BALTIMORE
The heyday of Joe the Mule and Hard Times Sam are long gone, and with them enough other bookmakers in this traditionally horse-crazy city so that trying to make a bet on a hot tip at Pimlico without leaving your neighborhood is much harder than it once was. There was a time in Baltimore when a bettor might well find a bookmaker living in the same block. And most of the action then was on horses, before the rise of football and basketball, and the boom in betting on those sports.
A half-century ago, when horse racing attracted the carriage trade and a day spent at the races was one of the unequivocal joys of American life, the underside of the sport also thrived -- it's said that illegal bets on horses alone, up until about 1970, totaled tens of millions of dollars a year in Baltimore. Store owners, barbers, saloon-keepers and gas-station operators were prominent among those who doubled as bookmakers, handling bets on the side and stashing their cash and IOU slips in such places as refrigerators and secret drawers.
But horse racing no longer holds the cachet it once did. Racetrack attendance generally is slim, which is why Maryland track owners long to install slot machines. They hope that lawmakers in Annapolis, after killing slots legislation in their recent session, will legalize slots next year despite staunch opposition. They envision bigger crowds and more betting on the horses as well, but the romance in the sport may well remain on the wane. As it is, the general public takes only fleeting interest in a few major horse racing events annually, such as Saturday's Preakness Stakes at Pimlico -- which remains a profitable day potentially for a modest number of bookmakers inclined to handle the upswing in interest that a nationally famous race normally creates.
"In general, I would think bookies do not want to take horse bets because they can get hit hard -- one bet can take away a lot of their profits quickly," said Frank Carulli, in-house handicapper for Pimlico. "They would rather deal with football and basketball because they're ensured of a profit by the 'vig' [the vigorish, essentially the handling fee established by the bookmaker].
"One reason for a bettor to bet a horse race with a bookmaker would be for convenience. But there are many convenient ways to place a bet nowadays and do it legally. You can place bets on the Internet or by telephone.
"But I would think, just like the Super Bowl, there would be increased interest in a nationally televised event like the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont and the Breeders Cup so that some people might want to place a bet with someone who's convenient or might be located through a friend or a friend of a friend."
Once upon a time in Baltimore and other major cities, betting on horses with a bookie was commonplace and bookmaking was a highly organized business. It's still well-organized, it's just that there are fewer bookies, and football and basketball are the popular sports to bet. At the bottom of the hierarchy have always been runners, who take customers' bets and deliver payoffs. High on the totem pole are layoff men, who can take the bets of small or mid-size bookies if they need to offset heavy action. Decades ago, the race track was portrayed as an exciting, sometimes elegant, place in film and fiction, and the bookmaker often was portrayed sympathetically.
"I would love to have come along in the '20s and '30s," said Paul Randall, a former owner and trainer. "They were big years for the thoroughbred industry and for bookmakers. Horse racing was practically the only form of gambling."
One of Baltimore's biggest-ever bookmakers was Julius Salsbury, known as "The Lord." Salsbury, who owned a strip joint in the downtown honky-tonk area called The Block, dodged the law for years until finally nailed on interstate gambling violations. Convicted and sentenced to 15 years but free on bail while appealing, Salsbury vanished in 1970 from his midtown apartment, leaving not a trace.
Still at large if living, Salsbury supposedly found freedom in a faraway country, which he reached via Canada. That much is fairly certain, while it is only part of the legend of "The Lord" that he escaped the city by being driven away in a horse trailer.
The principal character in filmmaker Barry Levinson's Baltimore movie "Liberty Heights" resembles Salsbury. "Nate" in the movie operates a place on The Block, as well as a book. Eventually, he is arrested and must say goodbye to his family as he is sent to jail -- a poignant ending rather than the fantastic but real-life story of Salsbury blowing the country.
Levinson pays heed to the city's culture of gambling in his other Baltimore films as well, including "Tin Men." In that one, two feuding aluminum-siding salesmen meet up at Pimlico, where one (played by Richard Dreyfuss) concedes "victory" in his personal battle with the other (Danny DeVito), who realizes correctly (he has already lost on the horses), "I couldn't a won. I smell a rat."
DeVito's character epitomizes the kind of patron cultivated by bookies. "Bookmakers want customers who lose and pay," said a source, who did not want to be identified. "If you hit 'em on a horse or two, they'll cut you off."
Yet bookmakers themselves can be put upon, by the law and by bettors who don't pay off. An incident recounted by the same source has a cop arresting a bookmaker, then phoning the bookie's layoff man and making bets on a couple of football games in the bookmaker's name as the bookmaker himself watches. "Don't bet them, they're going to lose," the bookmaker considerately advises the man who has arrested him.
Bookmakers also have to sense who the non-payers might be, and have to be alert to out-and-out trickery.
"When somebody says, 'I want to make a bet with you,' that's a red flag to a bookie," the source said. "Questions arise, Where was he doing business before? Why isn't he still doing business there?' "
Not many years ago, a certain individual playing the horses realized that the time between races at a Florida track was being shortened because of an approaching storm. He watched the outcome of a race on closed-circuit, then bet the winner with his bookie. When the man went to collect, however, he received the bad news: The horse had been disqualified. The adage again proved true, Some guys just can't win.
