Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: His first afternoon at Lawrenceville, he began by shooting fourteen
Speaker 2: foot jump shots from the right side.
Speaker 3: That's John McPhee, now ninety three years old, the grand
Speaker 3: Master of literary nonfiction. He's reading for us from the
Speaker 3: first book he ever published, back in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 3: He called the book A Sense of Where You Are.
Speaker 3: It was about a Princeton University basketball player named Bill Bradley.
Speaker 2: He got off to a bad start, and he kept
Speaker 2: missing them six in a row, hit the back rim
Speaker 2: of the basket and bounced out.
Speaker 3: The writer had talked the player into letting him watch
Speaker 3: his private workout. It was just the two of them
Speaker 3: alone in some high school gym that Bradley he had
Speaker 3: never been in before.
Speaker 2: He stopped looking discomfited and seemed to be making an
Speaker 2: adjustment in his mind. Then he went up for another
Speaker 2: jump shot from the same spot and hit it cleanly.
Speaker 3: I'm eleven years old when I read what John McPhee
Speaker 3: wrote about Bill Bradley. But I don't care about John McPhee.
Speaker 3: I only want to know more about Bill Bradley. At
Speaker 3: this point, he's in the NBA and I've set up
Speaker 3: a poop in my bedroom to create the upcoming nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two finals, which I care about only because Bradley
Speaker 3: will be in them. I play out this entire two
Speaker 3: hour game. I also serve as the play by play
Speaker 3: announcer into a tape recorder I've set up on my desk.
Speaker 3: Nicks down by one, five seconds left, Bradley in heavy traffic,
Speaker 3: Bradley dribbles, left, Bradley shoots. It's good, Bradley got away
Speaker 3: from McMillan jack. I'm a little man with a private obsession.
Speaker 3: After each game, I sit down and listen to my
Speaker 3: two hours of take to create box scores, to see
Speaker 3: how well Bill Bradley did, even though I had just
Speaker 3: done it. This is how I really begin as a
Speaker 3: sports fan with emulation. I want to be like Bill Bradley,
Speaker 3: which is why I bother to find a whole book
Speaker 3: about him and read it.
Speaker 2: Four more shots went in without a miss, and then
Speaker 2: he paused and said, you want to know something, That
Speaker 2: basket is about an inch and a half low.
Speaker 3: The main thing I learned from the book is that
Speaker 3: if I want to be Bill Bradley, it won't just happen.
Speaker 3: It won't be easy. When Bradley was himself eleven years old.
Speaker 3: He shot baskets until his fingers bled. By the time
Speaker 3: he got to Princeton, he'd shot so many different basketballs
Speaker 3: on so many different hoops. Then when he missed, he
Speaker 3: knew that the problem wasn't him, it was the hoop.
Speaker 2: Some weeks later, I went back to Lawrenceville with a
Speaker 2: steel tape, borrowed a step ladder, and measured the height
Speaker 2: of the basket. It was nine feet ten and seven
Speaker 2: eighths inches above the floor, or one and one eight
Speaker 2: inches too low.
Speaker 3: Much later, I'd realize that all the time I thought
Speaker 3: I was learning how to be Bill Bradley, I was
Speaker 3: actually learning how to be John McPhee. But that's another story. Anyway,
Speaker 3: eleven year old me would never believe what I'm about
Speaker 3: to do. When you were a player, when did you
Speaker 3: first have the sense that kids were looking at you
Speaker 3: as an example of excellence?
Speaker 4: Thousands, literally thousands of fathers would bring their son or
Speaker 4: mothers or daughter and father bring a daughter or whatever
Speaker 4: to the game, and they'd always say, you know, you
Speaker 4: want to be like Bradley. Well, I always disagreed with that.
Speaker 3: I'm talking with Bill Bradley for real.
Speaker 4: No, do you want to be like the father? You
Speaker 4: don't want to be like Bradley, But do you want
Speaker 4: to be like Bradley in terms of the values that
Speaker 4: you see exemplified in the development of his game, Because
Speaker 4: that's what you want to do in your life, to
Speaker 4: develop your skills to their highest and best years.
Speaker 3: I'm Michael Lewis, and this is against the rules this season.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at what's happening to the American fan and
Speaker 3: in this episode, what happens when Bill Bradley's ideal of
Speaker 3: the game collides with the way other people think of it.
