Sports in America

  ‘What eats my guts out,’ Herman Fly muttered for weeks after that disaster, is that Grove went on to win his next three games, includin’ that fantastic game in Boston, 2–0, when he gave the Red Sox only three hits and didn’t let a man get to second. God Almighty, if he’da won in St. Louis that Sunday, he’da had twenty in a row, and his record woulda stood forever.’

  Often when he thought of the disaster that had overtaken his hero, he would drop his head and mutter, ‘I could strangle Jimmy Moore,’ and tears would come into his eyes. Forever after, when he thought of Grove, the marvelous stringbean, he visualized that sad moment when Jimmy Moore miscalculated an easy out. ‘Except for that,’ Herman often said, ‘old Lefty woulda swept all before him. One pukey error.’ He continued to visualize himself strangling Jimmy Moore. But then his attention was distracted by the way the St. Louis Cardinals tore the A’s apart in the World Series. It was disgraceful, with Pepper Martin stealing the glove off Cochrane’s hand.

  ‘It’s been a bad year,’ Herman moaned as the fate-ridden season ended, and he sensed that it might be the harbinger of worse to come.

  In 1935 everything turned sour. Once more Connie Mack sold off his stars, all of them, and it grieved Herman to see Boston come into town with Grove and Foxx, or Detroit with Mickey Cochrane, still the best catcher in baseball. Eighth place one year by 34 games, once by 49, and later by 55, by 60. The team was so inept that fans conducted contests to see who could invent the silliest sayings about it: ‘One day Elmer Valo actually got to third base, and he asked the umpire, “Where do I go from here?” ’

  But now the quality of the true Philadelphia rooter manifested itself. Herman Fly and men like him kept coming out to the games, kept hoping that some miracle would again lift their team from last to first. They bled, they cursed, they left the park humiliated, but they kept supporting the team. In later years Herman would grow furious when he read that Baltimore or Boston would support only a winner. ‘Hell,’ he growled, ‘if we waited in Philadelphia for a winner, we wouldn’t support nobody.’

  In 1954 the miserable news broke that the Athletics were finally leaving the city. Connie Mack was long since broke. The team showed no possibility of recuperation, and other cities were eager to try their hand at rejuvenation in a new setting. Herman Fly felt as if a major part of his life were ending, as indeed it was.

  But then an extraordinary reaction took place: although the A’s now played in Kansas City, they remained his team, and when they moved to Oakland and their fortunes began to revive, Herman felt a surge of pride. ‘My old team’s comin’ back,’ he told his friends. When the A’s won three pennants in a row, and did so well in the World Series, he basked in their glory as if they were still playing in Shibe Park. ‘I told you they’d be winners again.’ Even though he had not seen them play a single game since 1954, for they did not play National League teams like the Phillies, they were still his team.

  But as a dedicated spectator, who derived positive good from sitting in a crowd and cheering for his team, he required a club to support, and when the A’s left Philadelphia some of his friends suggested that he transfer his loyalty to the Phillies, but he spurned them. ‘Worst team in baseball history. In their entire career they won just one World Series game, back in 1915. To hell with such a team.’

  Later he transferred his affections to the 76ers basketball team, but this, too, was an agonizing experience, for every year the team would show real promise, only to collapse in the play-offs against the Boston Celtics. After one real debacle he growled, ‘I would like to punch Wilt Chamberlain right in the nose,’ and a friend asked, ‘What you goin’ to use, a step-ladder?’

  When he was seventy years old, in 1974, his grandson insisted that he see a hockey game, and after ten minutes in the bright new arena at the other end of Broad Street, he understood what the game was all about, and he became a fierce partisan, screaming in support of the rowdy team known as the Broad Street Bullies. He pointed out, correctly, that when the Boston Bruins played rough it was called ‘vigorous checking,’ but when the Flyers used the same tactics it was ‘unnecessary brutality.’

