours later -- late afternoon on the East Coast -- Presti reopened the door. In place of Rondo, he agreed to take West, a tough, sharpshooting combo guard, plus the already agreed upon No. 5 pick and Szczerbiak, who would provide scoring in the short term and cap space when his contract expired in 2009. The Celtics got Allen and a second-round pick, which they would use that night to take LSU forward Glen (Big Baby) Davis.
Initial reaction to the trade was far from complimentary to Boston. Frank Hughes of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., made a lap of the reporters at the draft and wrote, "The general consensus was that the 30-year-old Presti fleeced Celtics general manager Danny Ainge, [who was] trying desperately to hold onto his and coach Doc Rivers's jobs."
The response was quite different within the Celtics family, and no one was happier than Pierce. "Danny had been asking me about Ray, Shawn Marion and a few other guys and what I thought of them," says Pierce. "I thought Ray was a better fit because he's a prototype two-guard and I can go play the three." But as team officials celebrated the arrival of Allen, who had a career 21.5 scoring average and the purest jump shot in the league, Rivers and other staffers figured there was no more hope of acquiring Garnett. Ainge felt otherwise: He had held fast to Jefferson and Ratliff as well as a conditional No. 1 pick from Minnesota (acquired in a 2006 trade) as chips to use in a long-shot bid to get Garnett.
In the days following the draft, Garnett, who had been steadfast in wanting to finish his career in Minnesota, learned of Taylor's intention to rebuild with a younger, cheaper roster. "The weekend after the draft is when he started to say, 'O.K., let's explore what the situation is,' " says Miller. Suitors quickly fell by the wayside: Garnett soured on the Lakers because of Kobe Bryant's trade demands, and another potential deal involving the Suns collapsed. Other interested teams, such as the Mavericks and the Golden State Warriors, weren't offering the package of youth, size, cap flexibility and draft picks that Ainge was willing to put up.
And Garnett was growing more intrigued with the Celtics. First, he had never played with teammates as talented as Pierce and Allen, with whom he could instantly contend for the Eastern Conference championship. Second, he had a friendship with Allen dating back to their high school days in South Carolina. "I didn't speak publicly, really didn't say too much to my friends or any of that," says Garnett. "But I really tried to be comfortable with seeing myself in a Celtics jersey."
He had no idea how Pierce felt about it, however. Garnett has an off-season home in Malibu, and before the draft -- amid widespread reports of his possible trade to Boston -- he had run into Pierce in a pickup game at UCLA, where Pierce, an L.A. native, is a regular. Yet Pierce had nothing to say to KG about their potentially becoming teammates. "He didn't even bring it up," says Garnett, confused by Pierce's seeming lack of enthusiasm.
The truth was, Pierce did not give any credence to the rumors, having been let down too many times by talk of everyone from Baron Davis to Allen Iverson coming to his rescue in Boston. So he rolled his eyes at the buzz about Garnett joining the Celtics. "I just thought there was no possible way," says Pierce, "and left it at that."
On July 5, Ainge and McHale reconnected at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. Ainge continued to pepper McHale with proposals for Garnett, and McHale continued to listen. "Kevin never played his hand [as if to say], This is something we're really interested in," says Ainge, "but he never gave me reason to lose hope."
For more than three weeks Ainge and McHale talked off and on -- as many as five conversations on some days, having in-house deliberation on others -- as McHale tried to squeeze the maximum out of the deal. The framework was settled quickly: Jefferson and Ratliff were mainstays, Ainge was willing to return the conditional No. 1 pick plus another, and Green, a swingman with 20-point potential, and Gomes, a second-year forward who played like a veteran, were in play.
By this time Garnett was willing to consider a contract extension with the Celtics. So on July 20, with Minnesota's permission, Ainge flew to California for a one-on-one in Garnett's Malibu backyard. During the 90-minute conversation they discussed how KG would fit in with the Celtics and worked out the general terms of his salary: combining the two years remaining on his current contract (enhanced by a 15% trade kicker) and a three-year, $56 million extension, Garnett would earn a total of $104.9 million over the next five seasons in Boston. "It was probably the most simple negotiation I've been through," says Garnett.
Others would disagree, including Miller, who was besieged by the technicalities of the first sign-and-trade extension in NBA history. On the eve of the deal, he says, "I went out and walked [an] entire golf course screaming and venting because I was having so much difficulty."
Satisfied with Garnett's willingness to be a Celtic, Ainge flew home more optimistic about making the trade than ever. Eight days later he and McHale finally settled on the particulars of the biggest trade for one player in NBA history: In exchange for Garnett, Boston would send Jefferson, Ratliff, Green, Gomes, Telfair, two first-round picks and cash to Minnesota, which would rebuild around Jefferson, second-year guard Randy Foye and rookie forward Corey Brewer, its first-round pick from Florida.
That afternoon Grousbeck was jogging on the beach near his summer home on Martha's Vineyard when his phone rang. It was the last of his five calls that day with Taylor, and Grousbeck, says a league source, would agree to pay $1 million of Telfair's salary as compensation for not including Rondo in the deal. "This was the first trade we've done where owners were involved," says Grousbeck. "This was just too big for both franchises. I took my phone with me in case it rang, and it did ring and thank God."
On July 31, at TD Banknorth Garden, Garnett stretched himself out of an SUV wearing an open-necked shirt, a blazer and a Red Sox cap. He had arrived in Boston that morning for meetings with the Celtics, a physical at New England Baptist Hospital and the beginning of the most promising phase of his career. (After the trade was announced the team enjoyed its most profitable day of ticket sales in years.) That evening, at Garnett's introductory press conference, the turnout was reminiscent of the day Bird announced his retirement 15 years earlier; the potential heirs to the original Big Three of Bird, McHale and Robert Parish had finally been found.
Boston is banking on the two trades turning into the most triumphant off-season makeover since the Lakers' in 1996. That summer L.A. acquired the rights to first-round pick Kobe Bryant in a draft-day deal and then signed free agent Shaquille O'Neal a few weeks later, an arranged marriage of superstars that produced three championships before an ugly divorce. Though it is paying $58.5 million to Allen, Garnett and Pierce this season alone -- more than the entire payrolls of four NBA teams -- Boston would gladly accept a similar scenario. "In this league if you really want to make something happen, you can," says Trail Blazers forward James Jones. "It's just that teams normally don't have the motivation to pull something off like the Celtics did."
Yet obvious questions will require months, maybe years, to answer. For instance, Are the new Big Three too old to win a championship? That's a fair concern because no NBA team has ever won a title with its top three scorers all in their 30s. Ainge contends that their style of play and body types will enable Allen, 32, Garnett, 31, and Pierce, 30, to remain productive for the lengths of their contracts. Still, the Celtics will be trying to break new ground with old legs. "We already know that the way to beat Boston is to run them," says Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas. "Look at how old they are -- we have to run them so that by the fourth quarter they have nothing left."
But in another way the three Boston elders have never felt younger. Eager to step up their learning curve, they met throughout September for daily workouts at the Celtics' practice facility. They will not be easing their way into November, especially with their arena almost guaranteed to be sold-out all season. "Kevin will pull those guys together quickly," says Timberwolves assistant G.M. Fred Hoiberg, who played with Garnett in Minnesota. "He's the best practice player I've been around in my career, and to see how hard he works, that brings together the team. I think they're the favorites to win the East."
After the Celtics gave up all those players, what about their depth? Ainge filled out the bench by signing veteran free agents Eddie House, Scot Pollard and James Posey to short-term, short-money contracts. Once the Celtics acquired Garnett, all three found Boston a more desirable destination and were willing to sign deals favorable to the team. Those contracts pushed Boston into luxury-tax territory, but the owners spend little time worrying about the enormous investment they've made. "If we don't get Banner 17 and do it in the right way, then we'll consider it a failure," says Grousbeck, who sees his ownership group as presiding over a public trust. "This isn't about the value of the team or selling out the building. It's about the Celtics on the court winning the championship and off the court leading the league in community relations and community work."
Other issues will be harder to quantify. Will Rivers prove able to coach defense as well as he oversees the offensive end of the court? (To that end he brought in defensive specialist Tom Thibodeau, the longtime aide to Jeff Van Gundy.) Will 21-year-old Rondo and 22-year-old center Kendrick Perkins develop into capable starters for a championship contender? Most important, will Allen, Garnett and Pierce be capable of dialing back their customary roles to flourish as a unit? "I can understand one of those guys being able to take the number 2 seat," says a Western Conference G.M. "But who's going to take the number 3 seat? There's no room for three [stars] unless at least one of them says, 'I don't care.' If one of them can do that, then they'll be great."
Some of these answers won't arrive until the looming heat of May and June, months when the old Boston Garden used to steam up and Auerbach was said to have glued the windows shut in the visitors' locker room. But the best sign of how far the Celtics have already come is that Pierce can see things from management's view. "They were new," Pierce says of Ainge and the owners. "They were learning the business, still learning how to operate the day-to-day. They took their time, sat back, evaluated everything for a few years and then it was the right time. They made the move. This is the most excited I've been about playing a season. I know this type of opportunity doesn't come around for a lot of players. We've got to make the most of it."
In the meantime Ainge will keep returning to the best memory he has of his extended efforts to restore the Celtics tradition. "Paul came and gave me a big hug the day we made the KG trade," says Ainge. "He said, 'Never did I think you could bring me these kind of veteran players.' That was probably my favorite moment of the whole thing, to see Paul like a little kid again."
By Ian Thomsen
Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/vault/2007/10/29/100910652/extreme-makeover
Oct. 23, 2007
Paul Pierce slowly walked into the Celtics' locker room after another loss last March, head down, wondering how his career had taken such a wrong turn. The 29-year-old small forward was the lone All-Star on a roster of novices, five of whom were young enough to be in college; he was 10 pounds too heavy; and, worst of all, he feared that he would never accomplish anything of lasting value in the NBA, at least with Boston. "I had pretty strong thoughts that I wouldn't even be here this year," Pierce says now. "I was wondering what the plan was, and I was wondering if I was in the plan."
A new ownership group, which had taken control in September 2002, hired former Celtics guard Danny Ainge as executive director of basketball operations the following May, and over the next four years Ainge shrewdly drafted Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Gerald Green, Ryan Gomes and Rajon Rondo without benefit of a lottery pick -- only to undermine that strategy with questionable trades for Raef LaFrentz, Ricky Davis, Wally Szczerbiak and Sebastian Telfair. As Pierce was maturing into one of the NBA's finest all-around players (with career averages of 23.6 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.66 steals), his supporting cast was growing progressively younger and becoming less supportive with each passing year.
The Celtics' 24-58 record last season was their worst in 10 years and included a franchise-record 18-game losing streak while a demoralized Pierce watched from the bench with a left foot injury. "We're going through 10, 11, 12 games in a row lost, 13," recalls Pierce, who missed the first 16 of those losses. "I was thinking, This team really has a future?"
Yet Ainge was not discouraged. Despite taking heat in Boston for his regular overhauls of the team, he felt he had accumulated enough assets to pull off a blockbuster trade. But even Ainge didn't imagine last March that he would swing two significant deals that have dramatically revived the championship hopes of a franchise that had won only three playoff series since Larry Bird's retirement in 1992.
By acquiring shooting guard Ray Allen from the Seattle SuperSonics and power forward Kevin Garnett from the Minnesota Timberwolves without relinquishing Pierce -- forming an unparalleled trio of still-in-its prime NBA talent, with a cumulative 21 All-Star appearances and career scoring average of 65.6 points -- Ainge made the Celtics relevant again.
As both a Boston player and executive, Ainge has not been afraid of the risks involved in acting boldly. Back in 1988, when he was one of the Celtics' backcourt starters, he was seated at a table with Bird, forward Kevin McHale and team president Red Auerbach during the organization's Christmas party. At the time Boston was reportedly considering trades that would have sent Bird and McHale to the Indiana Pacers and Dallas Mavericks, respectively. "Look at these two guys," Ainge told Auerbach, over the surrounding conversations of other players and their families. "Larry's got casts on his feet [from surgery to remove bone spurs in both heels], Kevin's got a screw in his foot [to repair a stress fracture] -- you've got to trade these guys." Everyone laughed at Ainge's typical audacity, but he wasn't joking. "I would have traded Larry Bird," he insists today.
Fifteen years later Ainge sits in Auerbach's old chair. He was hired to set the franchise on a fresh course in search of Banner 17, as new managing partner Wyc Grousbeck referred to the NBA championship that had eluded the Celtics since they won 16 titles in a 30-year span through 1985-86. Within five months Ainge had completed his first major deal, sending All-Star forward Antoine Walker to Dallas for a package that included LaFrentz and thrusting leadership of the team upon Pierce.
But postseason appearances in 2004 and '05 -- plus an Atlantic Division title in '05, when Walker was reacquired for the stretch run -- did not change the fact that Ainge was learning on the job. Many of Ainge's trades seemed to be attempts at rectifying earlier misjudgments. As he invested more and more in young players who were long-term projects, Boston slumped from 45 wins in 2004-05 to 33 to 24, missing the playoffs the last two years.
And yet, as the horrendous 2006-07 season wound down, Celtics fans were nonetheless enticed by hopes of landing one of the top two prospects in the draft, Ohio State center Greg Oden or Texas forward Kevin Durant, though Boston would enter the lottery with less than a 40% chance of winning one of the first two picks. Pierce was certain that either teenager would need years to mature into a player capable of turning the Celtics into an NBA champion, and that Pierce would be long gone by then. But the team's TV ratings in Boston increased during the 18-game losing streak, with fans perversely celebrating each loss as improving Boston's chances of landing Oden or Durant.
The Celtics' lead owners, investment bankers Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca, are longtime eastern Massachusetts residents and fans of the team their group bought five years ago for $360 million. Along with Ainge, they continually offered encouragement to Pierce, telling him that they shared his passion for winning in spite of the results. "I could see that Paul's spirit was kind of lost," says Ainge. "He wasn't the player that he could be, and I understood it."
Sensing his despair, the two owners and Ainge called Pierce to a meeting in Ainge's office at the team's practice facility in suburban Waltham last April to discuss the player's concerns. While he came away with a renewed belief that Grousbeck and Pagliuca were serious about providing him with veteran help, Pierce remained uncertain that Ainge could follow through. "I had mixed feelings about Danny," admits Pierce. "I didn't know if he could get us back to that [championship] level. What else am I supposed to think? I didn't know what he was trying to do, I didn't know the game plan."
It was apparent to Pierce that the Celtics were counting on rebuilding around Oden or Durant. "I saw the emergence of Al Jefferson and Tony Allen," says Pierce, "and I'm thinking, if they take either Oden or Durant, maybe it will be my time to go because they would have a great foundation." Whereas Pierce once feared being traded to a losing franchise -- he vetoed an attempt by Boston in 2005 to move him to the Portland Trail Blazers for a draft pick the Celtics would have used on Wake Forest guard Chris Paul -- he was now willing to start fresh almost anywhere: "I figured, How much worse could it get?"
On May 22, the day of the lottery, Grousbeck, wearing a green-and-white pinstriped suit, anxiously approached Room 3A at NBA Entertainment studios in Secaucus, N.J. He would serve as the Celtics' representative for the lottery, which was to take place 90 minutes before the ESPN telecast revealing the results. Each of the teams' reps had to turn in his cellphone and other wireless devices after entering the room and were forbidden from communicating with the outside world.
Shortly after 7:30 p.m. balls numbered 1 through 14 were dropped into a tumbler at the front of the room. Grousbeck sat back in his chair, a list of 1,000 possible four-number combinations -- including the 199 assigned to Boston for having the NBA's second-worst record -- upon his lap. When the balls 5, 9, 14 and 13 popped out for the No. 1 pick, Grousbeck didn't bother to review his list. Nor did he do so after 14, 4, 11 and 10 came up for pick No. 2. "I knew [our] numbers," he told reporters in the room. "A 1 or 2 had to show up or we weren't getting a pick, and they didn't show up."
As the telecast began, a brief camera shot of the gathering in Room 3A provided an unfortunate clue to Celtics president Rich Gotham. "I could tell by the way [Grousbeck] was sitting that we didn't get it," says Gotham, who was watching with Ainge and coach Doc Rivers in Ainge's office. "I could read the body language."
Boston ended up with the No. 5 pick, which meant the choice would be shopped. Perhaps the only person in Boston who was happy with this result was Pierce. Ainge would have more work to do.
Ainge and McHale have been friends for more than 25 years. They first met when Ainge, the reigning Wooden Award winner from BYU, joined the Celtics in November 1981 (Ainge had played four seasons in the Toronto Blue Jays' system before Auerbach bought out his baseball contract); McHale was in his second year in the NBA. They remained friends after Ainge was traded to the Sacramento Kings in '89. From there Ainge would play for the Trail Blazers and the Phoenix Suns, retire in '95 and work for TNT and serve as Suns coach before returning to Boston. McHale finished his career with the Celtics in '93, then became the Timberwolves' vice president of basketball operations two years later. "There are really no secrets between Kevin and I," Ainge says. "Kevin and I don't play games, we don't try to trick each other. We've known each other way too long to ever do that."
Ainge had been trying to pry Garnett from Minnesota since late in the 2005-06 season, when the Timberwolves were wrapping up a disappointing 33-win campaign that launched speculation of Garnett's exit. Ainge routinely worked Garnett's name into his conversations with McHale and stubbornly kept it up even after McHale said Garnett wasn't available. But the rapport between the two friends and team execs was of secondary importance; far more crucial to Garnett's future was McHale's failure to maintain a winning combination around the 6' 11" All-Star. After eight successive playoff appearances ending in 2004, Minnesota slumped to 44, 33 and 32 wins over the next three seasons. The franchise became vulnerable to losing Garnett because he could opt out of his contract after the 2007-08 season, and owner Glen Taylor wasn't interested in extending Garnett's deal unless he accepted a cut in his $20 million annual salary.
As it became clear that the Timberwolves might, indeed, part with Garnett, Boston emerged as a possible destination because it had a lottery pick; center Theo Ratliff's large contract that had only one year left; and, most attractive of all, Jefferson, an emerging 22-year-old power forward with the rare low-post and rebounding skills that McHale coveted. A week before the June 28 draft, however, Garnett's agent, Andy Miller, vetoed a potential trade to the Celtics by publicly declaring that Garnett had no interest in either leaving the Twin Cities or in signing an extension with Boston. Over the next few days the Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers became the front-runners in the bidding for the Big Ticket.
Though Ainge was still trying to salvage a deal for Garnett up to the eve of the draft, he was also looking elsewhere. A proposed three-team trade that would have sent Suns forward Shawn Marion to Boston and Garnett to Phoenix crumbled quickly, and another rumored deal for Marcus Camby of the Denver Nuggets didn't have legs either. As draft day approached it appeared as if Ainge might have to use that No. 5 pick after all. He had targeted Chinese forward Yi Jianlian, whom Ainge rated as the player with the most upside in this draft, but the last thing the Celtics needed was another phenom who was two or three years away.
On the morning of the draft, in the midst of making and taking scores of calls at the team's Waltham offices, Ainge found an apparent trading partner: Sam Presti, the Sonics' new general manager, who told Ainge that he was willing to move Allen, with the three years and $52 million remaining on his contract, in exchange for young talent and cap flexibility -- needs similar to those of the Timberwolves. While his staff quickly ran a background check to verify Allen's health (he had had surgery in April to remove bone spurs in both ankles), Ainge hit a wall in his negotiations with Presti: The Seattle G.M. said he wouldn't consummate the deal without including Rondo. "I was never going to do that," says Ainge, who values the athleticism, defense and potential leadership of his second-year point guard.
Several hours later -- late afternoon on the East Coast -- Presti reopened the door. In place of Rondo, he agreed to take West, a tough, sharpshooting combo guard, plus the already agreed upon No. 5 pick and Szczerbiak, who would provide scoring in the short term and cap space when his contract expired in 2009. The Celtics got Allen and a second-round pick, which they would use that night to take LSU forward Glen (Big Baby) Davis.
Initial reaction to the trade was far from complimentary to Boston. Frank Hughes of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., made a lap of the reporters at the draft and wrote, "The general consensus was that the 30-year-old Presti fleeced Celtics general manager Danny Ainge, [who was] trying desperately to hold onto his and coach Doc Rivers's jobs."
The response was quite different within the Celtics family, and no one was happier than Pierce. "Danny had been asking me about Ray, Shawn Marion and a few other guys and what I thought of them," says Pierce. "I thought Ray was a better fit because he's a prototype two-guard and I can go play the three." But as team officials celebrated the arrival of Allen, who had a career 21.5 scoring average and the purest jump shot in the league, Rivers and other staffers figured there was no more hope of acquiring Garnett. Ainge felt otherwise: He had held fast to Jefferson and Ratliff as well as a conditional No. 1 pick from Minnesota (acquired in a 2006 trade) as chips to use in a long-shot bid to get Garnett.
In the days following the draft, Garnett, who had been steadfast in wanting to finish his career in Minnesota, learned of Taylor's intention to rebuild with a younger, cheaper roster. "The weekend after the draft is when he started to say, 'O.K., let's explore what the situation is,' " says Miller. Suitors quickly fell by the wayside: Garnett soured on the Lakers because of Kobe Bryant's trade demands, and another potential deal involving the Suns collapsed. Other interested teams, such as the Mavericks and the Golden State Warriors, weren't offering the package of youth, size, cap flexibility and draft picks that Ainge was willing to put up.
And Garnett was growing more intrigued with the Celtics. First, he had never played with teammates as talented as Pierce and Allen, with whom he could instantly contend for the Eastern Conference championship. Second, he had a friendship with Allen dating back to their high school days in South Carolina. "I didn't speak publicly, really didn't say too much to my friends or any of that," says Garnett. "But I really tried to be comfortable with seeing myself in a Celtics jersey."
He had no idea how Pierce felt about it, however. Garnett has an off-season home in Malibu, and before the draft -- amid widespread reports of his possible trade to Boston -- he had run into Pierce in a pickup game at UCLA, where Pierce, an L.A. native, is a regular. Yet Pierce had nothing to say to KG about their potentially becoming teammates. "He didn't even bring it up," says Garnett, confused by Pierce's seeming lack of enthusiasm.
The truth was, Pierce did not give any credence to the rumors, having been let down too many times by talk of everyone from Baron Davis to Allen Iverson coming to his rescue in Boston. So he rolled his eyes at the buzz about Garnett joining the Celtics. "I just thought there was no possible way," says Pierce, "and left it at that."
On July 5, Ainge and McHale reconnected at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. Ainge continued to pepper McHale with proposals for Garnett, and McHale continued to listen. "Kevin never played his hand [as if to say], This is something we're really interested in," says Ainge, "but he never gave me reason to lose hope."
For more than three weeks Ainge and McHale talked off and on -- as many as five conversations on some days, having in-house deliberation on others -- as McHale tried to squeeze the maximum out of the deal. The framework was settled quickly: Jefferson and Ratliff were mainstays, Ainge was willing to return the conditional No. 1 pick plus another, and Green, a swingman with 20-point potential, and Gomes, a second-year forward who played like a veteran, were in play.
By this time Garnett was willing to consider a contract extension with the Celtics. So on July 20, with Minnesota's permission, Ainge flew to California for a one-on-one in Garnett's Malibu backyard. During the 90-minute conversation they discussed how KG would fit in with the Celtics and worked out the general terms of his salary: combining the two years remaining on his current contract (enhanced by a 15% trade kicker) and a three-year, $56 million extension, Garnett would earn a total of $104.9 million over the next five seasons in Boston. "It was probably the most simple negotiation I've been through," says Garnett.
Others would disagree, including Miller, who was besieged by the technicalities of the first sign-and-trade extension in NBA history. On the eve of the deal, he says, "I went out and walked [an] entire golf course screaming and venting because I was having so much difficulty."
Satisfied with Garnett's willingness to be a Celtic, Ainge flew home more optimistic about making the trade than ever. Eight days later he and McHale finally settled on the particulars of the biggest trade for one player in NBA history: In exchange for Garnett, Boston would send Jefferson, Ratliff, Green, Gomes, Telfair, two first-round picks and cash to Minnesota, which would rebuild around Jefferson, second-year guard Randy Foye and rookie forward Corey Brewer, its first-round pick from Florida.
That afternoon Grousbeck was jogging on the beach near his summer home on Martha's Vineyard when his phone rang. It was the last of his five calls that day with Taylor, and Grousbeck, says a league source, would agree to pay $1 million of Telfair's salary as compensation for not including Rondo in the deal. "This was the first trade we've done where owners were involved," says Grousbeck. "This was just too big for both franchises. I took my phone with me in case it rang, and it did ring and thank God."
On July 31, at TD Banknorth Garden, Garnett stretched himself out of an SUV wearing an open-necked shirt, a blazer and a Red Sox cap. He had arrived in Boston that morning for meetings with the Celtics, a physical at New England Baptist Hospital and the beginning of the most promising phase of his career. (After the trade was announced the team enjoyed its most profitable day of ticket sales in years.) That evening, at Garnett's introductory press conference, the turnout was reminiscent of the day Bird announced his retirement 15 years earlier; the potential heirs to the original Big Three of Bird, McHale and Robert Parish had finally been found.
Boston is banking on the two trades turning into the most triumphant off-season makeover since the Lakers' in 1996. That summer L.A. acquired the rights to first-round pick Kobe Bryant in a draft-day deal and then signed free agent Shaquille O'Neal a few weeks later, an arranged marriage of superstars that produced three championships before an ugly divorce. Though it is paying $58.5 million to Allen, Garnett and Pierce this season alone -- more than the entire payrolls of four NBA teams -- Boston would gladly accept a similar scenario. "In this league if you really want to make something happen, you can," says Trail Blazers forward James Jones. "It's just that teams normally don't have the motivation to pull something off like the Celtics did."
Yet obvious questions will require months, maybe years, to answer. For instance, Are the new Big Three too old to win a championship? That's a fair concern because no NBA team has ever won a title with its top three scorers all in their 30s. Ainge contends that their style of play and body types will enable Allen, 32, Garnett, 31, and Pierce, 30, to remain productive for the lengths of their contracts. Still, the Celtics will be trying to break new ground with old legs. "We already know that the way to beat Boston is to run them," says Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas. "Look at how old they are -- we have to run them so that by the fourth quarter they have nothing left."
But in another way the three Boston elders have never felt younger. Eager to step up their learning curve, they met throughout September for daily workouts at the Celtics' practice facility. They will not be easing their way into November, especially with their arena almost guaranteed to be sold-out all season. "Kevin will pull those guys together quickly," says Timberwolves assistant G.M. Fred Hoiberg, who played with Garnett in Minnesota. "He's the best practice player I've been around in my career, and to see how hard he works, that brings together the team. I think they're the favorites to win the East."
After the Celtics gave up all those players, what about their depth? Ainge filled out the bench by signing veteran free agents Eddie House, Scot Pollard and James Posey to short-term, short-money contracts. Once the Celtics acquired Garnett, all three found Boston a more desirable destination and were willing to sign deals favorable to the team. Those contracts pushed Boston into luxury-tax territory, but the owners spend little time worrying about the enormous investment they've made. "If we don't get Banner 17 and do it in the right way, then we'll consider it a failure," says Grousbeck, who sees his ownership group as presiding over a public trust. "This isn't about the value of the team or selling out the building. It's about the Celtics on the court winning the championship and off the court leading the league in community relations and community work."
Other issues will be harder to quantify. Will Rivers prove able to coach defense as well as he oversees the offensive end of the court? (To that end he brought in defensive specialist Tom Thibodeau, the longtime aide to Jeff Van Gundy.) Will 21-year-old Rondo and 22-year-old center Kendrick Perkins develop into capable starters for a championship contender? Most important, will Allen, Garnett and Pierce be capable of dialing back their customary roles to flourish as a unit? "I can understand one of those guys being able to take the number 2 seat," says a Western Conference G.M. "But who's going to take the number 3 seat? There's no room for three [stars] unless at least one of them says, 'I don't care.' If one of them can do that, then they'll be great."
Some of these answers won't arrive until the looming heat of May and June, months when the old Boston Garden used to steam up and Auerbach was said to have glued the windows shut in the visitors' locker room. But the best sign of how far the Celtics have already come is that Pierce can see things from management's view. "They were new," Pierce says of Ainge and the owners. "They were learning the business, still learning how to operate the day-to-day. They took their time, sat back, evaluated everything for a few years and then it was the right time. They made the move. This is the most excited I've been about playing a season. I know this type of opportunity doesn't come around for a lot of players. We've got to make the most of it."
In the meantime Ainge will keep returning to the best memory he has of his extended efforts to restore the Celtics tradition. "Paul came and gave me a big hug the day we made the KG trade," says Ainge. "He said, 'Never did I think you could bring me these kind of veteran players.' That was probably my favorite moment of the whole thing, to see Paul like a little kid again."
Grizzlies take time to form bond with St. Jude patients
I was grateful to report and write this story.
Dec 27, 2014
NBA.com: http://www.nba.com/2014/news/features/ian_thomsen/12/26/grizzlies-share-close-relationship-with-patients-at-st-jude/
MEMPHIS — The two players were talking about their daily habits.
"Everybody has a different routine before the game," Marc Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies was saying. "I'll leave my room at 4. I look for a coffee shop, a Whole Foods or an organic type of place, and I sit there with my coffee and listen to the radio. Most guys take naps, but I don't. I always feel like I'm losing my day, like I'm wasting my time."
"I don't take naps either," the other basketball player was saying.
Gasol nodded. "My brother, he likes to read," he said of Pau Gasol, the power forward of the Chicago Bulls. "To me, reading pulls me in a different mode. It's not a pregame mode."
The other player explained his own routine. "I started out two weeks ago," he said, and he looked up into Gasol's eyes. He had Gasol's full attention. "I've done five doses, and I have 55 to go," he went on. "It's no fun, I can tell you."
"Makes you tired," Gasol said, nodding sympathetically.
"And everything," said Adam Cruthirds.
There was little in common between the two players. The NBA star stood 13 inches taller than his new friend. Gasol, 29, was an MVP candidate having his best season with the Grizzlies; Adam was a 17-year-old defensive-minded guard who had been forced into retirement from basketball last summer because a subcutaneous port had been implanted beneath the skin of his chest, feeding a large vein that flows directly to the heart. "That was a bad day," remembered Adam. When the doctor had told him he could no longer play basketball or go mountain biking, the tears had brimmed over the corners of his eyes. That was how most of Adam's crying has happened over these last few months, quietly, proudly, like a peak of mountain snow giving way to the gentle creeks of spring.
They were sitting in the Teen Room at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital downtown in Memphis. White Christmas was playing softly in the background. In the soothing quiet of the music they would glance at one another in recognition of those few things they did share in common. They both lived in Memphis, for starters, and they both loved basketball so much that their values mirrored and enriched the way they played; and now, just now, they both were preoccupied with the cancer that was threatening Adam's young life. It was the cancer, strangely, that drew them together.
The trouble first appeared last summer when Adam's knuckles became inflamed. "It started with this right knuckle, two weeks before," said Adam's mother Connie Cruthirds, "and then moved to the left knuckle, and then it moved to his whole hands so they were throbbing." The cancer in Adam's bone marrow was seeking places to expand, she would come to be told; which would inspire her to dwell on the things she used to think. "I'm like this emotional basket case," she said, "like, oh my God - what if he's got arthritis." And she laughed at the less important fears that used to be life-and-death.
She stayed up with her son all night, praying. The next morning, miraculously, the pain in his hands was gone. They moved forward with the tests anyway. "Hugh Holt, the rheumatologist, calls me," Connie Cruthirds said. "He's known Adam since he was three, and he said, 'You know what just occurred to me, can he run by and do his blood work now? And then I'll have it on Wednesday."'
They didn't need the two extra days. Adam's blood count was high, and Dr. Holt had been able to see the blasts of Adam's blood cells through the microscope. "He was so upset that he called his wife and he was in tears," Connie Cruthirds said. The news spread fast among the elders in Adam's life. Everyone knew but him. "We couldn't find them," Connie Cruthirds said. "He took Annie (Parker, his girlfriend) out on a date at the river with his truck. They were sitting in the back, watching the sunset, eating a pizza."
On that evening of July 28, Adam met his parents and older sister Skyler at the home of Dr. Holt. The first response from Adam was to say, "I'm not afraid." Then he said, "What is leukemia?"
"For some reason, with some kids you just click," said Gasol, sweaty and still in uniform after a morning practice at the FedEx Forum in Memphis. He was speaking of Adam and the other young patients he has met over the years at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. "It may be you relate to them for something that has happened to them, or maybe they get really close to you in that time you spent in the hospital. And then you go visit them again. And then you go visit them again, and you're going there for a half-year or a year, and then all of a sudden they're not there anymore."
He could not make eye contact as he went on.
"And of course there are good stories, the kids are home and happy and they are back to their schools and they have their happy life," Gasol was saying. "And then there are stories where they tell you they're not there anymore. They passed. Most of the time what happens is they beat the cancer once or twice, and then it comes back and that's just brutal. The body is just not strong enough to take it anymore, and the cancer just takes over. Now, probably, there are 15 or 20 tumors everywhere. It is just too much for the kid." He was quiet. "There are countless stories of success, though, that we have to keep in mind."
He and Adam had met for the first time a few days earlier at the hospital. They had spent a good hour together, and that was all it took. In the days thereafter, Gasol would bring up Adam's name in a variety of conversations. The boy in need was always in his thoughts.
Connie Cruthirds has been amazed by how quickly her perspective has shifted. Her worst fears have given way to an overwhelming sense of gratitude. "He was the fastest in the door here," she said, as she sat in the Teen Room of St. Jude with Adam and Annie, "and the fastest to start chemo because he was the sickest. It just kept happening, one thing after the other, and then you start to think, wasn't it supposed to happen that way? Because it's unfolding just the right way."
The day after Adam discovered the meaning of leukemia, he was at St. Jude for an 8 a.m. appointment.
"It's like he is alive today because Danny Thomas needed 70 bucks," Connie Cruthirds said. "You know that story, right?"
The Cruthirds had been vaguely aware of the story which they now recite as gospel. Danny Thomas, a struggling 25-year-old comedian, had donated his last $7 to the collection plate while attending Mass in Detroit in 1937. He and his wife were expecting their first child, Marlo Thomas, and his prayers for help with the hospital bills were answered the next day by a gig worth 10 times his donation. Two years later, he prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes, for an end to his career struggles. "Help me find my way in life," he recalled praying, "and I will build you a shrine."
While his family comedy Make Room For Daddy (renamed later as The Danny Thomas Show) was in the midst of a 13-year run on television, Thomas made good on his end of the deal by meeting with a small group of acquaintances and strangers who were born of immigrants if not immigrants themselves.
"My father was one of those who met with Danny Thomas in the 1950s before there was a St. Jude," said Richard Shadyac Jr. "My father was a Department of Justice lawyer. And he didn't know Danny Thomas. We share the same heritage: We're Lebanese, and Danny Thomas is Lebanese. My dad was told to bring a couple of friends and meet Danny Thomas at a bowling alley in Washington DC. My father told me that Danny Thomas said four things: We're going to build a hospital, we're going to treat catastrophically ill kids, we're going to treat them without regard to race, creed, religion or ability to pay, and we're going to build it in Memphis, Tennessee, or somewhere in the South where they don't have access to modern medicine. And the cool thing is that these people listened to this guy, who was so convincing, and they made that view become a reality. And they did it to say thank you to God, and thank you to the United States of America for giving my grandparents and their parents the opportunity to come to this country to make a living."
They formed the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, or ALSAC. As soon as they began to work with the children and their families, the need to build and grow the hospital became less theoretical and more personal. The children, innocent and suffering, needed to be saved. The single hospital building that was opened in 1962 has given birth to a sprawling campus: of hospitals, research centers, dormitory housing for the patients and their families, and offices that exist to raise the $2 million per day necessary to run this urgent sprawling community that grew out of seven dollars from one man's empty pocket.
The first time he underwent chemotherapy, Adam grew tortuously sick. "It was like I had the flu, but times 100," he said. His mother could see the hope flickering in him. "I'm just holding him in my arms, he was bawling his eyes out," she said. "Then he said, `I love you, Mom, and I love life. But I cannot do this. I cannot do 59 more doses.' And there was a horrible moment. It was just terrible."
The doctor in charge of Adam's treatment, Ching-Hon Pui, has a well-worn habit of pacing the room back and forth as he considers Adam's options. One day he broke stride to turn and face Adam's mother. He said, "I will never let this guy down. Ever." And then he strode out of the room.
Adam had been allergic to the original chemotherapy. And so Dr. Pui put him on a more expensive course of treatment. The price of the 60 doses rose instantly from $500,000 to $1.5 million. "One point five million dollars for one medicine," Adam's mother was saying. There was never any doubt that Adam was going to receive the help he needed. "And we will never see the bill," she said. "And all of a sudden I'm thinking, Danny Thomas didn't dream this big."
"The first day away - when they first let you take him home - is scary as can be," Connie Cruthirds was saying. "When you're here, between six and eight people are checking the chemo before they give it to him. But when we're at home at night, my husband Art and I are the ones cutting Adam's chemo. I put on a mask and gloves and I go, 'Here, son, swallow this.' I'm thinking, oh my God, I hope I get this right."
On the typical day, Adam and Connie will leave their suburban home at 6 a.m. to arrive at St. Jude by 10 minutes to 7. "When you walk in here, it's like going to the airport - you've got to get your ticket, you check in, you join your flight," Connie Cruthirds said. At the registration desk, Adam is asked for his medical records number, and he is given his itinerary for the day. It might be three pages long. "He sticks out his arm, they double-check the wristband and put it on him," his mother said. "These are very familiar faces who are doing that. Then we go and wait. The first appointment typically is assessment triage, and today they accessed the port to get it ready for the blood draws. Then we're waiting an hour and a half for the blood results to come back, and in that time we'll go to breakfast or go to school."
There is a fully accredited school at St. Jude, which has enabled Adam to remain on track for college even while he is missing his junior year at St. George's Independent School. There is a cafeteria of myriad food stations and choices and chefs who are equipped to feed Adam to his exacting standards, because his body cannot accept the usual intakes of bacteria, sugar, sodium and fat. There are also counselors to help him and his family, including Skyler, Adam's sister, who had been hesitant about flying to London for a semester abroad. "The counselors here met with her and told her the best gift you can give your brother is to get on the plane and go," said Connie Cruthirds. "So he knows that you have faith."
Then there is the meeting with Dr. Pui. "Which includes a physical exam and a review of medicine," Connie Cruthirds went on. "You don't always know you're going to get the chemo. Nothing happens until Dr. Pui puts in the order right there and moves forward based on the counts. From there it's two more hours, because the medicine is made to order for each kid, each time. There's Benadryl for 20 minutes and then - depending on the day - different meds, with one hour of observation to make sure he's OK. It is 8 to 15 hours a day, three days a week here."
In one form or another, Adam is receiving chemotherapy daily. Seven days per week. "There was one last week they call the `Devil Drug' - it goes in red and comes out of him red too," Connie Cruthirds said. "There's one he'd taken before that hurts so bad, his nerve endings are hurting terribly - lots of pain in his jaw, his shoulders and arms and legs. So they vary."
As he has settled into his routine of visits to the hospital every other day or two, Adam has found himself feeling envy for the patients from far away who travel to Memphis for the assistance of St. Jude. At the end of the day those families return to the dormitories and spend time together in support of one another. "So it's kind of a good thing," Adam said of having St. Jude in his hometown, "but it's kind of a bad thing, because you don't really have the community."
That was why Connie Cruthirds reached out to the family of Nicholas London as soon as she read his story in the local newspaper. As a life coach who specialized in helping victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, a career she has set aside in order to support Adam, she recognized what her family needed. "We need community," she said. "We need each other."
Nicholas London was a skinny 6-foot-6 incoming freshman at Hamilton High School in Memphis when he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, the same as Adam. ALL, the most common cancer among children, killed all but 4 percent of its victims in 1962. The survival rate today at St. Jude is 94 percent. (But it is a long road. Adam won't know that he is cancer-free until he is 26 at the earliest.) Nicholas' father is 6-foot-8 Paris London, who played basketball at the University of Memphis, and who knew something was wrong as his son complained of stomach pain and struggled to run the court last summer while attending the camp that Chris Paul puts on at Wake Forest each year for the top eighth and ninth-graders in the country.
Earlier this month, Nicholas and Adam were greeted at St. Jude by Marc Gasol and Mike Conley, the Grizzlies point guard who happens to be Nicholas' favorite player. Nicholas was respectful and cool as they played an NBA video game while his treatment drained down from a tall metal stand into Nicholas's bandaged wrist. "Nick's like, 'Dad, Dad - I beat Mike Conley while playing (as) Mike Conley!"' said his mother Tangela London. "It's one of those things that I'm pretty sure Connie can tell you. Basketball is our life. He was taken away from all of his friends in basketball, the camaraderie of basketball."
To use a term of basketball, Adam and Nicholas are 'tweeners. Not children anymore, and not quite adult, they have been able to express themselves in ways that leave their elders in awe, as if the threat has brought out a prodigious maturity in them. "We talk about fears, and he said it best," Tangelo London said of Nicholas. "He said, `What is the worst that can happen?' Of course you don't want to tell your kid death is the worst that can happen in this process."
But she had no choice. He was 14 years old.
"He said, 'Is that really the worst that can happen? Don't we all die?"' recalled Tangelo London with a shaking of her head.
"`We do,"' she said to her son.
"And he said, 'So is that really the worst that can happen?'
"These kids," she said, "they show strength that I could never imagine. Never imagine."
One day Connie Cruthirds was driving Adam home after his day of chemotherapy when he became sick. Quickly she emptied a recycling bag of bottles and held it in front of him. "So what are we going to do with this?" she said. "Because the truth is, it's hot. His vomit has got chemo in it. It's hot."
The horrible stories that she cites as proof of the greatest good are amazing to her. They form the irony that outlines and deepens every grateful day.