Speaker 3: Bill Bradley always seemed to have a plan Basketball was
Speaker 3: just a piece of it before he got to Princeton.
Speaker 3: During his senior year in high school, he actually signed
Speaker 3: with Duke, but then the summer before college he went
Speaker 3: on a trip to Europe.
Speaker 4: And on one of those days he toured Oxford and
Speaker 4: I walked into christ Church Quad and looked around and
Speaker 4: thought to myself, I got to figure some way to
Speaker 4: get back here.
Speaker 3: When he got home, he looked into it, learned about
Speaker 3: Rhodes scholars and that Princeton generated the most of them.
Speaker 3: So he wrote to Duke and told them he wasn't coming.
Speaker 3: Duke was pissed. Princeton scrambled to find him a bed.
Speaker 3: Bradley then nearly flunked out of the college.
Speaker 4: I came from a small town high school in ninety six.
Speaker 4: I had so called low college board scores, and I
Speaker 4: certainly had no reference for French or biology.
Speaker 1: The two of that gave me problems.
Speaker 3: Basketball had already taught him that the harder you work,
Speaker 3: the better you get. He proceeded to spend so many
Speaker 3: hours in the Princeton library that he would graduate with honors.
Speaker 3: Midway through his senior year, he was offered the Rhodes Scholarship.
Speaker 3: The New York Knicks then took him with the first
Speaker 3: pick of the entire nineteen sixty five draft. Bradley thanked
Speaker 3: them politely, then left for Oxford to study for years.
Speaker 3: Even back then, people who didn't know Bill Bradley would
Speaker 3: hear about him and say, oh, it must be an act.
Speaker 3: But if it is an act, it's an act He's
Speaker 3: going to play his entire life. He totally embodies the
Speaker 3: values he talks about, sacrifice, discipline, selflessness, resilience. He's never
Speaker 3: going to lose his Princeton advisor says about him, do
Speaker 3: you know just how hard it is to defeat a
Speaker 3: sixteenth century Puritan elate. In his second year as a
Speaker 3: Rhodes scholar, Bill Bradley realizes how much he misses basketball,
Speaker 3: and so he calls the Knicks and he tells them
Speaker 3: that after he's done with his scholarship and a stint
Speaker 3: in the Air Force, he's coming back to New York
Speaker 3: to play, and Knicks fans go crazy. But his first
Speaker 3: year on the team, he bombs he's really just no
Speaker 3: good a price For those two years in an Oxford library,
Speaker 3: for the first time in Bradley's life, the fans turn
Speaker 3: on him. They bow him, they holler insults. One day
Speaker 3: a fan actually spits on him, but because he's Bill Bradley,
Speaker 3: he turns the other cheek, works his ass off, and improves.
Speaker 3: Over the next six years, he helps the next win
Speaker 3: two NBA championships, and the fans love him all over again,
Speaker 3: now including me. When Bradley's done, they retire his jersey
Speaker 3: and hang it from the rafters of Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 3: Did fans in any way enter your imagination as a player,
Speaker 3: They entered.
Speaker 4: Your imagination by the noise I love the roar of
Speaker 4: the crowd, and it wasn't a fan, It was twenty
Speaker 4: thousand fans when your team came together and did something
Speaker 4: amazing and the garden roof almost came off. And so
Speaker 4: the fans were instrumental in the experience for me as
Speaker 4: a player, as a whole, not as individuals.
Speaker 3: The fans were the congregation recipients of a kind of
Speaker 3: moral instruction which Bradley always honestly tried to supply. He
Speaker 3: always carried himself with this superhuman dignity. Even at peak fame.
Speaker 3: He refused to endorse products. And then there was the
Speaker 3: sordid underbelly in sports, which he someone managed to avoid
Speaker 3: really noticing until well into his pro career.
Speaker 4: We were ahead by six points and there were just
Speaker 4: seconds left, and I shot and hit the shot, and
Speaker 4: some people in the crowd bowed, and I asked afterwards,
Speaker 4: I asked the trainer.
Speaker 3: Why were they buy?
Speaker 4: We won by eight points, not six points?
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 4: Oh, well, those are people gambling on the game. And
Speaker 4: I thought, oh, that's sick, because for me, the game
Speaker 4: was always about values. The idea of gambling on sports
Speaker 4: was always something that was counter to the values of
Speaker 4: the sport.
