Bookmaker's Dream

In the shadowy world of illegal pro-football betting, they are known as "readers" -- informers who funnel inside information on a team's physical and mental condition to bookies and oddsmakers (TIME, Jan. 14). Most bookies have to settle for readers who pick up their dope secondhand from players, coaches, owners or even locker-room attendants. Now two big-time operators in New York City stand accused of using the best kind of reader available: the official orthopedic surgeon of the New York Giants.

According to a 40-count gambling indictment handed up in Manhattan last week, two bookies, Michael Astarita and Thomas Musto, conferred regularly last fall with Dr. Anthony Pisani about the "extent and exact nature of injuries" to several Giants players. On each of four weekends, after discussions with Pisani, the two gamblers, both of them reputed Mafia members, are said to have accepted bets in excess of $100,000 on pro games, including the Giants'. Pisani, who was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony, was not indicted. He resigned from the Giants last month after ten years as a team physician.

The indictment stunned the National Football League, which has successfully avoided any direct brush with gambling interests since Green Bay Packers Running Back Paul Hornung and Detroit Lions Tackle Alex Karras were suspended in 1963 for betting on games. The N.F.L. long ago adopted an injury-reporting procedure that was designed specifically to prevent what happened in the Pisani affair. Twice every week, each of the league's 26 teams must make public a list of injured players and their availability for the next game: "out, doubtful, questionable, possible or probable."

But coaches have been known to withhold such information--Washington Redskins Coach George Allen concealed an injury to a starting guard before a play-off game in 1972--and it is clear that bookies are convinced that enough medical data remain unpublicized to make readers valuable. They are probably right.

The New York indictment charges that Astarita and Musto debriefed Dr. Pisani last fall about the condition of Ron Johnson, the Giants' star running back. Going into a Sept. 30 game against the Cleveland Browns, the injured Johnson was listed as a "probable" player. Partly for that reason, the Giants were rated as 4-point favorites. In fact, Johnson did not play and the Giants lost 12-10. If the bookies knew Johnson would not play, they stood to make a killing by accepting mostly Giants bets. What is good business for bookies is bad business for football. Coming on top of the players' strike, the scandal is just about the last thing the N.F.L. needs.

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