"So we turn off North Parkway, get out," said Connie Cruthirds, "and this woman in the backyard - of course there is a woman in the backyard - she says, 'Honey, do you need help?' I said, 'My son's at St. Jude, he's a patient, he's just throwing up - can I put this up back in the alley?' She's out there with this little bitty golden retriever puppy, he comes over to us, sharing love. That was a bad day. And then you move on. The thing is, we're one story. We're just one story here.
"It is a story of faith."
This is the kind of player Adam was - sorry, is. Adam is able to see players as people, to see the game as an expression of life. The most intimidating basketball players were the ones he wanted to guard. "Some people are just like bruisers, and you know when they're mad," he said, his lips curling up into a smile. "I kind of like get into their head. Make them mad. I'll draw a foul or something like that." His father was his coach growing up, and when Adam would see the anger brimming over in an opposing player, he would say to his father, "I'll take that guy. I got him." Adam was not the scorer so much as he was the teammate who found joy in enabling others to score, and his father would laugh to himself, watching his competitive little boy applying psychology in the most selfless way for the good of the team. "He'd just get so mad," said Adam of whichever opponent he was riling up. "It's fun."
Adam was 135 pounds back then with a thick wave of hair. His weight plummeted to 100, as he dealt with pancreatitis. Thirty of the pounds have returned, though it is not the same kind of weight, and his hair has been replaced by a soft layer of peach fuzz. He wears a tiny round drug patch behind his right ear, and an array of diamond-shaped scars, black and permanent, are tattooed across his back like the beads of an abacus. So vulnerable is his platelet count that he earned those scars by sitting on the couch.
It is not a large city. Word gets around Memphis about who everyone is and what he or she stands for. It so happened that a friend of a friend knew Debby Wallace, the wife of Chris Wallace, the general manager of the Grizzlies. Last September 18, which was Adam's 17th birthday, his doorbell rang and he was called downstairs to find Chris Wallace and Tony Allen, the antagonizing defensive guard of the Grizzlies, who had come to celebrate Adam's birthday after hearing that he was Adam's favorite player. Connie Cruthirds was so excited for her son that she forgot to sanitize her visitors' hands.
"He didn't really believe what was going on," Tony Allen said. "So I was kind of in shock then, that I was actually over there; that somebody who was in that kind of pain could still admire me. I'm like, yo, take away all the fame and all the hoopla, I want to be over there just to let him know that it's genuine."
He wanted Adam to know that the feeling was mutual. It wasn't only that he wanted Adam to draw strength from him; there was a strength to be drawn from Adam, too.
Allen and Wallace were shown the birthday card that had been delivered to the house that day. It had been signed by the junior class at Adam's school. It was a banner 40 feet long. "Tony Allen walked over and spread it out across the dining room table, and he got teary-eyed," Connie Cruthirds said. "And he said, 'You know, Adam, that's love. That is love. Can I love you, too?' he said. Then he got a Sharpie and he signed it."
"That was one of the best things I can remember doing," Tony Allen said as he sat in the Grizzlies locker room with his feet in a bucket of ice. "I'm praying for them now, even now."
"The kids see these players as heroes," Richard Shadyac Jr. was saying. "So when they meet them, it makes them forget that they're sick, and they get to act like a normal kid. Then the athletes, especially, they realize how fortunate they are, that it's a blessed life that they get to live. They come to places like St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and it puts their life in perspective. They really do realize how fortunate they are. The troubles that they may have may pale in comparison to what some of these kids and these families are going through."
The original meeting of Shadyac's father and Danny Thomas has evolved dramatically. Richard Shadyac joined the board of St. Jude in 1963, served as chairman in the 1980s and was chief executive of ALSAC as recently as a decade ago. He died in 2009, which was the same year that his namesake, his son, became the new chief executive of ALSAC, the fundraising arm of St. Jude. It costs $2 million per day to operate St. Jude, and much more to grow its mission capitally. St. Jude shares the gains of its research on cancer and other childhood diseases openly around the world.
"This has changed me as a man, as a father," Richard Shadyac Jr. said. "It makes me appreciate my wife and my two healthy kids. It puts my life in perspective. When I think I have these little, small problems, I walk across the street, I walk into the cafeteria of the hospital, I see those mothers and dads and those kids. I say I don't have a problem in the world. And if I can make a small difference in the lives of those families, and if I can help raise the money that's necessary, I feel like I'm contributing a little bit to this blessed mission."
He understands the fear. He can see why people are reticent to be exposed to the worst kind of suffering by the most vulnerable.
"At first, people think it's going to be a frightening place," he said. "But this actually, I think, is a place that's relatively happy. It's a place filled with joy. It's a place filled with hope. That's one thing that's important for us, because families come to us after hearing some of the worst news that any family could ever hear. We do everything in our power to help give their family and that child the help they need. Not every child makes it. Cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease for U.S. kids today, despite all the progress we've made at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. One in five families who find out that their child has been diagnosed with cancer will lose that child. That's what inspires me and our amazing team. It's unacceptable."
Marc Gasol, who recently became a father, plays in a world that defines his work in terms of courage and toughness. There is truth to those attributes. And then there are greater truths.
"That is real toughness," Gasol was saying of the two boys he had met at St. Jude, Adam and Nicholas.
One day, Adam wriggled off the rubber band he had been wearing around his wrist and shot it across the room. The band read:
CANCER SUCKS
"He hated the word sucks," Connie Cruthirds said. "Because it's such a negative thing. He said, 'Cancer is part of my life now.' So we sat there and talked. This was like two or three weeks in. That was the day he got deep with me. And so we started talking, and he just kind of came up with this idea that cancer came to teach. 'Instead of cancer sucks,' he said, `what if cancer came to teach?"'
This was how Adam decided, on his own, not yet 17 years old, to deal with his enemy.
Cancer came to teach.
His voice is soft, his body frail, but everyone speaks of the strength they see in him. He is the leader of Adam's Army, a social media following that walks and runs and sells to raise funds for St. Jude. Make Every Day Count is their motto, handed down by him.
"People say, 'Things will be normal soon,"' Adam's mother was saying to him one day at the hospital. "What is your response to that?"
"That this is normal," Adam said.
"This is his normal," Connie Cruthirds said. "It's not their normal. They are saying that his life would be better today if it was their normal. But that's gone. That's not there."
Normal, in this new world of Adam, is a most ironic place where the world actually makes sense - where money is not the end but the means, where health and happiness and family are the fruits of the battle, where nothing else much matters when a child is in need.
For the rest of this month and into the New Year, the dosage of Adam's chemotherapy was going to be increased. He was going to have a hard time. What he was looking forward to was the day after Christmas, when the Houston Rockets will be visiting Memphis. Adam, with thanks to the relationship between the Grizzlies and St. Jude, has been promised tickets to the game. He will be sitting courtside, where he surely will be oblivious to the impact he is making on stars like Marc Gasol, Tony Allen and Mike Conley. They will be pushing themselves because that is the least you can do when you look over and see a boy like him, suffering even as he cheers you on. Adam, in his retirement from basketball, has become a game changer.
For updates on Adam Cruthirds, please visit http://adamsarmy.net
Dec 27, 2014
NBA.com: http://www.nba.com/2014/news/features/ian_thomsen/12/26/grizzlies-share-close-relationship-with-patients-at-st-jude/
MEMPHIS — The two players were talking about their daily habits.
"Everybody has a different routine before the game," Marc Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies was saying. "I'll leave my room at 4. I look for a coffee shop, a Whole Foods or an organic type of place, and I sit there with my coffee and listen to the radio. Most guys take naps, but I don't. I always feel like I'm losing my day, like I'm wasting my time."
"I don't take naps either," the other basketball player was saying.
Gasol nodded. "My brother, he likes to read," he said of Pau Gasol, the power forward of the Chicago Bulls. "To me, reading pulls me in a different mode. It's not a pregame mode."
The other player explained his own routine. "I started out two weeks ago," he said, and he looked up into Gasol's eyes. He had Gasol's full attention. "I've done five doses, and I have 55 to go," he went on. "It's no fun, I can tell you."
"Makes you tired," Gasol said, nodding sympathetically.
"And everything," said Adam Cruthirds.
There was little in common between the two players. The NBA star stood 13 inches taller than his new friend. Gasol, 29, was an MVP candidate having his best season with the Grizzlies; Adam was a 17-year-old defensive-minded guard who had been forced into retirement from basketball last summer because a subcutaneous port had been implanted beneath the skin of his chest, feeding a large vein that flows directly to the heart. "That was a bad day," remembered Adam. When the doctor had told him he could no longer play basketball or go mountain biking, the tears had brimmed over the corners of his eyes. That was how most of Adam's crying has happened over these last few months, quietly, proudly, like a peak of mountain snow giving way to the gentle creeks of spring.
They were sitting in the Teen Room at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital downtown in Memphis. White Christmas was playing softly in the background. In the soothing quiet of the music they would glance at one another in recognition of those few things they did share in common. They both lived in Memphis, for starters, and they both loved basketball so much that their values mirrored and enriched the way they played; and now, just now, they both were preoccupied with the cancer that was threatening Adam's young life. It was the cancer, strangely, that drew them together.
The trouble first appeared last summer when Adam's knuckles became inflamed. "It started with this right knuckle, two weeks before," said Adam's mother Connie Cruthirds, "and then moved to the left knuckle, and then it moved to his whole hands so they were throbbing." The cancer in Adam's bone marrow was seeking places to expand, she would come to be told; which would inspire her to dwell on the things she used to think. "I'm like this emotional basket case," she said, "like, oh my God - what if he's got arthritis." And she laughed at the less important fears that used to be life-and-death.
She stayed up with her son all night, praying. The next morning, miraculously, the pain in his hands was gone. They moved forward with the tests anyway. "Hugh Holt, the rheumatologist, calls me," Connie Cruthirds said. "He's known Adam since he was three, and he said, 'You know what just occurred to me, can he run by and do his blood work now? And then I'll have it on Wednesday."'
They didn't need the two extra days. Adam's blood count was high, and Dr. Holt had been able to see the blasts of Adam's blood cells through the microscope. "He was so upset that he called his wife and he was in tears," Connie Cruthirds said. The news spread fast among the elders in Adam's life. Everyone knew but him. "We couldn't find them," Connie Cruthirds said. "He took Annie (Parker, his girlfriend) out on a date at the river with his truck. They were sitting in the back, watching the sunset, eating a pizza."
On that evening of July 28, Adam met his parents and older sister Skyler at the home of Dr. Holt. The first response from Adam was to say, "I'm not afraid." Then he said, "What is leukemia?"
"For some reason, with some kids you just click," said Gasol, sweaty and still in uniform after a morning practice at the FedEx Forum in Memphis. He was speaking of Adam and the other young patients he has met over the years at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. "It may be you relate to them for something that has happened to them, or maybe they get really close to you in that time you spent in the hospital. And then you go visit them again. And then you go visit them again, and you're going there for a half-year or a year, and then all of a sudden they're not there anymore."
He could not make eye contact as he went on.
"And of course there are good stories, the kids are home and happy and they are back to their schools and they have their happy life," Gasol was saying. "And then there are stories where they tell you they're not there anymore. They passed. Most of the time what happens is they beat the cancer once or twice, and then it comes back and that's just brutal. The body is just not strong enough to take it anymore, and the cancer just takes over. Now, probably, there are 15 or 20 tumors everywhere. It is just too much for the kid." He was quiet. "There are countless stories of success, though, that we have to keep in mind."
He and Adam had met for the first time a few days earlier at the hospital. They had spent a good hour together, and that was all it took. In the days thereafter, Gasol would bring up Adam's name in a variety of conversations. The boy in need was always in his thoughts.
Connie Cruthirds has been amazed by how quickly her perspective has shifted. Her worst fears have given way to an overwhelming sense of gratitude. "He was the fastest in the door here," she said, as she sat in the Teen Room of St. Jude with Adam and Annie, "and the fastest to start chemo because he was the sickest. It just kept happening, one thing after the other, and then you start to think, wasn't it supposed to happen that way? Because it's unfolding just the right way."
The day after Adam discovered the meaning of leukemia, he was at St. Jude for an 8 a.m. appointment.
"It's like he is alive today because Danny Thomas needed 70 bucks," Connie Cruthirds said. "You know that story, right?"
The Cruthirds had been vaguely aware of the story which they now recite as gospel. Danny Thomas, a struggling 25-year-old comedian, had donated his last $7 to the collection plate while attending Mass in Detroit in 1937. He and his wife were expecting their first child, Marlo Thomas, and his prayers for help with the hospital bills were answered the next day by a gig worth 10 times his donation. Two years later, he prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes, for an end to his career struggles. "Help me find my way in life," he recalled praying, "and I will build you a shrine."
While his family comedy Make Room For Daddy (renamed later as The Danny Thomas Show) was in the midst of a 13-year run on television, Thomas made good on his end of the deal by meeting with a small group of acquaintances and strangers who were born of immigrants if not immigrants themselves.
"My father was one of those who met with Danny Thomas in the 1950s before there was a St. Jude," said Richard Shadyac Jr. "My father was a Department of Justice lawyer. And he didn't know Danny Thomas. We share the same heritage: We're Lebanese, and Danny Thomas is Lebanese. My dad was told to bring a couple of friends and meet Danny Thomas at a bowling alley in Washington DC. My father told me that Danny Thomas said four things: We're going to build a hospital, we're going to treat catastrophically ill kids, we're going to treat them without regard to race, creed, religion or ability to pay, and we're going to build it in Memphis, Tennessee, or somewhere in the South where they don't have access to modern medicine. And the cool thing is that these people listened to this guy, who was so convincing, and they made that view become a reality. And they did it to say thank you to God, and thank you to the United States of America for giving my grandparents and their parents the opportunity to come to this country to make a living."
They formed the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, or ALSAC. As soon as they began to work with the children and their families, the need to build and grow the hospital became less theoretical and more personal. The children, innocent and suffering, needed to be saved. The single hospital building that was opened in 1962 has given birth to a sprawling campus: of hospitals, research centers, dormitory housing for the patients and their families, and offices that exist to raise the $2 million per day necessary to run this urgent sprawling community that grew out of seven dollars from one man's empty pocket.
The first time he underwent chemotherapy, Adam grew tortuously sick. "It was like I had the flu, but times 100," he said. His mother could see the hope flickering in him. "I'm just holding him in my arms, he was bawling his eyes out," she said. "Then he said, `I love you, Mom, and I love life. But I cannot do this. I cannot do 59 more doses.' And there was a horrible moment. It was just terrible."
The doctor in charge of Adam's treatment, Ching-Hon Pui, has a well-worn habit of pacing the room back and forth as he considers Adam's options. One day he broke stride to turn and face Adam's mother. He said, "I will never let this guy down. Ever." And then he strode out of the room.
Adam had been allergic to the original chemotherapy. And so Dr. Pui put him on a more expensive course of treatment. The price of the 60 doses rose instantly from $500,000 to $1.5 million. "One point five million dollars for one medicine," Adam's mother was saying. There was never any doubt that Adam was going to receive the help he needed. "And we will never see the bill," she said. "And all of a sudden I'm thinking, Danny Thomas didn't dream this big."
"The first day away - when they first let you take him home - is scary as can be," Connie Cruthirds was saying. "When you're here, between six and eight people are checking the chemo before they give it to him. But when we're at home at night, my husband Art and I are the ones cutting Adam's chemo. I put on a mask and gloves and I go, 'Here, son, swallow this.' I'm thinking, oh my God, I hope I get this right."
On the typical day, Adam and Connie will leave their suburban home at 6 a.m. to arrive at St. Jude by 10 minutes to 7. "When you walk in here, it's like going to the airport - you've got to get your ticket, you check in, you join your flight," Connie Cruthirds said. At the registration desk, Adam is asked for his medical records number, and he is given his itinerary for the day. It might be three pages long. "He sticks out his arm, they double-check the wristband and put it on him," his mother said. "These are very familiar faces who are doing that. Then we go and wait. The first appointment typically is assessment triage, and today they accessed the port to get it ready for the blood draws. Then we're waiting an hour and a half for the blood results to come back, and in that time we'll go to breakfast or go to school."
There is a fully accredited school at St. Jude, which has enabled Adam to remain on track for college even while he is missing his junior year at St. George's Independent School. There is a cafeteria of myriad food stations and choices and chefs who are equipped to feed Adam to his exacting standards, because his body cannot accept the usual intakes of bacteria, sugar, sodium and fat. There are also counselors to help him and his family, including Skyler, Adam's sister, who had been hesitant about flying to London for a semester abroad. "The counselors here met with her and told her the best gift you can give your brother is to get on the plane and go," said Connie Cruthirds. "So he knows that you have faith."
Then there is the meeting with Dr. Pui. "Which includes a physical exam and a review of medicine," Connie Cruthirds went on. "You don't always know you're going to get the chemo. Nothing happens until Dr. Pui puts in the order right there and moves forward based on the counts. From there it's two more hours, because the medicine is made to order for each kid, each time. There's Benadryl for 20 minutes and then - depending on the day - different meds, with one hour of observation to make sure he's OK. It is 8 to 15 hours a day, three days a week here."
In one form or another, Adam is receiving chemotherapy daily. Seven days per week. "There was one last week they call the `Devil Drug' - it goes in red and comes out of him red too," Connie Cruthirds said. "There's one he'd taken before that hurts so bad, his nerve endings are hurting terribly - lots of pain in his jaw, his shoulders and arms and legs. So they vary."
As he has settled into his routine of visits to the hospital every other day or two, Adam has found himself feeling envy for the patients from far away who travel to Memphis for the assistance of St. Jude. At the end of the day those families return to the dormitories and spend time together in support of one another. "So it's kind of a good thing," Adam said of having St. Jude in his hometown, "but it's kind of a bad thing, because you don't really have the community."
That was why Connie Cruthirds reached out to the family of Nicholas London as soon as she read his story in the local newspaper. As a life coach who specialized in helping victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, a career she has set aside in order to support Adam, she recognized what her family needed. "We need community," she said. "We need each other."
Nicholas London was a skinny 6-foot-6 incoming freshman at Hamilton High School in Memphis when he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, the same as Adam. ALL, the most common cancer among children, killed all but 4 percent of its victims in 1962. The survival rate today at St. Jude is 94 percent. (But it is a long road. Adam won't know that he is cancer-free until he is 26 at the earliest.) Nicholas' father is 6-foot-8 Paris London, who played basketball at the University of Memphis, and who knew something was wrong as his son complained of stomach pain and struggled to run the court last summer while attending the camp that Chris Paul puts on at Wake Forest each year for the top eighth and ninth-graders in the country.
Earlier this month, Nicholas and Adam were greeted at St. Jude by Marc Gasol and Mike Conley, the Grizzlies point guard who happens to be Nicholas' favorite player. Nicholas was respectful and cool as they played an NBA video game while his treatment drained down from a tall metal stand into Nicholas's bandaged wrist. "Nick's like, 'Dad, Dad - I beat Mike Conley while playing (as) Mike Conley!"' said his mother Tangela London. "It's one of those things that I'm pretty sure Connie can tell you. Basketball is our life. He was taken away from all of his friends in basketball, the camaraderie of basketball."
To use a term of basketball, Adam and Nicholas are 'tweeners. Not children anymore, and not quite adult, they have been able to express themselves in ways that leave their elders in awe, as if the threat has brought out a prodigious maturity in them. "We talk about fears, and he said it best," Tangelo London said of Nicholas. "He said, `What is the worst that can happen?' Of course you don't want to tell your kid death is the worst that can happen in this process."
But she had no choice. He was 14 years old.
"He said, 'Is that really the worst that can happen? Don't we all die?"' recalled Tangelo London with a shaking of her head.
"`We do,"' she said to her son.
"And he said, 'So is that really the worst that can happen?'
"These kids," she said, "they show strength that I could never imagine. Never imagine."
One day Connie Cruthirds was driving Adam home after his day of chemotherapy when he became sick. Quickly she emptied a recycling bag of bottles and held it in front of him. "So what are we going to do with this?" she said. "Because the truth is, it's hot. His vomit has got chemo in it. It's hot."
The horrible stories that she cites as proof of the greatest good are amazing to her. They form the irony that outlines and deepens every grateful day.
"So we turn off North Parkway, get out," said Connie Cruthirds, "and this woman in the backyard - of course there is a woman in the backyard - she says, 'Honey, do you need help?' I said, 'My son's at St. Jude, he's a patient, he's just throwing up - can I put this up back in the alley?' She's out there with this little bitty golden retriever puppy, he comes over to us, sharing love. That was a bad day. And then you move on. The thing is, we're one story. We're just one story here.
"It is a story of faith."
This is the kind of player Adam was - sorry, is. Adam is able to see players as people, to see the game as an expression of life. The most intimidating basketball players were the ones he wanted to guard. "Some people are just like bruisers, and you know when they're mad," he said, his lips curling up into a smile. "I kind of like get into their head. Make them mad. I'll draw a foul or something like that." His father was his coach growing up, and when Adam would see the anger brimming over in an opposing player, he would say to his father, "I'll take that guy. I got him." Adam was not the scorer so much as he was the teammate who found joy in enabling others to score, and his father would laugh to himself, watching his competitive little boy applying psychology in the most selfless way for the good of the team. "He'd just get so mad," said Adam of whichever opponent he was riling up. "It's fun."
Adam was 135 pounds back then with a thick wave of hair. His weight plummeted to 100, as he dealt with pancreatitis. Thirty of the pounds have returned, though it is not the same kind of weight, and his hair has been replaced by a soft layer of peach fuzz. He wears a tiny round drug patch behind his right ear, and an array of diamond-shaped scars, black and permanent, are tattooed across his back like the beads of an abacus. So vulnerable is his platelet count that he earned those scars by sitting on the couch.
It is not a large city. Word gets around Memphis about who everyone is and what he or she stands for. It so happened that a friend of a friend knew Debby Wallace, the wife of Chris Wallace, the general manager of the Grizzlies. Last September 18, which was Adam's 17th birthday, his doorbell rang and he was called downstairs to find Chris Wallace and Tony Allen, the antagonizing defensive guard of the Grizzlies, who had come to celebrate Adam's birthday after hearing that he was Adam's favorite player. Connie Cruthirds was so excited for her son that she forgot to sanitize her visitors' hands.
"He didn't really believe what was going on," Tony Allen said. "So I was kind of in shock then, that I was actually over there; that somebody who was in that kind of pain could still admire me. I'm like, yo, take away all the fame and all the hoopla, I want to be over there just to let him know that it's genuine."
He wanted Adam to know that the feeling was mutual. It wasn't only that he wanted Adam to draw strength from him; there was a strength to be drawn from Adam, too.
Allen and Wallace were shown the birthday card that had been delivered to the house that day. It had been signed by the junior class at Adam's school. It was a banner 40 feet long. "Tony Allen walked over and spread it out across the dining room table, and he got teary-eyed," Connie Cruthirds said. "And he said, 'You know, Adam, that's love. That is love. Can I love you, too?' he said. Then he got a Sharpie and he signed it."
"That was one of the best things I can remember doing," Tony Allen said as he sat in the Grizzlies locker room with his feet in a bucket of ice. "I'm praying for them now, even now."
"The kids see these players as heroes," Richard Shadyac Jr. was saying. "So when they meet them, it makes them forget that they're sick, and they get to act like a normal kid. Then the athletes, especially, they realize how fortunate they are, that it's a blessed life that they get to live. They come to places like St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and it puts their life in perspective. They really do realize how fortunate they are. The troubles that they may have may pale in comparison to what some of these kids and these families are going through."
The original meeting of Shadyac's father and Danny Thomas has evolved dramatically. Richard Shadyac joined the board of St. Jude in 1963, served as chairman in the 1980s and was chief executive of ALSAC as recently as a decade ago. He died in 2009, which was the same year that his namesake, his son, became the new chief executive of ALSAC, the fundraising arm of St. Jude. It costs $2 million per day to operate St. Jude, and much more to grow its mission capitally. St. Jude shares the gains of its research on cancer and other childhood diseases openly around the world.
"This has changed me as a man, as a father," Richard Shadyac Jr. said. "It makes me appreciate my wife and my two healthy kids. It puts my life in perspective. When I think I have these little, small problems, I walk across the street, I walk into the cafeteria of the hospital, I see those mothers and dads and those kids. I say I don't have a problem in the world. And if I can make a small difference in the lives of those families, and if I can help raise the money that's necessary, I feel like I'm contributing a little bit to this blessed mission."
He understands the fear. He can see why people are reticent to be exposed to the worst kind of suffering by the most vulnerable.
"At first, people think it's going to be a frightening place," he said. "But this actually, I think, is a place that's relatively happy. It's a place filled with joy. It's a place filled with hope. That's one thing that's important for us, because families come to us after hearing some of the worst news that any family could ever hear. We do everything in our power to help give their family and that child the help they need. Not every child makes it. Cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease for U.S. kids today, despite all the progress we've made at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. One in five families who find out that their child has been diagnosed with cancer will lose that child. That's what inspires me and our amazing team. It's unacceptable."
Marc Gasol, who recently became a father, plays in a world that defines his work in terms of courage and toughness. There is truth to those attributes. And then there are greater truths.
"That is real toughness," Gasol was saying of the two boys he had met at St. Jude, Adam and Nicholas.
One day, Adam wriggled off the rubber band he had been wearing around his wrist and shot it across the room. The band read:
CANCER SUCKS
"He hated the word sucks," Connie Cruthirds said. "Because it's such a negative thing. He said, 'Cancer is part of my life now.' So we sat there and talked. This was like two or three weeks in. That was the day he got deep with me. And so we started talking, and he just kind of came up with this idea that cancer came to teach. 'Instead of cancer sucks,' he said, `what if cancer came to teach?"'
This was how Adam decided, on his own, not yet 17 years old, to deal with his enemy.
Cancer came to teach.
His voice is soft, his body frail, but everyone speaks of the strength they see in him. He is the leader of Adam's Army, a social media following that walks and runs and sells to raise funds for St. Jude. Make Every Day Count is their motto, handed down by him.
"People say, 'Things will be normal soon,"' Adam's mother was saying to him one day at the hospital. "What is your response to that?"
"That this is normal," Adam said.
"This is his normal," Connie Cruthirds said. "It's not their normal. They are saying that his life would be better today if it was their normal. But that's gone. That's not there."
Normal, in this new world of Adam, is a most ironic place where the world actually makes sense - where money is not the end but the means, where health and happiness and family are the fruits of the battle, where nothing else much matters when a child is in need.
For the rest of this month and into the New Year, the dosage of Adam's chemotherapy was going to be increased. He was going to have a hard time. What he was looking forward to was the day after Christmas, when the Houston Rockets will be visiting Memphis. Adam, with thanks to the relationship between the Grizzlies and St. Jude, has been promised tickets to the game. He will be sitting courtside, where he surely will be oblivious to the impact he is making on stars like Marc Gasol, Tony Allen and Mike Conley. They will be pushing themselves because that is the least you can do when you look over and see a boy like him, suffering even as he cheers you on. Adam, in his retirement from basketball, has become a game changer.
For updates on Adam Cruthirds, please visit http://adamsarmy.net
His Brother's Keeper
Dickie Eklund guided Micky Ward – until the police stepped between
This was the first extended story about the relationship between Micky Ward and his half-brother Dickie Eklund, which would be re-told by the 2010 film The Fighter, starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. I next saw Micky three years later, when I visited his dressing room in 1990 after he won a 10-round decision at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. Most of his family was there, and they didn’t appear to be happy with me; their passive anger was like a scene from the movie. Then I heard someone shout, “Ian! How you doing!” It was Micky, the nicest guy in boxing.
July 17 1987
The Boston Globe
LOWELL - His hand throbbed slowly, evenly, like a lung inhaling anger, exhaling anguish. It was handcuffed to his good right hand behind him. He sat in a Lowell Police patrol wagon. There was a lot of blood.
"Dickie," he cried out. "Dickie, I can't see."
His brother Dickie was crying.
"I can't see Dickie," Micky Ward shouted.
The blood spilling from his head welled in his eyes. His left arm too had been beaten, from elbow to hand. His hand took the worst of it. His hand was his career. He could not see, and he was a fighter who could not fight.
"Oh Dickie," Micky Ward said.
"It should have been me," Dickie Eklund, his brother, said. "Why did they have to do it to you? Why couldn't they do it to me?"
Lights flashing, the police wagon sped toward jail.
Moments earlier, as the bars were closing on a Friday night, Lowell police had been called to stop a fight on Market Street outside the Cosmopolitan Cafe. According to an arrest report filed by officer Edward Dowling, Dickie Eklund was seen kicking and punching 29-year-old Angel Rosario. Several officers attempted to arrest Dickie, but he reportedly punched Dowling several times and attempted an escape.
Dickie's older sister, Gail Carney, emerged from the crowd and pulled Dowling away from Dickie, according to the report. She was arrested after a struggle. Dowling then led brother and sister to a patrol wagon. Dickie struggled and cried out for help. Several people emerged from the onlooking crowd, including Dickie's younger brother Micky, who allegedly knocked Dowling to the ground. Micky and Dowling struggled. Dowling was also kicked by an unidentified male. Finally, the report concludes, the three of them -- Dickie, Gail and Micky -- were placed in the patrol wagon.
Dowling's report does not mention the injuries suffered by Micky Ward, nor does it note that nine other officers were on the scene to assist Dowling.
Dickie and Micky offer a different version of the events. Dickie says two friends, Angel Rosario and Mike LaPointe, were fighting when Rosario yelled for Dickie's help. Dickie stopped the fight and attempted to aid Rosario. Both LaPointe and Rosario have said Dickie did not strike them. Police arrived and two officers grabbed LaPointe, but LaPointe says the officers let him go when they saw Dickie standing over Rosario. Dickie says he was arrested, handcuffed and thrown to the ground. Then, he says, Micky came out of the crowd to check on Dickie. The police tackled Micky and beat him, the brothers say.
"Don't do that," Dickie says he yelled while police beat his brother. "That's Micky! You know Micky! He fought in Vegas!"
Dickie says an officer answered, "Bleep Micky Ward." Another officer said, according to Dickie, "Break his bleeping hand so he can't fight again."
Lowell police superintendent John Sheehan denies his officers were unnecessarily violent.
"Oh yeah, it was a confrontation," Sheehan says. "I've seen it many, many times. Guys get together after the fact and tell you what you want to hear. Their recollection of the event breaks down. I'm here to tell you there was a confrontation. It was like most confrontations. It starts off probably verbal, and it tends to get physical."
Dickie, Micky and Gail go to trial next Thursday in Lowell District Court. Their attorneys are threatening civil action against the Lowell police, although the suit may not be filed for some time. "We have three years to decide, and we may wait it out," says Morris Goldings, who is also attorney to Marvelous Marvin Hagler. "We have to look at the long-term effects upon Micky's career. Obviously, if his career is terminated because of this, then greater damages have to be assessed against the wrongdoers."
In Lowell, the alleged wrongdoers are the police. In Lowell, the victim is its finest fighter, its latest greatest hope to make a name for himself and his beleaguered boxing town. Approximately 1:55 the morning of May 9, Micky Ward lost $25,000, a chance to break through onto network television and, at least temporarily, the use of his left hand.
And then there is his older brother Dickie, who may have lost more than anyone.
The strange tale of Dickie and Micky is not the first of its kind from Lowell; this long-depressed town is populated with S-shaped noses and taverns housing retired fighters. But no apologies for Dickie and Micky yet. We join the boys in the middle of a vibrant, exciting career. They are professionals from an Irish family, Dickie retired from fighting at 30 and Micky, at 21, a contender with a 12-0 record. At their side is Alice Ward, who still cannot understand how her only two sons made this choice, since both were quiet children and were surrounded by seven sisters. Yet Alice herself was raised in the fighting Acre of Lowell, and two of her daughters married boxers, so there should be little wonder over what led young Dickie to enter a gym for the first time.
Dickie's parents divorced when he was 2, but within seven years, Alice had remarried and given birth to Micky. Each boy was named after his father, but Micky's largest influence was Dickie. "When Dickie went to the gym, Micky was sure to follow," Alice says.
Dickie cannot be given enough credit for Micky's emergence as -- this is his nickname -- "Lowell's Baby Faced Killer." As young fighters went, Dickie was good, the best, and all the time he was casting a shadow for little Micky to box. Micky emulated Dickie. "If he'd played football, I would have played football," Micky says. "If he was a hockey player, I'd probably be playing hockey right now. No one looks at all the good things he does. He kept me at it, kept me at it, kept me at it."
Dickie returned from fights with boxing shoes and shirts for his younger brother. He would stand on his knees and spar with Micky. Micky copied Dickie's switching style, learning to fight lefty and righty. Micky grew up winning the tournaments Dickie had won. Dickie turned pro (he was a welterweight) and Micky attended his local fights. "You could never tell Micky anything," Alice remembers. "He'd just sit there with his mouth open staring at Dickie." After Micky turned pro (he was a junior welterweight), Dickie retired -- he trained Micky. Dickie was a fine young prospect, and so is Micky. Then something went wrong with Dickie, and now a battered left hand worries Micky. Dickie does, and so does Micky. Dickie cries out . . . and nine years later . . . Micky echoes.
Both dropped out of high school to work construction. Their voices and speech patterns sound identical. Each fought under the nickname "Irish." All that stood between them were years and their last names -- Eklund and Ward. "I don't like that 'half-brother' stuff," Dickie says. "I think of him as my brother." They were twin sons of different fathers, and they were managed by their mother. Alice Ward arranged Dickie's fights, and today she manages Micky's. "I figured I'd managed Dickie and Micky all my life, so why stop?" she says.
But lately, it's been getting sticky. Micky's mother is being sued for $250,000 by Micky's previous manager, Bernie Bergeron. Bernie claims his contract with Micky was all hunky-dory, until Micky's "Mommy," as Bergeron calls Alice Ward, influenced her son with family hanky-panky. All together, Dickie-Micky-Mommy think the lawsuit is malarkey.
"That family," says Bernie, "that family will drag Micky down quickly."
On fight nights Micky's Mommy sits ringside near Micky's girlfriend, Laurie. Dickie waits in Micky's corner, where they are joined by Micky's friend, Richie and the cut man, Johnny. Johnny used to train Dickie. "Dickie teaches Micky what Johnny taught Dickie," says Dickie's and Micky's Mommy.
Micky's Mommy manages him, Dickie trains him, the family travels with him. Do relationships confine him, restrict him? Look at Dickie and look at Micky. Only a consonant separates them now, their relationship having raised Micky into boxing contention. Now that he's here, does he keep following Dickie? Brotherhood creaks in the knuckles of his left hand. What is it, he wonders, that has so suddenly robbed him of his chance to make it big out of this town?
Why, he is asked, could none of his Lowell predecessors ever win a championship, not even Dickie? Especially Dickie.
"I don't know," says Micky. "It's tricky."
Dickie says he was on the ground handcuffed and helpless when the police converged upon Micky. "Three of 'em," he says. "They threw him down. One on this side, one on this side, and the other with the big metal flashlight is clubbing him, I can hear it. Crack! Crack!"
Dickie slams his fist on the coffee table in his mother's basement. "Crack!" Four dead cigarettes shiver in an ashtray.
"There was no reason for them to do that to him," Dickie says.
For whatever reason the police beat him, whether he deserved it or not, Micky was taking his licking because of Dickie. This is a widespread opinion.
"Dickie should be more smarter than that," says Ouchie McManus, a Lowell trainer who worked Dickie's corner and now oversees the gym where Micky trains. "He's Micky's big brother, right? If Dickie handles him right, the kid's going to make it. But life is one big party."
"First and foremost, Dickie is very concerned and interested in Micky's career," says police chief Sheehan, who Alice Ward says has been friendly with her family for years. "Of course his heart is in the right place. But then you have to look at his lifestyle, his frame of mind, his approach to life. What are the proper influences for a young boxer like Micky? Is Dickie doing these things for himself? He has to do it for his brother.
"I've seen it generation after generation after generation. The similarities jump right out at you. All of these fighters have outstanding amateur careers; they win title after title after title and they have no trouble with the police. Then some time between their amateur and professional careers, something happens . . . Every once in a while a kid comes along the caliber of Micky Ward. In time somebody's got to come along, take him under his wing and keep him to the straight and narrow."
Dickie, Micky and their sister had converged upon the Cosmopolitan Cafe only two weeks before the most important fight of Micky's young career, a nationally-televised bout against fellow contender Joe Belinc in Corpus Christi, Texas. There is nothing cosmopolitan about the Cosmopolitan Cafe, and it is not a cafe. "It's one of the toughest bars in New England," says Bergeron, Micky's former manager. "If you walked up to it, you'd probably want to run away. There are all types there -- drugs, the whole works."
When police saw Dickie at the scene of the fight, they probably expected the worst. "Dickie's been in and out of trouble," Sheehan says. "They're not serious things, but he's had his ups and downs."
"He's been involved in a number of minor incidents," says one of Dickie's attorneys, Bruce Edmands of Boston. "I think he's just a kid who has really not learned to restrain himself from that which he does best."
A third of Alice Ward's children were arrested that morning. The three were charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery on officer Dowling. Gail Carney, 34, was also charged with possession of marijuana; it was her marriage to Lowell middleweight Larry Carney that probably kindled Dickie's interest in boxing. Dickie was charged with a second count of assault and battery on Angel Rosario, the victim of the street brawl. Micky was led into the police wagon last, completing a family tree of Lowell fighters, their hands cuffed behind them.
In 36 amateur fights and 12 as a professional, Micky had never seen his own blood. Now his blood blinded him. His older sister and brother, the foundations of his career, could only stare at Micky, who was unable to see them, but they tried to console him. "You have to go to the hospital, Micky," Gail said.
He sat alone in the wagon while his sister and brother were arraigned ahead of him. Then he was dropped off at the emergency room, where the gash in his head was stitched shut. The lumps he says he felt on his skull were untreatable. Blood was already calcifying in the joints of his left hand, inflicting tendinitis he still can feel two months later.
The next morning, Top Rank promoter Teddy Brenner innocently telephoned Alice to hear how his newest Lowell prospect was coming along. She asked Brenner to postpone the fight. It was canceled, and Micky has not been rescheduled by the network. He was able to resume training only last week.
Micky's replacement knocked out Joe Belinc.
In fairness to Dickie, his conversion to boxing was probably not as smooth as Micky's. Remember, Micky always had Dickie, while Dickie had to kick loose his own path. Before Dickie was 10, he was in the Lowell gyms with his friends. "I'd give 'em a glove each," Ouchie McManus says. "I'd put 'em all in the ring and they'd have a big battle royal. They'd all whack it out. One kid would get slugged and he'd come out, you know, holding his face. Pretty soon there'd only be two left, and it would really be a battle. He was the king, Dickie was."
At 12, Dickie was given the alias of Dick Huntley -- named after a fighter he had seen on a poster in the gym -- and was taken to Rockingham Park for amateur boxing night, where his first official opponent was a 20-year-old jockey who offered him a beer afterward. This was followed by amateur tournaments and fights with bigger, older opponents, often the only boys who would fight Dickie. He remembers classmates rewarding him with more attention as his career escalated. He was 13.
"He was a nice kid," says Arthur Ramalho, Dickie's first formal trainer. "There were never any problems. He always acted like a gentleman toward me. He would train, and he would train real hard. He was always in good shape, and he'd listen to me."
Like all of Lowell's failed fighters before him, it is difficult to pinpoint when Dickie began to change.
"It's a clean sport, fighting," Alice Ward says. "It keeps them off the street, you know? Dickie was always training when he was a teenager. He was never goofing off. He was always home by 9.
"That's why I remember the day; he was 16 years old. We were in the car and Dickie said his girlfriend was going to have a baby. I couldn't believe it -- when could she ever have gotten pregnant?"
Dickie was married (to Debbie) at 16 and a father (to Kerry) at 17. He moved out of his mother's house and into a Lowell apartment with his family. He dropped out of school in ninth grade. Ramalho cannot remember Dickie's new lifestyle having an effect on his training, but Dickie was developing a taste for the Cosmo.
"Fighters have been going there from Day 1," police chief Sheehan says. "I remember kicking Dickie Eklund out of there when he was 16. He'd just won the Best Fighter Award at the Golden Gloves -- they gave him a bowl. He was drinking beer out of it. I sent him home, and I told Alice to keep Dickie out of there."
His mother and trainer and friends and wife and daughter and drinking buddies each pulled at Dickie, some with better motives than others, but all wanting their piece of a promising fighter just turned pro at 18. Ramalho was first to go. "He came down to the gym and told me he was going pro," Ramalho says. "I was happy as a son of a gun. Then he told me his mother was sending him to be trained down in Boston, and that kind of took my heart out of it. It kind of hurt me."
His marriage went next; Dickie and Debbie were divorced. There followed a struggle between his career by day and his life by night, and it is clear to all which one gave out. "He should have been champ," Alice says. "He was a natural," says Dickie's trainer as a pro, Johnny Dunn of Boston. "He couldn't miss. We should all be swimming in money right now. Believe me when I tell you, he should have been champ."
Dickie believes. "If I did everything the right way," he says, "I would have been champ."
A month before he was scheduled to fight undefeated welterweight contender Sugar Ray Leonard, Dickie fell off his motorcycle while riding at the beach. "I'm lying in the ambulance," Dickie remembers, "and I'm thinking, 'Oh no, the fight. The fight!' " Later that week, Dickie hobbled into a pre-fight press conference on crutches. "I'm fighting him?" Leonard said. Dickie lost all 10 rounds to Leonard, nine of them unanimously, and was knocked down three times. This was in 1978, nine years before Dickie would hear his younger brother's echo shrieking outside the Cosmopolitan Cafe.
Dickie turned down all fights for a year after losing to Leonard. He resumed a sporadic career before lapsing into retirement last year with a 20-8 record. "I said I can't beat Leonard, I might as well quit," Dickie says. "I should have just kept going. I didn't know I was as good as I was."
"I think he fought Leonard too early," Ramalho says. "I don't think I would have hit Leonard as fast as they hit him. I think if he'd stuck with me I would have taken him along slow. He would have been the first pro I had. With me he was dedicated. Occasionally I look through the scrapbooks, kids like Dickie Eklund, Mattie Ross. I figure in 23 years, I've had four kids who possibly could have become world champion."