Speaker 3: Bill Bradley retires from basketball in nineteen seventy seven to
Speaker 3: run for public office. He'd become one of New Jersey's
Speaker 3: US Senators for almost two decades, and in that time
Speaker 3: an argument would develop that no one really wanted to
Speaker 3: have between Bradley's ideas about sports and American life and
Speaker 3: what was actually going on in sports and American life.
Speaker 3: When did you make your first sports bets?
Speaker 1: Oh, my first sports bet was made. They're probably eighth,
Speaker 1: seventh or eighth grade and in through high school, you know,
Speaker 1: just betting the parley cards. A buddy of mine used
Speaker 1: to bring in these green parley sheets where you'd have
Speaker 1: to pick a three for three, four for four, five
Speaker 1: for five. You know, you bet five ten bucks.
Speaker 3: His real name is goadoon Kirollas, but he's always been
Speaker 3: known as Spanky, after a character from the TV show
Speaker 3: The Little Rascals, which his mom loved. Spanky grew up
Speaker 3: in Jersey City, born the year before Bill Bradley became
Speaker 3: the state senator.
Speaker 1: He'd have one kid in the class the night of
Speaker 1: one and you know, he'd win, like, you know, fifty
Speaker 1: sixty bucks whatever, but most people lost. And then I
Speaker 1: sort of realized. I'm like, hey, can I get in
Speaker 1: on this. The only thing I knew as a high
Speaker 1: school kid is the house always won, So I knew
Speaker 1: it was unfair because I never won.
Speaker 3: Spanky maybe had an edge over some of the other
Speaker 3: kids at school because at home he was basically raised
Speaker 3: on games of chance, just a.
Speaker 1: Part of life. Every holiday we'd get together Christmas, New Year's,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd sell it. We'd have dinner and then
Speaker 1: we'd whip out the cards.
Speaker 3: And we just play poker for actual money.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for actual money.
Speaker 3: And so if you lost to your mom, she made
Speaker 3: you pay up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I would just by this is my allowance
Speaker 1: and everything. This is this is the real deal. There's
Speaker 1: you know, my mom, and she taught me, you know,
Speaker 1: a valuable lesson, don't gamble what you're not willing to lose.
Speaker 3: Spanky gamble didn't Spanky lost until Spanky started to gamble
Speaker 3: and win. By the time he entered high school, he
Speaker 3: was effectively running an illegal book of NFL parlays, not
Speaker 3: simple bets on which team wins and loses, but compound
Speaker 3: bets that give you like twenty to one odds if
Speaker 3: you say pick the winner of five different NFL games
Speaker 3: and pay you nothing if you only get four, right, Parley,
Speaker 3: they would have been illegal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you're in high school, one hundred percent. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so there's an illegal bookie in Hoboken, absolutely yes.
Speaker 3: And so he is using what like some high school
Speaker 3: kid as a sort of a salesman as a runner exactly,
Speaker 3: as a as a runner and these things is you're
Speaker 3: getting distributed in your nobody, nobody stops it.
Speaker 1: Nobody. Not only does nobody stopping it, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to name names obviously, but you know
Speaker 1: there will be teachers that will fill out all day
Speaker 1: cards and handle it, you know, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And it was a great school, big sports school, you know,
Speaker 1: just a part of life gambling on sports, betting on sports,
Speaker 1: the football games and stuff. So you know, that's what's
Speaker 1: what we did.
Speaker 3: You're getting a different kind of education.
Speaker 1: And I absolutely from from from people that really weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to be teachers and stuff. But it just it's
Speaker 1: just part of it.
Speaker 3: We're laughing. But Spanky is learning something. He's learning why
Speaker 3: bookies exist. They always win. The kids all want to
Speaker 3: bet on the local teams and so the local bookies
Speaker 3: shift the odds against them. Spanky sees the bookies exploiting
Speaker 3: fan loyalty and decides he wants a piece of the action.
Speaker 3: He takes the parlay cards from the bookie and gives
Speaker 3: them to a barber. The barber passes them out to customers,
Speaker 3: and the customers bet. Spanky then collects all the bets
Speaker 3: from the barber, but instead of handing them all to
Speaker 3: the bookie, he keeps some for himself, which is to
Speaker 3: say that by high school Spanky was a bookie. He
Speaker 3: wasn't stealing the bookies money. He was stealing their business.
