How the mob grew sports betting
Chad Millman
ESPN INSIDER
There at the creation.
That's one of my favorite phrases. It means you saw a flash of brilliance or caught a truly original moment or, if you spoke up, contributed to an idea or movement that mattered. It means that you were a witness to history. Think about all the imaginary light bulbs it would have been cool to see turn on (like, of course, the invention of the light bulb, whether you think it was Thomas Edison or Joseph Swan). I would like to have been in the brainstorming session for the Declaration of Independence. I would like to have been in Naismith's gym class. I would like to have been in the seat next to J.K. Rowling when she first typed the words "Harry Potter" and realized, even if no one else did yet, that her days of struggling were over. Thanks to Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, I was there at the creation when Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook. And it was cool, even if it was just a movie (and one that was robbed of an Oscar).
Those moments are rarely big, I would imagine. The weight of what's to come doesn't usually announce itself in incandescence. Creation myths only make it seem that way.
<offer>Beyond the big ones, I have dozens of smaller, more niche moments that I would have loved to have seen up close. And, as a lover of all things gambling, Vegas, the mob and legal dramas, that list includes the 1950 Kefauver hearings, which essentially are when the mob went public. That is why I'm anxious to hit the newly opened Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Built in the old federal courthouse that hosted the hearings, this was a labor of love for Sin City's former mayor Oscar Goldman, a legendary mob lawyer who tried his first case in the courthouse in the late-1960s.</offer>
<offer></offer>
"It was 1967 on St. Valentine's Day," he told me over the phone Wednesday afternoon, a week after the museum opened its doors. "I represented the stepbrother of a fella I came to know as one of the leading mobsters from the Northeast. I dressed my guy in khakis and a rep tie and blue blazer. I got lucky and won, I think the jury felt sorry for me, and from then on I was getting phone calls from associates of this particular guy."
Last year I visited Vegas for the NCAA tournament and spent the morning with the mayor in his office, which overlooked the work on the museum. His 12-year run as the boss was coming to an end. He had artifacts ready to go into the museum lined up along his walls, thanks to donations from the FBI. But my interest was truly piqued when he mentioned the Kefauver hearings. I hadn't realized the old federal building was where some of them had been held.
In 1949, dozens of newspapers and magazines around the country reported on the widespread influence of the mob on local business and statewide elections. Overwhelmed, local police pleaded with the federal government for national laws that had more teeth. In January 1950, Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver responded by proposing hearings on organized crime.
The hearings were held in 14 cities, including Las Vegas, over several months. And they were all televised. This was the beginning of the end for so much of the American underbelly, the first time American-made mobsters were paraded on TV, their influence revealed, their scratchy, East Coast-accented voices heard. They jumped from the pages of Damon Runyon stories and onto American TV screens at the exact moment that that newfangled technology was beginning to fascinate us. With the curtain pulled back, literally, they were no longer protected by fiction. Frank Costello, who ran New York's crime syndicate, refused to appear before the committee unless he wouldn't be shown on TV. During his testimony, cameras focused on his hands, which fiddled with his watch and cuff links so incessantly that people watching referred to it as "the hand ballet."
At times, nearly 100 percent of the televisions in the United States were tuned in. And what they learned, littered among the intricate details of the mob's influence, was how prevalent sports betting was to its operations. Cops in New Orleans supplemented their $186 a week salary by looking the other way when bookmakers did business. A Chicago police captain admitted he hadn't raided a bookie joint in more than a decade and that he had become rich betting on sports, elections and the stock market. When Kefauver finally released his report after a 17-month investigation, he wrote: "Big-time bookmaking operations, largely monopolized by big mobsters, cannot be carried on without the rapid transmission of racing information and information about other sporting events." This note laid the groundwork for the Interstate Wire Act of 1961, which essentially made using the phone to take bets illegal.
"The courtroom is at the centerpiece of the museum," Goodman told me. "It's like a hologram. And we have footage from the hearings. Costello being questioned. Virginia Hill, who had been the girlfriend to so many mobsters, was questioned. You feel like you are entering a place that was involved in a very historic event."
Almost as if you were there at the creation.