Two of them had personal problems that Ramalho would rather not discuss. The third, Ramalho's son, David, suffered from brittle hands, which is a problem Micky Ward might now face. Dickie was the fourth. Arthur Ramalho still bumps into Dickie now and then.
"I hear he's thinking about making a comeback," Ramalho says. "I would like him to come back to the gym. If he came back, the first thing I'd do, I'd sit down and talk with him. I always had a very good relationship with Dickie. Then, if the kid's in half-decent shape, it could take three-four months before he's fighting again. But you don't know, you just don't know."
Fighters and racehorses have to be the two most fragile investments in sports, a visitor tells Ramalho.
"Racehorses are tougher," Ramalho says, pointing out framed photographs of horses nailed to his wall. "I used to train them, too."
"I'd always be out partying," Dickie says. "I'd be out three days before a fight. You have a couple beers, and next thing you know you're out till 3 in the morning. That's the stuff I never want Micky to do. I'd be out and I'd say I'll just have a couple more beers. Three days later, I'm in the ring and all my friends are out there drinking beer. I'm thinking, Oh, no, I shouldn't have did it. I looked out in the stands and saw them. They're still out there drinking beer and I'm the one who has to fight. That was my last fight.
"It hurts, how I screwed up. I screwed up my life. That's how people talk. Everybody sees me, they say, 'Dickie, how are you doing?' Then they walk past and they're saying that you're doing too much drugs or doing too much drinking. If you box here, you're a bum, really. In England, they treat you like a gentleman.
"Drinking was what screwed me up. When I'm standing on the street with a beer in my hand and people walk by, I feel like two cents. I think, what happened to me? The only time I'd get arrested was when I was drinking. I'd never get arrested when I was sober. You leave a bar and something happens.
"I was there and Micky just came on his own. Everybody blames me, but I didn't take Micky down to the Cosmo. I didn't take him down there. He's 21 years old; I can't follow him around with a chain. He hits too hard (laughs).
"I've got to be more on the ball now. It's not just myself now. Look, name one trainer that does everything I do for him. I run with him. I go down and spar with him. I taught him everything he knows, and everybody blames me. Everybody thinks it's me, that if I'm out partying, Micky's going to be out.
"Micky won't leave me. We're going to stick together. I'm going to make him champ. I'm positive. I know what he's going to do. I know we're going to make it. He ain't going to be drinking booze or doing any drugs. He ain't, and I'm going to stop myself from doing it. I'll be in the gym with him every day if he needs me. I know all the bad things that can happen now. You can't get a better guy to teach you than that.
"Everybody talks about me hurting Micky Ward. Micky Ward is what I made him. At least I sure helped him. I'm dead serious. Micky could be a millionaire. He can't miss being champion. He's going to be back."
Dickie pauses.
"As long as his hand heals right," he says.
Dickie went to jail in Billerica last October. He was serving three months after admitting he had broken the jaw of a man who interrupted an argument Dickie was having with his sister. Micky refused to fight without Dickie in his corner, and yet he was angry that Dickie's mistakes were beginning to damage his, Micky's, career.
The House of Correction is only 6 miles from Alice Ward's Chelmsford home, and Dickie saw his family almost every visiting day. All reported the same things to Micky -- that Dickie was promising he wouldn't let Micky down again and, in fact, he was attempting a comeback. There is no beer in jail. "He was working out every night, training other guys," Micky says. "He probably was in better shape coming out of jail than he was when he fought Leonard."
Dickie became a free man on New Year's Eve. He did not go out on the biggest party night of the year. But he did not resume training, either. "He kept saying he was going to," Micky says. "As the days went on and the weeks went on, it just wore off."
Micky's career ascended all obstacles. Before one fight, Micky's best friend, Richie Bryan, learned in the locker room that his father had died. Micky won that brawl by decision, and at a victory party that night, he and Richie sat quietly in a corner booth.
In April, he earned a trip to Vegas, where he appeared in the second fight of the Marvelous Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard undercard. Micky and Dickie and Richie and 80-year-old trainer Dunn arrived four days before the fight. This was Micky's first taste of the big time he hoped to join. He says he played a few slot machines and nothing more. Dickie repeatedly predicted that Leonard would upset Hagler. "Everyone says Hagler's going to win," Dickie would say, "but I know."
Micky handled his opponent easily, then he and his brother waited for Sugar Ray's comeback fight to begin. They were not allowed into the arena, so they watched on a big screen in the press room. They agreed Leonard won the fight. "Then Micky went back to the hotel to rest," says Dickie, a smile curling in his lip, "and I didn't."
The next day, Dickie saw a limousine arrive at the Las Vegas airport. Out stepped Leonard.
"Hey Ray, what's up," Dickie shouted.
"You can't go over there," a bodyguard said.
Leonard waved, and the guard stood clear. They stood for a moment between and beneath the furious traffic. Leonard had just gone 12 rounds with Hagler, but he was healthy and youthful. Dickie's hair was graying, and marking his face were lines chiseled outside the ring. His smile was older than 30 years. Dickie says he shook Leonard's hand and said, "Ray, what's up?" He and Leonard had been equals once. Dickie cannot remember the rest of their conversation.
All was as Dickie wanted. He was careful not to violate the terms of his probation so that he would not be locked up again. At night in the Lowell taverns, he celebrated his first career, the one he says he "screwed up;" there are stories that he kissed Leonard on the head in the eighth round and knocked him down in the ninth (the referee ruled Leonard's fall to be a "slip"). In the morning, Dickie would wake up to a second chance -- he could still nurture his younger brother into a champion.
"Everybody says I can't do nothing, I can't do nothing," Dickie says. "But then I'd show 'em all. I'd show 'em I can do it."
One afternoon, he was driving his 13-year-old daughter home to her mother in New Hampshire. "She said to me, 'Daddy, why aren't you doing what Sugar Ray Leonard is doing?' " Dickie says. "That broke my heart. That's what made me want to come back."
He trimmed his nights out, though they did not vanish. And when he trained with Micky, he did so with his own career in mind, too. He arranged a public exhibition in Maine, Micky vs. Dickie, "to test myself, see where I stood." But he could already feel a couple of competitive years still springing in him. He and Micky training each other, each scaling Lowell history to the top of the world. That would show them.
Then, one night, he slipped. And out from the crowd watching his public fall walked Micky. He says he leaned over his brother and for a moment in the lights of the bar Dickie's scared eyes met Micky's, before the arms of Lowell pulled him down into the street.
Rather than give up, Dickie has threatened himself. "If I don't fight in three months, I'll never fight again," he says. He is planning to enroll in a low-cost alcohol rehabilitation program, as ordered by his probation. He also will seek help to learn why he gets in fights so easily. "But that has nothing to do with this case," attorney Edmands says. "In this case, I'm sure Dickie and Micky are innocent."
Micky continues to test his left hand in the gym and is pleased with its progress. Aug. 25 has been set for his return to the ring. In his apartment, he presses his knuckles and thin vulnerable bones. "That's gonna bother you forever," his roommate Tony Underwood says. "It'll probably get screwed up after every fight."
"Hmm," Micky mumbles, slumped over it.
"As long as his hand's OK, I don't see how this thing with the police will hurt him," says Kevin Monaghan, who arranges fights for NBC. "We're looking for good fights and good stories, and all of this might have even helped him. Now that he was involved in a gang fight or whatever, that's really intriguing. That makes him even more of a story."
Micky's goal is to fight Vinnie Pazienza for the junior welterweight championship. He figures Pazienza will move up from lightweight, where he is the undefeated champ. "He'll never be able to stay at that weight," Micky says. "He's never had anyone who's fought him the way I'll fight him. I won't come right at him."
"And Micky's a heavy puncher," Dickie says.
Everything Micky does is aimed at a fight with Pazienza, he says. Everything.
"What about staying out of trouble?" he is asked.
"That's not going to happen," Micky says.
"Every Lowell fighter before you probably said that," he is told. "Even Dickie."
"Probably when they were younger, they did say that," Micky says. "It's something I've got to do. I can say it and say it and say it, but it's something I've got to do."
Four days earlier, he and Dickie are standing outside the Cosmopolitan Cafe. It is almost 2 a.m. They have been drinking. Micky's words are slurring. "The fight began here," Dickie says.
They are agitated. "Then it came around the corner over here," Micky says. "They threw Dickie on the ground -- boom! Then I came over and they started hitting me -- crack, crack, crack! There was blood right here."
"There was a lot of blood," Dickie says.
Friends have met them outside the darkened bar. There are no police. Four girls in a car are inviting Dickie and Micky to a party. A teetering young man holding a beer says, "Dickie, where are we going to get some more beer?"
"OK, OK," Dickie says.
Micky says he will meet them. As he runs down Market Street to his car, he is unaware of his Lowell friend urinating on the sidewalk, splashing the very spot where Dickie and Micky almost lost everything.
July 17 1987
The Boston Globe
LOWELL - His hand throbbed slowly, evenly, like a lung inhaling anger, exhaling anguish. It was handcuffed to his good right hand behind him. He sat in a Lowell Police patrol wagon. There was a lot of blood.
"Dickie," he cried out. "Dickie, I can't see."
His brother Dickie was crying.
"I can't see Dickie," Micky Ward shouted.
The blood spilling from his head welled in his eyes. His left arm too had been beaten, from elbow to hand. His hand took the worst of it. His hand was his career. He could not see, and he was a fighter who could not fight.
"Oh Dickie," Micky Ward said.
"It should have been me," Dickie Eklund, his brother, said. "Why did they have to do it to you? Why couldn't they do it to me?"
Lights flashing, the police wagon sped toward jail.
Moments earlier, as the bars were closing on a Friday night, Lowell police had been called to stop a fight on Market Street outside the Cosmopolitan Cafe. According to an arrest report filed by officer Edward Dowling, Dickie Eklund was seen kicking and punching 29-year-old Angel Rosario. Several officers attempted to arrest Dickie, but he reportedly punched Dowling several times and attempted an escape.
Dickie's older sister, Gail Carney, emerged from the crowd and pulled Dowling away from Dickie, according to the report. She was arrested after a struggle. Dowling then led brother and sister to a patrol wagon. Dickie struggled and cried out for help. Several people emerged from the onlooking crowd, including Dickie's younger brother Micky, who allegedly knocked Dowling to the ground. Micky and Dowling struggled. Dowling was also kicked by an unidentified male. Finally, the report concludes, the three of them -- Dickie, Gail and Micky -- were placed in the patrol wagon.
Dowling's report does not mention the injuries suffered by Micky Ward, nor does it note that nine other officers were on the scene to assist Dowling.
Dickie and Micky offer a different version of the events. Dickie says two friends, Angel Rosario and Mike LaPointe, were fighting when Rosario yelled for Dickie's help. Dickie stopped the fight and attempted to aid Rosario. Both LaPointe and Rosario have said Dickie did not strike them. Police arrived and two officers grabbed LaPointe, but LaPointe says the officers let him go when they saw Dickie standing over Rosario. Dickie says he was arrested, handcuffed and thrown to the ground. Then, he says, Micky came out of the crowd to check on Dickie. The police tackled Micky and beat him, the brothers say.
"Don't do that," Dickie says he yelled while police beat his brother. "That's Micky! You know Micky! He fought in Vegas!"
Dickie says an officer answered, "Bleep Micky Ward." Another officer said, according to Dickie, "Break his bleeping hand so he can't fight again."
Lowell police superintendent John Sheehan denies his officers were unnecessarily violent.
"Oh yeah, it was a confrontation," Sheehan says. "I've seen it many, many times. Guys get together after the fact and tell you what you want to hear. Their recollection of the event breaks down. I'm here to tell you there was a confrontation. It was like most confrontations. It starts off probably verbal, and it tends to get physical."
Dickie, Micky and Gail go to trial next Thursday in Lowell District Court. Their attorneys are threatening civil action against the Lowell police, although the suit may not be filed for some time. "We have three years to decide, and we may wait it out," says Morris Goldings, who is also attorney to Marvelous Marvin Hagler. "We have to look at the long-term effects upon Micky's career. Obviously, if his career is terminated because of this, then greater damages have to be assessed against the wrongdoers."
In Lowell, the alleged wrongdoers are the police. In Lowell, the victim is its finest fighter, its latest greatest hope to make a name for himself and his beleaguered boxing town. Approximately 1:55 the morning of May 9, Micky Ward lost $25,000, a chance to break through onto network television and, at least temporarily, the use of his left hand.
And then there is his older brother Dickie, who may have lost more than anyone.
The strange tale of Dickie and Micky is not the first of its kind from Lowell; this long-depressed town is populated with S-shaped noses and taverns housing retired fighters. But no apologies for Dickie and Micky yet. We join the boys in the middle of a vibrant, exciting career. They are professionals from an Irish family, Dickie retired from fighting at 30 and Micky, at 21, a contender with a 12-0 record. At their side is Alice Ward, who still cannot understand how her only two sons made this choice, since both were quiet children and were surrounded by seven sisters. Yet Alice herself was raised in the fighting Acre of Lowell, and two of her daughters married boxers, so there should be little wonder over what led young Dickie to enter a gym for the first time.
Dickie's parents divorced when he was 2, but within seven years, Alice had remarried and given birth to Micky. Each boy was named after his father, but Micky's largest influence was Dickie. "When Dickie went to the gym, Micky was sure to follow," Alice says.
Dickie cannot be given enough credit for Micky's emergence as -- this is his nickname -- "Lowell's Baby Faced Killer." As young fighters went, Dickie was good, the best, and all the time he was casting a shadow for little Micky to box. Micky emulated Dickie. "If he'd played football, I would have played football," Micky says. "If he was a hockey player, I'd probably be playing hockey right now. No one looks at all the good things he does. He kept me at it, kept me at it, kept me at it."
Dickie returned from fights with boxing shoes and shirts for his younger brother. He would stand on his knees and spar with Micky. Micky copied Dickie's switching style, learning to fight lefty and righty. Micky grew up winning the tournaments Dickie had won. Dickie turned pro (he was a welterweight) and Micky attended his local fights. "You could never tell Micky anything," Alice remembers. "He'd just sit there with his mouth open staring at Dickie." After Micky turned pro (he was a junior welterweight), Dickie retired -- he trained Micky. Dickie was a fine young prospect, and so is Micky. Then something went wrong with Dickie, and now a battered left hand worries Micky. Dickie does, and so does Micky. Dickie cries out . . . and nine years later . . . Micky echoes.
Both dropped out of high school to work construction. Their voices and speech patterns sound identical. Each fought under the nickname "Irish." All that stood between them were years and their last names -- Eklund and Ward. "I don't like that 'half-brother' stuff," Dickie says. "I think of him as my brother." They were twin sons of different fathers, and they were managed by their mother. Alice Ward arranged Dickie's fights, and today she manages Micky's. "I figured I'd managed Dickie and Micky all my life, so why stop?" she says.
But lately, it's been getting sticky. Micky's mother is being sued for $250,000 by Micky's previous manager, Bernie Bergeron. Bernie claims his contract with Micky was all hunky-dory, until Micky's "Mommy," as Bergeron calls Alice Ward, influenced her son with family hanky-panky. All together, Dickie-Micky-Mommy think the lawsuit is malarkey.
"That family," says Bernie, "that family will drag Micky down quickly."
On fight nights Micky's Mommy sits ringside near Micky's girlfriend, Laurie. Dickie waits in Micky's corner, where they are joined by Micky's friend, Richie and the cut man, Johnny. Johnny used to train Dickie. "Dickie teaches Micky what Johnny taught Dickie," says Dickie's and Micky's Mommy.
Micky's Mommy manages him, Dickie trains him, the family travels with him. Do relationships confine him, restrict him? Look at Dickie and look at Micky. Only a consonant separates them now, their relationship having raised Micky into boxing contention. Now that he's here, does he keep following Dickie? Brotherhood creaks in the knuckles of his left hand. What is it, he wonders, that has so suddenly robbed him of his chance to make it big out of this town?
Why, he is asked, could none of his Lowell predecessors ever win a championship, not even Dickie? Especially Dickie.
"I don't know," says Micky. "It's tricky."
Dickie says he was on the ground handcuffed and helpless when the police converged upon Micky. "Three of 'em," he says. "They threw him down. One on this side, one on this side, and the other with the big metal flashlight is clubbing him, I can hear it. Crack! Crack!"
Dickie slams his fist on the coffee table in his mother's basement. "Crack!" Four dead cigarettes shiver in an ashtray.
"There was no reason for them to do that to him," Dickie says.
For whatever reason the police beat him, whether he deserved it or not, Micky was taking his licking because of Dickie. This is a widespread opinion.
"Dickie should be more smarter than that," says Ouchie McManus, a Lowell trainer who worked Dickie's corner and now oversees the gym where Micky trains. "He's Micky's big brother, right? If Dickie handles him right, the kid's going to make it. But life is one big party."
"First and foremost, Dickie is very concerned and interested in Micky's career," says police chief Sheehan, who Alice Ward says has been friendly with her family for years. "Of course his heart is in the right place. But then you have to look at his lifestyle, his frame of mind, his approach to life. What are the proper influences for a young boxer like Micky? Is Dickie doing these things for himself? He has to do it for his brother.
"I've seen it generation after generation after generation. The similarities jump right out at you. All of these fighters have outstanding amateur careers; they win title after title after title and they have no trouble with the police. Then some time between their amateur and professional careers, something happens . . . Every once in a while a kid comes along the caliber of Micky Ward. In time somebody's got to come along, take him under his wing and keep him to the straight and narrow."
Dickie, Micky and their sister had converged upon the Cosmopolitan Cafe only two weeks before the most important fight of Micky's young career, a nationally-televised bout against fellow contender Joe Belinc in Corpus Christi, Texas. There is nothing cosmopolitan about the Cosmopolitan Cafe, and it is not a cafe. "It's one of the toughest bars in New England," says Bergeron, Micky's former manager. "If you walked up to it, you'd probably want to run away. There are all types there -- drugs, the whole works."
When police saw Dickie at the scene of the fight, they probably expected the worst. "Dickie's been in and out of trouble," Sheehan says. "They're not serious things, but he's had his ups and downs."
"He's been involved in a number of minor incidents," says one of Dickie's attorneys, Bruce Edmands of Boston. "I think he's just a kid who has really not learned to restrain himself from that which he does best."
A third of Alice Ward's children were arrested that morning. The three were charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery on officer Dowling. Gail Carney, 34, was also charged with possession of marijuana; it was her marriage to Lowell middleweight Larry Carney that probably kindled Dickie's interest in boxing. Dickie was charged with a second count of assault and battery on Angel Rosario, the victim of the street brawl. Micky was led into the police wagon last, completing a family tree of Lowell fighters, their hands cuffed behind them.
In 36 amateur fights and 12 as a professional, Micky had never seen his own blood. Now his blood blinded him. His older sister and brother, the foundations of his career, could only stare at Micky, who was unable to see them, but they tried to console him. "You have to go to the hospital, Micky," Gail said.
He sat alone in the wagon while his sister and brother were arraigned ahead of him. Then he was dropped off at the emergency room, where the gash in his head was stitched shut. The lumps he says he felt on his skull were untreatable. Blood was already calcifying in the joints of his left hand, inflicting tendinitis he still can feel two months later.
The next morning, Top Rank promoter Teddy Brenner innocently telephoned Alice to hear how his newest Lowell prospect was coming along. She asked Brenner to postpone the fight. It was canceled, and Micky has not been rescheduled by the network. He was able to resume training only last week.
Micky's replacement knocked out Joe Belinc.
In fairness to Dickie, his conversion to boxing was probably not as smooth as Micky's. Remember, Micky always had Dickie, while Dickie had to kick loose his own path. Before Dickie was 10, he was in the Lowell gyms with his friends. "I'd give 'em a glove each," Ouchie McManus says. "I'd put 'em all in the ring and they'd have a big battle royal. They'd all whack it out. One kid would get slugged and he'd come out, you know, holding his face. Pretty soon there'd only be two left, and it would really be a battle. He was the king, Dickie was."
At 12, Dickie was given the alias of Dick Huntley -- named after a fighter he had seen on a poster in the gym -- and was taken to Rockingham Park for amateur boxing night, where his first official opponent was a 20-year-old jockey who offered him a beer afterward. This was followed by amateur tournaments and fights with bigger, older opponents, often the only boys who would fight Dickie. He remembers classmates rewarding him with more attention as his career escalated. He was 13.
"He was a nice kid," says Arthur Ramalho, Dickie's first formal trainer. "There were never any problems. He always acted like a gentleman toward me. He would train, and he would train real hard. He was always in good shape, and he'd listen to me."
Like all of Lowell's failed fighters before him, it is difficult to pinpoint when Dickie began to change.
"It's a clean sport, fighting," Alice Ward says. "It keeps them off the street, you know? Dickie was always training when he was a teenager. He was never goofing off. He was always home by 9.
"That's why I remember the day; he was 16 years old. We were in the car and Dickie said his girlfriend was going to have a baby. I couldn't believe it -- when could she ever have gotten pregnant?"
Dickie was married (to Debbie) at 16 and a father (to Kerry) at 17. He moved out of his mother's house and into a Lowell apartment with his family. He dropped out of school in ninth grade. Ramalho cannot remember Dickie's new lifestyle having an effect on his training, but Dickie was developing a taste for the Cosmo.
"Fighters have been going there from Day 1," police chief Sheehan says. "I remember kicking Dickie Eklund out of there when he was 16. He'd just won the Best Fighter Award at the Golden Gloves -- they gave him a bowl. He was drinking beer out of it. I sent him home, and I told Alice to keep Dickie out of there."
His mother and trainer and friends and wife and daughter and drinking buddies each pulled at Dickie, some with better motives than others, but all wanting their piece of a promising fighter just turned pro at 18. Ramalho was first to go. "He came down to the gym and told me he was going pro," Ramalho says. "I was happy as a son of a gun. Then he told me his mother was sending him to be trained down in Boston, and that kind of took my heart out of it. It kind of hurt me."
His marriage went next; Dickie and Debbie were divorced. There followed a struggle between his career by day and his life by night, and it is clear to all which one gave out. "He should have been champ," Alice says. "He was a natural," says Dickie's trainer as a pro, Johnny Dunn of Boston. "He couldn't miss. We should all be swimming in money right now. Believe me when I tell you, he should have been champ."
Dickie believes. "If I did everything the right way," he says, "I would have been champ."
A month before he was scheduled to fight undefeated welterweight contender Sugar Ray Leonard, Dickie fell off his motorcycle while riding at the beach. "I'm lying in the ambulance," Dickie remembers, "and I'm thinking, 'Oh no, the fight. The fight!' " Later that week, Dickie hobbled into a pre-fight press conference on crutches. "I'm fighting him?" Leonard said. Dickie lost all 10 rounds to Leonard, nine of them unanimously, and was knocked down three times. This was in 1978, nine years before Dickie would hear his younger brother's echo shrieking outside the Cosmopolitan Cafe.
Dickie turned down all fights for a year after losing to Leonard. He resumed a sporadic career before lapsing into retirement last year with a 20-8 record. "I said I can't beat Leonard, I might as well quit," Dickie says. "I should have just kept going. I didn't know I was as good as I was."
"I think he fought Leonard too early," Ramalho says. "I don't think I would have hit Leonard as fast as they hit him. I think if he'd stuck with me I would have taken him along slow. He would have been the first pro I had. With me he was dedicated. Occasionally I look through the scrapbooks, kids like Dickie Eklund, Mattie Ross. I figure in 23 years, I've had four kids who possibly could have become world champion."
Two of them had personal problems that Ramalho would rather not discuss. The third, Ramalho's son, David, suffered from brittle hands, which is a problem Micky Ward might now face. Dickie was the fourth. Arthur Ramalho still bumps into Dickie now and then.
"I hear he's thinking about making a comeback," Ramalho says. "I would like him to come back to the gym. If he came back, the first thing I'd do, I'd sit down and talk with him. I always had a very good relationship with Dickie. Then, if the kid's in half-decent shape, it could take three-four months before he's fighting again. But you don't know, you just don't know."
Fighters and racehorses have to be the two most fragile investments in sports, a visitor tells Ramalho.
"Racehorses are tougher," Ramalho says, pointing out framed photographs of horses nailed to his wall. "I used to train them, too."
"I'd always be out partying," Dickie says. "I'd be out three days before a fight. You have a couple beers, and next thing you know you're out till 3 in the morning. That's the stuff I never want Micky to do. I'd be out and I'd say I'll just have a couple more beers. Three days later, I'm in the ring and all my friends are out there drinking beer. I'm thinking, Oh, no, I shouldn't have did it. I looked out in the stands and saw them. They're still out there drinking beer and I'm the one who has to fight. That was my last fight.
"It hurts, how I screwed up. I screwed up my life. That's how people talk. Everybody sees me, they say, 'Dickie, how are you doing?' Then they walk past and they're saying that you're doing too much drugs or doing too much drinking. If you box here, you're a bum, really. In England, they treat you like a gentleman.
"Drinking was what screwed me up. When I'm standing on the street with a beer in my hand and people walk by, I feel like two cents. I think, what happened to me? The only time I'd get arrested was when I was drinking. I'd never get arrested when I was sober. You leave a bar and something happens.
"I was there and Micky just came on his own. Everybody blames me, but I didn't take Micky down to the Cosmo. I didn't take him down there. He's 21 years old; I can't follow him around with a chain. He hits too hard (laughs).
"I've got to be more on the ball now. It's not just myself now. Look, name one trainer that does everything I do for him. I run with him. I go down and spar with him. I taught him everything he knows, and everybody blames me. Everybody thinks it's me, that if I'm out partying, Micky's going to be out.
"Micky won't leave me. We're going to stick together. I'm going to make him champ. I'm positive. I know what he's going to do. I know we're going to make it. He ain't going to be drinking booze or doing any drugs. He ain't, and I'm going to stop myself from doing it. I'll be in the gym with him every day if he needs me. I know all the bad things that can happen now. You can't get a better guy to teach you than that.
"Everybody talks about me hurting Micky Ward. Micky Ward is what I made him. At least I sure helped him. I'm dead serious. Micky could be a millionaire. He can't miss being champion. He's going to be back."
Dickie pauses.
"As long as his hand heals right," he says.
Dickie went to jail in Billerica last October. He was serving three months after admitting he had broken the jaw of a man who interrupted an argument Dickie was having with his sister. Micky refused to fight without Dickie in his corner, and yet he was angry that Dickie's mistakes were beginning to damage his, Micky's, career.
The House of Correction is only 6 miles from Alice Ward's Chelmsford home, and Dickie saw his family almost every visiting day. All reported the same things to Micky -- that Dickie was promising he wouldn't let Micky down again and, in fact, he was attempting a comeback. There is no beer in jail. "He was working out every night, training other guys," Micky says. "He probably was in better shape coming out of jail than he was when he fought Leonard."
Dickie became a free man on New Year's Eve. He did not go out on the biggest party night of the year. But he did not resume training, either. "He kept saying he was going to," Micky says. "As the days went on and the weeks went on, it just wore off."
Micky's career ascended all obstacles. Before one fight, Micky's best friend, Richie Bryan, learned in the locker room that his father had died. Micky won that brawl by decision, and at a victory party that night, he and Richie sat quietly in a corner booth.
In April, he earned a trip to Vegas, where he appeared in the second fight of the Marvelous Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard undercard. Micky and Dickie and Richie and 80-year-old trainer Dunn arrived four days before the fight. This was Micky's first taste of the big time he hoped to join. He says he played a few slot machines and nothing more. Dickie repeatedly predicted that Leonard would upset Hagler. "Everyone says Hagler's going to win," Dickie would say, "but I know."
Micky handled his opponent easily, then he and his brother waited for Sugar Ray's comeback fight to begin. They were not allowed into the arena, so they watched on a big screen in the press room. They agreed Leonard won the fight. "Then Micky went back to the hotel to rest," says Dickie, a smile curling in his lip, "and I didn't."
The next day, Dickie saw a limousine arrive at the Las Vegas airport. Out stepped Leonard.
"Hey Ray, what's up," Dickie shouted.
"You can't go over there," a bodyguard said.
Leonard waved, and the guard stood clear. They stood for a moment between and beneath the furious traffic. Leonard had just gone 12 rounds with Hagler, but he was healthy and youthful. Dickie's hair was graying, and marking his face were lines chiseled outside the ring. His smile was older than 30 years. Dickie says he shook Leonard's hand and said, "Ray, what's up?" He and Leonard had been equals once. Dickie cannot remember the rest of their conversation.
All was as Dickie wanted. He was careful not to violate the terms of his probation so that he would not be locked up again. At night in the Lowell taverns, he celebrated his first career, the one he says he "screwed up;" there are stories that he kissed Leonard on the head in the eighth round and knocked him down in the ninth (the referee ruled Leonard's fall to be a "slip"). In the morning, Dickie would wake up to a second chance -- he could still nurture his younger brother into a champion.
"Everybody says I can't do nothing, I can't do nothing," Dickie says. "But then I'd show 'em all. I'd show 'em I can do it."
One afternoon, he was driving his 13-year-old daughter home to her mother in New Hampshire. "She said to me, 'Daddy, why aren't you doing what Sugar Ray Leonard is doing?' " Dickie says. "That broke my heart. That's what made me want to come back."
He trimmed his nights out, though they did not vanish. And when he trained with Micky, he did so with his own career in mind, too. He arranged a public exhibition in Maine, Micky vs. Dickie, "to test myself, see where I stood." But he could already feel a couple of competitive years still springing in him. He and Micky training each other, each scaling Lowell history to the top of the world. That would show them.
Then, one night, he slipped. And out from the crowd watching his public fall walked Micky. He says he leaned over his brother and for a moment in the lights of the bar Dickie's scared eyes met Micky's, before the arms of Lowell pulled him down into the street.
Rather than give up, Dickie has threatened himself. "If I don't fight in three months, I'll never fight again," he says. He is planning to enroll in a low-cost alcohol rehabilitation program, as ordered by his probation. He also will seek help to learn why he gets in fights so easily. "But that has nothing to do with this case," attorney Edmands says. "In this case, I'm sure Dickie and Micky are innocent."
Micky continues to test his left hand in the gym and is pleased with its progress. Aug. 25 has been set for his return to the ring. In his apartment, he presses his knuckles and thin vulnerable bones. "That's gonna bother you forever," his roommate Tony Underwood says. "It'll probably get screwed up after every fight."
"Hmm," Micky mumbles, slumped over it.
"As long as his hand's OK, I don't see how this thing with the police will hurt him," says Kevin Monaghan, who arranges fights for NBC. "We're looking for good fights and good stories, and all of this might have even helped him. Now that he was involved in a gang fight or whatever, that's really intriguing. That makes him even more of a story."
Micky's goal is to fight Vinnie Pazienza for the junior welterweight championship. He figures Pazienza will move up from lightweight, where he is the undefeated champ. "He'll never be able to stay at that weight," Micky says. "He's never had anyone who's fought him the way I'll fight him. I won't come right at him."
"And Micky's a heavy puncher," Dickie says.
Everything Micky does is aimed at a fight with Pazienza, he says. Everything.
"What about staying out of trouble?" he is asked.
"That's not going to happen," Micky says.
"Every Lowell fighter before you probably said that," he is told. "Even Dickie."
"Probably when they were younger, they did say that," Micky says. "It's something I've got to do. I can say it and say it and say it, but it's something I've got to do."
Four days earlier, he and Dickie are standing outside the Cosmopolitan Cafe. It is almost 2 a.m. They have been drinking. Micky's words are slurring. "The fight began here," Dickie says.
They are agitated. "Then it came around the corner over here," Micky says. "They threw Dickie on the ground -- boom! Then I came over and they started hitting me -- crack, crack, crack! There was blood right here."
"There was a lot of blood," Dickie says.
Friends have met them outside the darkened bar. There are no police. Four girls in a car are inviting Dickie and Micky to a party. A teetering young man holding a beer says, "Dickie, where are we going to get some more beer?"
"OK, OK," Dickie says.
Micky says he will meet them. As he runs down Market Street to his car, he is unaware of his Lowell friend urinating on the sidewalk, splashing the very spot where Dickie and Micky almost lost everything.
A Small-Town Tragedy
I was 24 when I spent a week in Pennsylvania, not long after a tragic accident involving the football stars of the local high school – the Ruddy twins. This was recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the best feature story of 1986.
Feb. 28, 1986
The Boston Globe
DUNMORE, Pa. -- They were well outside Scranton now, riding west along US Rte. 6 like a football in the hands of a dangerous, vulnerable runner. The highway stumbled and cut behind the Susquehanna River before leaping into its final sprint to Mansfield. The white Ford Tempo in which they rode was splotched with dirty snow. This was the final Wednesday in January.
The driver, Frank Butsko, was a 25-year-old assistant football coach at Mansfield University. The passengers were his recruits for the day, the Ruddy twins of Dunmore. Each had gained more than 1,000 yards while carrying Dunmore High School to its first state championship. But more than a fullback named Billy and a halfback named Bobby traveled with Frank Butsko the morning of Jan. 29. The twins were the best the future could offer the tired northeastern Pennsylvania coal town of Dunmore.
There is evidence that Butsko did not fully appreciate his cargo's importance. Which is understandable -- the Ruddy twins themselves could not see beyond the final bend of Rte. 6 on their way to Mansfield that snowy day.
"Does my driving this fast bother you?" Frank Butsko asked.
"No," Billy Ruddy said, smiling. "This is how I drive all the time."
In the back seat, Bobby, the younger Ruddy by 15 minutes, was silent.
The state police arrived at Dunmore High School three hours after Frank Butsko's car skidded into oncoming traffic. Joseph McDonald, the school principal, sent his football coach with the troopers to tell Rose Ruddy, the mother, that another in her family was gone.
Alone in his office, McDonald asked that Roseanne Ruddy, the twins' sister and a junior at the high school, be brought to him. He decided he would not tell Roseanne the worst. He would say just enough to get her out of here and into the arms of her family.
"Roseanne," McDonald said, "there's been an accident."
"They're dead," she said.
He felt as though the girl had shoved him against a wall. "Now Roseanne, the only report I have is that there's been an accident." He was trying to lie for her own good.
"I told them this was going to happen," she said. "The snow . . . I didn't want them to go . . ."
A teacher escorted Roseanne home. McDonald remembered that one of the twins had a girlfriend in school -- Bobby's girlfriend. That would make it easier. He sent for Leigh Rescigno and told her.
"Bobby's OK," McDonald repeated."Bobby's OK," McDonald repeated. "How do they know?" she said. "Are you sure that it's Bobby that's injured?"
He wanted to say yes. "That's the way the state police have it," McDonald told her. But he was not sure. He himself had trouble distinguishing the twins in school.
Experience clamped down upon his second-guessing. He knew better than to question the life and death of this. Leigh Rescigno went home. There was more for a principal to do. He flicked on the school PA.
"In five minutes, we will assemble at the gymnasium," he announced.
McDonald had told only his vice principal and, of course, the football coach. Rumor nonetheless spread -- the Ruddys had been in an accident. Climbing the gymnasium stairs to their seats, the twins' closest friends and teammates were not prepared for a tragedy. An accident . . . injury . . . recovery -- this was how life worked. Many of Dunmore High School's 610 students never had seriously considered a finality to youth until the day their principal stood before them on the hardwood floor.
"A member of our family has died," McDonald said. "We should be the first to know."
He did not have a microphone.
"The state police called me. There was an accident on the way to Mansfield today. The coach from Mansfield was killed. Bobby Ruddy was seriously injured. Billy Ruddy was killed."
He was drowned in his students' screams.
Later that day, after reporters from the local newspapers, radio stations and three TV affiliates had left his office, McDonald walked the two blocks to the Ruddy home. Rose, the mother, hugged him. "You're going to have to help me," she said.
Friends and relatives were drawn to the home. Msgr. Charles W. Heid, pastor at the Ruddys' church, met McDonald alone on the front porch. "Joseph, are you OK?" Msgr. Heid asked.
McDonald nodded, finally isolated with his thoughts. His own son, Michael, had died last year on the way to Mansfield in an accident identical to the one that killed Billy Ruddy. Death, like its survivor, had a twin.
Bobby Ruddy had suffered a concussion, a jaw broken in three places, facial contusions that required plastic surgery, a broken forearm and a cracked pelvis. He was hospitalized in Elmira, N.Y. Police advised the family to visit him in the morning -- the roads were still dangerous.
"He's my boy," the football coach, Jack Henzes, told the Ruddy family. "I've got an '82 Celebrity, it's got front-wheel drive, it's got snow tires with studs and there's room for five."
He led a small caravan of Ruddys along Rte. 6 to the surviving twin.
The following night, a Thursday, Bobby Ruddy lay in intensive care. He asked for a moment alone with his 30-year-old brother, Mike.
"I have to know," Bobby Ruddy said through teeth wired shut. "Where's Billy?"
Mike Ruddy searched for the words. "Well, Bobby," he said as the tears began, "he's with Dad now."
James F. Ruddy, father of the twins and their 10 brothers and sisters, died last May with a beer in his coal-stained hand, and wasn't that an obituary for the borough's front page?
Jim Ruddy -- a graduate of the local high school, a civil servant most of his life -- fairly represented Dunmore. Had he been born 20 years earlier, he might have been kicking shale above the mines when he was 12 and working in the tunnels at 14.
The public had already begun to rally against sending children into the mines when Jim Ruddy arrived screaming in 1919. The Pennsylvania Coal Co. soon crumbled in Dunmore, buried by other, safer fuels. But there was something about the black stain of the stuff -- the borough could not scrub itself clean. The dead coal shafts echo a hollow economic future.
But these were not major concerns for Jim Ruddy, known in Dunmore as the most popular employee of the Internal Revenue Service. At least 20 miners were trapped forever beneath the town. The idea of raising a family upon tragic ground -- the Ruddy home itself was built over a collapsed vein -- probably was not a burden to Jim.
Then again, he was never big on introspection. He was often positively reckless. How many times had he been warned to slow down? Frustrated, his heart would hold its breath until he turned blue. Finally, he would shrink into a chair somewhere, shrug off his family's concern . . . and head out to watch the next Dunmore High track meet.
He had chances to move the Ruddys to more affluent communities for better money, but -- and this was the attraction for many of Dunmore's 16,000 inhabitants -- he knew everyone in town and liked most of them. He liked the school, the teachers and the coaches. And he loved attending the Dunmore Bucks' Friday night football games, especially those of the mid-1970s when his sons, Tim and Pat, started for the high school's conference champion teams.
"You have not seen the best," Jim Ruddy would tell coach Henzes. "Just wait until my twins get to you. My twins are going to play in your backfield."
The twins had barely begun their Midget football careers, but Jim had a feel for them. Rose bore them in 1966 -- she called them "a gift from God" after losing a son in childbirth the previous year -- and, for the first and only time, she allowed Jim to name the children.
He chose to honor two uncles, William and Robert. Twice.
He named his boys William Robert Ruddy and Robert William Ruddy - - the Ruddy twins.
The family was further muddled when one of Jim Ruddy's daughters married a Robert Ruddy. Now there were two Robert Ruddys in the household, and one of them looked a lot like William Robert Ruddy.
"I think naming them that way was a mistake," Rose Ruddy says.
Or was it indicative? The twins' lives were shaped by their sibling competition -- their energies often seemed focused solely upon each other. But their father was always nearby. Cheering them or hugging them (or, later in their careers, videotaping them), he gave reason to their struggle.
He was their referee. He would hear the beginnings of a fight upstairs -- often started when one twin caught the other wearing his clothes -- and he would come running. "Horses' asses!" he called them. "You aren't going to break my house! Outside and mow the lawn!"
The twins were scheduled to run in a track meet last May 17, and Jim Ruddy would have attended, but he figured an afternoon's thunderstorm would cancel the event. Instead, he and the son-in-law Bob Ruddy walked across the street to refuel a home the Ruddys had bought, refurbished and recently sold. It was one of the older houses in Dunmore, one of the last still heated by coal. Jim Ruddy carried the final bucket to the furnace.
His son-in-law handed him the beer. Jim Ruddy slumped as he had many times before.
"Are you OK?" Bob Ruddy asked him.
"No, I don't think so," Jim Ruddy answered, the only time he ever gave in.
Angry that their usual one-man Ruddy fan club had missed the meet, the twins barged in that evening . . . to an empty home. The family slept together in the living room that night, on sofas and chairs and the floor. They buried Jim Ruddy four days later, the morning of the Lackawanna Track Conference meet.
Billy and Bobby went to bed early that afternoon. They were exhausted, but neither could sleep. They began to talk about their father. "If he were here, he'd be calling us the horses' asses," Bobby told Billy. "He'd say, 'Get up and rake the lawn.' "
They pulled on shorts and drove to the stadium. Bobby and Billy had been expected to finish third or fourth in their events -- they were, after all, husky football players running against sprinters. "I felt weak," Bobby remembers. "I didn't want to run."
Bobby Ruddy won the 220 meters.
Billy Ruddy chased Jerry Preschutti, the area's best sprinter, to the tape in the 100 meters. Officials ruled the race a dead heat. Preschutti won the coin toss and the trophy.
He handed the award to Billy. "Take this home to your mother," Preschutti said.
These were the beginnings of a remarkable year.
The Ruddys planted a baby oak tree that weekend behind the south end zone of the Dunmore High School football stadium. They cannot articulate why they chose a tree to memorialize Jim Ruddy. "It was something we just wanted to do," Bobby, the twin, says.
Their family thrived on gut feelings, priding itself on having done that undefinably right thing. And until the day Billy died, they -- like many of their neighbors -- rarely questioned their insulated world.
This helps explain why the Ruddys did not think it gruesome that headstones served as a backdrop to their father's living shrine. Nor did they challenge the cold-blooded geographics that tucked their high school -- the borough's heartiest symbol of hope -- beneath the shadows of three cemeteries.
The Ruddy boys were playing in the cemeteries before they were old enough for school. Their friends hunted squirrels above the tombs with BB guns; the twins finished the job with baseball bats. They met in two-story forts equipped with music, kerosene heaters and Sterno, which they used to light themselves on fire while chasing each other among the graves. Once, their fort caught fire and almost destroyed what was left of Bushnell's Woods.