Speaker 1: I won't want to wake up in the morning and
Speaker 1: I can't wait to break the law today. But you know,
Speaker 1: the money's the money I figured with gambling and with
Speaker 1: book making, it's really not that bad. It's not like
Speaker 1: I'm putting it under somebody's head and saying you got
Speaker 1: a bet. You know, these are the ones that are
Speaker 1: asking me, hey, you got the sheets in it? The
Speaker 1: sheets ready this week? It was just, you know, like
Speaker 1: you're selling cracks to a crack at it. It's just
Speaker 1: it was just so easy.
Speaker 3: At the same time as Spanky's raking it in the
Speaker 3: high school cafeteria. New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley is rising
Speaker 3: to political prominence. He sponsored bills on healthcare and gun
Speaker 3: control in the environment, but there was one issue he
Speaker 3: hadn't really touched that was dear to his heart. What
Speaker 3: got you interested in taking up gambling as an issue
Speaker 3: when you were in the Senate.
Speaker 4: I'd never done anything on sports. In fact, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: even talk about sports when I became a senator. You know,
Speaker 4: I would never raise the issue of sports. Other senators
Speaker 4: would want to talk sometimes about but I never raised
Speaker 4: it because I wasn't trying to bring basketball into my
Speaker 4: senate life and have it affect that.
Speaker 3: But at some point Bradley couldn't resist. That point came
Speaker 3: when he decided to write a book about the moral
Speaker 3: influence of sports, values of the game he'd call it.
Speaker 4: I thought about how gambling really didn't celebrate those values
Speaker 4: to the contrary, and so I passed this little bill.
Speaker 1: It was not a big bill.
Speaker 4: It was a little bill that banned sports petting in
Speaker 4: the states that didn't have it, and it was the
Speaker 4: law of the land, and I felt good about it.
Speaker 3: At the time. A few states allowed better on sports,
Speaker 3: but most didn't. Bradley's bill, the Professional and Amateur Sports
Speaker 3: Protection Act, effectively banned it except in states where it
Speaker 3: already existed, like Nevada. It was a weird law because
Speaker 3: it didn't ban sports gambling directly. It banned states from
Speaker 3: regulating it. But it accomplished what Bradley wanted to prevent
Speaker 3: people from betting on sports. What were the values that
Speaker 3: were kind of threatened or challenged by gambling.
Speaker 4: I didn't want players to be Roulette chips. I wanted
Speaker 4: to protect the purity of the game, the values that
Speaker 4: were important to me, and gambling polluted that in a
Speaker 4: very fundamental way.
Speaker 3: How gambling did that was obvious to most of the Senate.
Speaker 3: It encouraged athletes to throw games or rig them. It
Speaker 3: encouraged fans to think about their bets rather than the game.
Speaker 3: It introduced money where money really didn't belong in sports.
Speaker 3: The Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act passes in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: two with hardly a peep of protest or anything else.
Speaker 3: Once the Senators from Nevada are sure that they can
Speaker 3: keep doing whatever they want to do inside their state,
Speaker 3: opposition inside the US Senate totally vanishes. Outside of Nevada,
Speaker 3: it's illegal to be a bookie. It's okay to place
Speaker 3: a bet with a friend, but it's against the law
Speaker 3: to run a sports book. And America appears to be
Speaker 3: simply pleased to have Bill Bradley's values embedded in its laws.
Speaker 4: I thought this was very quiet. I mean, I thought, Okay,
Speaker 4: I passed the law. It's now illegal. That's the law land.
Speaker 4: A few New Jersey casino people were pissed, but there
Speaker 4: are a couple people Nobody came up to me, ever,
Speaker 4: I said, why did you pass that casino?
Speaker 5: Bill?
Speaker 3: Never, I want to pause for a moment to point
Speaker 3: out how volatile our country is. No other culture on
Speaker 3: the planet experiences the same violent swings between virtue and
Speaker 3: between freedom and repression, between fear and greed. Sports gambling
Speaker 3: is a good example of it.
Speaker 6: Gambling has always been a part of American history. George
Speaker 6: Washington bet on cockfights.
Speaker 3: David Hill's a writer who grew up in Arkansas, like Spankey,
Speaker 3: in a family of gamblers, so out of curiosity, he
Speaker 3: set out to write a book about the country's long
Speaker 3: relationship with this particular vice.
