A Scandal Grows in Brooklyn

On a good night, as much as two million dollars is bet on U.S. college basketball. In New York City alone, half a million--mostly in $50 to $500 bets--changes hands. A single Chicago betting spot handles about $100,000 worth of business a night.

Thanks to the basketball boom, hundreds of bookies (threatened with the necessity of working for their living after the racing ban) have gone on doing business at their old stands in Chicago, Kansas City, Providence, Boston, Minneapolis and points south & west. The cagey Minneapolis bookies will not touch a New York or Boston game--because, they say,

"Eastern basketball stinks." Last week the nation got a deep whiff of it.

Three New York detectives were watching the home of one Harry ("The Mustache") Rosen, suspected Fagin and fence for a gang of teen-age garment thieves. They spotted two youths entering and leaving, followed them to the home of Harvey Stemmer, a second racketeer. The detectives picked up the boys, grilled them at police headquarters. The youths got panicky and spilled a lurid story: they were members of the Brooklyn College basketball team, had pocketed bribes of $1,000 (to be split with three other teammates) to throw a game with the University of Akron; they had also arranged, for an additional $2,000, to toss a later game with St. Francis' College. Racketeers Rosen and Stemmer, byproducts of the big basketball gambling market, had set their sights on a sure way to slough the bookies.

Brooklyn College expelled the foolish five. A Grand Jury started an investigation of all recent basketball games involving teams in New York's Kings County. The State Legislature moved to pass new bribery regulations.

Prophets & Pipelines. For months there have been rumors of monkey-business on college courts, but only Dr. Forrest C. ("Phog") Allen, outspoken University of Kansas coach, had said anything out loud. Last October Phog Allen roared that he knew of two cases where college players were bribed to throw games. Now that the lid had blown off in Brooklyn, everyone tried to talk at once.

P: Athletic Director Roy ("Legs") Hawley of West Virginia University told of bookies trying to set up an information pipeline to his gym. A Cleveland operator had offered a weekly fee to one of Hawley's players if he would report the physical condition of the squad, its mental attitude, prospective changes in lineup the day before each game.

P: Wrote Sport Columnist Grantland Rice: "It wouldn't be so bad if these Brooklyn College players were the only offenders. . . . I know of more than one college football game . . . under heavy suspicion. My informants were members of the FBI."

P: His Honor Fiorello LaGuardia added his shrill voice: "It just happened that Brooklyn College was the school that was caught, but Brooklyn College is not the only one."

P: Said Georgia Tech's wise Bill Alex ander (TIME, Feb. 5): "When colleges allow a promoter or any other noncollegiate operator to book their athletic teams" -- as they are booked in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Buffalo's arenas--"they are asking for trouble."

P: Manhattan newsmen, a little late on the scene, nosed out the fact that twelve arrests of men taking bets on basketball, hockey and prize fights had been made in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden since Jan. 1.

Points & Profits. Since the Government closed the race tracks, the bookies (who formerly handled basketball bets only as a small sideline for the convenience of their horseplaying patrons) have gone after new business in a big way. Giving themselves much the best of it, as always, they devised a complicated give-&-take point system of basketball betting: if the odds on a game were 6-to-8, the better gave the bookie eight points if he wanted the favorite, got only six points if he wanted the underdog--but when the final score was "in the middle" (seven points difference), as five of this winter's 26 games in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden had ended, the bookies made a clean sweep of all bets. Any man with a mind to do some fixing could see the potential profits in such a setup.

Sucker's game or not, thousands of betters are playing it for all they are worth. For such places as Sammy Wolf's cigar store and betting commission house on North Clark Street near the river, Chicago's busiest betting spot, it is a post-racing bonanza. The average Saturday night handle at Sammy's runs about $100,000. On one side of the shop is a Western Union ticker machine, its burden of basketball, hockey and fight results magnified on a moving screen. On the opposite side, half-time and final basketball results are chalked up on a large blackboard as they roll in. Behind the counter, house men with Edward G. Robinson accents answer a battery of telephones.

Although they have caught on fast, the converted horse players are not without their complaints. Croaked one of Sammy Wolf's converts last week: "This basketball, it gives them all heart trouble. Ya see, a horse race, it starts, then bing, it's over in a few seconds. But the basketball starts, and boom, one team makes a basket. Boom, the second team makes a basket. Boom, the first team makes a basket. And this goes on for an hour. I tell ya, they're all getting heart trouble."

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