  Tickets to the hockey games were difficult to get, but during the regular season he managed a few. When the play-offs came, it was hopeless, and he watched those brilliant games on television with mounting fury. First Atlanta, and the Philadelphia team won. Then a bruising series with New York, and again his team won. Then the culmination with Boston, the best team in the world, and in a final game of uninterrupted brilliance, Philadelphia won, 1–0.

  When the last moment of that game ended, Herman Fly gave a shriek, turned off his television, and stormed out into the streets. Hundreds did the same, then thousands and finally more than a million and a half. They roared up and down Broad Street, smashing windows, kissing girls, overturning automobiles. They sang and drank beer and hugged one another and became a town gone wild, absolutely wild, and long after dawn Herman returned home, exhausted and very happy.

  ‘You look like a ten-day drunk,’ his wife said.

  ‘It’s worth it, to have a championship again,’ he replied.

  He couldn’t get to sleep. He sat on a chair in his room, his head bowed as if he were praying. From time to time he would shake his head and mutter, ‘I’ve seen ’em all. McInnis, Collins, Barry, Baker. Foxx, Bishop, Boley, Dykes. Wilt Chamberlain, Hal Greer, Billy Cunningham. And now Bobby Clarke and Bernie Parent.’

  Deeply satisfied, he nodded his bald head, a man of seventy no longer working. ‘But the day I remember best isn’t that ten-run inning in the World Series. It’s that doubleheader. My, my. A no-hit game ruined in the ninth inning with two outs. And the next game 1–0 on Ira Flagstead’s home run. That was a day to remember.’

  But then the sadness of the passing years caught up with him and he gritted his store teeth: ‘By God, I’d like to strangle Jimmy Moore.’

  Herman Fly never once knew the joy of active participation, but that he derived spiritual pleasure from being a mere spectator, there can be no doubt. In an age when big-league franchises were being callously shifted in order to pick up a few more dollars, he was unique in continuing to pay his devotion to a team which had abandoned him; many fans refused to do this and turned away from sports in bitterness.

  Fly’s health was affected neither favorably nor unfavorably by his attendance at games. Possibly he derived some good from sitting in sunlight and fresh air, but not much. At the later basketball and hockey games he inhaled a lot of other people’s smoke, but the damage was minimal. His furious partisanship could have endangered his heart, but his hard work at the locomotive plant had established alternate feed lines. In fact, the excitement stimulated his circulation.

  For the small amount of money he spent each year on his admissions, Fly received a maximum return. For him, sports were a bargain.

  The Bettor

  While working on this book I enjoyed opportunities that would rarely be accorded the average fan, and I was always mindful of that fact. I was allowed to work out with a professional football team. I was invited into the inner sanctum of another NFL team and watched many inside operations. I met with our leading coaches, attended seminars of college presidents concerned with sports, followed baseball teams closely, and watched private practices in college basketball.

  I was able to travel, too, and experience big-game fishing in Hawaii, the Super Bowl in New Orleans, a rodeo in a little town in Montana, auto races everywhere, trotting races at a beautiful rural track in upper New York, and soccer’s World Cup in Munich.

  If I like sports, it is partly because I have been privileged to see them at their best, but no experience was more meaningful than an invitation I received from a man who made his living gambling on horses. ‘If you want to see what it’s like, live with me for a while.’

  I shall call him simply the Pole, because that’s what he called himself. He lived in a neat garden apartment at the edge of Camden, New Jersey, where he was within driving dis
tance of six major race tracks: Garden State, Monmouth and Atlantic City in New Jersey; Liberty Bell and Keystone across the river in Pennsylvania; and beautiful Delaware Park across the bridge in Delaware. The meetings at these tracks were so coordinated that he could attend one almost every day in the year, and he did so.

  He asked me, ‘Try to get to my place before eight in the morning, because I want you to see just what we do.’ I asked who the we were, and he said, ‘You’ll see.’

  I left home about six and drove down the turnpike to the Camden exit, then out to the edge of the city, where the Pole was waiting for me. He led me to his quarters, a fine, clean apartment decorated with watercolors his wife had done before she died. He was a good cook, and as soon as we got to his apartment he started breakfast, a rather large one for the two of us, I thought.