Speaker 6: Sports gambling really began with betting on foot races in
Speaker 6: early America, and that evolved into betting on the fights,
Speaker 6: you know, first bare knuckle fights and then more sort
Speaker 6: of sanctioned boxing matches which were really put on just
Speaker 6: so that people could gamble on them.
Speaker 3: We don't seem to have sports ever without gambling on sports,
Speaker 3: and Americans have always been fanatical gamblers. At the same time,
Speaker 3: Americans have always been extremely hostile to gambling. At the
Speaker 3: turn of the last century, anti gambling forces got the
Speaker 3: upper hand for a while.
Speaker 6: They shut down a lot of race tracks when they
Speaker 6: passed these anti gambling laws, and without any horses to
Speaker 6: bet on, the bookmakers who made their living booking bets
Speaker 6: on the horses went to the ballpark.
Speaker 3: In other words, when Americans were told they couldn't bet
Speaker 3: on horses anymore, they figured out a way to bet
Speaker 3: on people. In horse racing, the odds aren't fixed until
Speaker 3: the betting stops, and are driven by how much is
Speaker 3: bet on any given horse. If everyone bet on the
Speaker 3: same horse, they wouldn't bother to run the race. In
Speaker 3: baseball or really any other sport, that clearly wouldn't work.
Speaker 3: The book he needed a way to attract interest in
Speaker 3: both teams before the game, even if one team was
Speaker 3: obviously a lot better than the other. Enter an underrated
Speaker 3: American genius named Charles McNeil.
Speaker 6: He created this idea of the points spread, where you
Speaker 6: would give the favorite a certain number of points that
Speaker 6: they would have delay to the underdog, so that the
Speaker 6: proposition between these two teams is as close to an
Speaker 6: even money proposition as possible. Right, you're spotting the worst
Speaker 6: team a certain number of points. And McNeil was a
Speaker 6: pretty bright guy.
Speaker 3: Was he a Wall Street guy?
Speaker 1: He was?
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was a Wall Street guy and worked in
Speaker 6: finance as it was back then, right, and he saw
Speaker 6: sports and the ability to bet on sports is just
Speaker 6: another market.
Speaker 3: Once Americans learned to bet on people instead of horses,
Speaker 3: it wasn't long before people started to fix the games.
Speaker 3: Various point shaving and game fixing scandals plagued college basketball
Speaker 3: in the years before, enduring Bill Bradley's college career. They
Speaker 3: obviously had an effect on Bradley. His law that prevented
Speaker 3: states from legalizing sports gambling was to make just this
Speaker 3: sort of thing a lot less likely to happen. But
Speaker 3: one thing the law didn't accomplish to stop the betting,
Speaker 3: To stop spanky or like anyone else in New Jersey
Speaker 3: who operated any illegal markets.
Speaker 1: A bookmaker who needs to meet you on the corner
Speaker 1: of forty sixth and seventh and hand you a bag
Speaker 1: full of cash. And that's kind of what got my
Speaker 1: wife nervous, want my mom nervous.
Speaker 3: And you know, so this this literally happened. You actually
Speaker 3: got given.
Speaker 1: Cash, oh, all the time, all the time, got given cash,
Speaker 1: gave cash, received and gave cash all the time.
Speaker 3: More on that in just a moment. Spankey graduates from
Speaker 3: high school, goes to Rutgers, graduates summa cum laude in
Speaker 3: computer science and finance, all the while still betting on sports.
Speaker 3: After college, he takes a job on Wall Street. It's
Speaker 3: now two thousand and one, and he has computers and
Speaker 3: the Internet and access to illegal bookies across the country.
Speaker 3: He writes programs that allow him to in effect see
Speaker 3: the entire national sports betting market. No one else is
Speaker 3: doing this so far as he can tell. He alone
Speaker 3: can see that the booky in Pittsburgh has different lines
Speaker 3: on games than the bookie in South Florida, and that
Speaker 3: neither one agrees with the booky and Hoboken. Spankey realizes
Speaker 3: that he can exploit the different lines. Say, the New
Speaker 3: York Giants are playing the San Francisco forty nine Ers,
Speaker 3: and the Giants are favored, but the bookie in New
Speaker 3: York has them as seven point favorites and the bookie
Speaker 3: in San Francisco has them as four point favorites. Spanky
Speaker 3: can bet on the forty nine ers in San Francisco
Speaker 3: and bet on the Giants in New York. He's making
Speaker 3: riskless bets. Whoever wins the game, Spanky will win at
Speaker 3: least one of the bets. If the Giants win by
Speaker 3: either five or six points, he wins them both. He
Speaker 3: figures all this out while working on Wall Street. His
Speaker 3: employer has no idea, and neither, it seems, do the bookies.