In grade school, they would dress identically and attend each other's classes. One teacher caught the twins in a hallway and ordered them back to their classrooms -- the incorrect rooms, of course.
They bristled at their nicknames of Fred and Barney, so classmates began calling each Ruddy boy "Twin," rather than pausing to decide which was Billy or Bobby. Only their closest friends could distinguish them. "I knew them since third grade," says Gary Muracco, who grew up to block for them. "Everybody else always had trouble telling them apart, but for some reason, I never had any problem."
They fought constantly, though Billy gained an advantage as they grew older. "Billy was a little bigger and a little stronger," Rose Ruddy says. "That comes from being the first twin. Show me a picture of twins and I can always tell you which was first-born and which was second-born. When they wrestled, you would always see Billy on top of Bobby, but Bobby would never give up. Billy had the athletic strength. Bobby had the desire."
That was a volatile combination, but their attempts at separation were futile. "I started dating my girlfriend in seventh grade," Bobby says. "Finally, my girlfriend and I said, why don't we try to get my brother together with her sister?"
The Ruddy twins soon found themselves going steady with the Rescigno sisters.
"It would be something if they were twin sisters," Bobby says.
But both were cheerleaders. "It was funny that Bobby and Leigh set them up," says Joan Rescigno, the mother. "Lynn and Billy always got along very well. But Leigh and Bobby were always fiery, they were always fighting -- maybe because Leigh was younger (by two years) and Bobby had the temper. You think about it, and that's the way the boys were. Billy was always easygoing. Bobby had the temper."
Friends recall them as a pair of ogrish linebackers in Midget football. "You never wanted to run at the Ruddy twins," says Harold Magnotta, a junior tight end for the Dunmore High champions last year. But the twins were runners first, paired in the same backfield for as long as Bobby Ruddy can remember.
"Billy was a big back to block with," Bobby says. "Sometimes I'd just put my hand on his back and follow him. I knew if anybody was getting in my way, he would take them out of my way."
In eighth grade, a teacher pushed Billy out of his desk. Bobby jumped up, and the twins shoved the man face-first against the wall. Friends say this was one of the rare times the twins showed disrespect for an authority figure.
"I remember in December, Bobby came over to pick up Leigh for a school dance," Joan Rescigno says. "Lynn and Billy weren't going, but Billy was over here. And I remember Bobby was pulling on his coat and it was knocking off his boutonniere, and before I could get up to straighten it Billy was over with his brother, straightening his jacket, making sure everything was right. I was remembering that just the other day -- the love you could see between those two . . ."
Billy was placid, at ease; Bobby could be sullen, driven, it seemed, to make up that 15-minute lead his brother took into life. Styles that might have divided others drew these two together.
"And Billy ruled his brother," Joan Rescigno says. "He made the decisions. I can just see Billy saying that morning, when they got out to the car, 'I'm sitting in the front seat -- you can take the back.'”
Few freshmen were able to play for the Dunmore High School football team, but both Ruddy twins started upon their arrival in the fall of 1982. "I told them from the beginning I didn't want anything to separate them," Henzes says. Then he made Billy a running back and Bobby a tight end. Bobby was blocking for Billy. The arrangement did not work.
"If Billy was getting his name written up more in the paper, you knew he was doing a lot better than you," Bobby says. "That made me want to do so much better. I'd think people were forgetting about me.
"For some reason, my freshman year I was real slow," Bobby says. "Then all of a sudden, in my sophomore year I became real fast."
They were a backfield again.
Their sophomore year, Dunmore allowed an opponent the apparent winning touchdown with 15 seconds left. Henzes called his kickoff team together. "Let the ball bounce through," he yelled. "Let Billy or Bobby handle it." The Bucks let it bounce through all right, until the ball died at the Dunmore 8- yard line. Bobby grabbed it, broke the first tackle -- "Billy had a good block on that play," Henzes remembers -- and returned it for the winning touchdown.
The Ruddy reputation grew out of that game. They were the runners on a team that rarely threw. No. 37 Billy, 6 feet 1 inch and 205 pounds, ran the trap and the outside veer. No. 43 Bobby, 6 feet and 195 pounds, ran the pitch and the trap-option. "Billy was the smooth runner," Rose Ruddy says. "Bobby was the tricky runner." The Bucks practiced little beyond those four plays. Key on one twin, they dared opponents, and the other will break away.
Coach Henzes invited the sophomore Ruddys into his office one afternoon early in the season. "You can be the two best running backs to ever come out of Dunmore High School," he told them.
His prediction was tinged in warning: Don't blow this.
The Ruddys were not "bad" kids; they were, however, troublesome. Billy Ruddy and Gary Muracco had been caught accepting "protection" money, up to 25 cents a week, from younger classmates in seventh grade. Teachers figured the Ruddys (accurately) to be patrons of the cemetery beer parties. Billy was at times lazy at football practice, and Henzes responded by holding him out of a game, preventing Billy from gaining 1,000 yards his junior year.
Worst, the NCAA was preparing tougher academic rules for intercollegiate athletics. The Ruddys' grades were within NCAA standards, but the twins had never tested well -- and poor college board scores could keep them out of Division 1 football.
But only the farsighted could predict problems for these two. Penn State, Temple and Rutgers were scouting them. The Ruddys were town heroes at 17, known throughout northeastern Pennsylvania. They treated adults with respect.
Their local notoriety leaped with their father's discovery of videotape. Jim Ruddy purchased equipment to record every game, and after retiring from the IRS, he would convince visitors -- even the mailman -- to step inside and watch the DHS Bucks.
VCRs thrived in a middle-class town with no movie theater. Dunmore High School game tapes were copied and circulated throughout the borough. The amazing Ruddy twins could be seen in any given home on any night.
"This is the greatest," Jim Ruddy would tell Henzes. "You've got to buy one of these systems."
Then Jim Ruddy died.
His family donated $2,800 of videotape equipment to the high school, bought with Jim Ruddy's insurance benefit.
And his twins . . . "They became one almost," says Griff Altman, a senior tight end who was cocaptain with the Ruddys and Muracco last season. "They helped their mother out. They became better in track, better in football, better in school. Their grades improved. They used to be troublemakers, but after their father died, they became two great people in every respect.
"My one hope is that Bobby handles what happened to Billy the same way they handled their father's death."
The town waited anxiously for the twins' final season, not only because the team had played so well the previous year -- winning its first seven games before injuries annihilated its chances -- but because this group seemed to represent Dunmore's last realistic hope at a championship. The borough was aging, the population was dwindling (the cemeteries were brimming), and enrollment had decreased by 300 students in six years. Dunmore High School was one-fourth the size of some competitors in the Big 11 Conference. The Bucks had never won the Eastern Conference championship (the eastern Pennsylvania equivalent of winning the state title). If they couldn't succeed with the Ruddy twins, many felt they never would.
The Ruddys practiced harder and lifted weights afterwards. They ran hills and bleachers. They trained together, one never wanting to fall behind the other -- but for a new reason: Now they were depending upon each other.
They had privately dedicated the season to their father.
Each twin would gain 1,000 yards, they agreed. The team would go undefeated, winning the Big 11 Conference and the Class A Eastern Conference. And nothing less would do.
When one twin tired, the other would slap him on the head. "Dad's watching us," one would say. "You're not doing your job. You're letting down Dad."
The Ruddys rarely left the field until a game was decided. Bobby played tailback and defensive end; Billy was the fullback and linebacker. Both twins played on special teams. "They dominated just as much defensively as they did offensively," Henzes says. "They could always reach back for that something extra. And they were always there. When you needed a key play, they were the kids to do it."
The only problem the Dunmore fans could see was the Ruddys' movement toward a hot-dog attitude. The twins were celebrating touchdowns by waving the ball at beaten foes. The matter came to a head when the Scranton Times published a close-up photo of triumphant Bobby Ruddy apparently mocking his opponent.
The Times received a phone call from the high school. "I think you ought to know," the caller said. "Those twins aren't trying to make a spectacle of themselves . . ."
So did word begin to spread. The tree was behind all of this. The twins were pointing the ball to their father's tree.
The legend of the thin oak tree grew with each Dunmore victory. It seemed everyone who had known Jim Ruddy wanted to see the story continue, and so his sons carried the burden. "Good luck Friday," they would hear from family friends, waiting for the tag line: "Do it for your father."
They had won their first seven games when the threats began. The Ruddy tree would die against Valley View High, the letters read. The Bucks led by 11 points in the fourth quarter when a group of Valley View fans began to assemble near the south end zone . . . and the tree. Dunmore fans pushed their way through. The players, still involved in the game, were oblivious to the fights breaking out in the corner of the stadium. Leaving the field, the Bucks could see Dunmore police surrounding the memory of Jim Ruddy.
The twins each gained 1,000 yards the following week. But Billy had been hurt. He underwent knee surgery five days later.
A doctor telephoned Henzes that Wednesday. Billy's operation had reached a critical point. The doctor could conclude without removing the damaged cartilage -- this would allow Billy to return to the team, though he would require further surgery after the season. If the procedure were continued, the doctor told Henzes, Billy probably would not play again that year.
"His future is more important than playing a football game in high school," Henzes decided. "Go ahead with the operation."
Bobby carried the team the last two weeks. He scored all of Dunmore's points for one victory. The Bucks trailed throughout the other when Bobby was knocked out of their final drive. Henzes called timeout before fourth down. A voice could be heard from the bleachers. "Bobby!" It was Rose Ruddy, Jim's widow. "Get up, Bobby! They need you now!"
Henzes felt a hand slap his shoulder. "Coach," Bobby Ruddy said, "I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready."
Henzes looked at an assistant. "He says he's ready, coach," the assistant said.
He gained the first down and the game-winning touchdown. Dunmore entered the play-offs undefeated: Goal No. 2.
The semifinal opponent would be Williamsport, whose senior class was larger than all of Dunmore High School. Billy Ruddy maintained he would play, even though he was unable to practice in the 17 days before the game.
He was dressed in his No. 37 red uniform 2 1/2 hours before kickoff. The Bucks returned to the locker room from their pregame warmup. Henzes gathered them around the videotape equipment donated by Jim Ruddy's family. The coach turned on the TV. Before the Bucks appeared the highlights of their season as spliced by the Ruddy in- laws, with background music provided by side one of the album, "Queen's Greatest Hits."
The team watched in open-mouthed awe. They were realizing who they were, what they meant to their town. They had never viewed themselves in this way.
The crowd already had filled the 6,000-seat stadium. Soon more people would be standing along the fences that surround the field. These same fans had lined the main streets in banners and crepe paper. The entire borough seemed decorated. Williamsport had bused through the Dunmore propaganda gauntlet that morning. "Williamsport was beat after coming through town to the stadium," a high school coach told Henzes' wife at the game.
The Bucks huddled at their stadium's edge. A few yards before them stood cheerleaders holding a large poster that read, "Here come the champions."
His teammates looked at Billy Ruddy. "You go through first," one of them said. The team had already decided to jog well behind him.
He came through the drum roll and the poster and into screams of excitement that hung suspended above the growing murmurs . . . what was happening here? He was churning past midfield, not limping but sprinting. Then the town realized who he was and they were standing, cheering him past the 30-yard line, the 20, into his father's end zone. More than 30 Ruddys were hugging each other. Some were crying. The game had not even begun. Billy Ruddy was wearing his helmet. The people could not see his face.
"I shouldn't have done that," Billy was saying, laughing yet grimacing in pain. "I should not have done that."
Billy Ruddy joined his brother in the backfield for the first time in three weeks. "We wanted to give Billy the ball right away, so we could know what we had," Henzes remembers. The trap opened. Billy gained 4 yards. He jumped up and walked back for more amid the chant: "Rud-dy . . . Rud-dy . . ."
Billy gained 88 yards on 12 carries. Bobby gained 120 yards. Three times they honored their father from the end zone. Dunmore beat Williamsport, 28-12. Together the twins had overcome the worst of it.
A week later, the Bucks led West Scranton, 27-8, in the Class A Eastern Conference championship game. Matching 1,000-yard seasons, an undefeated year, eastern Pennsylvania champions -- all goals would be theirs as soon as the scoreboard clock finished ticking. But the town could not wait. A sign was unfurled and applause turned the heads of the Ruddy twins.
"This one's for you, Dad," it read, signed, "Billy and Bobby."
Jim Ruddy's sons stood by that message.
The twins stayed in the locker room three hours after that final game. Years of preparation had been layered upon each other, and the moment had come and now, already, it was fading. The Ruddys even took to cleaning the fieldhouse. "They did not want to leave," Henzes says.
The borough bought all the tickets to the team's break-up banquet. There was a caravan through downtown Dunmore. The posters and banners that had predicted all of this remained in display of the celebration. The championship game had been televised and rerun on VCRs everywhere. The Scranton Times named Bobby "Player of the Year." The twins were the Big 11 "All-Star" backfield. The Ruddys were asked to make public appearances. They would sign autographs for hours. They had achieved everything they had wanted and still, they were realizing, it was not enough.
Their college boards had arrived. Both twins had scored a few points below the 700 demanded by the NCAA in the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The Division 1 schools -- Penn State, Rutgers, Temple -- could not offer the twins scholarships.
And what else would one expect? Stephen Crane had written of life in the Dunmore mines -- then the industrialists bought up all the books. Henry Ford wanted to build a plant in town but was turned away; an automobile manufacturer would only hurt coal production. When the Carnegie Libraries were sprouting throughout the country early in the 20th century, the town refused to apply for the program. They wanted no books. They wanted no signs indicating a better life. They only wanted the earth mined and the money coal brought.
That was the legacy of Dunmore.
The borough has wrestled to escape its past. The town is strictly middle-class, with little poverty or wealth. Those who took their children out of the mines have lived on through the generations of parents working so that their sons and daughters will do better. The school system has been strengthened so that Dunmore students' test scores are better than the national average.
In this way Dunmore has survived. Many have left and never returned, but enough have stayed. Residents claim there is no better place to raise a family. The town could thrive on football fields and in family rooms. Jim Ruddy's boys had proved that.
And then their test scores had arrived in three-digit judgment from some distant zip code. How many more correct answers had they needed? Two? Three? A blackened fist was clenching around the best an old coal town could produce. The Ruddy twins studied with a tutor and were reexamined. Their new scores have not come in, as if it matters anymore.
The Ruddys warmed to the idea of attending a Division 2 school. The caliber of football might be disappointing, but the twins had remained realistic throughout the high school celebrations. They decided they probably weren't NFL material. This did not shatter their self-perceptions. They had always figured upon ultimately returning to Dunmore to raise their families.
Bobby had hoped to ski with friends that final Wednesday in January. They decided to go another day. Next the twins decided to visit Lock Haven StateCollege. That trip was postponed. These events contrived to send them to Mansfield.
Even as Bobby Ruddy began to feel Frank Butsko losing control of the car, and the caged maw of the truck appeared from around the bend, he was secure in the knowledge that he and his brother could confront any situation together. A tough game, college, even hospitalization -- nothing could separate them. That was never an issue. He never imagined anything different.
The Pennsylvania state police have reported that the white Ford Tempo was headed west on US Rte. 6 when, at approximately 10:05 a.m., it skidded counter-clockwise into the eastbound lane. The truck driver, Donald Jackson of Morris, Pa., told police he saw the car after it began its skid. Jackson applied the brakes as the vehicles collided. The impact knocked him from his seat. He regained his seat and resumed applying the brakes. The path of the truck was unaltered by the head-on collision. The Ford was entangled in the truck's front grill. The vehicles skidded 136 feet until the rear of the entangled Ford struck the guardrail lining Rte. 6. The vehicles skidded another 174 feet along the railing. Police found debris throughout the 310- foot area of the collision.
Evidence indicates the Ford was traveling at an unsafe speed prior to the collision.
Coroners arrived at 11:15 a.m. and pronounced Frank Butsko and William Robert Ruddy dead at the scene. Robert William Ruddy had not yet been released from the vehicle. He was trapped with his twin brother for 90 minutes.
He awoke as the world began to shake. It was dark. He was confined. There was no room. His head was throbbing. He was remembering where he was, what had happened . . .
Outside, a rescue crew was preparing to free him from the car.
. . . He was remembering Billy . . . Billy had been sitting in the front seat. "Billy!" His face was soft, numb -- his mouth felt shattered. He spit out pain. He called out for his brother again. He could not reach or see the front seat. He could not see coach Butsko. He could not find Billy. He looked down and saw blood . . .
The workers could not release him naturally. They were now trying to rip the car open. "Just a few minutes," they promised.
. . . He yelled to the voices outside. "I'm spitting blood!" He was trapped behind the driver's seat in the car's only space. The car pulsated amid the tearing of metal. "Just a few more minutes," he could hear . . . A hole appeared before him . . .
He escaped from the car's womb into the cold light, pumped with fear and life and loneliness. His brother . . . his brother should have been out here already. His brother was still inside. He tried to reach in, to grab, pull. Arms hugged at him. He fought them off. He shoved and punched and screamed. His brother . . .
His brother was gone. They did not tell him that God had taken back His gift. In the fight to restrain him, Bobby Ruddy's forearm was broken. Police finally held him, crying, in the shadows of his brother's killer.
It was a coal truck 70,000 pounds full. A coal truck.
On a road quiet with morning snow, a town's past and future had met in head-on compromise, leaving Robert William Ruddy behind, alone.
Flags that had been lowered the previous day for the space shuttle tragedy remained at half-mast for another week. The high school canceled all athletic events for five days. Twice that week, groups of more than 600 teachers and students could be seen marching through Dunmore in mourning. More than 1,000 people crowded into the Ruddys' church for Billy's funeral. At least $14,000 has been donated to the family in his memory.
"The championship was wonderful," says Msgr. Heid, the Ruddys' pastor. "But the finest hour was when a community realized what happened to two of its finest boys."
The Monday Billy Ruddy was buried might have been Bobby's most difficult day. He could not attend the ceremony. Jim Ruddy's plot at Cathedral Cemetery in Scranton was redug so that Billy's casket could be lowered on top of his father's. The family had not planned to bury a son in that parcel of land.
Friends and relatives visited him when he was moved to a hospital near home. One night, peeking into Bobby's room, Muracco gasped.
He was certain the police had made a mistake.
The initial scare followed him outside the hospital after the visit. Bobby's face was swollen. He looked bigger. "Didn't he look like Billy?" Gary asked. His companion agreed.
"I guess I just wanted to see Billy," Gary would say later. He reached for his wallet and withdrew Billy Ruddy's senior picture. On the back was written,
To one of the best blockers in the Big 11. And I don't
"I guess," Gary said, "he never got back to it."
Bobby came home seven days after the accident. He settled carefully into a chair. His father's VCR was turned on. He watched his brother's funeral.
His bed was brought downstairs and the family slept together, one fewer than the night Jim Ruddy died.
Bobby watched the old games and the highlight tape the team had seen before the semifinal play-off. "It feels like he's still with us when I watch the games," Bobby said. "It feels like that day. It's just like we got done playing the game."
They were truly creations of each other. Now the reflection had vanished from Bobby's life. Billy Ruddy had become legend. Bobby Ruddy walked painfully on crutches. He wore a brace around his pelvis, a cast on his forearm. Scars lined his face. His jaw was wired shut. He could not eat solid food.
He watched the funeral . . . touchdowns . . . TV pictures of the accident . . . victories. His life unwound before him. The end had been instantaneous -- no time for Billy to regret.
One night Bobby lay stretched out before videotaped memories of the greatest times two running backs could share.
"I guess Billy threw his last block for me," Bobby said.
The Dunmore High School boys' basketball team had won its way into the division championship game Tuesday night. Bobby Ruddy arrived at the Scranton Catholic Youth Center with his mother shortly before halftime. The first to see him pointed. Others stood. He hobbled slowly into the arena on crutches and weakened legs. By now more than 3,500 people were standing. The championship game had stopped. Players from both teams were applauding him. In the corner of the arena lay the remains of a poster the Dunmore Bucks had run through on their way to the court.
This One's For You, Bobby, it read.
The crowd had become one almost. "Bob-by . . . Bob-by . . . Bob-by . . ." In the noise and the love of his town, Bobby Ruddy knew he was not finished. He knew he would live to play the game again.
Feb. 28, 1986
The Boston Globe
DUNMORE, Pa. -- They were well outside Scranton now, riding west along US Rte. 6 like a football in the hands of a dangerous, vulnerable runner. The highway stumbled and cut behind the Susquehanna River before leaping into its final sprint to Mansfield. The white Ford Tempo in which they rode was splotched with dirty snow. This was the final Wednesday in January.
The driver, Frank Butsko, was a 25-year-old assistant football coach at Mansfield University. The passengers were his recruits for the day, the Ruddy twins of Dunmore. Each had gained more than 1,000 yards while carrying Dunmore High School to its first state championship. But more than a fullback named Billy and a halfback named Bobby traveled with Frank Butsko the morning of Jan. 29. The twins were the best the future could offer the tired northeastern Pennsylvania coal town of Dunmore.
There is evidence that Butsko did not fully appreciate his cargo's importance. Which is understandable -- the Ruddy twins themselves could not see beyond the final bend of Rte. 6 on their way to Mansfield that snowy day.
"Does my driving this fast bother you?" Frank Butsko asked.
"No," Billy Ruddy said, smiling. "This is how I drive all the time."
In the back seat, Bobby, the younger Ruddy by 15 minutes, was silent.
The state police arrived at Dunmore High School three hours after Frank Butsko's car skidded into oncoming traffic. Joseph McDonald, the school principal, sent his football coach with the troopers to tell Rose Ruddy, the mother, that another in her family was gone.
Alone in his office, McDonald asked that Roseanne Ruddy, the twins' sister and a junior at the high school, be brought to him. He decided he would not tell Roseanne the worst. He would say just enough to get her out of here and into the arms of her family.
"Roseanne," McDonald said, "there's been an accident."
"They're dead," she said.
He felt as though the girl had shoved him against a wall. "Now Roseanne, the only report I have is that there's been an accident." He was trying to lie for her own good.
"I told them this was going to happen," she said. "The snow . . . I didn't want them to go . . ."
A teacher escorted Roseanne home. McDonald remembered that one of the twins had a girlfriend in school -- Bobby's girlfriend. That would make it easier. He sent for Leigh Rescigno and told her.
"Bobby's OK," McDonald repeated."Bobby's OK," McDonald repeated. "How do they know?" she said. "Are you sure that it's Bobby that's injured?"
He wanted to say yes. "That's the way the state police have it," McDonald told her. But he was not sure. He himself had trouble distinguishing the twins in school.
Experience clamped down upon his second-guessing. He knew better than to question the life and death of this. Leigh Rescigno went home. There was more for a principal to do. He flicked on the school PA.
"In five minutes, we will assemble at the gymnasium," he announced.
McDonald had told only his vice principal and, of course, the football coach. Rumor nonetheless spread -- the Ruddys had been in an accident. Climbing the gymnasium stairs to their seats, the twins' closest friends and teammates were not prepared for a tragedy. An accident . . . injury . . . recovery -- this was how life worked. Many of Dunmore High School's 610 students never had seriously considered a finality to youth until the day their principal stood before them on the hardwood floor.
"A member of our family has died," McDonald said. "We should be the first to know."
He did not have a microphone.
"The state police called me. There was an accident on the way to Mansfield today. The coach from Mansfield was killed. Bobby Ruddy was seriously injured. Billy Ruddy was killed."
He was drowned in his students' screams.
Later that day, after reporters from the local newspapers, radio stations and three TV affiliates had left his office, McDonald walked the two blocks to the Ruddy home. Rose, the mother, hugged him. "You're going to have to help me," she said.
Friends and relatives were drawn to the home. Msgr. Charles W. Heid, pastor at the Ruddys' church, met McDonald alone on the front porch. "Joseph, are you OK?" Msgr. Heid asked.
McDonald nodded, finally isolated with his thoughts. His own son, Michael, had died last year on the way to Mansfield in an accident identical to the one that killed Billy Ruddy. Death, like its survivor, had a twin.
Bobby Ruddy had suffered a concussion, a jaw broken in three places, facial contusions that required plastic surgery, a broken forearm and a cracked pelvis. He was hospitalized in Elmira, N.Y. Police advised the family to visit him in the morning -- the roads were still dangerous.
"He's my boy," the football coach, Jack Henzes, told the Ruddy family. "I've got an '82 Celebrity, it's got front-wheel drive, it's got snow tires with studs and there's room for five."
He led a small caravan of Ruddys along Rte. 6 to the surviving twin.
The following night, a Thursday, Bobby Ruddy lay in intensive care. He asked for a moment alone with his 30-year-old brother, Mike.
"I have to know," Bobby Ruddy said through teeth wired shut. "Where's Billy?"
Mike Ruddy searched for the words. "Well, Bobby," he said as the tears began, "he's with Dad now."
James F. Ruddy, father of the twins and their 10 brothers and sisters, died last May with a beer in his coal-stained hand, and wasn't that an obituary for the borough's front page?
Jim Ruddy -- a graduate of the local high school, a civil servant most of his life -- fairly represented Dunmore. Had he been born 20 years earlier, he might have been kicking shale above the mines when he was 12 and working in the tunnels at 14.
The public had already begun to rally against sending children into the mines when Jim Ruddy arrived screaming in 1919. The Pennsylvania Coal Co. soon crumbled in Dunmore, buried by other, safer fuels. But there was something about the black stain of the stuff -- the borough could not scrub itself clean. The dead coal shafts echo a hollow economic future.
But these were not major concerns for Jim Ruddy, known in Dunmore as the most popular employee of the Internal Revenue Service. At least 20 miners were trapped forever beneath the town. The idea of raising a family upon tragic ground -- the Ruddy home itself was built over a collapsed vein -- probably was not a burden to Jim.
Then again, he was never big on introspection. He was often positively reckless. How many times had he been warned to slow down? Frustrated, his heart would hold its breath until he turned blue. Finally, he would shrink into a chair somewhere, shrug off his family's concern . . . and head out to watch the next Dunmore High track meet.
He had chances to move the Ruddys to more affluent communities for better money, but -- and this was the attraction for many of Dunmore's 16,000 inhabitants -- he knew everyone in town and liked most of them. He liked the school, the teachers and the coaches. And he loved attending the Dunmore Bucks' Friday night football games, especially those of the mid-1970s when his sons, Tim and Pat, started for the high school's conference champion teams.
"You have not seen the best," Jim Ruddy would tell coach Henzes. "Just wait until my twins get to you. My twins are going to play in your backfield."
The twins had barely begun their Midget football careers, but Jim had a feel for them. Rose bore them in 1966 -- she called them "a gift from God" after losing a son in childbirth the previous year -- and, for the first and only time, she allowed Jim to name the children.
He chose to honor two uncles, William and Robert. Twice.
He named his boys William Robert Ruddy and Robert William Ruddy - - the Ruddy twins.
The family was further muddled when one of Jim Ruddy's daughters married a Robert Ruddy. Now there were two Robert Ruddys in the household, and one of them looked a lot like William Robert Ruddy.
"I think naming them that way was a mistake," Rose Ruddy says.
Or was it indicative? The twins' lives were shaped by their sibling competition -- their energies often seemed focused solely upon each other. But their father was always nearby. Cheering them or hugging them (or, later in their careers, videotaping them), he gave reason to their struggle.
He was their referee. He would hear the beginnings of a fight upstairs -- often started when one twin caught the other wearing his clothes -- and he would come running. "Horses' asses!" he called them. "You aren't going to break my house! Outside and mow the lawn!"
The twins were scheduled to run in a track meet last May 17, and Jim Ruddy would have attended, but he figured an afternoon's thunderstorm would cancel the event. Instead, he and the son-in-law Bob Ruddy walked across the street to refuel a home the Ruddys had bought, refurbished and recently sold. It was one of the older houses in Dunmore, one of the last still heated by coal. Jim Ruddy carried the final bucket to the furnace.
His son-in-law handed him the beer. Jim Ruddy slumped as he had many times before.
"Are you OK?" Bob Ruddy asked him.
"No, I don't think so," Jim Ruddy answered, the only time he ever gave in.
Angry that their usual one-man Ruddy fan club had missed the meet, the twins barged in that evening . . . to an empty home. The family slept together in the living room that night, on sofas and chairs and the floor. They buried Jim Ruddy four days later, the morning of the Lackawanna Track Conference meet.
Billy and Bobby went to bed early that afternoon. They were exhausted, but neither could sleep. They began to talk about their father. "If he were here, he'd be calling us the horses' asses," Bobby told Billy. "He'd say, 'Get up and rake the lawn.' "
They pulled on shorts and drove to the stadium. Bobby and Billy had been expected to finish third or fourth in their events -- they were, after all, husky football players running against sprinters. "I felt weak," Bobby remembers. "I didn't want to run."
Bobby Ruddy won the 220 meters.
Billy Ruddy chased Jerry Preschutti, the area's best sprinter, to the tape in the 100 meters. Officials ruled the race a dead heat. Preschutti won the coin toss and the trophy.
He handed the award to Billy. "Take this home to your mother," Preschutti said.
These were the beginnings of a remarkable year.
The Ruddys planted a baby oak tree that weekend behind the south end zone of the Dunmore High School football stadium. They cannot articulate why they chose a tree to memorialize Jim Ruddy. "It was something we just wanted to do," Bobby, the twin, says.
Their family thrived on gut feelings, priding itself on having done that undefinably right thing. And until the day Billy died, they -- like many of their neighbors -- rarely questioned their insulated world.
This helps explain why the Ruddys did not think it gruesome that headstones served as a backdrop to their father's living shrine. Nor did they challenge the cold-blooded geographics that tucked their high school -- the borough's heartiest symbol of hope -- beneath the shadows of three cemeteries.
The Ruddy boys were playing in the cemeteries before they were old enough for school. Their friends hunted squirrels above the tombs with BB guns; the twins finished the job with baseball bats. They met in two-story forts equipped with music, kerosene heaters and Sterno, which they used to light themselves on fire while chasing each other among the graves. Once, their fort caught fire and almost destroyed what was left of Bushnell's Woods.
In grade school, they would dress identically and attend each other's classes. One teacher caught the twins in a hallway and ordered them back to their classrooms -- the incorrect rooms, of course.
They bristled at their nicknames of Fred and Barney, so classmates began calling each Ruddy boy "Twin," rather than pausing to decide which was Billy or Bobby. Only their closest friends could distinguish them. "I knew them since third grade," says Gary Muracco, who grew up to block for them. "Everybody else always had trouble telling them apart, but for some reason, I never had any problem."
They fought constantly, though Billy gained an advantage as they grew older. "Billy was a little bigger and a little stronger," Rose Ruddy says. "That comes from being the first twin. Show me a picture of twins and I can always tell you which was first-born and which was second-born. When they wrestled, you would always see Billy on top of Bobby, but Bobby would never give up. Billy had the athletic strength. Bobby had the desire."
That was a volatile combination, but their attempts at separation were futile. "I started dating my girlfriend in seventh grade," Bobby says. "Finally, my girlfriend and I said, why don't we try to get my brother together with her sister?"
The Ruddy twins soon found themselves going steady with the Rescigno sisters.
"It would be something if they were twin sisters," Bobby says.
But both were cheerleaders. "It was funny that Bobby and Leigh set them up," says Joan Rescigno, the mother. "Lynn and Billy always got along very well. But Leigh and Bobby were always fiery, they were always fighting -- maybe because Leigh was younger (by two years) and Bobby had the temper. You think about it, and that's the way the boys were. Billy was always easygoing. Bobby had the temper."
Friends recall them as a pair of ogrish linebackers in Midget football. "You never wanted to run at the Ruddy twins," says Harold Magnotta, a junior tight end for the Dunmore High champions last year. But the twins were runners first, paired in the same backfield for as long as Bobby Ruddy can remember.
"Billy was a big back to block with," Bobby says. "Sometimes I'd just put my hand on his back and follow him. I knew if anybody was getting in my way, he would take them out of my way."
In eighth grade, a teacher pushed Billy out of his desk. Bobby jumped up, and the twins shoved the man face-first against the wall. Friends say this was one of the rare times the twins showed disrespect for an authority figure.
"I remember in December, Bobby came over to pick up Leigh for a school dance," Joan Rescigno says. "Lynn and Billy weren't going, but Billy was over here. And I remember Bobby was pulling on his coat and it was knocking off his boutonniere, and before I could get up to straighten it Billy was over with his brother, straightening his jacket, making sure everything was right. I was remembering that just the other day -- the love you could see between those two . . ."
Billy was placid, at ease; Bobby could be sullen, driven, it seemed, to make up that 15-minute lead his brother took into life. Styles that might have divided others drew these two together.
"And Billy ruled his brother," Joan Rescigno says. "He made the decisions. I can just see Billy saying that morning, when they got out to the car, 'I'm sitting in the front seat -- you can take the back.'”
Few freshmen were able to play for the Dunmore High School football team, but both Ruddy twins started upon their arrival in the fall of 1982. "I told them from the beginning I didn't want anything to separate them," Henzes says. Then he made Billy a running back and Bobby a tight end. Bobby was blocking for Billy. The arrangement did not work.
"If Billy was getting his name written up more in the paper, you knew he was doing a lot better than you," Bobby says. "That made me want to do so much better. I'd think people were forgetting about me.
"For some reason, my freshman year I was real slow," Bobby says. "Then all of a sudden, in my sophomore year I became real fast."
They were a backfield again.
Their sophomore year, Dunmore allowed an opponent the apparent winning touchdown with 15 seconds left. Henzes called his kickoff team together. "Let the ball bounce through," he yelled. "Let Billy or Bobby handle it." The Bucks let it bounce through all right, until the ball died at the Dunmore 8- yard line. Bobby grabbed it, broke the first tackle -- "Billy had a good block on that play," Henzes remembers -- and returned it for the winning touchdown.
The Ruddy reputation grew out of that game. They were the runners on a team that rarely threw. No. 37 Billy, 6 feet 1 inch and 205 pounds, ran the trap and the outside veer. No. 43 Bobby, 6 feet and 195 pounds, ran the pitch and the trap-option. "Billy was the smooth runner," Rose Ruddy says. "Bobby was the tricky runner." The Bucks practiced little beyond those four plays. Key on one twin, they dared opponents, and the other will break away.
Coach Henzes invited the sophomore Ruddys into his office one afternoon early in the season. "You can be the two best running backs to ever come out of Dunmore High School," he told them.
His prediction was tinged in warning: Don't blow this.
The Ruddys were not "bad" kids; they were, however, troublesome. Billy Ruddy and Gary Muracco had been caught accepting "protection" money, up to 25 cents a week, from younger classmates in seventh grade. Teachers figured the Ruddys (accurately) to be patrons of the cemetery beer parties. Billy was at times lazy at football practice, and Henzes responded by holding him out of a game, preventing Billy from gaining 1,000 yards his junior year.
Worst, the NCAA was preparing tougher academic rules for intercollegiate athletics. The Ruddys' grades were within NCAA standards, but the twins had never tested well -- and poor college board scores could keep them out of Division 1 football.
But only the farsighted could predict problems for these two. Penn State, Temple and Rutgers were scouting them. The Ruddys were town heroes at 17, known throughout northeastern Pennsylvania. They treated adults with respect.
Their local notoriety leaped with their father's discovery of videotape. Jim Ruddy purchased equipment to record every game, and after retiring from the IRS, he would convince visitors -- even the mailman -- to step inside and watch the DHS Bucks.
VCRs thrived in a middle-class town with no movie theater. Dunmore High School game tapes were copied and circulated throughout the borough. The amazing Ruddy twins could be seen in any given home on any night.
"This is the greatest," Jim Ruddy would tell Henzes. "You've got to buy one of these systems."
Then Jim Ruddy died.
His family donated $2,800 of videotape equipment to the high school, bought with Jim Ruddy's insurance benefit.
And his twins . . . "They became one almost," says Griff Altman, a senior tight end who was cocaptain with the Ruddys and Muracco last season. "They helped their mother out. They became better in track, better in football, better in school. Their grades improved. They used to be troublemakers, but after their father died, they became two great people in every respect.
"My one hope is that Bobby handles what happened to Billy the same way they handled their father's death."
The town waited anxiously for the twins' final season, not only because the team had played so well the previous year -- winning its first seven games before injuries annihilated its chances -- but because this group seemed to represent Dunmore's last realistic hope at a championship. The borough was aging, the population was dwindling (the cemeteries were brimming), and enrollment had decreased by 300 students in six years. Dunmore High School was one-fourth the size of some competitors in the Big 11 Conference. The Bucks had never won the Eastern Conference championship (the eastern Pennsylvania equivalent of winning the state title). If they couldn't succeed with the Ruddy twins, many felt they never would.
The Ruddys practiced harder and lifted weights afterwards. They ran hills and bleachers. They trained together, one never wanting to fall behind the other -- but for a new reason: Now they were depending upon each other.
They had privately dedicated the season to their father.
Each twin would gain 1,000 yards, they agreed. The team would go undefeated, winning the Big 11 Conference and the Class A Eastern Conference. And nothing less would do.
When one twin tired, the other would slap him on the head. "Dad's watching us," one would say. "You're not doing your job. You're letting down Dad."
The Ruddys rarely left the field until a game was decided. Bobby played tailback and defensive end; Billy was the fullback and linebacker. Both twins played on special teams. "They dominated just as much defensively as they did offensively," Henzes says. "They could always reach back for that something extra. And they were always there. When you needed a key play, they were the kids to do it."
The only problem the Dunmore fans could see was the Ruddys' movement toward a hot-dog attitude. The twins were celebrating touchdowns by waving the ball at beaten foes. The matter came to a head when the Scranton Times published a close-up photo of triumphant Bobby Ruddy apparently mocking his opponent.
The Times received a phone call from the high school. "I think you ought to know," the caller said. "Those twins aren't trying to make a spectacle of themselves . . ."
So did word begin to spread. The tree was behind all of this. The twins were pointing the ball to their father's tree.
The legend of the thin oak tree grew with each Dunmore victory. It seemed everyone who had known Jim Ruddy wanted to see the story continue, and so his sons carried the burden. "Good luck Friday," they would hear from family friends, waiting for the tag line: "Do it for your father."
They had won their first seven games when the threats began. The Ruddy tree would die against Valley View High, the letters read. The Bucks led by 11 points in the fourth quarter when a group of Valley View fans began to assemble near the south end zone . . . and the tree. Dunmore fans pushed their way through. The players, still involved in the game, were oblivious to the fights breaking out in the corner of the stadium. Leaving the field, the Bucks could see Dunmore police surrounding the memory of Jim Ruddy.
The twins each gained 1,000 yards the following week. But Billy had been hurt. He underwent knee surgery five days later.
A doctor telephoned Henzes that Wednesday. Billy's operation had reached a critical point. The doctor could conclude without removing the damaged cartilage -- this would allow Billy to return to the team, though he would require further surgery after the season. If the procedure were continued, the doctor told Henzes, Billy probably would not play again that year.
"His future is more important than playing a football game in high school," Henzes decided. "Go ahead with the operation."
Bobby carried the team the last two weeks. He scored all of Dunmore's points for one victory. The Bucks trailed throughout the other when Bobby was knocked out of their final drive. Henzes called timeout before fourth down. A voice could be heard from the bleachers. "Bobby!" It was Rose Ruddy, Jim's widow. "Get up, Bobby! They need you now!"
Henzes felt a hand slap his shoulder. "Coach," Bobby Ruddy said, "I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready."
Henzes looked at an assistant. "He says he's ready, coach," the assistant said.
He gained the first down and the game-winning touchdown. Dunmore entered the play-offs undefeated: Goal No. 2.
The semifinal opponent would be Williamsport, whose senior class was larger than all of Dunmore High School. Billy Ruddy maintained he would play, even though he was unable to practice in the 17 days before the game.
He was dressed in his No. 37 red uniform 2 1/2 hours before kickoff. The Bucks returned to the locker room from their pregame warmup. Henzes gathered them around the videotape equipment donated by Jim Ruddy's family. The coach turned on the TV. Before the Bucks appeared the highlights of their season as spliced by the Ruddy in- laws, with background music provided by side one of the album, "Queen's Greatest Hits."
The team watched in open-mouthed awe. They were realizing who they were, what they meant to their town. They had never viewed themselves in this way.
The crowd already had filled the 6,000-seat stadium. Soon more people would be standing along the fences that surround the field. These same fans had lined the main streets in banners and crepe paper. The entire borough seemed decorated. Williamsport had bused through the Dunmore propaganda gauntlet that morning. "Williamsport was beat after coming through town to the stadium," a high school coach told Henzes' wife at the game.
The Bucks huddled at their stadium's edge. A few yards before them stood cheerleaders holding a large poster that read, "Here come the champions."
His teammates looked at Billy Ruddy. "You go through first," one of them said. The team had already decided to jog well behind him.
He came through the drum roll and the poster and into screams of excitement that hung suspended above the growing murmurs . . . what was happening here? He was churning past midfield, not limping but sprinting. Then the town realized who he was and they were standing, cheering him past the 30-yard line, the 20, into his father's end zone. More than 30 Ruddys were hugging each other. Some were crying. The game had not even begun. Billy Ruddy was wearing his helmet. The people could not see his face.
"I shouldn't have done that," Billy was saying, laughing yet grimacing in pain. "I should not have done that."
Billy Ruddy joined his brother in the backfield for the first time in three weeks. "We wanted to give Billy the ball right away, so we could know what we had," Henzes remembers. The trap opened. Billy gained 4 yards. He jumped up and walked back for more amid the chant: "Rud-dy . . . Rud-dy . . ."
Billy gained 88 yards on 12 carries. Bobby gained 120 yards. Three times they honored their father from the end zone. Dunmore beat Williamsport, 28-12. Together the twins had overcome the worst of it.
A week later, the Bucks led West Scranton, 27-8, in the Class A Eastern Conference championship game. Matching 1,000-yard seasons, an undefeated year, eastern Pennsylvania champions -- all goals would be theirs as soon as the scoreboard clock finished ticking. But the town could not wait. A sign was unfurled and applause turned the heads of the Ruddy twins.