  At quarter to nine, as they did every day of the year, the Italian and the German arrived, the first a short, intense man in his early fifties, the second a very tall, thin man in his late forties. The Pole, a hefty man who had held many jobs from which he was now retired, was just past sixty.

  His visitors had brought with them three copies of that day’s Daily Racing Form, and before breakfast was served, each man opened his Form and studied it in silence. They were comparing the offerings at the various tracks running that day, and with a skill that I would never understand or master, they decided which track offered them the best opportunities for betting. They then discussed their conclusions, each man stating his opinion, and in the end it was decided that on this day they would head for Liberty Bell.

  These men earned their livings betting on horses. Each had a small assured income from either retirement benefits or a night custodian’s job, but primarily they spent only such money as they earned at the track. For them betting was deadly serious, and although they were pleased to talk with me about other aspects of their lives, they wanted no levity about horses and refused to tell me how much actual money they bet or on what horse. They did not even tell one another. They would share the most intimate thoughts about a race, the jockey, the past performances, the way the horse did on grass or on a wet track. But when the final moment came, they moved apart and each man bet his own conclusions.

  They bet in three radically different ways. The Pole, a conservative, looked for the races that promised higher than usual returns on place and show bets, and he was supposed to be uncanny in his ability to spot a race in which the odds were more favorable than the facts would warrant. He rarely bet to win, although sometimes he would go across the board on a horse that seemed sure to place and with a good chance to win. There were refinements to his system that I did not penetrate; although he explained them to me several times, they required so much concentration and study of the Racing Form that I was soon lost in paper work.

  The Italian played only the gimmick bets; the Daily Double (the winners in the first two races), the Exacta (first two finishers in one race) and the Trifecta (first three finishers in one race). ‘What’s the good of betting $2 and getting back $3.20, like him?’ he asked contemptuously, indicating the Pole. Betting every gimmick race on the card, the Italian’s winnings were sensational … once or twice a month. I was with him when he won something like $372 for a $10 bet in the Daily Double, and $194 for a $2 bet. He was also very strong in picking the Trifecta on the ninth race, and when he did this, ending the day with a big hit, he invariably invited his two companions to a good dinner at one of the fine restaurants in the area.

  The German looked for special situations. He would bet either the gimmicks, or to win, or across the board, or even sometimes to show. All he required was some bit of knowledge the general public did not have. When he acquired this edge, he was willing to gamble heavily on it. But when he felt himself just one of the general mass, he would ignore that race, and on some days he might bet only once or twice out of nine races. I gained the impression that perhaps he did better, in the long run, than either of the other two.

  It was the German who set the philosophical stage for my betting experience, but before we get to that, let’s finish with the breakfast. Every morning when the meal was about ready the Pole would ask the Italian how he liked his eggs, and every morning the Italian would reply, ‘On a plate.’ Then, chuckles behind them, the Pole would disappear into the kitchen and shortly thereafter summon the others to the table. There he would serve them eggs, sausage, fried potatoes, Danish and coffee. The German always had milk. They would eat heartily, for that was the last meal they would have till about eight at night.

  During breakfast they would discuss the nine races at Liberty Bell, or wherever they were headed, and I could see each man confirming himself in his predilected way of betting. The Pole would be looking for horses with slight edges that he might capitalize upon across the board. The Italian was forming up his ideas about the Daily Double, his first big responsibility of the day. And the German would be studying speed ratings, jockey switches, trainers’ habits, weather and the multitude of other factors reported in the Racing Form. At this stage they would be exchanging information rather freely, and I was invited to listen and make use of it as I deemed best. (During our entire relationship, which was a most congenial one, they never advised me specifically concerning a single horse. If, as a consequence of their stated opinions, I came to like one enough to bet on it, that was my decision, not theirs.)

  After breakfast there was a more leisurely study of the Form, but with each man zeroing in on some peculiarity he had noticed, and now there was no exchange of information. The room was hauntingly quiet, and it was definitely each man for himself.