Speaker 1: This is one of these things you start learning that
Speaker 1: there's a bias depending on the geographic region, and then
Speaker 1: you start picking up on these things and saying, my god,
Speaker 1: these discrepancies are real. Then you know it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: just snowballs from there.
Speaker 3: Which you're doing, in a funny way, is exploiting fan
Speaker 3: emotion that you got the fans in LA you want
Speaker 3: to bet on the Lakers, and the fans in New
Speaker 3: York I want to bet on the knicks, and they
Speaker 3: distort the odds.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, and the book maker knows that the majority
Speaker 1: of his customers are going to bet on that fan emotion,
Speaker 1: and that's when I come in and I just scoop
Speaker 1: up the value. On the other.
Speaker 3: Side, he's scooping up the values. And by two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, he's asking himself a question, why am I
Speaker 3: wasting my time on Wall Street? Why not just quit
Speaker 3: and become a full time sports gambler.
Speaker 1: I had my mother in law, my mother, my brother,
Speaker 1: and my wife's family all have individual conversations with me,
Speaker 1: asking me if I was sure of this, or are
Speaker 1: you sure about this? Nobody gamble for a living or
Speaker 1: you out of your mind? Spanky knows that's not true.
Speaker 1: People do gamble for a living, lots of people. They
Speaker 1: just don't advertise it.
Speaker 3: But the Spanky's way of thinking, betting on sports isn't
Speaker 3: any worse than working on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: This isn't something that I just took on a whim.
Speaker 1: I'm a risk averse guy. I want to make sure
Speaker 1: that it's going to work before I actually take that
Speaker 1: step forward.
Speaker 3: You're not betting on the sports in the sense that
Speaker 3: you're not depending on your superior knowledge of sports. You're
Speaker 3: just arbitraging sports books.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 3: He's becoming Bill Bradley's worst nightmare. In Spanky's world, the
Speaker 3: games themselves are beside the point. He's no longer even
Speaker 3: watching the games, just the lines.
Speaker 1: No matter what sport it was, underlying asset didn't matter,
Speaker 1: it was just great. It was just printing money. At
Speaker 1: that time.
Speaker 3: He's no longer even doing anything illegal. There's no law
Speaker 3: against placing a sports bet. The law simply forbids making
Speaker 3: a book. It's the bookies he's using who are breaking
Speaker 3: the law. And there's some differences between Spanky's new trading
Speaker 3: business and his old job on Wall Street. What's the
Speaker 3: largest amount of cash you got handed or you handed over?
Speaker 3: And what's the scariest situation you found yourself in.
Speaker 1: The largest cash? You know? It was probably close to
Speaker 1: a million bucks? If I'm not you know it was
Speaker 1: it was probably a million bucks. I was thinking of
Speaker 1: those are a few went form between, But several hundred
Speaker 1: thousands was always the case? Was it? Always?
Speaker 3: What undred hundred dollar bills?
Speaker 1: Always? Yeah? Always, you know, I'll as somebody you don't
Speaker 1: if the guy didn't like you, then he would give
Speaker 1: you twenties and stuff and that would suck. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Then you know what's drug money too. That's another thing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? You know, I remember picking
Speaker 1: up a package I think it was seven hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: and most of them was all twenties and tens, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is custing, this is definitely
Speaker 1: drug warning or whatever it was. But listen, I'm just
Speaker 1: a gambler picking up my winnings.
Speaker 3: So what were they handed to you in like a briefcase.
Speaker 1: Back, you know, in a bag it's a plastic bag,
Speaker 1: or in a book bag or whatnot. I was dealing
Speaker 1: with one guy and he goes, my boss wants to
Speaker 1: see you first before he pays you. So I go
Speaker 1: and meet him at this like you know, abandoned restaurant that,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. And that's a scary.