"This one's for you, Dad," it read, signed, "Billy and Bobby."
Jim Ruddy's sons stood by that message.
The twins stayed in the locker room three hours after that final game. Years of preparation had been layered upon each other, and the moment had come and now, already, it was fading. The Ruddys even took to cleaning the fieldhouse. "They did not want to leave," Henzes says.
The borough bought all the tickets to the team's break-up banquet. There was a caravan through downtown Dunmore. The posters and banners that had predicted all of this remained in display of the celebration. The championship game had been televised and rerun on VCRs everywhere. The Scranton Times named Bobby "Player of the Year." The twins were the Big 11 "All-Star" backfield. The Ruddys were asked to make public appearances. They would sign autographs for hours. They had achieved everything they had wanted and still, they were realizing, it was not enough.
Their college boards had arrived. Both twins had scored a few points below the 700 demanded by the NCAA in the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The Division 1 schools -- Penn State, Rutgers, Temple -- could not offer the twins scholarships.
And what else would one expect? Stephen Crane had written of life in the Dunmore mines -- then the industrialists bought up all the books. Henry Ford wanted to build a plant in town but was turned away; an automobile manufacturer would only hurt coal production. When the Carnegie Libraries were sprouting throughout the country early in the 20th century, the town refused to apply for the program. They wanted no books. They wanted no signs indicating a better life. They only wanted the earth mined and the money coal brought.
That was the legacy of Dunmore.
The borough has wrestled to escape its past. The town is strictly middle-class, with little poverty or wealth. Those who took their children out of the mines have lived on through the generations of parents working so that their sons and daughters will do better. The school system has been strengthened so that Dunmore students' test scores are better than the national average.
In this way Dunmore has survived. Many have left and never returned, but enough have stayed. Residents claim there is no better place to raise a family. The town could thrive on football fields and in family rooms. Jim Ruddy's boys had proved that.
And then their test scores had arrived in three-digit judgment from some distant zip code. How many more correct answers had they needed? Two? Three? A blackened fist was clenching around the best an old coal town could produce. The Ruddy twins studied with a tutor and were reexamined. Their new scores have not come in, as if it matters anymore.
The Ruddys warmed to the idea of attending a Division 2 school. The caliber of football might be disappointing, but the twins had remained realistic throughout the high school celebrations. They decided they probably weren't NFL material. This did not shatter their self-perceptions. They had always figured upon ultimately returning to Dunmore to raise their families.
Bobby had hoped to ski with friends that final Wednesday in January. They decided to go another day. Next the twins decided to visit Lock Haven StateCollege. That trip was postponed. These events contrived to send them to Mansfield.
Even as Bobby Ruddy began to feel Frank Butsko losing control of the car, and the caged maw of the truck appeared from around the bend, he was secure in the knowledge that he and his brother could confront any situation together. A tough game, college, even hospitalization -- nothing could separate them. That was never an issue. He never imagined anything different.
The Pennsylvania state police have reported that the white Ford Tempo was headed west on US Rte. 6 when, at approximately 10:05 a.m., it skidded counter-clockwise into the eastbound lane. The truck driver, Donald Jackson of Morris, Pa., told police he saw the car after it began its skid. Jackson applied the brakes as the vehicles collided. The impact knocked him from his seat. He regained his seat and resumed applying the brakes. The path of the truck was unaltered by the head-on collision. The Ford was entangled in the truck's front grill. The vehicles skidded 136 feet until the rear of the entangled Ford struck the guardrail lining Rte. 6. The vehicles skidded another 174 feet along the railing. Police found debris throughout the 310- foot area of the collision.
Evidence indicates the Ford was traveling at an unsafe speed prior to the collision.
Coroners arrived at 11:15 a.m. and pronounced Frank Butsko and William Robert Ruddy dead at the scene. Robert William Ruddy had not yet been released from the vehicle. He was trapped with his twin brother for 90 minutes.
He awoke as the world began to shake. It was dark. He was confined. There was no room. His head was throbbing. He was remembering where he was, what had happened . . .
Outside, a rescue crew was preparing to free him from the car.
. . . He was remembering Billy . . . Billy had been sitting in the front seat. "Billy!" His face was soft, numb -- his mouth felt shattered. He spit out pain. He called out for his brother again. He could not reach or see the front seat. He could not see coach Butsko. He could not find Billy. He looked down and saw blood . . .
The workers could not release him naturally. They were now trying to rip the car open. "Just a few minutes," they promised.
. . . He yelled to the voices outside. "I'm spitting blood!" He was trapped behind the driver's seat in the car's only space. The car pulsated amid the tearing of metal. "Just a few more minutes," he could hear . . . A hole appeared before him . . .
He escaped from the car's womb into the cold light, pumped with fear and life and loneliness. His brother . . . his brother should have been out here already. His brother was still inside. He tried to reach in, to grab, pull. Arms hugged at him. He fought them off. He shoved and punched and screamed. His brother . . .
His brother was gone. They did not tell him that God had taken back His gift. In the fight to restrain him, Bobby Ruddy's forearm was broken. Police finally held him, crying, in the shadows of his brother's killer.
It was a coal truck 70,000 pounds full. A coal truck.
On a road quiet with morning snow, a town's past and future had met in head-on compromise, leaving Robert William Ruddy behind, alone.
Flags that had been lowered the previous day for the space shuttle tragedy remained at half-mast for another week. The high school canceled all athletic events for five days. Twice that week, groups of more than 600 teachers and students could be seen marching through Dunmore in mourning. More than 1,000 people crowded into the Ruddys' church for Billy's funeral. At least $14,000 has been donated to the family in his memory.
"The championship was wonderful," says Msgr. Heid, the Ruddys' pastor. "But the finest hour was when a community realized what happened to two of its finest boys."
The Monday Billy Ruddy was buried might have been Bobby's most difficult day. He could not attend the ceremony. Jim Ruddy's plot at Cathedral Cemetery in Scranton was redug so that Billy's casket could be lowered on top of his father's. The family had not planned to bury a son in that parcel of land.
Friends and relatives visited him when he was moved to a hospital near home. One night, peeking into Bobby's room, Muracco gasped.
He was certain the police had made a mistake.
The initial scare followed him outside the hospital after the visit. Bobby's face was swollen. He looked bigger. "Didn't he look like Billy?" Gary asked. His companion agreed.
"I guess I just wanted to see Billy," Gary would say later. He reached for his wallet and withdrew Billy Ruddy's senior picture. On the back was written,
To one of the best blockers in the Big 11. And I don't
"I guess," Gary said, "he never got back to it."
Bobby came home seven days after the accident. He settled carefully into a chair. His father's VCR was turned on. He watched his brother's funeral.
His bed was brought downstairs and the family slept together, one fewer than the night Jim Ruddy died.
Bobby watched the old games and the highlight tape the team had seen before the semifinal play-off. "It feels like he's still with us when I watch the games," Bobby said. "It feels like that day. It's just like we got done playing the game."
They were truly creations of each other. Now the reflection had vanished from Bobby's life. Billy Ruddy had become legend. Bobby Ruddy walked painfully on crutches. He wore a brace around his pelvis, a cast on his forearm. Scars lined his face. His jaw was wired shut. He could not eat solid food.
He watched the funeral . . . touchdowns . . . TV pictures of the accident . . . victories. His life unwound before him. The end had been instantaneous -- no time for Billy to regret.
One night Bobby lay stretched out before videotaped memories of the greatest times two running backs could share.
"I guess Billy threw his last block for me," Bobby said.
The Dunmore High School boys' basketball team had won its way into the division championship game Tuesday night. Bobby Ruddy arrived at the Scranton Catholic Youth Center with his mother shortly before halftime. The first to see him pointed. Others stood. He hobbled slowly into the arena on crutches and weakened legs. By now more than 3,500 people were standing. The championship game had stopped. Players from both teams were applauding him. In the corner of the arena lay the remains of a poster the Dunmore Bucks had run through on their way to the court.
This One's For You, Bobby, it read.
The crowd had become one almost. "Bob-by . . . Bob-by . . . Bob-by . . ." In the noise and the love of his town, Bobby Ruddy knew he was not finished. He knew he would live to play the game again.
Oo-La-La, Lenny
Fun-loving, free-spending Phillie Lenny Dykstra toured Europe as baseball's unlikely ambassador
Dec. 6, 1993
Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/vault/1993/12/06/130065/oo-la-la-lenny-fun-loving-free-spending-phillie-lenny-dykstra-toured-europe-as-baseballs-unlikely-ambassador
"May I take your hat, monsieur?"
Lenny Dykstra stared at the manicured hand extended before him. His eyes pedaled up past the white cuff and black tuxedo sleeve to the slightly bowed head of the maître d', who was tall and unblinking as he waited for their eyes to meet, his black mustache trimmed like a woman's eyebrow.
Dykstra had just been seated in perhaps the finest restaurant in Paris, but he was still wearing his tan driving cap. He considered it elegant headwear, as it could not be pulled down to his ears; but more important, it concealed the matted hair of his perpetual hat-head. When Dykstra returned his gaze to the outstretched hand, his eyes were almost crossed and the tip of his tongue was revealed like a teddy bear's. "No, thank you," he said to the hand. "I'm going to keep it on."
"Yes," said the maître d', who rolled his eyes and rotated his head one revolution on the pivot of his neck until everything was back as it had been. "Your hat, please, monsieur."
"Uh, no," Dykstra said, and he began pointing at his own head with both hands. "I've got this...." he sputtered. "I really can't." Dykstra squinted upward with pleading eyes, but the maître d' stood erect, his hand like a cop's waiting for the driver's license. Dykstra looked like he wanted to turn his head and spit. "I've got to keep it on, I've got this.... Bob? Bob! Bob, man, explain to this dude that...."
Dykstra whispered into the ear of Bob Schueller, his interpreter. Schueller rose and spoke in French to the maître d', gesturing. The maître d' sighed and, with a mighty shrug, fell into a line of five other men dressed just like him. They formed a black picket fence around the Dykstra party of 12, perhaps to protect the other customers from the raucous conversation and general commotion as everyone got settled.
When a wine list bigger than The Baseball Encyclopedia arrived, Dykstra told Schueller about a bottle of something he once had for dessert at Caesars Palace, something called Chateau d'Yquem. The wine steward pointed out the listing to Schueller, who turned to Dykstra and said, "They're offering you a bottle for 16,000 francs."
That's almost $3,000, but Dykstra nodded as if Schueller had leaned out of a drive-thru window to tell him he would have to take a chocolate milkshake instead of vanilla. And suddenly everyone around Dykstra relaxed and began to treat him more appreciatively. Ordering such a bottle of wine was like homering to rally your team in the seventh inning of Game 6 in the World Series—and Dykstra had done that too.
Four hundred years ago customers actually dueled to get a table here at La Tour d'Argent, but now Dykstra was suddenly abandoning his table and taking his entourage with him. He just felt like taking a walk. The maître d' practically ran after him to the elevator. "You are leaving?" he asked.
"We're coming back," Dykstra said. "We're just going to take a tour of the place."
Dykstra's good friend and business manager, Lindsay Jones, said, "Save the table for us," as the doors closed in the face of the maître d'.
Someone in the elevator asked Dykstra how he had been able to keep his cap. "I got Bob to tell the waiter I have a serious baseball injury," Dykstra said. "I told him I can't expose my head to the air."
So what was Major League Baseball thinking when it exposed Dykstra to an unsuspecting audience in Europe, dispatching the rollicking Philadelphia Phillie centerfielder as its goodwill ambassador on a tour of Düsseldorf, Paris and Amsterdam from Nov. 19 to 23? Less than three years ago Dykstra was placed on one year's probation by then commissioner Fay Vincent for losing $78,000 to a Mississippi gambler. Two months later, in May 1991, he was nearly killed in an accident while driving legally drunk in Radnor Township, Pa. The resulting injuries—he broke a cheekbone, a collarbone and three ribs—caused him to miss 99 games in '91, then he sat out 77 more in '92 with three separate on-field injuries.
But last season he stayed healthy and overcame a miserable start at the plate, winding up with a .305 batting average and becoming the first player to lead the National League in at bats, hits, walks and runs. If the Phillies had had a better bullpen, Dykstra would have been a world champion, and with a .348 average and four home runs against the Toronto Blue Jays, he would have been Most Valuable Player of the World Series.
A more likely overseas spokesman might have been Toronto's Paul Molitor, who was the Series MVP, or even Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, who beat out Dykstra as National League MVP. Any number of players might have seemed a more logical first choice to represent the game on the Continent rather than the stubby leader of the alley-cat Phillies, his mouth stuffed with chewing tobacco during games.
But who better to handle the indifference, the anonymity any player was sure to face in Europe? Who would make people laugh regardless of the language barrier? The personality traits and mannerisms that have made Dykstra both laughable and lovable—the bluntness, the almost childlike charm—were universal qualities, making him seem approachable to people who knew nothing about his game. Dykstra was always going to be more than a high batting average and lots of stolen bases. This is baseball, shake his hand, his name is Lenny Dykstra.
Hard to believe, but Europe knew less about Dykstra than he knew about Europe. ("Now, Paris is France," Dykstra was heard to reason on the flight from Paris to Amsterdam. "But London, that's just London, right? It's just London?") While in the last decade the NBA, the NFL and even professional beach volleyball have established marketing footholds in Europe by playing exhibitions or setting up overseas leagues, and creating a following through televised events, baseball has been arguing with its own shadow. The adversarial relationship between baseball owners and players ruined plans to stage major league exhibitions in Barcelona prior to the '92 Olympics and last October at the famous Lord's cricket ground in London, which, by the way, is in England.
But baseball was able to muster this one-man tour, which officially began on Saturday morning, Nov. 20, in Düsseldorf, where Dykstra signed autographs for two hours at Karstadt, reputedly the largest sporting goods store in Europe. At the entrance to the store Dykstra looked up to find Shaquille O'Neal dunking over him. It seemed fitting enough that a basketball poster two stories tall would greet a 5'10" baseball player. Michael Jordan is the world's most popular athlete and O'Neal is already a global celebrity in his second pro season, but the World Series was not even televised in Germany.
Dykstra's job was to show Europe what it had missed, to give baseball a face. A steady line of Karstadt customers wanted his signature, although in many cases they had no idea who he was. Yet Dykstra did not appear disappointed as he left for Paris that night.
Things picked up the next morning over breakfast at the Ritz, where Dykstra was interviewed by two journalists from Strike, a quarterly French baseball magazine. He put on his Phillie uniform for photographs at the Eiffel Tower, and then he was taken to the French national sports institute, where he awarded medals to a group of 8- to 12-year-olds who had won the local baseball championship. Also four players from the French national baseball team, all in their 20's, were waiting to take batting practice in his presence. They didn't show Dykstra anything to write home to Phillie general manager Lee Thomas about, but he delivered his lecture on hitting as promised.
Later, wearing nothing heavier than a sweater on a freezing afternoon, he led a group of traveling companions across the square fronting Notre Dame. He had discovered an artist. "Dude has no arms, man," Dykstra said. "He has to paint with his feet!"
The artist turned out to be a dwarf confined to a wheelchair—and he had both of his arms and feet. Copies of artwork similar to his might have been found at a nearby tourist shop at a cost of $4; but for two drawings of Paris by the dwarf, Dykstra paid 850 francs, roughly $150. These were authentic, Dykstra reasoned, drawn by hand. While urging Schueller to talk the dwarf down a few francs, Dykstra allowed another artist, this one a long-haired man from Italy, to draw his portrait. Because the easily distracted Dykstra spent most of the ensuing three minutes with his back to the guy, the result was a $30 caricature that looked more like Don Zimmer.
The next day it was on to Amsterdam, where Dykstra was better known because baseball is popular in Holland and highlights of each World Series game had been broadcast there. He gave lots of interviews and took part in a press conference during two days in Amsterdam, showing much more patience than you would have expected and going out of his way to explain things.
On the second day Dykstra bought his wife, Terri, a three-carat diamond ring, whose price he got down to $41,000, with an extra one-carat diamond thrown in. That night he visited the Hard Rock Cafe, where more than 100 people were crowded around the door, chanting, "Lenny! Lenny! Lenny!" By now it was becoming clear that while he was promoting baseball, he was also promoting Lenny Dykstra.
"My goal is to build a financial empire," he proclaimed later that night in a hotel bar. "It has to start somewhere. It's just like these old buildings over here; they all had to start somewhere."
He will launch his first business this winter with the Lenny Dykstra Car Wash in Corona Hills, Calif. Baseball memorabilia will be on display there, and employees in baseball uniforms will hand-wash the cars. His long-term dream will be helped along, he hopes, by a contract extension; he wants to negotiate a new $25 million deal with the Phils. Then perhaps he'll develop a high-rise condominium in Florida—he isn't sure just yet. "I know people laugh about all the stuff I say and do," he says. "But believe me, before I take a dirt nap, I'm going to build myself a financial empire."
Grown in the Bordeaux region, Chateau d'Yquem is perhaps the most difficult wine in the world to produce, requiring an extraordinary summer of heat and an extraordinary autumn of moist, misty mornings to properly rot the grapes. Because each grape is picked individually only after it has sufficiently dried and shriveled on the vine, it takes 10 to 15 painstaking tours of the vineyard to pick the crop.
The great wine would not be available at La Tour d'Argent if not for Andrè Terrail, who, as the proprietor during World War II, bricked off his supply of Chateau d'Yquem to hide it from the Germans. Even so, only five bottles from the 1937 and '38 vintages remained in the restaurant's cellar two weeks ago. And one of those would not have been consumed by the American baseball player had not Dykstra taken the advice of his limousine driver and jumped at the chance to dine at one of the world's most celebrated restaurants, where he spent more than $13,000 at dinner that night.
As Lindsay Jones and his wife, Sharie, were getting up from the table, Dykstra announced for all the restaurant to hear, "We're getting ready to pour the 16,000-franc dessert wine; you'd better get some bench."
"We were just going to tour the wine cellar," Jones said.
"Tour the wine cellar? You can go down on your way out," Dykstra said. "It's Chateau Whatever, he's got it coming. You just don't sit down and have yourself a gulp."
Then Dykstra turned to find another hand outstretched before him. It was the hand of Claude Terrail, Andrè's son and the current proprietor of La Tour d'Argent. "Monsieur, it is a pleasure to meet you," he said with an exaggerated bow. "You have just bought the best wine in the world."
Lenny adjusted his cap and turned to the steward. "Let me get another bottle of this," he said. "To go."
Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/vault/1993/12/06/130065/oo-la-la-lenny-fun-loving-free-spending-phillie-lenny-dykstra-toured-europe-as-baseballs-unlikely-ambassador
"May I take your hat, monsieur?"
Lenny Dykstra stared at the manicured hand extended before him. His eyes pedaled up past the white cuff and black tuxedo sleeve to the slightly bowed head of the maître d', who was tall and unblinking as he waited for their eyes to meet, his black mustache trimmed like a woman's eyebrow.
Dykstra had just been seated in perhaps the finest restaurant in Paris, but he was still wearing his tan driving cap. He considered it elegant headwear, as it could not be pulled down to his ears; but more important, it concealed the matted hair of his perpetual hat-head. When Dykstra returned his gaze to the outstretched hand, his eyes were almost crossed and the tip of his tongue was revealed like a teddy bear's. "No, thank you," he said to the hand. "I'm going to keep it on."
"Yes," said the maître d', who rolled his eyes and rotated his head one revolution on the pivot of his neck until everything was back as it had been. "Your hat, please, monsieur."
"Uh, no," Dykstra said, and he began pointing at his own head with both hands. "I've got this...." he sputtered. "I really can't." Dykstra squinted upward with pleading eyes, but the maître d' stood erect, his hand like a cop's waiting for the driver's license. Dykstra looked like he wanted to turn his head and spit. "I've got to keep it on, I've got this.... Bob? Bob! Bob, man, explain to this dude that...."
Dykstra whispered into the ear of Bob Schueller, his interpreter. Schueller rose and spoke in French to the maître d', gesturing. The maître d' sighed and, with a mighty shrug, fell into a line of five other men dressed just like him. They formed a black picket fence around the Dykstra party of 12, perhaps to protect the other customers from the raucous conversation and general commotion as everyone got settled.
When a wine list bigger than The Baseball Encyclopedia arrived, Dykstra told Schueller about a bottle of something he once had for dessert at Caesars Palace, something called Chateau d'Yquem. The wine steward pointed out the listing to Schueller, who turned to Dykstra and said, "They're offering you a bottle for 16,000 francs."
That's almost $3,000, but Dykstra nodded as if Schueller had leaned out of a drive-thru window to tell him he would have to take a chocolate milkshake instead of vanilla. And suddenly everyone around Dykstra relaxed and began to treat him more appreciatively. Ordering such a bottle of wine was like homering to rally your team in the seventh inning of Game 6 in the World Series—and Dykstra had done that too.
Four hundred years ago customers actually dueled to get a table here at La Tour d'Argent, but now Dykstra was suddenly abandoning his table and taking his entourage with him. He just felt like taking a walk. The maître d' practically ran after him to the elevator. "You are leaving?" he asked.
"We're coming back," Dykstra said. "We're just going to take a tour of the place."
Dykstra's good friend and business manager, Lindsay Jones, said, "Save the table for us," as the doors closed in the face of the maître d'.
Someone in the elevator asked Dykstra how he had been able to keep his cap. "I got Bob to tell the waiter I have a serious baseball injury," Dykstra said. "I told him I can't expose my head to the air."
So what was Major League Baseball thinking when it exposed Dykstra to an unsuspecting audience in Europe, dispatching the rollicking Philadelphia Phillie centerfielder as its goodwill ambassador on a tour of Düsseldorf, Paris and Amsterdam from Nov. 19 to 23? Less than three years ago Dykstra was placed on one year's probation by then commissioner Fay Vincent for losing $78,000 to a Mississippi gambler. Two months later, in May 1991, he was nearly killed in an accident while driving legally drunk in Radnor Township, Pa. The resulting injuries—he broke a cheekbone, a collarbone and three ribs—caused him to miss 99 games in '91, then he sat out 77 more in '92 with three separate on-field injuries.
But last season he stayed healthy and overcame a miserable start at the plate, winding up with a .305 batting average and becoming the first player to lead the National League in at bats, hits, walks and runs. If the Phillies had had a better bullpen, Dykstra would have been a world champion, and with a .348 average and four home runs against the Toronto Blue Jays, he would have been Most Valuable Player of the World Series.
A more likely overseas spokesman might have been Toronto's Paul Molitor, who was the Series MVP, or even Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, who beat out Dykstra as National League MVP. Any number of players might have seemed a more logical first choice to represent the game on the Continent rather than the stubby leader of the alley-cat Phillies, his mouth stuffed with chewing tobacco during games.
But who better to handle the indifference, the anonymity any player was sure to face in Europe? Who would make people laugh regardless of the language barrier? The personality traits and mannerisms that have made Dykstra both laughable and lovable—the bluntness, the almost childlike charm—were universal qualities, making him seem approachable to people who knew nothing about his game. Dykstra was always going to be more than a high batting average and lots of stolen bases. This is baseball, shake his hand, his name is Lenny Dykstra.
Hard to believe, but Europe knew less about Dykstra than he knew about Europe. ("Now, Paris is France," Dykstra was heard to reason on the flight from Paris to Amsterdam. "But London, that's just London, right? It's just London?") While in the last decade the NBA, the NFL and even professional beach volleyball have established marketing footholds in Europe by playing exhibitions or setting up overseas leagues, and creating a following through televised events, baseball has been arguing with its own shadow. The adversarial relationship between baseball owners and players ruined plans to stage major league exhibitions in Barcelona prior to the '92 Olympics and last October at the famous Lord's cricket ground in London, which, by the way, is in England.
But baseball was able to muster this one-man tour, which officially began on Saturday morning, Nov. 20, in Düsseldorf, where Dykstra signed autographs for two hours at Karstadt, reputedly the largest sporting goods store in Europe. At the entrance to the store Dykstra looked up to find Shaquille O'Neal dunking over him. It seemed fitting enough that a basketball poster two stories tall would greet a 5'10" baseball player. Michael Jordan is the world's most popular athlete and O'Neal is already a global celebrity in his second pro season, but the World Series was not even televised in Germany.
Dykstra's job was to show Europe what it had missed, to give baseball a face. A steady line of Karstadt customers wanted his signature, although in many cases they had no idea who he was. Yet Dykstra did not appear disappointed as he left for Paris that night.
Things picked up the next morning over breakfast at the Ritz, where Dykstra was interviewed by two journalists from Strike, a quarterly French baseball magazine. He put on his Phillie uniform for photographs at the Eiffel Tower, and then he was taken to the French national sports institute, where he awarded medals to a group of 8- to 12-year-olds who had won the local baseball championship. Also four players from the French national baseball team, all in their 20's, were waiting to take batting practice in his presence. They didn't show Dykstra anything to write home to Phillie general manager Lee Thomas about, but he delivered his lecture on hitting as promised.
Later, wearing nothing heavier than a sweater on a freezing afternoon, he led a group of traveling companions across the square fronting Notre Dame. He had discovered an artist. "Dude has no arms, man," Dykstra said. "He has to paint with his feet!"
The artist turned out to be a dwarf confined to a wheelchair—and he had both of his arms and feet. Copies of artwork similar to his might have been found at a nearby tourist shop at a cost of $4; but for two drawings of Paris by the dwarf, Dykstra paid 850 francs, roughly $150. These were authentic, Dykstra reasoned, drawn by hand. While urging Schueller to talk the dwarf down a few francs, Dykstra allowed another artist, this one a long-haired man from Italy, to draw his portrait. Because the easily distracted Dykstra spent most of the ensuing three minutes with his back to the guy, the result was a $30 caricature that looked more like Don Zimmer.
The next day it was on to Amsterdam, where Dykstra was better known because baseball is popular in Holland and highlights of each World Series game had been broadcast there. He gave lots of interviews and took part in a press conference during two days in Amsterdam, showing much more patience than you would have expected and going out of his way to explain things.
On the second day Dykstra bought his wife, Terri, a three-carat diamond ring, whose price he got down to $41,000, with an extra one-carat diamond thrown in. That night he visited the Hard Rock Cafe, where more than 100 people were crowded around the door, chanting, "Lenny! Lenny! Lenny!" By now it was becoming clear that while he was promoting baseball, he was also promoting Lenny Dykstra.
"My goal is to build a financial empire," he proclaimed later that night in a hotel bar. "It has to start somewhere. It's just like these old buildings over here; they all had to start somewhere."
He will launch his first business this winter with the Lenny Dykstra Car Wash in Corona Hills, Calif. Baseball memorabilia will be on display there, and employees in baseball uniforms will hand-wash the cars. His long-term dream will be helped along, he hopes, by a contract extension; he wants to negotiate a new $25 million deal with the Phils. Then perhaps he'll develop a high-rise condominium in Florida—he isn't sure just yet. "I know people laugh about all the stuff I say and do," he says. "But believe me, before I take a dirt nap, I'm going to build myself a financial empire."
Grown in the Bordeaux region, Chateau d'Yquem is perhaps the most difficult wine in the world to produce, requiring an extraordinary summer of heat and an extraordinary autumn of moist, misty mornings to properly rot the grapes. Because each grape is picked individually only after it has sufficiently dried and shriveled on the vine, it takes 10 to 15 painstaking tours of the vineyard to pick the crop.
The great wine would not be available at La Tour d'Argent if not for Andrè Terrail, who, as the proprietor during World War II, bricked off his supply of Chateau d'Yquem to hide it from the Germans. Even so, only five bottles from the 1937 and '38 vintages remained in the restaurant's cellar two weeks ago. And one of those would not have been consumed by the American baseball player had not Dykstra taken the advice of his limousine driver and jumped at the chance to dine at one of the world's most celebrated restaurants, where he spent more than $13,000 at dinner that night.
As Lindsay Jones and his wife, Sharie, were getting up from the table, Dykstra announced for all the restaurant to hear, "We're getting ready to pour the 16,000-franc dessert wine; you'd better get some bench."
"We were just going to tour the wine cellar," Jones said.
"Tour the wine cellar? You can go down on your way out," Dykstra said. "It's Chateau Whatever, he's got it coming. You just don't sit down and have yourself a gulp."
Then Dykstra turned to find another hand outstretched before him. It was the hand of Claude Terrail, Andrè's son and the current proprietor of La Tour d'Argent. "Monsieur, it is a pleasure to meet you," he said with an exaggerated bow. "You have just bought the best wine in the world."
Lenny adjusted his cap and turned to the steward. "Let me get another bottle of this," he said. "To go."
The Gang That Beat Las Vegas
The Saga of the High-Tech Gambling Syndicate that Revolutionized Sports Betting
This three-part series told the story of the most important sports-betting syndicate in American history. The Computer Group of Michael Kent and Billy Walters had better information than the oddsmakers – until the FBI stepped in.
June 6, 1990
The National Sports Daily
The Arrests
He was in the bed sleeping when the two men walked into his bedroom. Billy Walters sleeps in a big clean bed in Las Vegas, in a small but elaborate home renovated to his liking, with palm trees and white flowerpots and two satellite dishes in the yard, and four large televisions in the den, and a security guard who sits just out of sight behind the shrubs across the street. This environment was disrupted early last Jan. 5, when the two strangers introduced themselves to Billy Walters with all the subtlety of an alarm clock. He greeted them by sitting up in the bed, blinking. His wife wasn't in the bed with him. They already had her, probably.
"You're going to have to get dressed," one man said. Billy Walters reached down for the pile of wrinkled clothes he had worn the night before. The room was quiet. The men watched him dress.
"We don't like to have to do this to you," the other man said.
His wife Susan was downstairs with a third man in the kitchen. There was not a lot of chit-chat. Susan and Billy Walters were led across their fine, trimmed yard in handcuffs. The path to law and order wended past a copy of the daily newspaper, which lay on their driveway like an upturned headstone. As Billy Walters glanced down at the headline, he realized that he was the front-page news:
INDICTMENTS TARGET BETTING GROUP IN LAS VEGAS
As he tells it, what steams Billy Walters most of all was the sight later that day of his pretty wife in leg irons, chains scraping the floor as she staggered toward him. Afterward, when they had been released without bail, she revealed how the manacles had eaten through her stockings.
Seventeen days later Billy Walters and 16 associates held the first meeting of the legendary Computer Group. This was a celebrated occasion in gambling history, and long overdue. The men and women of the Computer Group had been pioneers in their field. All the Computer Group did, apparently, was wager money on college football and basketball games, but for five hysterical years they did it better than anyone else ever had. It was almost as if they had invented junk bonds. Every season the cash arrived by the millions, all because their computer told them which teams should be favored to win everything from the mammoth Ohio State-Michigan football game to the basket-ball game pitting Monmouth against Fairleigh Dickinson. The Computer Group did not fix games. It simply understood them.
The group began to assert its mastery of sports betting in 1980, when the computer as an everyday machine had no firm place in sports. Most of the big Las Vegas players of 1980 were still relying on their own good sense and whatever trends they could pick up. A computer seemed to them a gimmick from the future, a big blinking queen-bee serviced by men in white coats. There were relatively few of these "personal computers" that are everywhere today. As a matter of fact, the Computer Group didn't even own its own computer. Until 1983. the group settled for renting time on a computer 2,400 miles away in Rockville, Md. As for the group's invaluable program, it was maintained on thousands of clumsy old "batch" cards, kept in shoeboxes, then fed to the computer like hay into a thrasher.
Although dozens of workers served the Computer Group, only one man communicated with the machine itself. He was Michael Kent, a 34-year-old mathematician who had spent II years helping to develop nuclear submarines for Westinghouse. He found such work boring. In 1979 he quit his job and moved to Las Vegas, to bet on football games. In 1980 he became partners with a man he hardly knew, an orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Ivan Mindlin, who Kent says agreed to place bets for them on a 50-50 basis, in accordance with his computerized forecasts. In the 1980 season the computer wizard and the doctor shared winnings of $100,000 playing college football. By 1983 they were winning almost $1 million in one week of college football - or, at least, that's what Michael Kent was told. He never bothered to check the books.
By then Dr. Mindlin had built their little corner business into something resembling a national conglomerate, which had opened betting offices staffed by a dozen employees in New York and Las Vegas. The Computer Group had burgeoned into the first truly national network of sports bettors, able to buy up the best point spreads from coast to coast. At the height of its powers, the Computer Group of 1983-85 wielded more influence over the millions of Americans who bet on sports than any superstar athlete or Super Bowl franchise. Yes, it was even more important than the split-fingered fastball. In its sleekest moments, the Computer Group had as grand an effect upon its constituency in the 1980s as OPEC had upon American consumers in the 70s.
As its influence grew, the Computer Group became something of an underground social club, extending an unofficial membership to at least one smalltime hoodlum, as well as sharing information with the likes of lrwin Molasky, the powerful real estate developer and Las Vegas civic leader.
Profits were staggering. The group never had a losing season betting on college football or college basketball. According to figures compiled recently by Michael Kent, the Computer Group in 1983-84 earned almost $5 million from wagers on college and, occasionally, NFL games. Yet Michael Kent suspects that his records are incomplete. They do not account for personal bets made by Dr. Mindlin, or Billy Walters, or by the dozens of other associates who had access to the Computer Group's information. By the time everyone had exhausted Kent's forecasts in the 1983-84 sports year, they might easily have earned 110 million, perhaps $15 million. Perhaps more.
"When you worked it down all the way to the bottom," says Billy Walters, "it might have been 1,000 people using our information."
Finally, in 1987, success got the best of them. They had to break up, just like the Beatles. Despite all the time they had spent working together, the members of the Computer Group had never really known one another. In most cases they had spoken only by phone, in staccato conversation, using code names. Faces rarely had been attached to voices. And so, as their legend had grown in recent years, it was only proper that these reclusive celebrities be united last Jan. 22 in Las Vegas, to shake hands and wonder where all the time had gone, as 17 of them assembled in Courtroom No. 4 of the Foley Federal Building, awaiting their arraignment on 120 counts of conspiracy, gambling, and racketeering charges.
Among these Garbos there were two their partners most wanted to see: Billy Walters, gambler of gamblers, who had come to Las Vegas in debt and was now a millionaire; and the treacherous doctor, Ivan Mindlin, whose cunning had built the group up-and then led to its demise.
On the day they were arrested, just two weeks before the five-year statute of limitations on their case would have run out, Billy Walters sat in a holding cell with Dr. Mindlin and a third member of the group, Billy Nelson. Dr. Mindlin wore his hair longer than Walters remembered - combed back, until it splashed against his shoulders. The three of them were discussing their contempt for the FBI, and, in particular, the ambitious special agent Thomas B. Noble, whose investigation of six years had uncovered so very little. Walters and Nelson went back and forth in their denigration of Noble, using many unpleasant terms, until finally the doctor spoke up. Walters recalls Mindlin saying: "Yeah, and can you believe that S.O.B. told two people that, if they'd tell him how I killed my wife, he'd go easier on them?"
Now, in the courtroom 17 days later, his former colleagues whispered about Dr. Mindlin. He was the most intriguing presence among them. Yet he sat alone in a corner, as if he were the least popular boy in school.
In groups of four they were called to the bench of U.S. Magistrate Robert Johnston. Dr. Mindlin's was the first name called. Each man and woman was asked about his or her education, and it turned out that all had attended college, with the exception of Billy Walters. Then the magistrate wanted to know how they intended to plead.
"Not guilty," each of them said.
"Not guilty," the magistrate repealed each time, a little sarcastically. He then proceeded to set all the gamblers free, on their own recognizance, and several of them hurried back to their homes, for there were games that night, and wagers to be made.
The Operation
In a room alone, just he and his computer, Michael Kent was simply another technology dweeb. But plug him into a network of bettors, and now, with the flick of a switch, Kent was utterly brilliant, a mastermind. These dozens of betting agents, or beards, as they are called, were as essential to Michael Kent as the electrical juice that drove his computer. He could not begin to succeed without them. And so, each day, without equivocation, he turned over his forecasts of the upcoming games to Dr. Ivan Mindlin, who then passed them on to his New York partners, Stanley Tomchin and Jimmy Evart, who, until 1984, were responsible for placing the majority of wagers for the Computer Group.
Dr. Mindlin had been making personal bets through Tomchin and Evart long before the Computer Group was formed. According to a partner in the group, Mindlin had built up a debt of some $100,000 to Tomchin and Evart when Michael Kent came along in 1980. By offering Kent's computer information to them, Mindlin was able to work off his debt quickly.
Tomchin and Evart were so impressed with the accuracy of Dr. Mindlin's information that they agreed to move money for him on a regular basis. Their colleagues describe Tomchin and Evart as a pair of Ivy Leaguers, more erudite than the normal gamblers. Tomchin, a Cornell alumnus, was a world-class backgammon and poker player; his friend Jimmy (Sneakers) Evart was said to have attended Harvard. Tomchin and Evart were well known in New York gambling circles as the "Computer Kids."
In 1983, when Billy Walters began making bets for the Computer Group, he often received his orders from Tomchin and Evart. The Group's main betting pool was wagering $40 million per year, but all the action in the world could not sustain Evart's interest. His newlywed wife insisted that he stop gambling, and so, in 1984, he walked away from the money and moved to Spain. According to a former partner, Tomchin moved to San Francisco and eventually left the group. His former partners say he is now an options trader in Santa Barbara. Tomchin declined to answer questions in connection with this story.
The Computer Group foundered in Evart's absence until October 1984, when Dr. Mindlin offered Billy Walters a percentage of the group's winnings and placed him in charge of moving the weekly millions. At that time Walters worked out of a lovely three-bedroom home overlooking the eighth fairway at the Las Vegas Country Club, Indeed, Billy Walters wore clothes suggesting that he had been called in from the golf course. His gray speckled hair was styled straight back. away from his thin face. its expression creased by the transitions of gambling, from sadness to happiness and then back again. His face was older than his body. He was always thinking about work. He had been assigned (he enormous responsibility of exploiting the weakest betting lines, and it did not matter where they were. Billy Walters was supposed to find them. and where they failed to exist, he was expected to create them.
He was a powerful broker in an unregulated industry. Walters blanketed the country with bets, taking action wherever it was available, which was at times in as many as 45 states. In 44 of them he dealt exclusively with illegal bookmakers. To help bear that burden he hired six people to work for him in Las Vegas, at a salary of no more than $700 per week, plus the occasional bonus. His wife served as an accountant, but he depended most upon his young assistant, Glen Walker, who had quit his job in the publicity department at NBC Sports in New York and relocated to Las Vegas, so enthralled was he by a 1980 story in Sports Illustrated about Las Vegas gambler Gary Austin. "That copy of Sports Illustrated changed my life," Walker says today.
Billy Walters maintained a low profile in Las Vegas. If he appeared at a sports book it was usually around midnight. when he might come to open a betting account with $100,000 or more in cash - however much he could fit in a Famous Amos Cookies bag. As for more public matters, he preferred that business be conducted by Glen Walker. So Walker would visit the Las Vegas sports books each day, to settle up or place bets, and fend off the legions of bettors who wanted to know which games the computer liked that week. He worked with three other group employees at the "C&B Collection Agency," which was a front for their betting operation. His colleagues would meet there, at an office park on Spring Mountain Road, when they weren't moving money out of Billy Walters' house.
Perhaps Walters' favorite employee was gentle Arnie Haaheim, a big bright laughing man who was unable to mask his tremendous emotions. He liked women - liked to talk about them, actually, until he was all talked out. Then, says Walker, Arnie would stare off, leaning on his elbow, as passive as a solar cell at dusk. All around him phones were ringing and money was being wagered in thick sexy wads, but Arena would just sit there, his jaw hanging open while Billy Walters shouted orders.
By and large, though, there was little humor in their work. On a Saturday of college basketball they might bet 60 games, which required that they be aware of every injury, casualty and rumor surrounding all 120 teams. They had to chart the movement of the point spreads in various sports books for each game. They had to find the weakest lines, and they had to make and keep track of their wagers by the hundreds. They worked almost every day from September through March. Some days they would start at 6 a.m. and finish at midnight. Always Walters felt obliged to protect the Computer's information from the public, because these numbers were as valuable to him personally as they were to the group. His employees never even heard mention of the name Ivan Mindlin. The voice delivering the daily betting orders was known only as "Doc" or "Cowboy," and Billy Walters would say nothing more to identify him.
Occasionally, however, it paid to be careless. On a Wednesday afternoon, ever so casually, Billy Walters might tell Glen Walker to make a call over to the old Gary Austin Sports Book on the strip. "We want to lay $30,000 on Wisconsin giving 3 to Purdue," Billy Walters would tell him.
Walters knew that several wise guys would be passing time near the counter at Gary Austin's. And they would notice that the line favoring Wisconsin over Purdue would rise to 3 1/2 points. And they would ask who was responsible for moving the line, and they would be told the truth: That $30,000 had just been laid by the computer. And then …
The wise guys would bet on Wisconsin themselves. These wise guys would whisper to other wise guys. Tout services would hear that the computer liked Wisconsin. A run would begin on Wisconsin. News of Wisconsin would spread nationally. By the time word reached the man in Louisiana or the woman in Illinois, there would be no mention of the Computer Group. They would simply be told that they had better get something down on Wisconsin. You can see now that the betting market in Las Vegas is no different than Wall Street. Fed by rumor, speculation and greed, a stock like Wisconsin can grow hot for no substantial reason.
By Thursday or Friday, Wisconsin might be inflated to a 5-point favorite, 5 1/2 in some markets. At this point Billy Walters believed the price could rise no higher, and so he would marshal his forces: "Open order on Purdue taking 5!" In moments, they would be on their speed-dial phones, reaching every available source nationwide, betting as much as they could wherever Purdue was a 5-point underdog. They were a frantic yet focused group inside the "C&B Collection Agency," attempting to flood all the markets simultaneously, before the point spread could drop. Into one phone they would shout a few words and then hang up while dialing another number on another phone, back and forth, until they were frazzled. In two minutes Walters alone could place bets through a dozen beards or bookies.
