“Cocaine, heroin, they all cost ya money but to gamble and win, that buzz, there’s nothing like it on earth. I was right. I’ve got a bit of paper in my hand that says ‘I was right.’ I weighed out the odds, I studied the forum and I was right.” — Eddie Fitzgerald (Robbie Coltrane) in Cracker at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting.
Famed horse racing handicapper Andy Beyer followed a simple rule to make millions at race tracks across America.
He told the New York Times in the early 2000s that the secret to his success was simple.
Beyer said: “I don’t gamble.”
What Beyer meant was he didn’t play hunches, take tips or waste his money on hopeless long shots. He used charts and the industry’s bible, the Daily Racing Form, as his guides.
But that flies in the face of what gambling is. It is an exercise in high emotion. Those addicted feel exactly the same as the crackhead taking a pull off his pipe.
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At this moment in time, we are awash in sports betting. It is ubiquitous. But behind much of the glitzy facade can be misery — lost homes, marriages, jobs.
That terrific Cracker episode came to mind when I saw that disgraced former Ohio State and Baltimore Colts star quarterback Art Schlichter was back in the news.
He is 62 years old now and a long way from his matinee-handsome younger self. Once upon a time, Schlichter had it all and then gambled it all away, literally.
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The one-time can’t-miss field general was found unresponsive in June at a Hampton Inn in Hilliard, Ohio. Cops found cocaine in the room and now Schlichter is charged with fifth-degree felony possession.
A first-round draft pick by the Colts from Bloomingburg, Ohio, southwest of Columbus, Schlichter got into trouble his first season in the NFL. It was gambling. A probe showed he placed big bets on at least 10 games during the 1982 season.
The result was a one-season suspension. During that time of reflection, the fallen star admitted to continuing his gambling habit. Schlichter was never the same and was released five games into the 1985 season.
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For the one-time star, the future was the CFL and the Arena Football League. Mostly there was trouble connected to his gambling addiction and a taste for drugs.
Just last summer, Schlichter was released from federal prison after a nine-year jolt for wire fraud, bank fraud and filing a false tax return in a scheme to sell bogus college football tickets.
Gambling has become synonymous with sports. Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson have not taken up their rightful places in Cooperstown because of it.
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And betting in sports almost always walks hand in hand with the Mafia. Jack Molinas found that out.
In the early 1950s, Molinas was a star at Columbia University in New York. He was later implicated in a widespread points-shaving scandal.
Even while he played for the nascent NBA’s Fort Wayne Pistons, Molinas was the mastermind with mobsters in a points-shaving scandal that involved 50 players from 27 colleges.
Also part of the scheme was Big Apple mobster Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli, the head of the Genovese crime family.
Molinas served five years in the slammer before being released in 1968.
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In the early morning hours of Aug. 3, 1975, Molinas was shot to death in the backyard of his Los Angeles home. His business partner was beaten to death the previous November.
Art Schlichter’s spiral from the cover of Sports Illustrated to a drug-addicted gambler is on loop.
He probably should have listened to old railbird Andy Beyer.
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