Speaker 3: And then you know he's there in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: This is in Jersey and North Jersey and it's in
Speaker 1: a restaurant this and the soprano is his airing, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know exactly. And the guy I think ran a
Speaker 1: tanning salon or something or whatever it was. I don't
Speaker 1: even remember, but I went to this restaurant, and then
Speaker 1: you know, he goes, why should I pay you this money?
Speaker 1: And then I go because I wanted fair and square
Speaker 1: and if I would have lost, I would have paid you.
Speaker 1: And then he just looked me in the eye, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was at that moment where you're thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, am I going to walk out of here alive?
Speaker 1: Like what's happening here? Like what are they doing? And
Speaker 1: then he just looked at me and he goes, I
Speaker 1: believe you. And then he like motioned to the guy
Speaker 1: at another guy at the table, and the guy handed
Speaker 1: me the bag, and that what's happened.
Speaker 3: Spanky's world maybe a little CD, but it has its
Speaker 3: own values. They're just a bit different from Bradley's values,
Speaker 3: like keep your word and your mouth shut, see when
Speaker 3: the odds are off and exploit them, take the right
Speaker 3: end of any stupid bet. Spanky's good at all of this.
Speaker 3: He makes more money as a sports gambler than he
Speaker 3: ever did on Wall Street. He's living his life in
Speaker 3: the shadows and thinks that maybe no one will ever
Speaker 3: notice him, but he's dealing with people who are breaking
Speaker 3: the law, and the law is listening.
Speaker 1: So they got us on some of these wiretaps thicking.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we know these illegal bookmakers are operating illegally,
Speaker 1: and then they're giving money to this guy Spanky. That
Speaker 1: means Spanky must be this kingpin bookmaker. And they rounded
Speaker 1: up everybody. I was accused of a crime. Ithentic command.
Speaker 1: And that's the god's honest truth, whether anyone wants to
Speaker 1: believe me or not. I wasn't a bookmaker. I was
Speaker 1: just a better It didn't really matter what he was.
Speaker 1: Spanky faced a nasty choice. He could defend himself in
Speaker 1: court and risk years in prison, or he could cut
Speaker 1: a deal and walk.
Speaker 3: How much did they get for me?
Speaker 1: They got I think about seven hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they just took it. Yes, this took it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they took seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You
Speaker 3: plead guilty to a felony, and what are the consequences
Speaker 3: of that? You don't spend any time in jail?
Speaker 1: Right? I spent I spent two nights in jail.
Speaker 3: And Spanky's now are convicted felon. But that party's kind
Speaker 3: of okay with the felony.
Speaker 1: Did nothing I couldn't coach my son's baseball team because
Speaker 1: you know, they do background checks and then fall of
Speaker 1: a sudden on my fist. So that was like the
Speaker 1: big hit to me other than that, I can't vote,
Speaker 1: which I've never voted anyway. I can't own a gun,
Speaker 1: which I've never owned a gun anyway. And I can't
Speaker 1: serve on a jury, which is actually a plus because
Speaker 1: time I get calls for jury duty, I just tell
Speaker 1: him I'm the felon and they go, oh sorry, and
Speaker 1: that's it. It's over. So it really wasn't that bad.
Speaker 3: Yes, there was this law to stop the spread of
Speaker 3: sports gambling, and yes the Feds occasionally went and arrested people,
Speaker 3: but even the cops who arrested Spanky didn't seem to
Speaker 3: have their hearts in it.
Speaker 1: The pinch happens in October, so I have my attorney
Speaker 1: calling up the DA's office saying, listen, my client needs
Speaker 1: his computers backed. My clients needs his computers back. And
Speaker 1: then eventually the ADA wind up calling my lawyer and
Speaker 1: goes tell Spanky, we're gonna give him his fucking computers
Speaker 1: back before football season starts, and lo and behold. In August,
Speaker 1: I get a call from Queen's saying, your computer's already
Speaker 1: to be packed up, and I went and I went
Speaker 1: go pick up my computer. So like they know that
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue betting.
Speaker 3: So Spanky gets his stuff back and he can get
Speaker 3: his bets down on NFL games. Right after that, New
Speaker 3: Jersey holds a referendum on sports gambling. This is in
Speaker 3: twenty eleven. The referendum puts a simple question to a
Speaker 3: popular vote, should sports betting be legal in New Jersey?