So: On Wednesday they'd bet against Purdue. to lower its value in the market. Now on Friday they were buying as much Purdue as they could, a grand total of $1 million or more. And wouldn't you know it: Sometimes Wisconsin would beat Purdue by 4 and the Computer Group would win the "middle" - bets on both teams paying off in the same game.
Now and then, Billy Walters fooled his own employees. Glen Walker recalls more than one occasion when Arena Haaheim laid his own money on the first team (in this case Wisconsin) only to find out later in the week that the Computer had preferred the opponent (Purdue) all along. On Saturday they would sit in Billy Walters home and watch the game on television. "Arena, what's the matter?" Walters would say. "I don't see you cheering over there."
No betting operation bad ever controlled the market on such a synchronized and national level, but Billy Walters admits, he didn't always have his way so easily. "There were other times I bet $130,000 or $140,000 just to move the line," he says in his low Kentucky drawl. "One thing about the public, they'll follow anybody as long as you're picking winners,"
Because they pay a 10% service fee to the house on all losing bets, professional gamblers have to win 52.38% of their games just to break even. Records of the 1983 college football season seized from Dr. Mindlin show that the Computer Group won an incredible 60.3% of its games against the spread. The Computer Group's main betting pool began that season in September with a $1.1 million line of credit, and concluded Jan. 2 with $5 million cash.
Of course, in those days the official point spread was softer than mayonnaise. The mathematical wizard Michael Kent admits that the Computer Group might never have risen to prominence if not for the removal of Bob Martin, who since 1967 had been making the official line for Las Vegas. However, in 1980, Martin was sentenced to 13 months for the crime of transmitting wagering information across state lines by telephone. If the federal government had not gotten rid of Bob Martin, then the FBI might never have felt compelled to spend six long years investigating the Computer Group.
More often than not, Michael Kent's line was more accurate than the official line in Las Vegas. Line-makers will argue that the only purpose of their official line is to entice betting action on both sides, that they are not responsible for outsmarting experts like Michael Kent. Nonetheless, the people who were making that line in the early 1980s were a particularly feeble lot.
Other gamblers noticed the same weaknesses, but they couldn't take advantage to the same extent as the Computer Group. "They had some amateurs setting the line at that time, and the line was very weak," says Lem Banker, whose nationally syndicated newspaper column made him perhaps the most famous gambler in Las Vegas. "It was a good opportunity to win, and a lot of people did."
Greater than any individual, the mysterious Computer Group emerged as the prominent voice in Las Vegas, much like a Wizard in Oz. "When a handicapper gets going good, a 'following' phenomena goes into effect," says Michael (Roxy) Roxborough, now the top Las Vegas linemaker, whose services are purchased by 35 sports books. "A game might open at 3 [points], and the followers raise it up to a 6. With these computer guys, every time a game moved, they were the ones credited with moving it, whether they did it or not. Their legend may be larger than they actually were."
The top gambling rings today use the Computer Group as their model. In Las Vegas, a classroom genius like Michael Kent has to depend entirely upon someone like Billy Walters, who was educated in alleys. "There is no gambler's college," Walters says. "Everything I know, I learned the hard way. Now, how do I know when the spread has risen as high as it's going to get? I have to depend upon my years of experience. I use my feel and the information I get from my contacts around the country to decide when I should bet and when to back off."
Sitting at his desk each day, Billy Walters based his decisions upon numbers he wrote on two pieces of paper. On one page was a list of point spreads compiled by Michael Kent's computer. In the case of Wisconsin at Purdue, Kent might have decided: Purdue -I over Wisconsin. On the second page Billy Walters was keeping track of the official lines at various sports books in Las Vegas. Wherever he could find a difference of I '/2 points between the Computer Group's line and the official Las Vegas line, he would bet on that game. If the official line decided: Wisconsin -5 over Purdue, then what Billy Walters had here was a massive 6-point difference of opinion. In such a case he might bet $1 million on that game. The greater the difference, the more he would bet (see box, p.40).
So confident was the Computer Group that its weekly wagers often exceeded the ceiling of its betting pool. According to ledgers seized by the FBI, Michael Kent's group in one week wagered $4,571,050 on college basketball games alone - more than twice as much as its reservoir in the pool at that time. Including the college bowl games and the NFL play-offs. the group bet more than $5.5 million that week, turning a profit of almost $700,000.
And that represented the work of Michael Kent's tiny group. Dozens of other bettors had access to his information. Who knows how much additional revenue they earned?
Billy Walters claims that he gambled more than $500,000 of his own money each week with the help of computer information. He is just one of many big winners whose profits do not appear on the group's ledgers.
Even though he tried to gamble like the button-down brokers on Wall Street, Walters admits that he too fell victim to the occasional betting frenzy. During the Christmas holidays six years ago, Walters found he was betting hand over fist on Michigan in the Sugar Bowl against Auburn. It was one of those rare times when the tout services were opposing the computer on a major game. No matter how much Billy Walters bet on Michigan for the Computer Group and for himself, the line remained the same. The public kept laying money on Auburn, giving 41/2 points.
"I kept betting on the game, and the line kept coming back, so I just kept betting," Walters says. "I guess I got a little carried away. I had more than $1 million on that game. I literally bet my entire net worth on that game, and probably some additional."
Trailing 7-6 in the fourth quarter, Auburn took possession at its 39 with 7:44 left. If Auburn scored a touch-down to cover, Billy Walters would lose $1 million. But Auburn kicked a 19-yard field goal to win, 9-7, and Billy Walters is today a rich genius.
The Computer Wizard
One day Michael Kent, who was the centerfielder, got to wondering about his company softball team. How good were he and his teammates, really? When they destroyed a poor opponent by 15-4, was that as impressive as beating a good team by 6-5? His team had won a couple of league championships, but what had they really accomplished? All his life he had found answers to such questions in numbers, statistics. He simply had to find out what those numbers meant. What was the numerical definition of a good softball team?
His thoughts drifted naturally in this direction. Kent was a 27-year-old math-' mathematician at Westinghouse in suburban Pittsburgh. Every day he worked with computers. to help design a better nuclear sub. At night, he says. he began to formulate a computer program that rated the strength of his softball team. Each week he would update the statistics, then feed the information into the high-speed Control Data computer at Westinghouse. His teammates were interested in this output of statistics - it was flattering to them - but Michael Kent ultimately was disappointed by the results. When (he work was done he had a printout listing his team's strengths and weaknesses. So what? He had given order to these numbers, but there was no application, no further use for them.
He says he began work on a more complex program. The game was college football. This time he could foresee a dollar sign in front of the numbers. The year was 1972. He recorded information from old NCAA football guides, which list the scores and statistics from the previous season. Then he visited the library, the old newspapers in particular, in order to see which teams had been favored each week, and by how many points. He examined the spreads and the slats. attempting to find a correlation. Which statistics, he wanted to know. were important in assigning a point spread?
He knew of only one way to find out. He began to write a program. The computer would ask hundreds of questions in algorithmic. pinpointing strengths and weaknesses for each team. As his wealth of information grew, Kent learned that some strengths were more important than others. There was a value to first downs and there was another value to yards gained. Home-field advantage had a value. So did strength of schedule. So did success against common opponents. The list of questions went on and on, some so picayune that the average football fan might have laughed in the face of this stocky, bespectacled mathematician. Billy Walters believes that the program even accounted for the distance of the visiting team's road trip.
The hobby soon became his vocation. He began to test his model by placing bets with local bookies. He says he worked an average of two hours per night over the course of seven years, fine-tuning his football program and developing a similar program for college basketball, until one morning he walked into the plant and quit his job. He was very quiet about it. Only his closest friends were informed of his plans. He moved to Las Vegas in lime for the 1979 college football season. For the last seven years he had been saving his money, to wager on football and basketball games. Still, when he looked in the mirror, it was a hard thing to believe, that the person staring back at him was a professional gambler.
When Michael Kent arrived in Las Vegas, he clearly was on his own. No gambler of note was depending solely upon a computer to analyze bets. Allow yourself to go broke because of a machine? That was crazy thinking. But Michael Kent didn't know anything about Las Vegas common sense. He was from Pennsylvania. He wanted to know where he should do his laundry. On a daily basis he wanted to bet as many games as he could, whenever he perceived the slightest 1 1/2 point advantage, and this was more crazy thinking. Common sense in Las Vegas said that you couldn't win big by betting a lot of games. You should concentrate on just a few games. That's what common sense said. Michael Kent didn't know about that, either. Most of what he knew about this business was contained in a book called Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic, by Richard A. Epstein. Chapter 2 told him the percentage of his money he should bet, depending upon how much he liked the game. The book was written in the language of numbers. Michael Kent wanted to meet this man Epstein.
The job of betting sports fulltime was a little harder than he had imagined. Kent would wake up early, update his information from the morning newspapers. tap into the Control Data computer on which he was renting time, and establish a belting line for each game. Then he and a friend would spend the rest of the day and night visiting sports books and private bookmakers, seeking out the most favorable point spreads. He was not instantly successful.
"That first football season was curious," Kent recalls, speaking by phone from Las Vegas, under the supervision of his attorney, Steven Brooks of Boston. "l started real well. Then in midseason, there were five big games, and I lost all five by a point, by a half-point. by a missed field goal. All crazy things. It put me down. and for the rest of the year I'd lose every week."
According to his records, he lost $40.000 that football season. His bad luck continued two months into the basketball season.
"I was getting killed," he says. "I was at the point where I was debating what my future was going to be. Then, I remember, there were 17 games I was betting one night, and I won 16 of the 17. That was a definite high. to get me back on the plus-side."
He found that betting the games was an awesome responsibility. It was not an easy thing to settle up with a bookmaker after each round of bets, carrying huge bundles of cash in and out of public places. Whenever he had a lot of money on him, he feared he was being followed. If he happened to notice two men walking behind him on the sidewalk, he would run as fast as he could into the nearest casino, and stand near a security guard for a while. Of course, this only drew more attention to himself. He asked security guards to escort him to his car whenever feasible. He also depended heavily upon valet parking. He didn't like the idea of carrying 150.000 into a dark garage. Valet parking was much safer. He didn't know how to just be cool about it. He couldn't chill out. He was working 80 hours a week in the strangest city in America and he was always worrying. He won $150.000 betting college basketball in 1979-80, but it was a terrible way to live.
He gave betting one last try for a football month in the fall of 1980. Exhausted, with no alternative but to go home, he says he placed a call to Dr. Ivan Mindlin. He had met the doctor once before. In 1979, while playing tennis with fellow gambler Billy Nelson, Michael Kent had mentioned his use of a computer in betting. Nelson had said that Kent should meet this Dr. Mindlin. "I thought they could help each other," Nelson said in a deposition year.
They seemed to understand each other. When Kent arrived at Mindlin's house on Ottawa Drive, the doctor explained that. quite ironically, he had been attempting to forecast major league baseball games by use of a computer program. When Michael Kent heard this in 1979, he felt almost as if Dr. Mindlin was a brother. In 1980, when they began to work as a team, he came to think of Dr. Mindlin as a father. Later Dr. Mindlin would place his arm around Michael Kent and say that they were, as gamblers, married to each other.
Years later, Kent's attorney marvels at the hypnotic grip Dr. Mindlin maintained over his brilliant yet woefully naive client. Says Steven Brooks, "I would sit down with Michael for hours, discussing different parts of his arrangement with Dr. Mindlin. and I would say: 'Why did you do this?' And he would say, 1 don't know.' It was incredible. He didn't know why they were doing anything. He just trusted Ivan completely."
In 1982 Michael invited his older brother John Kent to mow-to Las Vegas. Michael taught John how to feed data to the computer, training John to work for the Computer Group. Later, Michael would invite another brother, and even his mother, into the betting pool. Michael's success provided wonderful experiences for all of the Kents. Michael was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each season. and he wasn't even paying taxes on it. He was depositing his winnings with banks in the Bahamas and Switzerland, the same banks that Dr. Mindlin was using, according to Kent.
Only in the last few years did Michael Kent begin to understand the full extent of his creation. As far as he knew, the Computer Group consisted of himself, members of his family. Dr. Mindlin and a few others who helped them make bets. From 1980 through January 1985, he figured that his group had wagered close to $140 million and turned a profit $14 million. The idea that his information was earning two or three times that much without him getting his fair share ... well. he never really came to grips with the possibility that anything unethical could come of his work.
While other regular players in Las Vegas schemed and flattered Dr. Mindlin in their vain attempts to gain access to the Computer Group's information, Michael Kent walked freely through town, blissfully anonymous, unaffected and ingenuous, the neon reflecting from his glasses.
The Doctor
His enemies, who are many, exult in spreading rumors that portray Ivan Mindlin as a doctor ruined by his gambling. They say that he would listen to baseball games while performing surgery to the detriment of his patients, and that he would leave the operating room to gather up the scores. In reality, Dr. Mindlin enjoys an excellent reputation as an orthopedic surgeon, according to three respected Las Vegas attorneys who specialize in medical cases - all of whom approved Mindlin to give objective medical examinations for use in court cases. "A doctor would have to be highly thought of to be approved by both sides in a case," says attorney Bruce Alverson, who lauds Dr. Mindlin. Attorney Neil Galatz expresses sadness over Mindlin's recent legal troubles with the Computer Group. "It's a shame," he says, "because he was a fine doctor."
Lem Banker, the famous sports bettor, says he has been a friend of Dr. Mindlin's for 30 years, since he served as house physician for hotels on the Las Vegas strip. "He was my doctor," says Banker. "I actually showed him some of the finer points of handicapping. Sometimes we'd stop into the hotels and go partners, shooting craps. I had a lot of respect for his mind."
Though the doctor reportedly had a good run playing the horses, one of his partners says that Mindlin was a loser betting on ballgames - that by1980, the doctor had run up a $100,000 debt to a pair of New York bettors, Stanley Tomchin and Jimmy Evart. Dr. Mindlin was able to work off that debt in October 1980, when Michael Kent dropped by (like manna from heaven) to discuss his computer program for handicapping football and basketball games.
As he spoke, Michael Kent could not have been very impressive to a man like Ivan Mindlin. Kent was something of a Lt. Colombo in that regard. He did not speak elegantly. He wore drab clothes. He said he had grown up in Chicago as a Cubs fan. And he looked like a Chicago Cubs fan, just in from the bleachers. To Dr. Mindlin he must have looked like a pigeon, with a beard and glasses.
Kent said he had grown weary of betting the games himself. What really tired him, he said with all sincerity, was having to deal with such large amounts of money. The chores of betting were wearing him out. He says he and Dr. Mindlin agreed: Kent forecasts the games, Mindlin makes the bets, and they split the winnings 50-50.
With their handshake, the Computer Group was formed. And from that day forward, Dr. Mindlin took it upon himself to insulate Michael Kent from the outside world, just as Kent had wished. Kent was left alone to work with the numbers, while Mindlin took care of the streets. Mindlin apparently loved the streets, where he was deemed something of a Renaissance man, a street-smart manager who knew how to move truckloads of money and an intellectual genius as well. As time went on and the group's profits soared, he began to take more and more credit, until it was common knowledge throughout Las Vegas that he - Dr. Ivan Mindlin - was the inventor of the Computer Group's invaluable program.
In March 1986. Sports Illustrated became the first national publication to report the story of the Computer Group. Dr. Ivan Mindlin explained to the magazine that he had taught himself computer programming while serving on the faculty at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, N.J., the first hospital in the country to have an IBM computerized record-keeping system. Mindlin told an intricate tale, of how he'd run 25,000 past college basketball games through computer services from coast to coast so see how accurate the pregame spreads were against the final score. The magazine reported that Mindlin "devised his own programs to make a number' on each game, and that he serves as the alleged mathematical mastermind behind the mysterious Computer Group, which just might be the biggest known sports betting ring ever established anywhere."
The name of Michael Kent was mentioned nowhere in the story.
Though many members of the Computer Group might have thought that Dr. Mindlin was the grand inventor, there is very little to support that view. Those partners of Dr. Mindlin's who agreed to give interviews all maintained that Michael Kent invented the group's program for handicapping football and basketball games. The only program Dr. Mindlin produced was for betting on major league baseball, and they say it was a failure.
Dr. Mindlin has declined to comment on this and all other matters. His attorney, Morris Goldings, is evasive when asked who invented the group's programs. "We're not getting into the vanity of it," he said recently from his car phone. Last February, however, Goldings said bluntly: "What does Kent say? That he was the brains and Mindlin was the beard? That's our position too."
Each day Kent and his brother John collected the statistical data for every team, fed it into the computer, updated their program. fine-tuned all of the forecasts and then dumped them into a computer file to which Mindlin had access. From that point on. Kent -who was either too busy or too gullible to notice the fence that Mindlin was constructing around him - abdicated all responsibility to the doctor.
Dr. Mindlin's responsibility was so relay the information to Stanley Tomchin and a few other beards (or betting agents), who would survey the market and make the bets. Those phone calls and his accounting duties for the group were the extent of Mindlin's workload, but other matters kept him busy.
To the doctor's credit, the Computer Group grew very quickly under his direction. As they were beginning to earn millions each season, Dr. Mindlin was injured in a 1981 car accident in Florida, which left him unable to perform surgery. He applied for disability insurance, and his practice was limited to giving expert testimony in medical cases.
As his reputation as a gambler grew, he was able to strike up an acquaintance with Irwin Molasky, a mighty Las Vegas developer with whom Mindlin reportedly shared "his" computerized information in exchange for Molasky's friendship and all the avenues it might open up to him.
Now street-famous for his work with the Computer Group, Dr. Mindlin entered into the commodities business. Once more he turned to Michael Kent and Kent's friend, Mark Ricci who began work on a program for predicting the price of commodities futures. Based on their efforts, Dr. Mindlin farmed a private commodities firm he called Commend, which may have served him in several ways. For one, he allegedly was able to launder money through Commend. Michael Kent's brother, John, in a sworn deposition last year. testified that he received $112,695 from Commend for his work on the Computer Group's sports data base. John Kent testified that he never did any work for Commend.
Dr. Mindlin also found that commodities could serve as another point of contact with Irwin Molasky, who invested with him through Commend, according to Molasky's attorney Stanley Hunterton.
Mindlin also established a relationship with Dominic Spinale, who reportedly was a smalltime hoodlum with ties to Chicago mobster Tony Spilotro. Spinale happened to be under investigation by the FBI at the time his name was being used by Mindlin to open a betting account at the Stardust Hotel. If Mindlin could change one thing, he would probably never have become friendly with Spinale, which might have averted all of the troubles that engulf him today.
The Feds
Special Agent Thomas B. Noble has developed quite a reputation in the FBI for his six-year investigation of the Computer Group. Quite sad, really. "He got himself in a jam," says a fellow special agent. "He was a rookie when this thing started. Everybody was saying, Forget about it, you haven't got anything.' But, somehow, he convinced one of his superiors that it was bookmaking, and got him to go along with it. He (Noble] is always saying how every case he's working on is the greatest thing. In the end, it never works out."
Thomas Noble says that joining the FBI was "just something I had always wanted to do." He was made a special agent in 1982 and was assigned to Las Vegas a year later. He had not been there long when a gambling investigation of Dominic Spinale led him to Dr. Ivan Mindlin, who had opened a betting account at the Stardust Hotel in Spinale's name. A muted alarm began to ring between the ears of Thomas Noble. This had the look of a betting operation run by La Cosa Nostra. The Mafia. Organized crime.
Soon after he had been questioned by the FBI about Spinale, Dr. Mindlin began to spend more time at his house in Vail, Colo. A second alarm went off: The subject seemed to be distancing himself from Spinale, his LCN (La Cosa Nostra) contact. Noble traced a check endorsed by Spinale to an account maintained by Michael Kent. Kent referred the FBI's inquiries to his attorney. Another alarm. Michael Kent had the same attorney as Ivan Mindlin
Spinale was next observed by FBI operatives associating with a young blonde subject named Glen Walker, who walked with a pronounced limp (the result of a high school football injury). Walker was trailed to an establishment called "C&B Collection Agency." Further investigation indicated that the "C&B Collection Agency" was not actually a collection agency but was in fact the front for a gambling operation. Informants led special agent Noble to believe that Walker represented the Computer Group, the most successful gambling ring in the city, the gambling ring in which Dr. Mindlin was an admitted member. The alarm in Noble's head was now whistling like a steaming tea kettle. Noble respectfully informed his superiors that he believed he had discovered one of the largest illegal bookmaking operations in the nation.
The distinction between bookmakers and mere bettors is an important one. Though federal prosecution of illegal bookmakers declined in the 1980s. the government still enjoys good legal footing in such cases, because it can easily be proved that bookmakers are in the business of illegal gambling. It is much more difficult to prosecute the mere bettor, because the laws weren't clearly written to apprehend him. In a 1981 case in Rhode lsland (U.S. v. Robert Barborian and Anthony Lauro), the U.S. District Court ruled that the use of telephones or other wire communication for interstate gambling "does not cover an individual bettor, even if the bettor wagered substantial sums and displayed sophistication of an expert in his knowledge of odds making."
But special agent Noble was certain that he was chasing bookmakers. More agents were assigned to aid Thomas Noble. Surveillance was increased. Wire taps were approved in December 1964. Every day was a new adventure. Two years with the bureau and he was about to crumble the LCN's finest bookmaking ring with one squeeze of his fist. Had it all started so quickly for J. Edgar Hoover?
"Through legally intercepted conversations," wrote Noble, forcing himself to sit at his desk long enough to compose this sworn affidavit in January 1985 while bookmakers were making book outside, "this investigation has determined that Ivan Mindlin directs William Thurman Walters on the placing of what are believed to be layoff' bets for the Computer' group. Walters operates a large bookmaking operation which be uses to place bets on desired games..."
This allegation was the keystone of special agent Noble's investigation. Layoff bets, by definition, are made exclusively by bookmakers wishing to protect themselves against large losses by making bets with other bookmakers.
"Besides this operation," Noble continued, "Walters controls a bookmaking operation under the guise of C&B Collection Agency. This second bookmaking operation is run by Glen Andrews Walker who uses the premises and facilities of C&B Collection Agency as a bookmaker's wire room...
The big day was January 19, 1985, the eve of Super Bowl XIX, in which San Francisco would crush Miami, 38-16. The weekend would prove to be even more momentous for special agent Thomas Noble. He had requested 43 separate raids to take place in 23 cities in 16 states - perhaps the largest series of coordinated gambling raids in history. "Historically," wrote Noble in requesting the raids, "(during) the weekend wherein the National Football League holds its Super Bowl' championship, the betting volume for bookmakers is very high."
He was right on. The members of the Computer Group were caught redhanded. Betting ledgers and hundreds of thousands of incriminating dollars were seized. All that remained before Thomas B. Noble could ascend toward the top of the FBI like a rocket toward the stars was this matter of legal paperwork. He simply had to prove that the Computer Group was an illegal bookmaking operation, that it was in fact a strong arm of the LCN.
"He said that to me once," recalls Billy Walters. "Noble said to me, 'We're closing in on your friends in La Cosa Nostra.' I'm telling you, the guy's read too many comic books.'"
The Raids
Michael Kent and his brother, Bill, had been invited to spend the Super Bowl weekend at the home of Dr. Mindlin in Vail. Colorado. Before he left Las Vegas, Michael Kent was asked to run a couple of errands for Mindlin. First, he received cash and checks from Billy Nelson, the gambler who had originally brought Kent and Mindlin together and who now served as an aide to Billy Walters in the Computer Group. Next Kent visited the cashier's cage at the Horseshoe Casino, where he showed the cashier a dollar bill scrawled with a series of handwritten numbers, a password of sorts. The cashier handed Kent cash from the account of Billy Walters. That week Michael Kent carried some $500,000 in cashier's checks and perhaps $100.000 cash to Vail, for delivery to Dr. Mindlin.
Kent says his brother Bill happened to be sitting on the doorstep of Mindlin's home in Vail on Saturday, Jan. 19. when he was approached by three men identifying themselves as FBI agents. "One guy tried to kick the door in," Michael Kent says. "Bill said. What did you do that for?' The door was unlocked. Bill reached over and opened it."
The FBI took down the names and addresses of the Kent brothers, and then Michael Kent sat and watched television while the FBI rummaged through the house, confiscating money, records and gambling paraphernalia. An FBI agent was careful not so obstruct Kent's view while he was watching television. "I thought that was rather polite," Kent says. "They let us come and go as we pleased. I remember we went out for lunch - Ivan too. Ivan seemed to be taking it very well. He didn't seem to be too overly concerned." Indeed, the doctor simply turned around and began his own investigation of the FBI. Sources say that Mindlin, in his uniquely audacious manner, hired a private investigator to follow special agent Noble.
But Michael Kent wasn't taking it very well at all. He had been detained by police only once before, he says. for driving with a loud muffler. "It's a bad crime in Goldsberg, Pennsylvania," he explained in a deposition. The night of the Vail raid he would return to Las Vegas so find she FBI raiding his condominium as well as the homes of his partners. Vacationing in Florida, Billy Walters and Billy Nelson were also raided that day. Clearly they were all in some sort of trouble. He says it struck him then how very little he knew about the group he had created.
One year earlier, special agent Thomas Noble had contacted Michael Kent about the check that had been endorsed by Dominic Spinale. At that time Kent had listened to Dr. Mindlin, who advised him not so worry. But, this matter of FBI raids was much more serious. At the advice of special agent Noble, Kent says he hired his own lawyer, separate from Mindlin. Kent was referred to attorney Steven Brooks in Boston. As Brooks learned more about she gambling operation, he urged Kent to take precautions that would protect him from Mindlin. "I would tell Ivan that I wanted to do things differently on the advice of my lawyer," Kent says. "Ivan would say, Oh, don't listen to him. What does he know? He's a schmuck.'"
Kent says he finally came so understand Mindlin's priorities. But Kent's attorney believes his client might still be loyal to Dr. Mindlin to this day, if not for the FBI's frightening raids five years ago. "Remember, Michael thought everything was fine back then." Brooks says. "He had no idea that he should suspect Mindlin of anything."
The Beard
Dale Conway says he was sitting as his desk, placing a bet over the phone from his Salt Lake home, when he stood to answer a knock at the door. In his driveway he could see a postal service truck. Conway opened the door to receive his mail and a man shouted, "FBI!" Suddenly, he claims, several G-Men came surging into his living room.
"They ran upstairs so where my boy David was playing in his room, Conway remembers. "He was just 12 years old. He's sitting on the floor playing. They knocked on the door and I guess he didn't answer quick enough, because they just busted the door down. The door's still all busted. I just left it like it was."
FBI records show that Dale Conway's telephones had been wiretapped prior to the Jan. 19, 1985 raid of his home. He says he had been making bets of $1,000 and less for Billy Walters, whom he met at a poker tournament in Las Vegas. "I don't see what's the big deal about betting on a ballgame," says Conway, 61, who has since been indicted for his part in the Computer Group.
The government seemed to believe that Dale Conway was much more than a simple gambler. In fact, Las Vegas Strike Force attorney Eric Johnson - who was acting as lead prosecutor in the case - flew to Salt Lake in May 1985 to plead that the government be allowed to retain as evidence $75,179 in cash seized in the January raid of Dale Conway. Johnson noted that Conway's money had been hidden in coat pockets and inside a box tied so a rope behind the furnace wall. "I don't think this is normal operating procedure for individuals who are trying to use their money in a legal manner," Johnson told the judge.
Johnson also said, "This is not your typical bookmaking operation, your Honor." And he said: "You're talking about over a thousand hours of tapes that have to be listened too. You're talking 216,000 pages of computer printouts that have to be reviewed." And he said: "We believe that bookmakers from coast to coast in a number of states have been involved in this. It's set up like a corporation. If your Honor would like, I can even show a chart demonstrating the vast complexity of this case."
The judge declined to view the chart. It was obvious that the strength of Eric Johnson's argument that day - and the strength of the case itself - was that the government was going to expose and arrest a national network of illegal bookmakers. Too many times to count, Eric Johnson referred to Dale Conway as a bookmaker. He said Conway was just one of the many bookmakers involved in this investigation. He made it sound as though, once the government had learned so make sense of all she information is had seized, it would become easier to apprehend and bring to justice all future bookmakers.
"This case is complex and mammoth in proportions," Johnson told U.S. District Judge Bruce S. Jenkins in Salt Lake that day.
The judge asked many questions, and listened to Eric Johnson's answers, and then he ordered that the $75,179 be returned, along with stock certificates and other seized monies. Five years later, Dale Conway wonders when the rest of his "bookmaking evidence" will be restored so him. "They even took my 12-year-old's Dungeons & Dragons game," says Conway, "I guess because there's dice in that game, they called its gambling device.'"
When this matter is settled, he'd appreciate it if someone from the FBI would come by to fix the door.
Project Layoff
Some new bookies were in town, and they wanted to meet Billy Walters. So he came to the Desert Inn for lunch. The year was 1984. Waiting for him at the Desert Inn were Walters' top associate, Glen Walker, and a common gambler known in town as Matius (Fat Matt) Marcus. There were also two other men whom Walters had never seen before. They introduced themselves as Danny Donnigan and John Cleary, though Glen Walker still wonders if those were real names. "I remember Danny Donnigan sitting there in his Brooks Brothers sweater," Walker says. "It didn't seem right. These guys just didn't fit in."
The two men turned their attentions to the kingpin Billy Walters, asking him many questions as they buttered their bread. Which is the most efficient method so establish a betting line? How does a fellow handle layoff bets? Basically they wanted Billy Walters to tell them how to become bookmaker.
Walters says he began by saying: "I'm not a bookmaker, but..." He gave them advice and drew them into further conversation, which is how he generally handles his suspicions. Later he asked to speak with Walker privately. Says Billy Walters: "I told Walker, I said. These guys aren't bookmakers. They don't know what they're talking about.' I told Walker I would have nothing so do with it."
In the parking lot Billy Walters says he found a Lincoln Mark IV with Louisiana plates. The two men had mentioned that they'd recently moved from Louisiana. Walters wrote down the license number and passed it onto a private detective. "Of course he couldn't trace it anywhere," Walters says. "So that was it for me. I had no association wish them whatsoever."
But Glen Walker could only envision pigeons and soft point spreads, easy money. He bet with the new bookmakers, and he was not the only one. Fat Mat and his preppy bookies were quickly able to establish business all over town. For all of their dumb innocence, they were very sure of themselves. Fat Matt could be found hanging out (literally) at Gary Austin's sports book on the strip, passing out business cards. He was so brazen that, had the thought had occurred to him, he might have placed an ad in the newspaper: "Fall Malt's Illegal Bookmakers! We Take Bets From Anyone!" Indeed, he and his partners showed no fear of the law whatsoever.
It is amusing now to imagine the strategy sessions held at FBI headquarters in Las Vegas in January 1985, after 11 phone conversations between Glen Walker and the Marcus Sports Service had been intercepted. Special agent Thomas Noble sprang into action! He assigned other agents to investigate the illegal bookmaking operation; intelligence filtered in. The Marcus' group had swelled into one of the largest illegal bookmaking operations in the country, grossing as much as $2 million a week in bets. Their clients included associates of New York Mafia boss "Fat Tony" Salerno, and Chicago racketeer Tony Spilotro, who was betting them for upwards of $50,000 per week. But Noble's chief interest in Matt Marcus was his association with the Computer Group.
"Intercepted conversations indicate that the Waiters-Walker bookmaking ring operation uses this [Marcus] bookmaking operation on a regular basis to place what are believed to be layoff bets in violation of Title 18. United States Code. Sections 1955, 162(c) and 1952(d)," wrote Noble in the FBI affidavit, before his men went after Matt Marcus and tried to shut him down.
And so, on Jan. 19, 1985, on the eve of the Super Bowl, several FBI rents raided the Marcus Sports service. Perhaps they even broke down some doors. Certainly their firearms were loaded and ready. They raided the illegal bookmakers like they had never been raided before. Meanwhile, the men who worked with Matt Marcus sat in chairs and crossed their legs, perhaps smirking to each other from time to time.
Undaunted by the FBI, the Marcus Spans Service continued to accept bets for several months more. Then one day a pair of angry bettors marched into the office and demanded money they thought they had coming. They might as well have tried to get a refund from, say, the Internal Revenue Service. In other words, they did not come away with their money. Nonetheless, they had guns. Real guns, loaded with real bullets. The men behind the Marcus Sports Service were scared almost to death. They closed down their office shortly thereafter and went back to the Foley Federal Building at 300 Las Vegas Blvd., where they resumed their normal duties as agents for, yes, the Internal Revenue Service. The Brooks Brothers colleagues of Fat Matt Marcus had been nothing more than governmental meter maids. The Marcus Sports Service was their brilliant "sting" operation, with which the IRS had hoped to catch Billy Walters and other gamblers.
It seems now that the IRS probably should have shared its plans with the FBI. Perhaps then this peculiar business of the FBI raiding the IRS could have been avoided. "We knew upfront about that," special agent Noble says today. "We knew what it was. If you look carefully at the warrants, you'll see that we knew. We don't operate in a vacuum."
The FBI now says that it went forward with the raid in order to give the IRS bookmaking operation more credibility in the streets. In layman's terms, one government agency raided another government agency in order to convince the criminals that the other government agency was not in fact a government agency, but was rather an illegal operation that happened to be run like a government agency.
When the Las Vegas Sun broke news of the IRS scheme, more than four years after its demise, Nevada's U.S. Senators, Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, asked to see the records and reports of the undercover bookmakers, to learn what good had come from the sting. In his reply, IRS Commissioner Frederick Goldberg informed the senators that the records of Project Layoff, as it was named, were no longer available. They had been "disposed of." Destroyed would have been a stronger term, and just as accurate. Goldberg was able to inform the senators that the project had operated at a loss of $577,770, which in 1985 amounted to the federal income taxes paid by 350 average Americans.
Among the losses were $75,000 in uncollected gambling debts. The rumor in Las Vegas is that these were accrued by the notorious Tony Spilotro who - as it turned out - was simply continuing his career of stiffing the IRS. A few months later, Spilotro was found buried in an Indiana cornfield, although no one believes the IRS would have anything to do with that - at least not as long as Tony was in red to the government for $75,000.
The IRS is facing two Congressional investigations, and its Nevada office has been shaken up severely. But it's not as if the 1R5 is going to have to go through a terrible punishment, like, say, an audit. "The IRS owed me something like $10,000 when I was done betting them," Glen Walker says sadly. "I asked if I could get it written off of my taxes."
The Gambler
Billy Walters moved to Las Vegas eight years ago with his family and his immense ego and very little else. He was worth more dead than alive, as they say. For too many years he had been operating a used-car dealership in his home state of Kentucky, and then gambling away the profits. In 1982 he plea-bargained to a misdemeanor bookmaking charge - possession of gambling records, it was called - and was sentenced to six month probation and a $1,000 fine. He was in debt to several bookmakers, and he could not command credit. At 35, into his third marriage, with an ill son who was supposed to have died years before, Billy Walters believed he had no alternative but move to Las Vegas, to be a full-time professional gambler, to lay all that he had on this one final hand.
Walters can pinpoint his problems from those days, now that he is worth millions of dollars. As recently as 1982, when he was preparing to leave Kentucky, he had lacked focus. He was a gambler, that was definite, but he had no idea how to gamble professionally. He wanted to win every single day. When he lost at the race track or when he lost betting games or when he lost playing poker or when he lost playing golf, he always felt compelled to get down another bet, to retrieve what he had lost that very day. He recalls an evening in Kentucky when he was pitching nickels with a friend. The wagers grew until Billy Walters had lost his house - his house, from pitching nickels.
Then he had to come home and tell his wife. "I'm not one to beat around the bush," he says. Standing now in his kitchen, head down, hands in pockets, he seems to be recreating the scene. "I just came home and said to her, Look, honey, I was pitching nickels with a guy today, and I lost the house. And we might have to move.'" They didn't have to move but it took Billy Walters a year and a half to pay off the mortgage incurred by the revolution of the five-cent coin. He kept the house, but he lost his wife. She left him. That was his second wife. "She couldn't take it. Fifteen times I've come home where I've lost every single penny we've got," he says, as if revealing a scar.
His father died when William Thurman Walters was not yet 2 years old, and his mother ran off, and his grandmother, who was a maid in Mufferville, Ky., left him under the supervision of his uncle each day. His uncle ran a pool hall. Billy Walters estimates that his first bet was made at the age of 5, when his uncle would assemble islands of Coke cases around a pool table so that the boy could reach the felt. As soon as he began to work, his grandmother charged him rent. He hustled pool, betting his rent money. He was not yet a teenager.
At 13 he moved back in with his mother, in Louisville. At 16 he had fathered a child and married the mother. Some morning he worked 4:30 till 7:30 at a bakery, some nights it was 3 to 11 at a gas station. Most days he went to school. Sometimes he ran a poker game - he was still just a teenager - in a house adjacent to Billy's Lounge. That marriage lasted one year. It's been much longer than a decade since he's seen his daughter.
His occupations have included newspaper boy, farmhand, shoe-shiner, baker, tobacco worker, foundry worker, painter, car dealer, realtor. To him, these were mere side jobs. In his mind he was a professional player - of pool, gin rummy, poker, blackjack, roulette, golf, the horses, whatever. He remarried and with his second wife had two sons, which has since led Billy Walters to decide that his own childhood was not so desperate. His oldest son, Scott, should have been dead at the age of 5.
"They said he had 30 days to live," Billy Walters says. "He had the tumor back behind the left eye, where they couldn't operate. After radiation they told us every day he was going to die. I stayed drunk the whole time. I was 26 at the time. It was the only thing in my life I wasn't able to handle. I neglected my business and my family and stayed drunk. After nine months I went back to running the business."
The business, he says, was a wholesale auto dealership in Louisville. "I earned $400,000 or $500,000 a year," says Walters, "but I never accumulated one dollar." Three years after his son had been diagnosed, Billy Walters was wed to his current wife, Susan, and she has been a wonderful partner. They will celebrate their 14th anniversary in September. She moved with him to Las Vegas in 1982 and served as his accountant when he began to move money for the Computer Group. She was indicted with him in January 1990 and expected to go to trial with him in November 1990, if the case got that far.
Walters says he went to work for Dr. Ivan Mindlin in 1983, making bets in Las Vegas and a few other territories. By then the Computer Group was four years old and churning out millions in profits each season. In return for his work, Walters received free use of the group's betting information. Because he didn't have to share his profits with others, he might have been earning more from the Computer Group than Michael Kent, the computer wizard who so naively trusted Dr. Mindlin.
For the first time in his life, Billy Walters was winning consistently and holding onto the money. He invested in real estate, fast food franchises and other ventures. His confidence was such that he could play golf matched for thousands of dollars. He even captured the 1986 Super Bowl of Poker in Lake Tahoe. There has been recent talk that he won more than $3 million in one day of roulette in Atlantic City. Apparently, Walters hired agents to take notes at the roulette tables, in attempt to locate "biases," or patterns, in the wheels. Sources at Caesars Palace say that after Walters beat them for more than $1 million in one sitting, the wheel was sent to NASA for an examination and dissection that revealed specific biases - but no for the numbers Walters had been playing. Nobody knows his secret, and he isn't saying, though he admits he has been barred from playing roulette in the major casinos.
Late in 1984, Walters' reputation had risen so high that he was invited to join the Computer Group on a percentage basis. In other words, he would share in profits with Michael Kent, Dr. Mindlin and other core members of the group. Walters continued to place additional bets for himself until January 1985, when the FBI raided the group of its records and cash, shutting down Walters for the remainder of the college basketball season. He complains about harassment by the FBI, saying it confiscated funds and refused to transfer them to the IRS to pay his taxes. He claims he is persecuted in part because the government loathes his attorney, Oscar Goodman, a colorful Las Vegas lawyer who has represented many mob figures.
"You've got to understand my position," he says. "After the government went through all the evidence, they decided not to prosecute us. For three years they tell us the case is dead. Then all of a sudden, two weeks before the statute of limitations is going to run out, they come back with these indictments. The day before we were indicted, my attorney (Goodman) tried to contact the Strike Force to say we would be willing to turn ourselves in. The Strike Force wouldn't return his calls. The next day they come barging into my house, drag me out of bed, put my wife in leg irons. I'm telling you, you don't believe it until you've gone through something like this, what the government can do to you."
Walters says he agreed to give this, his first interview, out of a feeling of desperation. He perceives himself to be a rare gambling success story - a man who was in debt before he came to Las Vegas. At 43, he wonders why he isn't put forth as a role model. "People look at us gamblers and say, You don't have a job like we do, you don't work 9 to 5, you have to be doing something wrong," he says. "I came to Las Vegas because it's the Wall Street of gambling. If you can get arrested for betting games here...well, let me just say I never would have dreamed that the things that have happened to me, with the FBI and the rest of it, could happen here."
Then he admits that his life could be much worse. Inviting a reporter upstairs, he visits with his son, Scott, 22, is no bigger than a 14-year-old, and outside the house he wears a cap or wig to cover the hair loss caused by his cancer treatments. He recently got his first job, as a busboy at the Horseshoe casino downtown. His father says he could be no prouder of his son. In this relationship the gambler is called "sir."
"Let's see those autographed baseballs of yours," Billy Walters says, and the two of them sit on the bed, reading the signatures of Scott's heroes.
The Mogul
At one time Irwin Molasky was vice president of Lorimar-Telepictures, which produced television shows ranging from "Dallas" to "The Waltons." Today, surrounded by his vast real estate holdings, he settles for being one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas. There he lives atop the Regency Towers, which stands like a castle overlooking Irwin Molasky's kingdom. At one time the Regency Towers was known as a high palace for the mob. Irwin Molasky would surely argue that this no longer is the case. Indeed, he commenced another debate over a piece of real estate in 1975, when the subject was his California resort Rancho La Costa. At that time, Penthouse magazine reported the La Costa was controlled by "mobsters," that it served as their "power center," and that it used "illegal profits" from "the mob's worldwide operations."