One Baltimore bookie of yesteryear, a saloon-keeper, hid rolls of bills behind the liverwurst he served. The saloon-keeper always said, "Irish cops won't go near the liverwurst."
The vice squad was apt to strike at any time, as a Baltimore man, Bob Blatchley, recalled recently. As a boy one Saturday afternoon, he followed the instructions of a nun at his grade school and went to get a haircut before serving on the altar the next day. He was in the chair when the cops stormed in. "Son, I think you better leave," an officer told him. He watched from the sidewalk as adding machines and other betting paraphernalia were found in the shop's back room and heaved outside -- and he stood at locked heels before the nun on Monday morning for not having a fresh haircut.
These days, bookies concentrate on football and basketball. Estimates place the number of active bookmakers in Baltimore at about 200.
"Football is the biggest game in town," said a current Baltimore bookmaker, who lives modestly in a red-brick row house.
Sitting on his sofa, the bookmaker told a story. When he was starting out in the business as a runner for a fairly good-sized bookmaker, he brought in enough extra cash one week to be questioned, "Who's the new customer?" Told who it was, the bookmaker advised the runner not to take the man's money in the future because he couldn't be trusted to pay off. But the following week, the runner again took the man's bets, feeling sorry for him because he had lost the previous week. The bookmaker told the runner, "From now on, you're going to have to make good on his bets."
Soon, the IOU grew and the runner did not have the wherewithal to pay off. "One day, the bookmaker told me that the guy was going to be at such and such a place that night and then opened the drawer to a desk," the onetime runner said. "He pulled out a sawed-off shotgun and said, 'Just blow his head off tonight and we'll call it even.' "
At that point, the runner knew he had some decisions to make.
He borrowed the money from his parents and paid off the bookmaker.
He also decided to improve his state in life, which did not mean getting out of the business but moving up from runner to bookmaker.
He takes bets only on football, he said; Tuesday, after the Monday-night game, is the "straighten-up day," when bets are collected and payoffs are made.
"One year I did horses and everything else year-round," he said. "It drove me crazy. I never had any time off. All I do now is football, college and pro. I work half a year. The season begins with the Kickoff Classic and ends with the Super Bowl. We're in the off-season now. I like to have time off."
He settled back on the sofa and propped up his feet. He will place a small wager on the Preakness for the fun of it, because he loves race horses and the event. He said he likes Peace Rules.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51901-2003May13.html
The heyday of Joe the Mule and Hard Times Sam are long gone, and with them enough other bookmakers in this traditionally horse-crazy city so that trying to make a bet on a hot tip at Pimlico without leaving your neighborhood is much harder than it once was. There was a time in Baltimore when a bettor might well find a bookmaker living in the same block. And most of the action then was on horses, before the rise of football and basketball, and the boom in betting on those sports.
A half-century ago, when horse racing attracted the carriage trade and a day spent at the races was one of the unequivocal joys of American life, the underside of the sport also thrived -- it's said that illegal bets on horses alone, up until about 1970, totaled tens of millions of dollars a year in Baltimore. Store owners, barbers, saloon-keepers and gas-station operators were prominent among those who doubled as bookmakers, handling bets on the side and stashing their cash and IOU slips in such places as refrigerators and secret drawers.
But horse racing no longer holds the cachet it once did. Racetrack attendance generally is slim, which is why Maryland track owners long to install slot machines. They hope that lawmakers in Annapolis, after killing slots legislation in their recent session, will legalize slots next year despite staunch opposition. They envision bigger crowds and more betting on the horses as well, but the romance in the sport may well remain on the wane. As it is, the general public takes only fleeting interest in a few major horse racing events annually, such as Saturday's Preakness Stakes at Pimlico -- which remains a profitable day potentially for a modest number of bookmakers inclined to handle the upswing in interest that a nationally famous race normally creates.
"In general, I would think bookies do not want to take horse bets because they can get hit hard -- one bet can take away a lot of their profits quickly," said Frank Carulli, in-house handicapper for Pimlico. "They would rather deal with football and basketball because they're ensured of a profit by the 'vig' [the vigorish, essentially the handling fee established by the bookmaker].
"One reason for a bettor to bet a horse race with a bookmaker would be for convenience. But there are many convenient ways to place a bet nowadays and do it legally. You can place bets on the Internet or by telephone.
"But I would think, just like the Super Bowl, there would be increased interest in a nationally televised event like the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont and the Breeders Cup so that some people might want to place a bet with someone who's convenient or might be located through a friend or a friend of a friend."
Once upon a time in Baltimore and other major cities, betting on horses with a bookie was commonplace and bookmaking was a highly organized business. It's still well-organized, it's just that there are fewer bookies, and football and basketball are the popular sports to bet. At the bottom of the hierarchy have always been runners, who take customers' bets and deliver payoffs. High on the totem pole are layoff men, who can take the bets of small or mid-size bookies if they need to offset heavy action. Decades ago, the race track was portrayed as an exciting, sometimes elegant, place in film and fiction, and the bookmaker often was portrayed sympathetically.