  At about eleven-thirty they would clean up the apartment, washing the breakfast dishes before they left, and would head for the car so as to be inside the race track well before one-thirty, post time for the first race, which would also be the first leg of the Daily Double.

  At the track each man would pay $2 or $2.25 entrance money and 35¢ for the program, which gave last-minute changes and the track handicapper’s selections. These two fees, added to the $1 apiece already paid for the Racing Form, meant that each man started the day a total of $3.35 or $3.60 in the hole, plus the 50¢ or $1 parking fee paid by whoever drove.

  I asked why they were willing to pay this initiation fee, as it were, and the Italian introduced me into some of the niceties of betting for a living. ‘I’d prefer to stay home and bet with my bookie, but if I do, four bad things can happen. No matter how high the odds are at the track, and we’ll see some sixty-to-one shots, the bookie has a rule that he will never pay higher than thirty-to-one on win bets and fifty-five-to-one on gimmicks. Also he won’t accept place and show bets unless an equal amount is bet to win. So you miss your chance at a real killing. And if you win too often, he won’t let you bet with him any longer. And if too many people win one day, you may never see him again. To get the best betting odds, you simply gotta go to the track.’

  ‘Also,’ said the German, ‘you gotta be at the track to pick up your last-minute bits of information.’ I was to learn that the German never placed any bet until the last thirty seconds before a race began. He was especially sensitive to the ebb and flow of heavy money, which altered the visible odds on the horses, and if a great chunk of what he called “smart money’ were suddenly dumped on a horse to lower the odds appreciably at the last minute, he might rush in and climb aboard, aware that some kind of special knowledge was operating that day.

  Each day as we entered the race track he would look up at the portals and tell me, ‘Remember, Michener, more than a million dollars will be bet here today. By slobs who don’t know anything about racin’. There’s no reason why us fellows who do know somethin’ shouldn’t pick off our share of that loot.’

  The Pole, when I’d asked apprehensively if any of the races were fixed, told me not to worry about my money. “Whether they’re fixed or not doesn’t matter, Jim. At most, they manipulate one race a day, and even then, whether the fix is a tampered horse that’s supposed
to lose because, say, they put bad shoes on him, or whether it’s a hyped horse that’s supposed to win, everything doesn’t always go according to plan, because the horse that’s supposed to win doesn’t know it. Nobody’s figured out how to tell him yet.’

  I was astonished by the fact that my three gamblers almost never watched a race. They gathered in a corner under the grandstand, joined by seven or eight other gamblers who attended the tracks regularly, and there they would stand all afternoon, lying to one another, studying the past performances for the upcoming race, moving cautiously to the betting windows with an eye on the tote board in the last two or three minutes, and placing their bets in the severest secrecy.

  They cashed their winning tickets in the same secrecy, and during the entire time I was with them I never heard one of my three or any of the other seven or eight report honestly on whether he had won or lost a specific race or on how he was doing generally. The standard reply, used by all of them, was, ‘I’m makin’ expenses.’

  While these classic and silent men pursued their trade, I was being introduced to two of the most fascinating people at the track. The Super Stooper was a tall, thin man who wore a sharp spike attached to the toe of his right shoe. He spent his afternoon prowling the grandstand, keeping his eyes on the floor, turning over castaway tickets with the spike, looking for winning tickets whose one-time owners had mistakenly thrown them away,

  The introduction was sedate and formal: ‘Super, this is James Michener, the writer. He’d like to work with you for a while. Mr. Michener, this is the Super Stooper.’ He nodded gravely and indicated that I would be welcome to join him, if I didn’t slow him down too much with my questions.

  ‘Do you ever find tickets worth real money?’

  ‘Would I wear a nail in my toe if I didn’t?’

  When the Super Stooper did not intend answering a question, he would interrupt his constant staring at the floor and look at me as if I were an imbecile. Without further comment he would resume his inspection of the fallen tickets.