Molasky and his co-owner at La Costa, Merv Adelson, who at one time was chairman and chief executive at Lorimar, did not appreciate such unsavory allegations. So, they filed a $490 million libel suit against the magazine. The legal proceedings were drawn out over 10 years at a cost of $25 million, until Molasky and Adelson finally settle for an apology. A major booster of UNLV basketball, Molasky at 62 is highly image-conscious. It is important that he be recognized as a sober and legitimate businessman. And in fact, Molasky has never been charged with a crime.
Molasky's attorney, Stanley Hunterton, readily admits that his client enjoys betting on ballgames, as do thousands of his fellow residents Las Vegas, where is can be a legal and rather social activity. However, Dr. Ivan Mindlin was not interested in currying favor with thousands of legal bettors. He was interested mainly in Irwin Molasky.
For years, Dr. Mindlin had been pretending to be the brains behind the Computer Group, claiming to be the inventor of its unbeatable program for forecasting ballgames. It appears that Dr. Mindlin was never much more than an intermediary for the group, as his own attorney admits today. But Mindlin surely knew how to maximize his position. By sharing the group's betting information with Irwin Molasky, and making a winner out of Irwin Molasky, he became a friend of Irwin Molasky. When Dr. Mindlin needed help in the commodities business, who did he look to? Irwin Molasky, with whom he became partners in the purchase and sale of commodities, according to attorney Stan Hunterton.
Michael Kent, the mathematician who established the Computer Group's forecasts, recalls hearing Dr. Mindlin speak of Molasky in 1983-84. "From what I remember," says Kent, "let's say it was a situation where we had taken a team with 4 points. Well, for some reason that day, the team we took had jumped up to 5 points - which almost never happened. Usually when we took a team, the points went in our direction."
"I remember saying, `Shoot, it's too bad we didn't wait and get that team at 5.' And Mindlin said to me, `Don't worry - I'll go ahead and give the 4 to Molasky, and we'll go up and take the 5.'"
That day they sold their bets on the underdog at 4 points to Molasky. "It was a good deal for us," says Kent. "Molasky didn't know any better, so he wouldn't mind taking the 4. And we were able to use the money to bet on the 5, which was a better bet."
As the Computer Group investigation lay dormant from 1986-88, Molasky and everyone else using the group's information appeared safe from prosecution. Then, in 1988, the government began to resurrect its case. Molasky hired Hunterton, who says he had served as a special attorney within the Organized Crime Strike Forces for 10 years, until 1984. Hunterton acknowledges that he was involved in the early stages of the government's case against the Computer Group, approving requests made by FBI special agent Thomas Noble. But Hunterton denies the assertion, made by others in the group, that representing Molasky was a conflict of interest.
Using his contacts - which the attorney admits were the reason Molasky hired him - Hunterton reportedly was able to win immunity for Molasky, in return for his testimony before the grand jury. However, Molasky's testimony seems to have been a mere formality. "I've seen the (Computer Group) indictment," said Molasky's longtime attorney Sam Lionel, who worked with Hunterton on this case, "and it doesn't appear that anything he testified to had anything to do with what is contained in the indictment." Whatever the substance of his testimony might have been, his appearance before the grand jury ensured that he would be excluded from any indictment the panel might hand down.
Irwin Molasky's record as a law-abiding citizen was thus preserved, and his good name has been spared. However, some of the indicted members of the Computer Group think he may not be entirely finished with this business - not yet, anyway. If their case goes to trial in November, as scheduled, they plan to subpoena Molasky and question him vigorously, not only about his betting with Ivan Mindlin, but also regarding his attorney, Stanley Hunterton, who played both sides as effectively as anyone in the Computer Group ever had.
The Fall
After he had been raided by the FBI in January 1985, Michael Kent began to ask the kinds of questions he should have been raising long ago. So began the end of the Computer Group. He wanted to know how the group was run, and what became of his information after he gave it to Dr. Mindlin, and how much money his program actually was generating. His partners in the computer group informed Kent that his precious information was being shared with the outside world in ways that could only profit Mindlin. Here was Michael Kent, the mastermind, still living in his humdrum condo in Las Vegas, while Mindlin had homes in Vegas, Colorado and California.
Dr. Mindlin even seemed to profit from the FBI's raids. Kent alleges that when the raids shut down the group's activities six weeks into the 1984-85 college basketball season, Mindlin claimed the group had simply broken even on its bets to that point. Therefore, no profits would be paid to any members of the group. But when the FBI allowed Kent and others to review the seized records, Kent says he discovered that his group had earned a total of $1.6 million in those six weeks of basketball.
By 1986 Kent had hired a lawyer of his own, Steven Brooks of Boston, who advised him that many of his current practices with Dr. Mindlin were either illegal (such as Kent's failure to pay taxes) or inexplicable (his failure to oversee Mindlin's handling of the money). Kent says he tried to change the way he conducted business with Mindlin, but had little success.
Wary that he could not account for the actions of his partner, Michael Kent nonetheless kept trying to deal with Mindlin. He says he offered Mindlin exclusive rights to the computer forecasts for the 1987 college football season at a fee of $700,000. In return, Kent would tell Mindlin which teams to play and how much to bet, and Mindlin could keep all profits. However, Kent says, the forecasts lost money for Mindlin in the first week, at which point he canceled their agreement. Kent says he never received payment for his one week of service, which he valued at $35,650.
At this point Michael Kent was at the end of his rope. He had placed all of his trust in Dr. Mindlin. In return Mindlin had seemed to treat him like a son. The truth of their relationship, Kent now believed, was that he had been playing the fool to Mindlin for all these years.
In 1988 Michael and his brother John Kent filed a joint suit against Ivan Mindlin, demanding $589,719 in Computer Group profits and payment for services. They suspect that he owes them more, but in all likelihood they will never be able to prove it. At the same time, Michael Kent went to the FBI, admittedly to punish Mindlin. Kent agreed to explain what he knew about the Computer Group and turn over evidence. In exchange, he was granted immunity from prosecution.
Dr. Mindlin's attorney, Morris Goldings, was also representing Michael Kent when the FBI began its investigation in 1984. Today he accuses Kent of extortion. "Kent has admitted under oath that he told Dr. Mindlin, If you don't pay me the money you owe me, then I'm going to the feds with you.' That's the kind of guy Michael Kent is."
Indeed, Kent's lawsuit revived the government's interest in its dormant case against the Computer Group. "I don't blame Mike Kent at all for turning over to the government," Billy Walters says. "This was the only way he knew of to get even...Kent is a bright guy in mathematics. He knows numbers like nobody else. But he's absolutely dumb from a common-sense standpoint. Mindlin would tell Kent that he was betting, say, $5,000 when he was really betting $20,000. And Kent had no idea."
Yet Billy Walters admits that he too was fooled by Mindlin. Walters says he quit the group in the spring of 1986 when Mindlin refused to honor a $110,000 debt. "I knew from day one who I was dealing with, but never for a moment did I think the guy could steal money from me," Walters says. "I thought I was too important to the operation. I was the guy who moved the money."
By 1987, the Computer Group was dead, victim of a human virus. Vanity and greed had infected its affairs. The computer wizard, Michael Kent, was refusing to supply his information, and the gambler, Billy Walters, was refusing to move the money. Yet Dr. Mindlin was still in business. He hired Kent's friend, Mark Ricci, of all people, who in the 1970's had worked with Kent at Westinghouse. Mindlin's new group had its run of modest success, but it could not begin to compare with the impact he had made with the Computer Group. Indeed, the doctor was something of a tragic figure, broken by his own greed, devastated personally as well as professionally. While trying to recoup his relationship with Michael Kent, the doctor had engaged in a worldwide, yearlong search to find a cure for his only son, Gary Mindlin. In the end, he succumbed to a cancerous brain tumor, the same type from his Billy Walters's son had been so miraculously spared. Then another tragedy struck the Mindlin household. In 1988, the doctor's wife, Georgia Mindlin, died from respiratory failure consistent with an allergic reaction. The coroner found that she was probably allergic to penicillin - penicillin that she apparently received from her husband, the doctor.
The autopsy report indicated that Georgia Mindlin, 56, was suffering from a sore throat on March 19, 1988. Dr. Mindlin admitted to giving her 500 to 1000 milligrams of penicillin, which she took orally, after her evening meal.
Some 25 minutes later she told her husband that she wasn't feeling well. She got out of bed and collapsed, falling into cardiorespiratory arrest. The doctor called for an ambulance. The police arrived at 11:52 p.m. to find an emergency crew trying to save Georgia Mindlin. Police say that Dr. Mindlin attempted to revive his wife with a shot of adrenaline after her airway had closed off in reaction to the penicillin. "It's easily reversible with things like adrenaline if it happens before the airway closes," says Eagle County coroner Donna Meineke, who requested the autopsy of Georgia Mindlin. "But it (the injection) has to happen in minutes. Once the airway closes off, oxygen can't get to the brain."
Vail police lieutenant Corey Schmidt says he conducted his investigation of Georgia Mindlin's death without interviewing her husband. "I think he left town," says Schmidt, who declines to make his report public. "I didn't have a lot to go on, other than friends' and relatives' hunches that it (her death) was purposeful, but we couldn't nail it down."
Special agent Thomas Noble says that the FBI is looking into the death of Georgia Mindlin. "Once you read the coroner's report, it will be clear why we have an interest," he says. When Michael Kent was deposed last year for his lawsuit against Mindlin, the doctor's attorney questioned him repeatedly about the death of Georgia Mindlin. Kent admitted that the FBI had indeed asked him about it, but said he'd known little of her death - as little as he had known about Dr. Mindlin's betting activities with the Computer Group.
Lt. Schmidt is surprised to hear of the FBI's interest in Georgia Mindlin, considering that the Bureau never asked him for his report. "If they're doing something, why wouldn't they have contacted me?" he wonders.
As for his own probe, Schmidt says he found nothing more than the hunches of relatives to make him suspect foul play. He declares the investigation inactive. "We haven't had one since 1979," he says, referring to murder in Vail. "Not that we've been able to prove, anyway."
The End
His former colleagues say that Ivan Mindlin still has not given up. They say he works with a beard in Miami, using the same program Michael Kent developed 10 years ago.
Kent himself would be the first to warn his successors that the business is no longer so easy. Kent has formed a legal sports betting corporation with two partners - his brother John Kent and their friend, Mark Ricci, who stopped working for Mindlin in 1988. Their attorney, Steven Brooks, boasts that all profits of MJM Inc. (it stands for Michael, John, Mark) are reported to the IRS and that all bets are placed in full harmony with the law. In a recent deposition, Ricci estimated that their three-man betting group won $800,000 last year, which would have represented two good weeks for the Computer Group.
When Michael Kent was a mere centerfielder, trying to decipher the strengths and weaknesses of his softball team at Westinghouse 18 years ago, there was no real computer science in sport. Kent was at the leading edge of all that. Today every statistic is calibrated, measured. Every human decision can be backed by numbers. Michael Kent was among the first to find reason within the numbers.
In November, if all goes as planned - and there is nothing in the history of this case to suggest that it will - his partners will be reunited in the courtroom once more (Kent himself was granted immunity.) Though Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Johnson was the lead prosecutor in the government's investigation of the Computer Group five years ago, and though his name is listed atop the Jan. 4 indictment, he will not be in charge of the case when it comes to trial. At that critical point, the six-year case will be handled by Jane Hawkins, even though she has been an Assistant U.S. Attorney for less than two years. As a matter of fact, when Eric Johnson was leading the Computer Group investigation in 1985, Jane Hawkins was a humble clerk for Judge Lloyd D. George, before whom - and a fine coincidence this is - she will be trying the case.
"That may have been the smartest thing Eric has ever done, getting himself away from this thing," admits FBI special agent Thomas Noble.
Abandoned now by all the others who have worked on this case, Noble seems to be hanging out to dry. He works for the FBI out of Chicago these days, his reputation stained. For six quixotic years he led the chase after the Computer Group in the belief that it was the largest bookmaking operation in the country. Following Noble's lead, the FBI obtained wiretaps on the group's telephones for five months, until there existed more than 1,500 hours of taped conversation, which then had to be laboriously reviewed and transcribed. He requested and was granted the aid of special agents to follow the group's actions all over the nation. He provided information that resulted in raids of 45 homes or offices in 16 states. He requested a raid of the Internal Revenue Service. (But he knew what he was doing!) He oversaw the seizure of evidence by the truckload: bank checks, the origins of which had to be traced, hundreds of thousands of dollars with serial numbers that demanded verification, gambling ledgers that had to be interpreted, not to mention 216,000 pages of computer printouts, incomprehensible to all but Michael Kent. There were 89 boxes of evidence in government storage, much of it still there today. Then there was the matter of dealing with this vast array of people. Every man and woman raided had a lawyer demanding appeasement. The government sent Eric Johnson and other attorneys to various sites, defending the FBI's right to retain evidence, including large amounts of cash. It is no easy thing to capture a group of criminals these days.
Thomas Noble still maintains his firm belief that the Computer Group was a criminal enterprise worthy of prosecution. But at what cost? If a bill could be brought before the taxpayers, the price of this investigation might total $1 million, which does not include the $577,770 lost by the IRS in its parallel attempt to capture the group.
Then, in January, after six years of investigation and review, after the case had been opened and shut and opened again, the indictments at long last came down in Las Vegas. Nineteen men and women were placed under arrest. Each was charged with up to 120 counts of conspiracy, gambling and racketeering, related to their obvious use of the telephone to place bets and exchange betting information across state lines.
There was no charge of bookmaking.
No bookmaking.
So the government admits, at last, that the Computer Group simply was betting on games. If not for Ivan Mindlin's careless association with a petty hoodlum, there might never have been a FBI inquiry. But the inquiry began, and it was extended into the next decade by innuendo and intrigue, and by Thomas Noble's desire to understand how these people were earning so much money.
Six years with Big Brother has not cured the Computer Group of its addiction to gambling. Of the 19 who were indicted in January, most are still gamblers. Like deposed heads of state, they await trial while the system grinds on without them. In Las Vegas, all the top betting operations now have access to their own Michael Kents. They hire their Billy Walters to move the money on a national level. Aided by their Glen Walkers and Dale Conways and Arnie Haaheims, they flood the market and try to manipulate the line. In all of the Vegas sports books there are agents for the betting combines, soldiers armed with cellular phones and beepers, waiting for instructions. For all their vast organization, these modern brokers of sports bets will never match the sensation created by their forefathers, who, not 10 years ago, were sophisticated enough to beat the linemakers at their own game.
Their legacy was to ruin the game for all who might try to duplicate their success, including themselves.
"Next year," says Michael Roxborough, an official linemaker in Las Vegas, "we've got a new computer program that's going to help us make a better line."
June 6, 1990
The National Sports Daily
The Arrests
He was in the bed sleeping when the two men walked into his bedroom. Billy Walters sleeps in a big clean bed in Las Vegas, in a small but elaborate home renovated to his liking, with palm trees and white flowerpots and two satellite dishes in the yard, and four large televisions in the den, and a security guard who sits just out of sight behind the shrubs across the street. This environment was disrupted early last Jan. 5, when the two strangers introduced themselves to Billy Walters with all the subtlety of an alarm clock. He greeted them by sitting up in the bed, blinking. His wife wasn't in the bed with him. They already had her, probably.
"You're going to have to get dressed," one man said. Billy Walters reached down for the pile of wrinkled clothes he had worn the night before. The room was quiet. The men watched him dress.
"We don't like to have to do this to you," the other man said.
His wife Susan was downstairs with a third man in the kitchen. There was not a lot of chit-chat. Susan and Billy Walters were led across their fine, trimmed yard in handcuffs. The path to law and order wended past a copy of the daily newspaper, which lay on their driveway like an upturned headstone. As Billy Walters glanced down at the headline, he realized that he was the front-page news:
INDICTMENTS TARGET BETTING GROUP IN LAS VEGAS
As he tells it, what steams Billy Walters most of all was the sight later that day of his pretty wife in leg irons, chains scraping the floor as she staggered toward him. Afterward, when they had been released without bail, she revealed how the manacles had eaten through her stockings.
Seventeen days later Billy Walters and 16 associates held the first meeting of the legendary Computer Group. This was a celebrated occasion in gambling history, and long overdue. The men and women of the Computer Group had been pioneers in their field. All the Computer Group did, apparently, was wager money on college football and basketball games, but for five hysterical years they did it better than anyone else ever had. It was almost as if they had invented junk bonds. Every season the cash arrived by the millions, all because their computer told them which teams should be favored to win everything from the mammoth Ohio State-Michigan football game to the basket-ball game pitting Monmouth against Fairleigh Dickinson. The Computer Group did not fix games. It simply understood them.
The group began to assert its mastery of sports betting in 1980, when the computer as an everyday machine had no firm place in sports. Most of the big Las Vegas players of 1980 were still relying on their own good sense and whatever trends they could pick up. A computer seemed to them a gimmick from the future, a big blinking queen-bee serviced by men in white coats. There were relatively few of these "personal computers" that are everywhere today. As a matter of fact, the Computer Group didn't even own its own computer. Until 1983. the group settled for renting time on a computer 2,400 miles away in Rockville, Md. As for the group's invaluable program, it was maintained on thousands of clumsy old "batch" cards, kept in shoeboxes, then fed to the computer like hay into a thrasher.
Although dozens of workers served the Computer Group, only one man communicated with the machine itself. He was Michael Kent, a 34-year-old mathematician who had spent II years helping to develop nuclear submarines for Westinghouse. He found such work boring. In 1979 he quit his job and moved to Las Vegas, to bet on football games. In 1980 he became partners with a man he hardly knew, an orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Ivan Mindlin, who Kent says agreed to place bets for them on a 50-50 basis, in accordance with his computerized forecasts. In the 1980 season the computer wizard and the doctor shared winnings of $100,000 playing college football. By 1983 they were winning almost $1 million in one week of college football - or, at least, that's what Michael Kent was told. He never bothered to check the books.
By then Dr. Mindlin had built their little corner business into something resembling a national conglomerate, which had opened betting offices staffed by a dozen employees in New York and Las Vegas. The Computer Group had burgeoned into the first truly national network of sports bettors, able to buy up the best point spreads from coast to coast. At the height of its powers, the Computer Group of 1983-85 wielded more influence over the millions of Americans who bet on sports than any superstar athlete or Super Bowl franchise. Yes, it was even more important than the split-fingered fastball. In its sleekest moments, the Computer Group had as grand an effect upon its constituency in the 1980s as OPEC had upon American consumers in the 70s.
As its influence grew, the Computer Group became something of an underground social club, extending an unofficial membership to at least one smalltime hoodlum, as well as sharing information with the likes of lrwin Molasky, the powerful real estate developer and Las Vegas civic leader.
Profits were staggering. The group never had a losing season betting on college football or college basketball. According to figures compiled recently by Michael Kent, the Computer Group in 1983-84 earned almost $5 million from wagers on college and, occasionally, NFL games. Yet Michael Kent suspects that his records are incomplete. They do not account for personal bets made by Dr. Mindlin, or Billy Walters, or by the dozens of other associates who had access to the Computer Group's information. By the time everyone had exhausted Kent's forecasts in the 1983-84 sports year, they might easily have earned 110 million, perhaps $15 million. Perhaps more.
"When you worked it down all the way to the bottom," says Billy Walters, "it might have been 1,000 people using our information."
Finally, in 1987, success got the best of them. They had to break up, just like the Beatles. Despite all the time they had spent working together, the members of the Computer Group had never really known one another. In most cases they had spoken only by phone, in staccato conversation, using code names. Faces rarely had been attached to voices. And so, as their legend had grown in recent years, it was only proper that these reclusive celebrities be united last Jan. 22 in Las Vegas, to shake hands and wonder where all the time had gone, as 17 of them assembled in Courtroom No. 4 of the Foley Federal Building, awaiting their arraignment on 120 counts of conspiracy, gambling, and racketeering charges.
Among these Garbos there were two their partners most wanted to see: Billy Walters, gambler of gamblers, who had come to Las Vegas in debt and was now a millionaire; and the treacherous doctor, Ivan Mindlin, whose cunning had built the group up-and then led to its demise.
On the day they were arrested, just two weeks before the five-year statute of limitations on their case would have run out, Billy Walters sat in a holding cell with Dr. Mindlin and a third member of the group, Billy Nelson. Dr. Mindlin wore his hair longer than Walters remembered - combed back, until it splashed against his shoulders. The three of them were discussing their contempt for the FBI, and, in particular, the ambitious special agent Thomas B. Noble, whose investigation of six years had uncovered so very little. Walters and Nelson went back and forth in their denigration of Noble, using many unpleasant terms, until finally the doctor spoke up. Walters recalls Mindlin saying: "Yeah, and can you believe that S.O.B. told two people that, if they'd tell him how I killed my wife, he'd go easier on them?"
Now, in the courtroom 17 days later, his former colleagues whispered about Dr. Mindlin. He was the most intriguing presence among them. Yet he sat alone in a corner, as if he were the least popular boy in school.
In groups of four they were called to the bench of U.S. Magistrate Robert Johnston. Dr. Mindlin's was the first name called. Each man and woman was asked about his or her education, and it turned out that all had attended college, with the exception of Billy Walters. Then the magistrate wanted to know how they intended to plead.
"Not guilty," each of them said.
"Not guilty," the magistrate repealed each time, a little sarcastically. He then proceeded to set all the gamblers free, on their own recognizance, and several of them hurried back to their homes, for there were games that night, and wagers to be made.
The Operation
In a room alone, just he and his computer, Michael Kent was simply another technology dweeb. But plug him into a network of bettors, and now, with the flick of a switch, Kent was utterly brilliant, a mastermind. These dozens of betting agents, or beards, as they are called, were as essential to Michael Kent as the electrical juice that drove his computer. He could not begin to succeed without them. And so, each day, without equivocation, he turned over his forecasts of the upcoming games to Dr. Ivan Mindlin, who then passed them on to his New York partners, Stanley Tomchin and Jimmy Evart, who, until 1984, were responsible for placing the majority of wagers for the Computer Group.
Dr. Mindlin had been making personal bets through Tomchin and Evart long before the Computer Group was formed. According to a partner in the group, Mindlin had built up a debt of some $100,000 to Tomchin and Evart when Michael Kent came along in 1980. By offering Kent's computer information to them, Mindlin was able to work off his debt quickly.
Tomchin and Evart were so impressed with the accuracy of Dr. Mindlin's information that they agreed to move money for him on a regular basis. Their colleagues describe Tomchin and Evart as a pair of Ivy Leaguers, more erudite than the normal gamblers. Tomchin, a Cornell alumnus, was a world-class backgammon and poker player; his friend Jimmy (Sneakers) Evart was said to have attended Harvard. Tomchin and Evart were well known in New York gambling circles as the "Computer Kids."
In 1983, when Billy Walters began making bets for the Computer Group, he often received his orders from Tomchin and Evart. The Group's main betting pool was wagering $40 million per year, but all the action in the world could not sustain Evart's interest. His newlywed wife insisted that he stop gambling, and so, in 1984, he walked away from the money and moved to Spain. According to a former partner, Tomchin moved to San Francisco and eventually left the group. His former partners say he is now an options trader in Santa Barbara. Tomchin declined to answer questions in connection with this story.
The Computer Group foundered in Evart's absence until October 1984, when Dr. Mindlin offered Billy Walters a percentage of the group's winnings and placed him in charge of moving the weekly millions. At that time Walters worked out of a lovely three-bedroom home overlooking the eighth fairway at the Las Vegas Country Club, Indeed, Billy Walters wore clothes suggesting that he had been called in from the golf course. His gray speckled hair was styled straight back. away from his thin face. its expression creased by the transitions of gambling, from sadness to happiness and then back again. His face was older than his body. He was always thinking about work. He had been assigned (he enormous responsibility of exploiting the weakest betting lines, and it did not matter where they were. Billy Walters was supposed to find them. and where they failed to exist, he was expected to create them.
He was a powerful broker in an unregulated industry. Walters blanketed the country with bets, taking action wherever it was available, which was at times in as many as 45 states. In 44 of them he dealt exclusively with illegal bookmakers. To help bear that burden he hired six people to work for him in Las Vegas, at a salary of no more than $700 per week, plus the occasional bonus. His wife served as an accountant, but he depended most upon his young assistant, Glen Walker, who had quit his job in the publicity department at NBC Sports in New York and relocated to Las Vegas, so enthralled was he by a 1980 story in Sports Illustrated about Las Vegas gambler Gary Austin. "That copy of Sports Illustrated changed my life," Walker says today.
Billy Walters maintained a low profile in Las Vegas. If he appeared at a sports book it was usually around midnight. when he might come to open a betting account with $100,000 or more in cash - however much he could fit in a Famous Amos Cookies bag. As for more public matters, he preferred that business be conducted by Glen Walker. So Walker would visit the Las Vegas sports books each day, to settle up or place bets, and fend off the legions of bettors who wanted to know which games the computer liked that week. He worked with three other group employees at the "C&B Collection Agency," which was a front for their betting operation. His colleagues would meet there, at an office park on Spring Mountain Road, when they weren't moving money out of Billy Walters' house.
Perhaps Walters' favorite employee was gentle Arnie Haaheim, a big bright laughing man who was unable to mask his tremendous emotions. He liked women - liked to talk about them, actually, until he was all talked out. Then, says Walker, Arnie would stare off, leaning on his elbow, as passive as a solar cell at dusk. All around him phones were ringing and money was being wagered in thick sexy wads, but Arena would just sit there, his jaw hanging open while Billy Walters shouted orders.
By and large, though, there was little humor in their work. On a Saturday of college basketball they might bet 60 games, which required that they be aware of every injury, casualty and rumor surrounding all 120 teams. They had to chart the movement of the point spreads in various sports books for each game. They had to find the weakest lines, and they had to make and keep track of their wagers by the hundreds. They worked almost every day from September through March. Some days they would start at 6 a.m. and finish at midnight. Always Walters felt obliged to protect the Computer's information from the public, because these numbers were as valuable to him personally as they were to the group. His employees never even heard mention of the name Ivan Mindlin. The voice delivering the daily betting orders was known only as "Doc" or "Cowboy," and Billy Walters would say nothing more to identify him.
Occasionally, however, it paid to be careless. On a Wednesday afternoon, ever so casually, Billy Walters might tell Glen Walker to make a call over to the old Gary Austin Sports Book on the strip. "We want to lay $30,000 on Wisconsin giving 3 to Purdue," Billy Walters would tell him.
Walters knew that several wise guys would be passing time near the counter at Gary Austin's. And they would notice that the line favoring Wisconsin over Purdue would rise to 3 1/2 points. And they would ask who was responsible for moving the line, and they would be told the truth: That $30,000 had just been laid by the computer. And then …
The wise guys would bet on Wisconsin themselves. These wise guys would whisper to other wise guys. Tout services would hear that the computer liked Wisconsin. A run would begin on Wisconsin. News of Wisconsin would spread nationally. By the time word reached the man in Louisiana or the woman in Illinois, there would be no mention of the Computer Group. They would simply be told that they had better get something down on Wisconsin. You can see now that the betting market in Las Vegas is no different than Wall Street. Fed by rumor, speculation and greed, a stock like Wisconsin can grow hot for no substantial reason.
By Thursday or Friday, Wisconsin might be inflated to a 5-point favorite, 5 1/2 in some markets. At this point Billy Walters believed the price could rise no higher, and so he would marshal his forces: "Open order on Purdue taking 5!" In moments, they would be on their speed-dial phones, reaching every available source nationwide, betting as much as they could wherever Purdue was a 5-point underdog. They were a frantic yet focused group inside the "C&B Collection Agency," attempting to flood all the markets simultaneously, before the point spread could drop. Into one phone they would shout a few words and then hang up while dialing another number on another phone, back and forth, until they were frazzled. In two minutes Walters alone could place bets through a dozen beards or bookies.
So: On Wednesday they'd bet against Purdue. to lower its value in the market. Now on Friday they were buying as much Purdue as they could, a grand total of $1 million or more. And wouldn't you know it: Sometimes Wisconsin would beat Purdue by 4 and the Computer Group would win the "middle" - bets on both teams paying off in the same game.
Now and then, Billy Walters fooled his own employees. Glen Walker recalls more than one occasion when Arena Haaheim laid his own money on the first team (in this case Wisconsin) only to find out later in the week that the Computer had preferred the opponent (Purdue) all along. On Saturday they would sit in Billy Walters home and watch the game on television. "Arena, what's the matter?" Walters would say. "I don't see you cheering over there."
No betting operation bad ever controlled the market on such a synchronized and national level, but Billy Walters admits, he didn't always have his way so easily. "There were other times I bet $130,000 or $140,000 just to move the line," he says in his low Kentucky drawl. "One thing about the public, they'll follow anybody as long as you're picking winners,"
Because they pay a 10% service fee to the house on all losing bets, professional gamblers have to win 52.38% of their games just to break even. Records of the 1983 college football season seized from Dr. Mindlin show that the Computer Group won an incredible 60.3% of its games against the spread. The Computer Group's main betting pool began that season in September with a $1.1 million line of credit, and concluded Jan. 2 with $5 million cash.
Of course, in those days the official point spread was softer than mayonnaise. The mathematical wizard Michael Kent admits that the Computer Group might never have risen to prominence if not for the removal of Bob Martin, who since 1967 had been making the official line for Las Vegas. However, in 1980, Martin was sentenced to 13 months for the crime of transmitting wagering information across state lines by telephone. If the federal government had not gotten rid of Bob Martin, then the FBI might never have felt compelled to spend six long years investigating the Computer Group.
More often than not, Michael Kent's line was more accurate than the official line in Las Vegas. Line-makers will argue that the only purpose of their official line is to entice betting action on both sides, that they are not responsible for outsmarting experts like Michael Kent. Nonetheless, the people who were making that line in the early 1980s were a particularly feeble lot.
Other gamblers noticed the same weaknesses, but they couldn't take advantage to the same extent as the Computer Group. "They had some amateurs setting the line at that time, and the line was very weak," says Lem Banker, whose nationally syndicated newspaper column made him perhaps the most famous gambler in Las Vegas. "It was a good opportunity to win, and a lot of people did."
Greater than any individual, the mysterious Computer Group emerged as the prominent voice in Las Vegas, much like a Wizard in Oz. "When a handicapper gets going good, a 'following' phenomena goes into effect," says Michael (Roxy) Roxborough, now the top Las Vegas linemaker, whose services are purchased by 35 sports books. "A game might open at 3 [points], and the followers raise it up to a 6. With these computer guys, every time a game moved, they were the ones credited with moving it, whether they did it or not. Their legend may be larger than they actually were."
The top gambling rings today use the Computer Group as their model. In Las Vegas, a classroom genius like Michael Kent has to depend entirely upon someone like Billy Walters, who was educated in alleys. "There is no gambler's college," Walters says. "Everything I know, I learned the hard way. Now, how do I know when the spread has risen as high as it's going to get? I have to depend upon my years of experience. I use my feel and the information I get from my contacts around the country to decide when I should bet and when to back off."
Sitting at his desk each day, Billy Walters based his decisions upon numbers he wrote on two pieces of paper. On one page was a list of point spreads compiled by Michael Kent's computer. In the case of Wisconsin at Purdue, Kent might have decided: Purdue -I over Wisconsin. On the second page Billy Walters was keeping track of the official lines at various sports books in Las Vegas. Wherever he could find a difference of I '/2 points between the Computer Group's line and the official Las Vegas line, he would bet on that game. If the official line decided: Wisconsin -5 over Purdue, then what Billy Walters had here was a massive 6-point difference of opinion. In such a case he might bet $1 million on that game. The greater the difference, the more he would bet (see box, p.40).
So confident was the Computer Group that its weekly wagers often exceeded the ceiling of its betting pool. According to ledgers seized by the FBI, Michael Kent's group in one week wagered $4,571,050 on college basketball games alone - more than twice as much as its reservoir in the pool at that time. Including the college bowl games and the NFL play-offs. the group bet more than $5.5 million that week, turning a profit of almost $700,000.
And that represented the work of Michael Kent's tiny group. Dozens of other bettors had access to his information. Who knows how much additional revenue they earned?
Billy Walters claims that he gambled more than $500,000 of his own money each week with the help of computer information. He is just one of many big winners whose profits do not appear on the group's ledgers.
Even though he tried to gamble like the button-down brokers on Wall Street, Walters admits that he too fell victim to the occasional betting frenzy. During the Christmas holidays six years ago, Walters found he was betting hand over fist on Michigan in the Sugar Bowl against Auburn. It was one of those rare times when the tout services were opposing the computer on a major game. No matter how much Billy Walters bet on Michigan for the Computer Group and for himself, the line remained the same. The public kept laying money on Auburn, giving 41/2 points.
"I kept betting on the game, and the line kept coming back, so I just kept betting," Walters says. "I guess I got a little carried away. I had more than $1 million on that game. I literally bet my entire net worth on that game, and probably some additional."
Trailing 7-6 in the fourth quarter, Auburn took possession at its 39 with 7:44 left. If Auburn scored a touch-down to cover, Billy Walters would lose $1 million. But Auburn kicked a 19-yard field goal to win, 9-7, and Billy Walters is today a rich genius.
The Computer Wizard
One day Michael Kent, who was the centerfielder, got to wondering about his company softball team. How good were he and his teammates, really? When they destroyed a poor opponent by 15-4, was that as impressive as beating a good team by 6-5? His team had won a couple of league championships, but what had they really accomplished? All his life he had found answers to such questions in numbers, statistics. He simply had to find out what those numbers meant. What was the numerical definition of a good softball team?
His thoughts drifted naturally in this direction. Kent was a 27-year-old math-' mathematician at Westinghouse in suburban Pittsburgh. Every day he worked with computers. to help design a better nuclear sub. At night, he says. he began to formulate a computer program that rated the strength of his softball team. Each week he would update the statistics, then feed the information into the high-speed Control Data computer at Westinghouse. His teammates were interested in this output of statistics - it was flattering to them - but Michael Kent ultimately was disappointed by the results. When (he work was done he had a printout listing his team's strengths and weaknesses. So what? He had given order to these numbers, but there was no application, no further use for them.
He says he began work on a more complex program. The game was college football. This time he could foresee a dollar sign in front of the numbers. The year was 1972. He recorded information from old NCAA football guides, which list the scores and statistics from the previous season. Then he visited the library, the old newspapers in particular, in order to see which teams had been favored each week, and by how many points. He examined the spreads and the slats. attempting to find a correlation. Which statistics, he wanted to know. were important in assigning a point spread?
He knew of only one way to find out. He began to write a program. The computer would ask hundreds of questions in algorithmic. pinpointing strengths and weaknesses for each team. As his wealth of information grew, Kent learned that some strengths were more important than others. There was a value to first downs and there was another value to yards gained. Home-field advantage had a value. So did strength of schedule. So did success against common opponents. The list of questions went on and on, some so picayune that the average football fan might have laughed in the face of this stocky, bespectacled mathematician. Billy Walters believes that the program even accounted for the distance of the visiting team's road trip.
The hobby soon became his vocation. He began to test his model by placing bets with local bookies. He says he worked an average of two hours per night over the course of seven years, fine-tuning his football program and developing a similar program for college basketball, until one morning he walked into the plant and quit his job. He was very quiet about it. Only his closest friends were informed of his plans. He moved to Las Vegas in lime for the 1979 college football season. For the last seven years he had been saving his money, to wager on football and basketball games. Still, when he looked in the mirror, it was a hard thing to believe, that the person staring back at him was a professional gambler.
When Michael Kent arrived in Las Vegas, he clearly was on his own. No gambler of note was depending solely upon a computer to analyze bets. Allow yourself to go broke because of a machine? That was crazy thinking. But Michael Kent didn't know anything about Las Vegas common sense. He was from Pennsylvania. He wanted to know where he should do his laundry. On a daily basis he wanted to bet as many games as he could, whenever he perceived the slightest 1 1/2 point advantage, and this was more crazy thinking. Common sense in Las Vegas said that you couldn't win big by betting a lot of games. You should concentrate on just a few games. That's what common sense said. Michael Kent didn't know about that, either. Most of what he knew about this business was contained in a book called Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic, by Richard A. Epstein. Chapter 2 told him the percentage of his money he should bet, depending upon how much he liked the game. The book was written in the language of numbers. Michael Kent wanted to meet this man Epstein.
The job of betting sports fulltime was a little harder than he had imagined. Kent would wake up early, update his information from the morning newspapers. tap into the Control Data computer on which he was renting time, and establish a belting line for each game. Then he and a friend would spend the rest of the day and night visiting sports books and private bookmakers, seeking out the most favorable point spreads. He was not instantly successful.
"That first football season was curious," Kent recalls, speaking by phone from Las Vegas, under the supervision of his attorney, Steven Brooks of Boston. "l started real well. Then in midseason, there were five big games, and I lost all five by a point, by a half-point. by a missed field goal. All crazy things. It put me down. and for the rest of the year I'd lose every week."
According to his records, he lost $40.000 that football season. His bad luck continued two months into the basketball season.
"I was getting killed," he says. "I was at the point where I was debating what my future was going to be. Then, I remember, there were 17 games I was betting one night, and I won 16 of the 17. That was a definite high. to get me back on the plus-side."
He found that betting the games was an awesome responsibility. It was not an easy thing to settle up with a bookmaker after each round of bets, carrying huge bundles of cash in and out of public places. Whenever he had a lot of money on him, he feared he was being followed. If he happened to notice two men walking behind him on the sidewalk, he would run as fast as he could into the nearest casino, and stand near a security guard for a while. Of course, this only drew more attention to himself. He asked security guards to escort him to his car whenever feasible. He also depended heavily upon valet parking. He didn't like the idea of carrying 150.000 into a dark garage. Valet parking was much safer. He didn't know how to just be cool about it. He couldn't chill out. He was working 80 hours a week in the strangest city in America and he was always worrying. He won $150.000 betting college basketball in 1979-80, but it was a terrible way to live.
He gave betting one last try for a football month in the fall of 1980. Exhausted, with no alternative but to go home, he says he placed a call to Dr. Ivan Mindlin. He had met the doctor once before. In 1979, while playing tennis with fellow gambler Billy Nelson, Michael Kent had mentioned his use of a computer in betting. Nelson had said that Kent should meet this Dr. Mindlin. "I thought they could help each other," Nelson said in a deposition year.
They seemed to understand each other. When Kent arrived at Mindlin's house on Ottawa Drive, the doctor explained that. quite ironically, he had been attempting to forecast major league baseball games by use of a computer program. When Michael Kent heard this in 1979, he felt almost as if Dr. Mindlin was a brother. In 1980, when they began to work as a team, he came to think of Dr. Mindlin as a father. Later Dr. Mindlin would place his arm around Michael Kent and say that they were, as gamblers, married to each other.
Years later, Kent's attorney marvels at the hypnotic grip Dr. Mindlin maintained over his brilliant yet woefully naive client. Says Steven Brooks, "I would sit down with Michael for hours, discussing different parts of his arrangement with Dr. Mindlin. and I would say: 'Why did you do this?' And he would say, 1 don't know.' It was incredible. He didn't know why they were doing anything. He just trusted Ivan completely."
In 1982 Michael invited his older brother John Kent to mow-to Las Vegas. Michael taught John how to feed data to the computer, training John to work for the Computer Group. Later, Michael would invite another brother, and even his mother, into the betting pool. Michael's success provided wonderful experiences for all of the Kents. Michael was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each season. and he wasn't even paying taxes on it. He was depositing his winnings with banks in the Bahamas and Switzerland, the same banks that Dr. Mindlin was using, according to Kent.
Only in the last few years did Michael Kent begin to understand the full extent of his creation. As far as he knew, the Computer Group consisted of himself, members of his family. Dr. Mindlin and a few others who helped them make bets. From 1980 through January 1985, he figured that his group had wagered close to $140 million and turned a profit $14 million. The idea that his information was earning two or three times that much without him getting his fair share ... well. he never really came to grips with the possibility that anything unethical could come of his work.
While other regular players in Las Vegas schemed and flattered Dr. Mindlin in their vain attempts to gain access to the Computer Group's information, Michael Kent walked freely through town, blissfully anonymous, unaffected and ingenuous, the neon reflecting from his glasses.
The Doctor
His enemies, who are many, exult in spreading rumors that portray Ivan Mindlin as a doctor ruined by his gambling. They say that he would listen to baseball games while performing surgery to the detriment of his patients, and that he would leave the operating room to gather up the scores. In reality, Dr. Mindlin enjoys an excellent reputation as an orthopedic surgeon, according to three respected Las Vegas attorneys who specialize in medical cases - all of whom approved Mindlin to give objective medical examinations for use in court cases. "A doctor would have to be highly thought of to be approved by both sides in a case," says attorney Bruce Alverson, who lauds Dr. Mindlin. Attorney Neil Galatz expresses sadness over Mindlin's recent legal troubles with the Computer Group. "It's a shame," he says, "because he was a fine doctor."
Lem Banker, the famous sports bettor, says he has been a friend of Dr. Mindlin's for 30 years, since he served as house physician for hotels on the Las Vegas strip. "He was my doctor," says Banker. "I actually showed him some of the finer points of handicapping. Sometimes we'd stop into the hotels and go partners, shooting craps. I had a lot of respect for his mind."
Though the doctor reportedly had a good run playing the horses, one of his partners says that Mindlin was a loser betting on ballgames - that by1980, the doctor had run up a $100,000 debt to a pair of New York bettors, Stanley Tomchin and Jimmy Evart. Dr. Mindlin was able to work off that debt in October 1980, when Michael Kent dropped by (like manna from heaven) to discuss his computer program for handicapping football and basketball games.
As he spoke, Michael Kent could not have been very impressive to a man like Ivan Mindlin. Kent was something of a Lt. Colombo in that regard. He did not speak elegantly. He wore drab clothes. He said he had grown up in Chicago as a Cubs fan. And he looked like a Chicago Cubs fan, just in from the bleachers. To Dr. Mindlin he must have looked like a pigeon, with a beard and glasses.
Kent said he had grown weary of betting the games himself. What really tired him, he said with all sincerity, was having to deal with such large amounts of money. The chores of betting were wearing him out. He says he and Dr. Mindlin agreed: Kent forecasts the games, Mindlin makes the bets, and they split the winnings 50-50.