"I would love to have come along in the '20s and '30s," said Paul Randall, a former owner and trainer. "They were big years for the thoroughbred industry and for bookmakers. Horse racing was practically the only form of gambling."
One of Baltimore's biggest-ever bookmakers was Julius Salsbury, known as "The Lord." Salsbury, who owned a strip joint in the downtown honky-tonk area called The Block, dodged the law for years until finally nailed on interstate gambling violations. Convicted and sentenced to 15 years but free on bail while appealing, Salsbury vanished in 1970 from his midtown apartment, leaving not a trace.
Still at large if living, Salsbury supposedly found freedom in a faraway country, which he reached via Canada. That much is fairly certain, while it is only part of the legend of "The Lord" that he escaped the city by being driven away in a horse trailer.
The principal character in filmmaker Barry Levinson's Baltimore movie "Liberty Heights" resembles Salsbury. "Nate" in the movie operates a place on The Block, as well as a book. Eventually, he is arrested and must say goodbye to his family as he is sent to jail -- a poignant ending rather than the fantastic but real-life story of Salsbury blowing the country.
Levinson pays heed to the city's culture of gambling in his other Baltimore films as well, including "Tin Men." In that one, two feuding aluminum-siding salesmen meet up at Pimlico, where one (played by Richard Dreyfuss) concedes "victory" in his personal battle with the other (Danny DeVito), who realizes correctly (he has already lost on the horses), "I couldn't a won. I smell a rat."
DeVito's character epitomizes the kind of patron cultivated by bookies. "Bookmakers want customers who lose and pay," said a source, who did not want to be identified. "If you hit 'em on a horse or two, they'll cut you off."
Yet bookmakers themselves can be put upon, by the law and by bettors who don't pay off. An incident recounted by the same source has a cop arresting a bookmaker, then phoning the bookie's layoff man and making bets on a couple of football games in the bookmaker's name as the bookmaker himself watches. "Don't bet them, they're going to lose," the bookmaker considerately advises the man who has arrested him.
Bookmakers also have to sense who the non-payers might be, and have to be alert to out-and-out trickery.
"When somebody says, 'I want to make a bet with you,' that's a red flag to a bookie," the source said. "Questions arise, Where was he doing business before? Why isn't he still doing business there?' "
Not many years ago, a certain individual playing the horses realized that the time between races at a Florida track was being shortened because of an approaching storm. He watched the outcome of a race on closed-circuit, then bet the winner with his bookie. When the man went to collect, however, he received the bad news: The horse had been disqualified. The adage again proved true, Some guys just can't win.
One Baltimore bookie of yesteryear, a saloon-keeper, hid rolls of bills behind the liverwurst he served. The saloon-keeper always said, "Irish cops won't go near the liverwurst."
The vice squad was apt to strike at any time, as a Baltimore man, Bob Blatchley, recalled recently. As a boy one Saturday afternoon, he followed the instructions of a nun at his grade school and went to get a haircut before serving on the altar the next day. He was in the chair when the cops stormed in. "Son, I think you better leave," an officer told him. He watched from the sidewalk as adding machines and other betting paraphernalia were found in the shop's back room and heaved outside -- and he stood at locked heels before the nun on Monday morning for not having a fresh haircut.
These days, bookies concentrate on football and basketball. Estimates place the number of active bookmakers in Baltimore at about 200.
"Football is the biggest game in town," said a current Baltimore bookmaker, who lives modestly in a red-brick row house.
Sitting on his sofa, the bookmaker told a story. When he was starting out in the business as a runner for a fairly good-sized bookmaker, he brought in enough extra cash one week to be questioned, "Who's the new customer?" Told who it was, the bookmaker advised the runner not to take the man's money in the future because he couldn't be trusted to pay off. But the following week, the runner again took the man's bets, feeling sorry for him because he had lost the previous week. The bookmaker told the runner, "From now on, you're going to have to make good on his bets."
Soon, the IOU grew and the runner did not have the wherewithal to pay off. "One day, the bookmaker told me that the guy was going to be at such and such a place that night and then opened the drawer to a desk," the onetime runner said. "He pulled out a sawed-off shotgun and said, 'Just blow his head off tonight and we'll call it even.' "
At that point, the runner knew he had some decisions to make.
He borrowed the money from his parents and paid off the bookmaker.
He also decided to improve his state in life, which did not mean getting out of the business but moving up from runner to bookmaker.
He takes bets only on football, he said; Tuesday, after the Monday-night game, is the "straighten-up day," when bets are collected and payoffs are made.
"One year I did horses and everything else year-round," he said. "It drove me crazy. I never had any time off. All I do now is football, college and pro. I work half a year. The season begins with the Kickoff Classic and ends with the Super Bowl. We're in the off-season now. I like to have time off."
He settled back on the sofa and propped up his feet. He will place a small wager on the Preakness for the fun of it, because he loves race horses and the event. He said he likes Peace Rules.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51901-2003May13.html