Speaker 3: Two thirds of the voters say yes. The vote has
Speaker 3: no practical effect. Bradley's law is federal law and overrides
Speaker 3: the results of a state referendum. But the referendum tells
Speaker 3: you something. Two thirds of the people Bill Bradley represented
Speaker 3: don't like his ban on sports betting. They agree with Spanky,
Speaker 3: and Spanky thinks time is now my friend. Many many
Speaker 3: people who knew Bill Bradley as a basketball player just
Speaker 3: sort of assumed that he would one day be president
Speaker 3: of the United States. He was so obviously what was
Speaker 3: best in America. But Bradley was always saying, it's not
Speaker 3: the right time to run. But in the year tw
Speaker 3: just as Spanky's really getting going as a sports gambler.
Speaker 3: Bill Bradley finally ran for president. Michael Jordan endorsed him,
Speaker 3: so did many of his former teammates and Senate colleagues.
Speaker 3: Even though Bradley was running against a sitting incumbent Vice
Speaker 3: President Al Gore, turned out it still wasn't the right time.
Speaker 5: Following the results on Tuesday night, I've decided to withdraw
Speaker 5: from the Democratic grace for president.
Speaker 1: We have been defeated.
Speaker 5: But the cause for which I ran has not been
Speaker 5: the cause of trying to create a new politics in
Speaker 5: this country, the cause of trying to fulfill our special
Speaker 5: promise as a nation that cannot be defeated by one
Speaker 5: or one hundred defeats.
Speaker 3: What was it about Bill Bradley that failed to appeal
Speaker 3: to his fellow citizens. He always exemplified these great values,
Speaker 3: but I've always thought his values were the problem. When
Speaker 3: push comes to shove, we want to live like Spanky,
Speaker 3: not like Bill Bradley. Your view of the purity of
Speaker 3: sport is you know, I share it, but it's old fashion.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't think it's old fashion at all. Nope, No,
Speaker 4: you ever shoot five hundred shots in a row and
Speaker 4: do a hundred push ups and run ten miles to
Speaker 4: get into shape to be the best you could be.
Speaker 4: Is that old fashion?
Speaker 3: Nope? I swear to God in that moment, I felt
Speaker 3: eleven years old all over again.
Speaker 4: People don't do that so they can make a bet.
Speaker 4: They do that because they want to be the best
Speaker 4: at what they do. I don't think that's old fashion
Speaker 4: at all. That's what kids need. They need to be
Speaker 4: able to have parents that say, you know, look at
Speaker 4: the way Steph Curry practices. That's what you want to
Speaker 4: say to your kid. And if your kid isn't interested
Speaker 4: in that, but always interested in is a parlay bet
Speaker 4: with fifteen teams in a game on Saturday Night that said,
Speaker 4: we are living in a different world and we've lost
Speaker 4: something precious to all of us. And the problem is
Speaker 4: a lot of people don't know they're about to lose.
Speaker 3: It, or people know they're about to lose it and
Speaker 3: they don't care. There was always more than one New
Speaker 3: Jersey and the other New Jersey. It wants a piece
Speaker 3: of the action. Welcome to the Garden State, Baby That's Next.
Speaker 3: Against the Rules is written and hosted by me Michael
Speaker 3: Lewis and produced by Lydia Gen Kott, Catherine Gerardo, and
Speaker 3: Ariela Markowitz. Our editor is Julia Barton. Our engineer is
Speaker 3: Jake Korski. Our music was composed by Matthias Bossi and
Speaker 3: John Evans of stell Wagon Sinfinett. Our fact checker is
Speaker 3: Lauren Ves. Polly Against the Rules is a production of
Speaker 3: Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 3: and if you'd like to listen to ad free and
Speaker 3: learn about other exclusive offerings, don't forget to sign up
Speaker 3: for a Pushkin Plus subscription at pushkin, dot fm, slash
Speaker 3: Plus or on our Apple show page.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to differentiate between the mics.
Speaker 1: Chinese Mic is my partner, but he's not even Chinese.
Speaker 1: He's actually Vietnamese, but we call him Chinese Fike because
Speaker 1: it's just shorter.
Speaker 3: I want you to give me my nickname if I'm
Speaker 3: gonna come, if I ever come to join you as
Speaker 3: a partner. I can't be Mike anymore.
Speaker 1: I could be something Mike if you I think that's
Speaker 1: you know that word.
Speaker 3: All right? I think I would got my moneyball Mike