With their handshake, the Computer Group was formed. And from that day forward, Dr. Mindlin took it upon himself to insulate Michael Kent from the outside world, just as Kent had wished. Kent was left alone to work with the numbers, while Mindlin took care of the streets. Mindlin apparently loved the streets, where he was deemed something of a Renaissance man, a street-smart manager who knew how to move truckloads of money and an intellectual genius as well. As time went on and the group's profits soared, he began to take more and more credit, until it was common knowledge throughout Las Vegas that he - Dr. Ivan Mindlin - was the inventor of the Computer Group's invaluable program.
In March 1986. Sports Illustrated became the first national publication to report the story of the Computer Group. Dr. Ivan Mindlin explained to the magazine that he had taught himself computer programming while serving on the faculty at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, N.J., the first hospital in the country to have an IBM computerized record-keeping system. Mindlin told an intricate tale, of how he'd run 25,000 past college basketball games through computer services from coast to coast so see how accurate the pregame spreads were against the final score. The magazine reported that Mindlin "devised his own programs to make a number' on each game, and that he serves as the alleged mathematical mastermind behind the mysterious Computer Group, which just might be the biggest known sports betting ring ever established anywhere."
The name of Michael Kent was mentioned nowhere in the story.
Though many members of the Computer Group might have thought that Dr. Mindlin was the grand inventor, there is very little to support that view. Those partners of Dr. Mindlin's who agreed to give interviews all maintained that Michael Kent invented the group's program for handicapping football and basketball games. The only program Dr. Mindlin produced was for betting on major league baseball, and they say it was a failure.
Dr. Mindlin has declined to comment on this and all other matters. His attorney, Morris Goldings, is evasive when asked who invented the group's programs. "We're not getting into the vanity of it," he said recently from his car phone. Last February, however, Goldings said bluntly: "What does Kent say? That he was the brains and Mindlin was the beard? That's our position too."
Each day Kent and his brother John collected the statistical data for every team, fed it into the computer, updated their program. fine-tuned all of the forecasts and then dumped them into a computer file to which Mindlin had access. From that point on. Kent -who was either too busy or too gullible to notice the fence that Mindlin was constructing around him - abdicated all responsibility to the doctor.
Dr. Mindlin's responsibility was so relay the information to Stanley Tomchin and a few other beards (or betting agents), who would survey the market and make the bets. Those phone calls and his accounting duties for the group were the extent of Mindlin's workload, but other matters kept him busy.
To the doctor's credit, the Computer Group grew very quickly under his direction. As they were beginning to earn millions each season, Dr. Mindlin was injured in a 1981 car accident in Florida, which left him unable to perform surgery. He applied for disability insurance, and his practice was limited to giving expert testimony in medical cases.
As his reputation as a gambler grew, he was able to strike up an acquaintance with Irwin Molasky, a mighty Las Vegas developer with whom Mindlin reportedly shared "his" computerized information in exchange for Molasky's friendship and all the avenues it might open up to him.
Now street-famous for his work with the Computer Group, Dr. Mindlin entered into the commodities business. Once more he turned to Michael Kent and Kent's friend, Mark Ricci who began work on a program for predicting the price of commodities futures. Based on their efforts, Dr. Mindlin farmed a private commodities firm he called Commend, which may have served him in several ways. For one, he allegedly was able to launder money through Commend. Michael Kent's brother, John, in a sworn deposition last year. testified that he received $112,695 from Commend for his work on the Computer Group's sports data base. John Kent testified that he never did any work for Commend.
Dr. Mindlin also found that commodities could serve as another point of contact with Irwin Molasky, who invested with him through Commend, according to Molasky's attorney Stanley Hunterton.
Mindlin also established a relationship with Dominic Spinale, who reportedly was a smalltime hoodlum with ties to Chicago mobster Tony Spilotro. Spinale happened to be under investigation by the FBI at the time his name was being used by Mindlin to open a betting account at the Stardust Hotel. If Mindlin could change one thing, he would probably never have become friendly with Spinale, which might have averted all of the troubles that engulf him today.
The Feds
Special Agent Thomas B. Noble has developed quite a reputation in the FBI for his six-year investigation of the Computer Group. Quite sad, really. "He got himself in a jam," says a fellow special agent. "He was a rookie when this thing started. Everybody was saying, Forget about it, you haven't got anything.' But, somehow, he convinced one of his superiors that it was bookmaking, and got him to go along with it. He (Noble] is always saying how every case he's working on is the greatest thing. In the end, it never works out."
Thomas Noble says that joining the FBI was "just something I had always wanted to do." He was made a special agent in 1982 and was assigned to Las Vegas a year later. He had not been there long when a gambling investigation of Dominic Spinale led him to Dr. Ivan Mindlin, who had opened a betting account at the Stardust Hotel in Spinale's name. A muted alarm began to ring between the ears of Thomas Noble. This had the look of a betting operation run by La Cosa Nostra. The Mafia. Organized crime.
Soon after he had been questioned by the FBI about Spinale, Dr. Mindlin began to spend more time at his house in Vail, Colo. A second alarm went off: The subject seemed to be distancing himself from Spinale, his LCN (La Cosa Nostra) contact. Noble traced a check endorsed by Spinale to an account maintained by Michael Kent. Kent referred the FBI's inquiries to his attorney. Another alarm. Michael Kent had the same attorney as Ivan Mindlin
Spinale was next observed by FBI operatives associating with a young blonde subject named Glen Walker, who walked with a pronounced limp (the result of a high school football injury). Walker was trailed to an establishment called "C&B Collection Agency." Further investigation indicated that the "C&B Collection Agency" was not actually a collection agency but was in fact the front for a gambling operation. Informants led special agent Noble to believe that Walker represented the Computer Group, the most successful gambling ring in the city, the gambling ring in which Dr. Mindlin was an admitted member. The alarm in Noble's head was now whistling like a steaming tea kettle. Noble respectfully informed his superiors that he believed he had discovered one of the largest illegal bookmaking operations in the nation.
The distinction between bookmakers and mere bettors is an important one. Though federal prosecution of illegal bookmakers declined in the 1980s. the government still enjoys good legal footing in such cases, because it can easily be proved that bookmakers are in the business of illegal gambling. It is much more difficult to prosecute the mere bettor, because the laws weren't clearly written to apprehend him. In a 1981 case in Rhode lsland (U.S. v. Robert Barborian and Anthony Lauro), the U.S. District Court ruled that the use of telephones or other wire communication for interstate gambling "does not cover an individual bettor, even if the bettor wagered substantial sums and displayed sophistication of an expert in his knowledge of odds making."
But special agent Noble was certain that he was chasing bookmakers. More agents were assigned to aid Thomas Noble. Surveillance was increased. Wire taps were approved in December 1964. Every day was a new adventure. Two years with the bureau and he was about to crumble the LCN's finest bookmaking ring with one squeeze of his fist. Had it all started so quickly for J. Edgar Hoover?
"Through legally intercepted conversations," wrote Noble, forcing himself to sit at his desk long enough to compose this sworn affidavit in January 1985 while bookmakers were making book outside, "this investigation has determined that Ivan Mindlin directs William Thurman Walters on the placing of what are believed to be layoff' bets for the Computer' group. Walters operates a large bookmaking operation which be uses to place bets on desired games..."
This allegation was the keystone of special agent Noble's investigation. Layoff bets, by definition, are made exclusively by bookmakers wishing to protect themselves against large losses by making bets with other bookmakers.
"Besides this operation," Noble continued, "Walters controls a bookmaking operation under the guise of C&B Collection Agency. This second bookmaking operation is run by Glen Andrews Walker who uses the premises and facilities of C&B Collection Agency as a bookmaker's wire room...
The big day was January 19, 1985, the eve of Super Bowl XIX, in which San Francisco would crush Miami, 38-16. The weekend would prove to be even more momentous for special agent Thomas Noble. He had requested 43 separate raids to take place in 23 cities in 16 states - perhaps the largest series of coordinated gambling raids in history. "Historically," wrote Noble in requesting the raids, "(during) the weekend wherein the National Football League holds its Super Bowl' championship, the betting volume for bookmakers is very high."
He was right on. The members of the Computer Group were caught redhanded. Betting ledgers and hundreds of thousands of incriminating dollars were seized. All that remained before Thomas B. Noble could ascend toward the top of the FBI like a rocket toward the stars was this matter of legal paperwork. He simply had to prove that the Computer Group was an illegal bookmaking operation, that it was in fact a strong arm of the LCN.
"He said that to me once," recalls Billy Walters. "Noble said to me, 'We're closing in on your friends in La Cosa Nostra.' I'm telling you, the guy's read too many comic books.'"
The Raids
Michael Kent and his brother, Bill, had been invited to spend the Super Bowl weekend at the home of Dr. Mindlin in Vail. Colorado. Before he left Las Vegas, Michael Kent was asked to run a couple of errands for Mindlin. First, he received cash and checks from Billy Nelson, the gambler who had originally brought Kent and Mindlin together and who now served as an aide to Billy Walters in the Computer Group. Next Kent visited the cashier's cage at the Horseshoe Casino, where he showed the cashier a dollar bill scrawled with a series of handwritten numbers, a password of sorts. The cashier handed Kent cash from the account of Billy Walters. That week Michael Kent carried some $500,000 in cashier's checks and perhaps $100.000 cash to Vail, for delivery to Dr. Mindlin.
Kent says his brother Bill happened to be sitting on the doorstep of Mindlin's home in Vail on Saturday, Jan. 19. when he was approached by three men identifying themselves as FBI agents. "One guy tried to kick the door in," Michael Kent says. "Bill said. What did you do that for?' The door was unlocked. Bill reached over and opened it."
The FBI took down the names and addresses of the Kent brothers, and then Michael Kent sat and watched television while the FBI rummaged through the house, confiscating money, records and gambling paraphernalia. An FBI agent was careful not so obstruct Kent's view while he was watching television. "I thought that was rather polite," Kent says. "They let us come and go as we pleased. I remember we went out for lunch - Ivan too. Ivan seemed to be taking it very well. He didn't seem to be too overly concerned." Indeed, the doctor simply turned around and began his own investigation of the FBI. Sources say that Mindlin, in his uniquely audacious manner, hired a private investigator to follow special agent Noble.
But Michael Kent wasn't taking it very well at all. He had been detained by police only once before, he says. for driving with a loud muffler. "It's a bad crime in Goldsberg, Pennsylvania," he explained in a deposition. The night of the Vail raid he would return to Las Vegas so find she FBI raiding his condominium as well as the homes of his partners. Vacationing in Florida, Billy Walters and Billy Nelson were also raided that day. Clearly they were all in some sort of trouble. He says it struck him then how very little he knew about the group he had created.
One year earlier, special agent Thomas Noble had contacted Michael Kent about the check that had been endorsed by Dominic Spinale. At that time Kent had listened to Dr. Mindlin, who advised him not so worry. But, this matter of FBI raids was much more serious. At the advice of special agent Noble, Kent says he hired his own lawyer, separate from Mindlin. Kent was referred to attorney Steven Brooks in Boston. As Brooks learned more about she gambling operation, he urged Kent to take precautions that would protect him from Mindlin. "I would tell Ivan that I wanted to do things differently on the advice of my lawyer," Kent says. "Ivan would say, Oh, don't listen to him. What does he know? He's a schmuck.'"
Kent says he finally came so understand Mindlin's priorities. But Kent's attorney believes his client might still be loyal to Dr. Mindlin to this day, if not for the FBI's frightening raids five years ago. "Remember, Michael thought everything was fine back then." Brooks says. "He had no idea that he should suspect Mindlin of anything."
The Beard
Dale Conway says he was sitting as his desk, placing a bet over the phone from his Salt Lake home, when he stood to answer a knock at the door. In his driveway he could see a postal service truck. Conway opened the door to receive his mail and a man shouted, "FBI!" Suddenly, he claims, several G-Men came surging into his living room.
"They ran upstairs so where my boy David was playing in his room, Conway remembers. "He was just 12 years old. He's sitting on the floor playing. They knocked on the door and I guess he didn't answer quick enough, because they just busted the door down. The door's still all busted. I just left it like it was."
FBI records show that Dale Conway's telephones had been wiretapped prior to the Jan. 19, 1985 raid of his home. He says he had been making bets of $1,000 and less for Billy Walters, whom he met at a poker tournament in Las Vegas. "I don't see what's the big deal about betting on a ballgame," says Conway, 61, who has since been indicted for his part in the Computer Group.
The government seemed to believe that Dale Conway was much more than a simple gambler. In fact, Las Vegas Strike Force attorney Eric Johnson - who was acting as lead prosecutor in the case - flew to Salt Lake in May 1985 to plead that the government be allowed to retain as evidence $75,179 in cash seized in the January raid of Dale Conway. Johnson noted that Conway's money had been hidden in coat pockets and inside a box tied so a rope behind the furnace wall. "I don't think this is normal operating procedure for individuals who are trying to use their money in a legal manner," Johnson told the judge.
Johnson also said, "This is not your typical bookmaking operation, your Honor." And he said: "You're talking about over a thousand hours of tapes that have to be listened too. You're talking 216,000 pages of computer printouts that have to be reviewed." And he said: "We believe that bookmakers from coast to coast in a number of states have been involved in this. It's set up like a corporation. If your Honor would like, I can even show a chart demonstrating the vast complexity of this case."
The judge declined to view the chart. It was obvious that the strength of Eric Johnson's argument that day - and the strength of the case itself - was that the government was going to expose and arrest a national network of illegal bookmakers. Too many times to count, Eric Johnson referred to Dale Conway as a bookmaker. He said Conway was just one of the many bookmakers involved in this investigation. He made it sound as though, once the government had learned so make sense of all she information is had seized, it would become easier to apprehend and bring to justice all future bookmakers.
"This case is complex and mammoth in proportions," Johnson told U.S. District Judge Bruce S. Jenkins in Salt Lake that day.
The judge asked many questions, and listened to Eric Johnson's answers, and then he ordered that the $75,179 be returned, along with stock certificates and other seized monies. Five years later, Dale Conway wonders when the rest of his "bookmaking evidence" will be restored so him. "They even took my 12-year-old's Dungeons & Dragons game," says Conway, "I guess because there's dice in that game, they called its gambling device.'"
When this matter is settled, he'd appreciate it if someone from the FBI would come by to fix the door.
Project Layoff
Some new bookies were in town, and they wanted to meet Billy Walters. So he came to the Desert Inn for lunch. The year was 1984. Waiting for him at the Desert Inn were Walters' top associate, Glen Walker, and a common gambler known in town as Matius (Fat Matt) Marcus. There were also two other men whom Walters had never seen before. They introduced themselves as Danny Donnigan and John Cleary, though Glen Walker still wonders if those were real names. "I remember Danny Donnigan sitting there in his Brooks Brothers sweater," Walker says. "It didn't seem right. These guys just didn't fit in."
The two men turned their attentions to the kingpin Billy Walters, asking him many questions as they buttered their bread. Which is the most efficient method so establish a betting line? How does a fellow handle layoff bets? Basically they wanted Billy Walters to tell them how to become bookmaker.
Walters says he began by saying: "I'm not a bookmaker, but..." He gave them advice and drew them into further conversation, which is how he generally handles his suspicions. Later he asked to speak with Walker privately. Says Billy Walters: "I told Walker, I said. These guys aren't bookmakers. They don't know what they're talking about.' I told Walker I would have nothing so do with it."
In the parking lot Billy Walters says he found a Lincoln Mark IV with Louisiana plates. The two men had mentioned that they'd recently moved from Louisiana. Walters wrote down the license number and passed it onto a private detective. "Of course he couldn't trace it anywhere," Walters says. "So that was it for me. I had no association wish them whatsoever."
But Glen Walker could only envision pigeons and soft point spreads, easy money. He bet with the new bookmakers, and he was not the only one. Fat Mat and his preppy bookies were quickly able to establish business all over town. For all of their dumb innocence, they were very sure of themselves. Fat Matt could be found hanging out (literally) at Gary Austin's sports book on the strip, passing out business cards. He was so brazen that, had the thought had occurred to him, he might have placed an ad in the newspaper: "Fall Malt's Illegal Bookmakers! We Take Bets From Anyone!" Indeed, he and his partners showed no fear of the law whatsoever.
It is amusing now to imagine the strategy sessions held at FBI headquarters in Las Vegas in January 1985, after 11 phone conversations between Glen Walker and the Marcus Sports Service had been intercepted. Special agent Thomas Noble sprang into action! He assigned other agents to investigate the illegal bookmaking operation; intelligence filtered in. The Marcus' group had swelled into one of the largest illegal bookmaking operations in the country, grossing as much as $2 million a week in bets. Their clients included associates of New York Mafia boss "Fat Tony" Salerno, and Chicago racketeer Tony Spilotro, who was betting them for upwards of $50,000 per week. But Noble's chief interest in Matt Marcus was his association with the Computer Group.
"Intercepted conversations indicate that the Waiters-Walker bookmaking ring operation uses this [Marcus] bookmaking operation on a regular basis to place what are believed to be layoff bets in violation of Title 18. United States Code. Sections 1955, 162(c) and 1952(d)," wrote Noble in the FBI affidavit, before his men went after Matt Marcus and tried to shut him down.
And so, on Jan. 19, 1985, on the eve of the Super Bowl, several FBI rents raided the Marcus Sports service. Perhaps they even broke down some doors. Certainly their firearms were loaded and ready. They raided the illegal bookmakers like they had never been raided before. Meanwhile, the men who worked with Matt Marcus sat in chairs and crossed their legs, perhaps smirking to each other from time to time.
Undaunted by the FBI, the Marcus Spans Service continued to accept bets for several months more. Then one day a pair of angry bettors marched into the office and demanded money they thought they had coming. They might as well have tried to get a refund from, say, the Internal Revenue Service. In other words, they did not come away with their money. Nonetheless, they had guns. Real guns, loaded with real bullets. The men behind the Marcus Sports Service were scared almost to death. They closed down their office shortly thereafter and went back to the Foley Federal Building at 300 Las Vegas Blvd., where they resumed their normal duties as agents for, yes, the Internal Revenue Service. The Brooks Brothers colleagues of Fat Matt Marcus had been nothing more than governmental meter maids. The Marcus Sports Service was their brilliant "sting" operation, with which the IRS had hoped to catch Billy Walters and other gamblers.
It seems now that the IRS probably should have shared its plans with the FBI. Perhaps then this peculiar business of the FBI raiding the IRS could have been avoided. "We knew upfront about that," special agent Noble says today. "We knew what it was. If you look carefully at the warrants, you'll see that we knew. We don't operate in a vacuum."
The FBI now says that it went forward with the raid in order to give the IRS bookmaking operation more credibility in the streets. In layman's terms, one government agency raided another government agency in order to convince the criminals that the other government agency was not in fact a government agency, but was rather an illegal operation that happened to be run like a government agency.
When the Las Vegas Sun broke news of the IRS scheme, more than four years after its demise, Nevada's U.S. Senators, Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, asked to see the records and reports of the undercover bookmakers, to learn what good had come from the sting. In his reply, IRS Commissioner Frederick Goldberg informed the senators that the records of Project Layoff, as it was named, were no longer available. They had been "disposed of." Destroyed would have been a stronger term, and just as accurate. Goldberg was able to inform the senators that the project had operated at a loss of $577,770, which in 1985 amounted to the federal income taxes paid by 350 average Americans.
Among the losses were $75,000 in uncollected gambling debts. The rumor in Las Vegas is that these were accrued by the notorious Tony Spilotro who - as it turned out - was simply continuing his career of stiffing the IRS. A few months later, Spilotro was found buried in an Indiana cornfield, although no one believes the IRS would have anything to do with that - at least not as long as Tony was in red to the government for $75,000.
The IRS is facing two Congressional investigations, and its Nevada office has been shaken up severely. But it's not as if the 1R5 is going to have to go through a terrible punishment, like, say, an audit. "The IRS owed me something like $10,000 when I was done betting them," Glen Walker says sadly. "I asked if I could get it written off of my taxes."
The Gambler
Billy Walters moved to Las Vegas eight years ago with his family and his immense ego and very little else. He was worth more dead than alive, as they say. For too many years he had been operating a used-car dealership in his home state of Kentucky, and then gambling away the profits. In 1982 he plea-bargained to a misdemeanor bookmaking charge - possession of gambling records, it was called - and was sentenced to six month probation and a $1,000 fine. He was in debt to several bookmakers, and he could not command credit. At 35, into his third marriage, with an ill son who was supposed to have died years before, Billy Walters believed he had no alternative but move to Las Vegas, to be a full-time professional gambler, to lay all that he had on this one final hand.
Walters can pinpoint his problems from those days, now that he is worth millions of dollars. As recently as 1982, when he was preparing to leave Kentucky, he had lacked focus. He was a gambler, that was definite, but he had no idea how to gamble professionally. He wanted to win every single day. When he lost at the race track or when he lost betting games or when he lost playing poker or when he lost playing golf, he always felt compelled to get down another bet, to retrieve what he had lost that very day. He recalls an evening in Kentucky when he was pitching nickels with a friend. The wagers grew until Billy Walters had lost his house - his house, from pitching nickels.
Then he had to come home and tell his wife. "I'm not one to beat around the bush," he says. Standing now in his kitchen, head down, hands in pockets, he seems to be recreating the scene. "I just came home and said to her, Look, honey, I was pitching nickels with a guy today, and I lost the house. And we might have to move.'" They didn't have to move but it took Billy Walters a year and a half to pay off the mortgage incurred by the revolution of the five-cent coin. He kept the house, but he lost his wife. She left him. That was his second wife. "She couldn't take it. Fifteen times I've come home where I've lost every single penny we've got," he says, as if revealing a scar.
His father died when William Thurman Walters was not yet 2 years old, and his mother ran off, and his grandmother, who was a maid in Mufferville, Ky., left him under the supervision of his uncle each day. His uncle ran a pool hall. Billy Walters estimates that his first bet was made at the age of 5, when his uncle would assemble islands of Coke cases around a pool table so that the boy could reach the felt. As soon as he began to work, his grandmother charged him rent. He hustled pool, betting his rent money. He was not yet a teenager.
At 13 he moved back in with his mother, in Louisville. At 16 he had fathered a child and married the mother. Some morning he worked 4:30 till 7:30 at a bakery, some nights it was 3 to 11 at a gas station. Most days he went to school. Sometimes he ran a poker game - he was still just a teenager - in a house adjacent to Billy's Lounge. That marriage lasted one year. It's been much longer than a decade since he's seen his daughter.
His occupations have included newspaper boy, farmhand, shoe-shiner, baker, tobacco worker, foundry worker, painter, car dealer, realtor. To him, these were mere side jobs. In his mind he was a professional player - of pool, gin rummy, poker, blackjack, roulette, golf, the horses, whatever. He remarried and with his second wife had two sons, which has since led Billy Walters to decide that his own childhood was not so desperate. His oldest son, Scott, should have been dead at the age of 5.
"They said he had 30 days to live," Billy Walters says. "He had the tumor back behind the left eye, where they couldn't operate. After radiation they told us every day he was going to die. I stayed drunk the whole time. I was 26 at the time. It was the only thing in my life I wasn't able to handle. I neglected my business and my family and stayed drunk. After nine months I went back to running the business."
The business, he says, was a wholesale auto dealership in Louisville. "I earned $400,000 or $500,000 a year," says Walters, "but I never accumulated one dollar." Three years after his son had been diagnosed, Billy Walters was wed to his current wife, Susan, and she has been a wonderful partner. They will celebrate their 14th anniversary in September. She moved with him to Las Vegas in 1982 and served as his accountant when he began to move money for the Computer Group. She was indicted with him in January 1990 and expected to go to trial with him in November 1990, if the case got that far.
Walters says he went to work for Dr. Ivan Mindlin in 1983, making bets in Las Vegas and a few other territories. By then the Computer Group was four years old and churning out millions in profits each season. In return for his work, Walters received free use of the group's betting information. Because he didn't have to share his profits with others, he might have been earning more from the Computer Group than Michael Kent, the computer wizard who so naively trusted Dr. Mindlin.
For the first time in his life, Billy Walters was winning consistently and holding onto the money. He invested in real estate, fast food franchises and other ventures. His confidence was such that he could play golf matched for thousands of dollars. He even captured the 1986 Super Bowl of Poker in Lake Tahoe. There has been recent talk that he won more than $3 million in one day of roulette in Atlantic City. Apparently, Walters hired agents to take notes at the roulette tables, in attempt to locate "biases," or patterns, in the wheels. Sources at Caesars Palace say that after Walters beat them for more than $1 million in one sitting, the wheel was sent to NASA for an examination and dissection that revealed specific biases - but no for the numbers Walters had been playing. Nobody knows his secret, and he isn't saying, though he admits he has been barred from playing roulette in the major casinos.
Late in 1984, Walters' reputation had risen so high that he was invited to join the Computer Group on a percentage basis. In other words, he would share in profits with Michael Kent, Dr. Mindlin and other core members of the group. Walters continued to place additional bets for himself until January 1985, when the FBI raided the group of its records and cash, shutting down Walters for the remainder of the college basketball season. He complains about harassment by the FBI, saying it confiscated funds and refused to transfer them to the IRS to pay his taxes. He claims he is persecuted in part because the government loathes his attorney, Oscar Goodman, a colorful Las Vegas lawyer who has represented many mob figures.
"You've got to understand my position," he says. "After the government went through all the evidence, they decided not to prosecute us. For three years they tell us the case is dead. Then all of a sudden, two weeks before the statute of limitations is going to run out, they come back with these indictments. The day before we were indicted, my attorney (Goodman) tried to contact the Strike Force to say we would be willing to turn ourselves in. The Strike Force wouldn't return his calls. The next day they come barging into my house, drag me out of bed, put my wife in leg irons. I'm telling you, you don't believe it until you've gone through something like this, what the government can do to you."
Walters says he agreed to give this, his first interview, out of a feeling of desperation. He perceives himself to be a rare gambling success story - a man who was in debt before he came to Las Vegas. At 43, he wonders why he isn't put forth as a role model. "People look at us gamblers and say, You don't have a job like we do, you don't work 9 to 5, you have to be doing something wrong," he says. "I came to Las Vegas because it's the Wall Street of gambling. If you can get arrested for betting games here...well, let me just say I never would have dreamed that the things that have happened to me, with the FBI and the rest of it, could happen here."
Then he admits that his life could be much worse. Inviting a reporter upstairs, he visits with his son, Scott, 22, is no bigger than a 14-year-old, and outside the house he wears a cap or wig to cover the hair loss caused by his cancer treatments. He recently got his first job, as a busboy at the Horseshoe casino downtown. His father says he could be no prouder of his son. In this relationship the gambler is called "sir."
"Let's see those autographed baseballs of yours," Billy Walters says, and the two of them sit on the bed, reading the signatures of Scott's heroes.
The Mogul
At one time Irwin Molasky was vice president of Lorimar-Telepictures, which produced television shows ranging from "Dallas" to "The Waltons." Today, surrounded by his vast real estate holdings, he settles for being one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas. There he lives atop the Regency Towers, which stands like a castle overlooking Irwin Molasky's kingdom. At one time the Regency Towers was known as a high palace for the mob. Irwin Molasky would surely argue that this no longer is the case. Indeed, he commenced another debate over a piece of real estate in 1975, when the subject was his California resort Rancho La Costa. At that time, Penthouse magazine reported the La Costa was controlled by "mobsters," that it served as their "power center," and that it used "illegal profits" from "the mob's worldwide operations."
Molasky and his co-owner at La Costa, Merv Adelson, who at one time was chairman and chief executive at Lorimar, did not appreciate such unsavory allegations. So, they filed a $490 million libel suit against the magazine. The legal proceedings were drawn out over 10 years at a cost of $25 million, until Molasky and Adelson finally settle for an apology. A major booster of UNLV basketball, Molasky at 62 is highly image-conscious. It is important that he be recognized as a sober and legitimate businessman. And in fact, Molasky has never been charged with a crime.
Molasky's attorney, Stanley Hunterton, readily admits that his client enjoys betting on ballgames, as do thousands of his fellow residents Las Vegas, where is can be a legal and rather social activity. However, Dr. Ivan Mindlin was not interested in currying favor with thousands of legal bettors. He was interested mainly in Irwin Molasky.
For years, Dr. Mindlin had been pretending to be the brains behind the Computer Group, claiming to be the inventor of its unbeatable program for forecasting ballgames. It appears that Dr. Mindlin was never much more than an intermediary for the group, as his own attorney admits today. But Mindlin surely knew how to maximize his position. By sharing the group's betting information with Irwin Molasky, and making a winner out of Irwin Molasky, he became a friend of Irwin Molasky. When Dr. Mindlin needed help in the commodities business, who did he look to? Irwin Molasky, with whom he became partners in the purchase and sale of commodities, according to attorney Stan Hunterton.
Michael Kent, the mathematician who established the Computer Group's forecasts, recalls hearing Dr. Mindlin speak of Molasky in 1983-84. "From what I remember," says Kent, "let's say it was a situation where we had taken a team with 4 points. Well, for some reason that day, the team we took had jumped up to 5 points - which almost never happened. Usually when we took a team, the points went in our direction."
"I remember saying, `Shoot, it's too bad we didn't wait and get that team at 5.' And Mindlin said to me, `Don't worry - I'll go ahead and give the 4 to Molasky, and we'll go up and take the 5.'"
That day they sold their bets on the underdog at 4 points to Molasky. "It was a good deal for us," says Kent. "Molasky didn't know any better, so he wouldn't mind taking the 4. And we were able to use the money to bet on the 5, which was a better bet."
As the Computer Group investigation lay dormant from 1986-88, Molasky and everyone else using the group's information appeared safe from prosecution. Then, in 1988, the government began to resurrect its case. Molasky hired Hunterton, who says he had served as a special attorney within the Organized Crime Strike Forces for 10 years, until 1984. Hunterton acknowledges that he was involved in the early stages of the government's case against the Computer Group, approving requests made by FBI special agent Thomas Noble. But Hunterton denies the assertion, made by others in the group, that representing Molasky was a conflict of interest.
Using his contacts - which the attorney admits were the reason Molasky hired him - Hunterton reportedly was able to win immunity for Molasky, in return for his testimony before the grand jury. However, Molasky's testimony seems to have been a mere formality. "I've seen the (Computer Group) indictment," said Molasky's longtime attorney Sam Lionel, who worked with Hunterton on this case, "and it doesn't appear that anything he testified to had anything to do with what is contained in the indictment." Whatever the substance of his testimony might have been, his appearance before the grand jury ensured that he would be excluded from any indictment the panel might hand down.
Irwin Molasky's record as a law-abiding citizen was thus preserved, and his good name has been spared. However, some of the indicted members of the Computer Group think he may not be entirely finished with this business - not yet, anyway. If their case goes to trial in November, as scheduled, they plan to subpoena Molasky and question him vigorously, not only about his betting with Ivan Mindlin, but also regarding his attorney, Stanley Hunterton, who played both sides as effectively as anyone in the Computer Group ever had.
The Fall
After he had been raided by the FBI in January 1985, Michael Kent began to ask the kinds of questions he should have been raising long ago. So began the end of the Computer Group. He wanted to know how the group was run, and what became of his information after he gave it to Dr. Mindlin, and how much money his program actually was generating. His partners in the computer group informed Kent that his precious information was being shared with the outside world in ways that could only profit Mindlin. Here was Michael Kent, the mastermind, still living in his humdrum condo in Las Vegas, while Mindlin had homes in Vegas, Colorado and California.
Dr. Mindlin even seemed to profit from the FBI's raids. Kent alleges that when the raids shut down the group's activities six weeks into the 1984-85 college basketball season, Mindlin claimed the group had simply broken even on its bets to that point. Therefore, no profits would be paid to any members of the group. But when the FBI allowed Kent and others to review the seized records, Kent says he discovered that his group had earned a total of $1.6 million in those six weeks of basketball.
By 1986 Kent had hired a lawyer of his own, Steven Brooks of Boston, who advised him that many of his current practices with Dr. Mindlin were either illegal (such as Kent's failure to pay taxes) or inexplicable (his failure to oversee Mindlin's handling of the money). Kent says he tried to change the way he conducted business with Mindlin, but had little success.
Wary that he could not account for the actions of his partner, Michael Kent nonetheless kept trying to deal with Mindlin. He says he offered Mindlin exclusive rights to the computer forecasts for the 1987 college football season at a fee of $700,000. In return, Kent would tell Mindlin which teams to play and how much to bet, and Mindlin could keep all profits. However, Kent says, the forecasts lost money for Mindlin in the first week, at which point he canceled their agreement. Kent says he never received payment for his one week of service, which he valued at $35,650.
At this point Michael Kent was at the end of his rope. He had placed all of his trust in Dr. Mindlin. In return Mindlin had seemed to treat him like a son. The truth of their relationship, Kent now believed, was that he had been playing the fool to Mindlin for all these years.
In 1988 Michael and his brother John Kent filed a joint suit against Ivan Mindlin, demanding $589,719 in Computer Group profits and payment for services. They suspect that he owes them more, but in all likelihood they will never be able to prove it. At the same time, Michael Kent went to the FBI, admittedly to punish Mindlin. Kent agreed to explain what he knew about the Computer Group and turn over evidence. In exchange, he was granted immunity from prosecution.
Dr. Mindlin's attorney, Morris Goldings, was also representing Michael Kent when the FBI began its investigation in 1984. Today he accuses Kent of extortion. "Kent has admitted under oath that he told Dr. Mindlin, If you don't pay me the money you owe me, then I'm going to the feds with you.' That's the kind of guy Michael Kent is."
Indeed, Kent's lawsuit revived the government's interest in its dormant case against the Computer Group. "I don't blame Mike Kent at all for turning over to the government," Billy Walters says. "This was the only way he knew of to get even...Kent is a bright guy in mathematics. He knows numbers like nobody else. But he's absolutely dumb from a common-sense standpoint. Mindlin would tell Kent that he was betting, say, $5,000 when he was really betting $20,000. And Kent had no idea."
Yet Billy Walters admits that he too was fooled by Mindlin. Walters says he quit the group in the spring of 1986 when Mindlin refused to honor a $110,000 debt. "I knew from day one who I was dealing with, but never for a moment did I think the guy could steal money from me," Walters says. "I thought I was too important to the operation. I was the guy who moved the money."
By 1987, the Computer Group was dead, victim of a human virus. Vanity and greed had infected its affairs. The computer wizard, Michael Kent, was refusing to supply his information, and the gambler, Billy Walters, was refusing to move the money. Yet Dr. Mindlin was still in business. He hired Kent's friend, Mark Ricci, of all people, who in the 1970's had worked with Kent at Westinghouse. Mindlin's new group had its run of modest success, but it could not begin to compare with the impact he had made with the Computer Group. Indeed, the doctor was something of a tragic figure, broken by his own greed, devastated personally as well as professionally. While trying to recoup his relationship with Michael Kent, the doctor had engaged in a worldwide, yearlong search to find a cure for his only son, Gary Mindlin. In the end, he succumbed to a cancerous brain tumor, the same type from his Billy Walters's son had been so miraculously spared. Then another tragedy struck the Mindlin household. In 1988, the doctor's wife, Georgia Mindlin, died from respiratory failure consistent with an allergic reaction. The coroner found that she was probably allergic to penicillin - penicillin that she apparently received from her husband, the doctor.
The autopsy report indicated that Georgia Mindlin, 56, was suffering from a sore throat on March 19, 1988. Dr. Mindlin admitted to giving her 500 to 1000 milligrams of penicillin, which she took orally, after her evening meal.
Some 25 minutes later she told her husband that she wasn't feeling well. She got out of bed and collapsed, falling into cardiorespiratory arrest. The doctor called for an ambulance. The police arrived at 11:52 p.m. to find an emergency crew trying to save Georgia Mindlin. Police say that Dr. Mindlin attempted to revive his wife with a shot of adrenaline after her airway had closed off in reaction to the penicillin. "It's easily reversible with things like adrenaline if it happens before the airway closes," says Eagle County coroner Donna Meineke, who requested the autopsy of Georgia Mindlin. "But it (the injection) has to happen in minutes. Once the airway closes off, oxygen can't get to the brain."
Vail police lieutenant Corey Schmidt says he conducted his investigation of Georgia Mindlin's death without interviewing her husband. "I think he left town," says Schmidt, who declines to make his report public. "I didn't have a lot to go on, other than friends' and relatives' hunches that it (her death) was purposeful, but we couldn't nail it down."
Special agent Thomas Noble says that the FBI is looking into the death of Georgia Mindlin. "Once you read the coroner's report, it will be clear why we have an interest," he says. When Michael Kent was deposed last year for his lawsuit against Mindlin, the doctor's attorney questioned him repeatedly about the death of Georgia Mindlin. Kent admitted that the FBI had indeed asked him about it, but said he'd known little of her death - as little as he had known about Dr. Mindlin's betting activities with the Computer Group.
Lt. Schmidt is surprised to hear of the FBI's interest in Georgia Mindlin, considering that the Bureau never asked him for his report. "If they're doing something, why wouldn't they have contacted me?" he wonders.
As for his own probe, Schmidt says he found nothing more than the hunches of relatives to make him suspect foul play. He declares the investigation inactive. "We haven't had one since 1979," he says, referring to murder in Vail. "Not that we've been able to prove, anyway."
The End
His former colleagues say that Ivan Mindlin still has not given up. They say he works with a beard in Miami, using the same program Michael Kent developed 10 years ago.
Kent himself would be the first to warn his successors that the business is no longer so easy. Kent has formed a legal sports betting corporation with two partners - his brother John Kent and their friend, Mark Ricci, who stopped working for Mindlin in 1988. Their attorney, Steven Brooks, boasts that all profits of MJM Inc. (it stands for Michael, John, Mark) are reported to the IRS and that all bets are placed in full harmony with the law. In a recent deposition, Ricci estimated that their three-man betting group won $800,000 last year, which would have represented two good weeks for the Computer Group.
When Michael Kent was a mere centerfielder, trying to decipher the strengths and weaknesses of his softball team at Westinghouse 18 years ago, there was no real computer science in sport. Kent was at the leading edge of all that. Today every statistic is calibrated, measured. Every human decision can be backed by numbers. Michael Kent was among the first to find reason within the numbers.
In November, if all goes as planned - and there is nothing in the history of this case to suggest that it will - his partners will be reunited in the courtroom once more (Kent himself was granted immunity.) Though Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Johnson was the lead prosecutor in the government's investigation of the Computer Group five years ago, and though his name is listed atop the Jan. 4 indictment, he will not be in charge of the case when it comes to trial. At that critical point, the six-year case will be handled by Jane Hawkins, even though she has been an Assistant U.S. Attorney for less than two years. As a matter of fact, when Eric Johnson was leading the Computer Group investigation in 1985, Jane Hawkins was a humble clerk for Judge Lloyd D. George, before whom - and a fine coincidence this is - she will be trying the case.
"That may have been the smartest thing Eric has ever done, getting himself away from this thing," admits FBI special agent Thomas Noble.
Abandoned now by all the others who have worked on this case, Noble seems to be hanging out to dry. He works for the FBI out of Chicago these days, his reputation stained. For six quixotic years he led the chase after the Computer Group in the belief that it was the largest bookmaking operation in the country. Following Noble's lead, the FBI obtained wiretaps on the group's telephones for five months, until there existed more than 1,500 hours of taped conversation, which then had to be laboriously reviewed and transcribed. He requested and was granted the aid of special agents to follow the group's actions all over the nation. He provided information that resulted in raids of 45 homes or offices in 16 states. He requested a raid of the Internal Revenue Service. (But he knew what he was doing!) He oversaw the seizure of evidence by the truckload: bank checks, the origins of which had to be traced, hundreds of thousands of dollars with serial numbers that demanded verification, gambling ledgers that had to be interpreted, not to mention 216,000 pages of computer printouts, incomprehensible to all but Michael Kent. There were 89 boxes of evidence in government storage, much of it still there today. Then there was the matter of dealing with this vast array of people. Every man and woman raided had a lawyer demanding appeasement. The government sent Eric Johnson and other attorneys to various sites, defending the FBI's right to retain evidence, including large amounts of cash. It is no easy thing to capture a group of criminals these days.
Thomas Noble still maintains his firm belief that the Computer Group was a criminal enterprise worthy of prosecution. But at what cost? If a bill could be brought before the taxpayers, the price of this investigation might total $1 million, which does not include the $577,770 lost by the IRS in its parallel attempt to capture the group.
Then, in January, after six years of investigation and review, after the case had been opened and shut and opened again, the indictments at long last came down in Las Vegas. Nineteen men and women were placed under arrest. Each was charged with up to 120 counts of conspiracy, gambling and racketeering, related to their obvious use of the telephone to place bets and exchange betting information across state lines.
There was no charge of bookmaking.
No bookmaking.
So the government admits, at last, that the Computer Group simply was betting on games. If not for Ivan Mindlin's careless association with a petty hoodlum, there might never have been a FBI inquiry. But the inquiry began, and it was extended into the next decade by innuendo and intrigue, and by Thomas Noble's desire to understand how these people were earning so much money.
Six years with Big Brother has not cured the Computer Group of its addiction to gambling. Of the 19 who were indicted in January, most are still gamblers. Like deposed heads of state, they await trial while the system grinds on without them. In Las Vegas, all the top betting operations now have access to their own Michael Kents. They hire their Billy Walters to move the money on a national level. Aided by their Glen Walkers and Dale Conways and Arnie Haaheims, they flood the market and try to manipulate the line. In all of the Vegas sports books there are agents for the betting combines, soldiers armed with cellular phones and beepers, waiting for instructions. For all their vast organization, these modern brokers of sports bets will never match the sensation created by their forefathers, who, not 10 years ago, were sophisticated enough to beat the linemakers at their own game.
Their legacy was to ruin the game for all who might try to duplicate their success, including themselves.
"Next year," says Michael Roxborough, an official linemaker in Las Vegas, "we've got a new computer program that's going to help us make a better line."
Best of Ian's Work
Click the links below to read the rest of Ian's work, which spans over three decades.