Chad Millman
ESPN INSIDER
There at the creation.
That's one of my favorite phrases. It means you saw a flash of brilliance or caught a truly original moment or, if you spoke up, contributed to an idea or movement that mattered. It means that you were a witness to history. Think about all the imaginary light bulbs it would have been cool to see turn on (like, of course, the invention of the light bulb, whether you think it was Thomas Edison or Joseph Swan). I would like to have been in the brainstorming session for the Declaration of Independence. I would like to have been in Naismith's gym class. I would like to have been in the seat next to J.K. Rowling when she first typed the words "Harry Potter" and realized, even if no one else did yet, that her days of struggling were over. Thanks to Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, I was there at the creation when Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook. And it was cool, even if it was just a movie (and one that was robbed of an Oscar).
Those moments are rarely big, I would imagine. The weight of what's to come doesn't usually announce itself in incandescence. Creation myths only make it seem that way.
<offer>Beyond the big ones, I have dozens of smaller, more niche moments that I would have loved to have seen up close. And, as a lover of all things gambling, Vegas, the mob and legal dramas, that list includes the 1950 Kefauver hearings, which essentially are when the mob went public. That is why I'm anxious to hit the newly opened Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Built in the old federal courthouse that hosted the hearings, this was a labor of love for Sin City's former mayor Oscar Goldman, a legendary mob lawyer who tried his first case in the courthouse in the late-1960s.</offer>
<offer></offer>
"It was 1967 on St. Valentine's Day," he told me over the phone Wednesday afternoon, a week after the museum opened its doors. "I represented the stepbrother of a fella I came to know as one of the leading mobsters from the Northeast. I dressed my guy in khakis and a rep tie and blue blazer. I got lucky and won, I think the jury felt sorry for me, and from then on I was getting phone calls from associates of this particular guy."
Last year I visited Vegas for the NCAA tournament and spent the morning with the mayor in his office, which overlooked the work on the museum. His 12-year run as the boss was coming to an end. He had artifacts ready to go into the museum lined up along his walls, thanks to donations from the FBI. But my interest was truly piqued when he mentioned the Kefauver hearings. I hadn't realized the old federal building was where some of them had been held.
In 1949, dozens of newspapers and magazines around the country reported on the widespread influence of the mob on local business and statewide elections. Overwhelmed, local police pleaded with the federal government for national laws that had more teeth. In January 1950, Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver responded by proposing hearings on organized crime.
The hearings were held in 14 cities, including Las Vegas, over several months. And they were all televised. This was the beginning of the end for so much of the American underbelly, the first time American-made mobsters were paraded on TV, their influence revealed, their scratchy, East Coast-accented voices heard. They jumped from the pages of Damon Runyon stories and onto American TV screens at the exact moment that that newfangled technology was beginning to fascinate us. With the curtain pulled back, literally, they were no longer protected by fiction. Frank Costello, who ran New York's crime syndicate, refused to appear before the committee unless he wouldn't be shown on TV. During his testimony, cameras focused on his hands, which fiddled with his watch and cuff links so incessantly that people watching referred to it as "the hand ballet."
At times, nearly 100 percent of the televisions in the United States were tuned in. And what they learned, littered among the intricate details of the mob's influence, was how prevalent sports betting was to its operations. Cops in New Orleans supplemented their $186 a week salary by looking the other way when bookmakers did business. A Chicago police captain admitted he hadn't raided a bookie joint in more than a decade and that he had become rich betting on sports, elections and the stock market. When Kefauver finally released his report after a 17-month investigation, he wrote: "Big-time bookmaking operations, largely monopolized by big mobsters, cannot be carried on without the rapid transmission of racing information and information about other sporting events." This note laid the groundwork for the Interstate Wire Act of 1961, which essentially made using the phone to take bets illegal.
"The courtroom is at the centerpiece of the museum," Goodman told me. "It's like a hologram. And we have footage from the hearings. Costello being questioned. Virginia Hill, who had been the girlfriend to so many mobsters, was questioned. You feel like you are entering a place that was involved in a very historic event."
Almost as if you were there at the creation.
