Hump Guns Down Brain Over Stud Debt!

"I hate pinochle," Memo said. "Let's play poker but not the open kind."

- Bernard Malamud, The Natural



In October 1919, eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw five games in the best-of-nine World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The players implicated in the conspiracy – including Eddie Cicotte and Shoeless Joe Jackson – were banned from baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, though a movement is under way to have Jackson posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. Arnold Rothstein, the syndicate boss who bribed the players with $10,000 apiece, got off scot-free, as did the dozens of his associates who also were involved. Ten years later, Rothstein was gunned down for not paying up after losing $322,000 in a three-day stud marathon. That game may well have been fixed by a team of sharps led by the dapper Joe Bernstein, who won a gold bracelet in the 1973 World Series and was inducted 10 years later into the Poker Hall of Fame at Binion's Horseshoe.



Before Rothstein's couriers would hand over the $80,000 in 1919, he demanded a clear signal that the fix was in. Cicotte provided it by hitting Cincinnati leadoff man Morrie Rath in the back with the second pitch of the Series. Left fielder Jackson eventually misplayed three singles into triples, which normally result, of course, from balls hit to right or right center. Cicotte made three fielding errors in the fifth inning of Game Four alone. Having confidently bet on the Reds, Rothstein and his partners made millions.



When the conspiracy began to unravel, Rothstein testified before a Cook County grand jury that he was an innocent businessman and baseball lover. "The whole thing started when [Abe] Attell and some other cheap gamblers decided to frame the Series and make a killing. The world knows I was asked in on the deal and my friends know how I turned it down flat. I don't doubt that Attell used my name to put it over. That's been done by smarter men than Abe. But I was not in on it, would not have gone into it under any circumstances and did not bet a cent on the Series after I found out what was underway." And as Michael Corleone was forced to ask Fredo, "You believed that story?" The grand jury apparently did. The truth was that so many gangsters had been trying to fix the Series, Rothstein found it easy to cover his tracks. As he told one of his protégés, "If a girl goes to bed with nine guys, who's gonna believe her when she says the tenth one's the father?"



Born in Manhattan in 1882, Rothstein was a math whiz and junior conniver who learned to love the rackets before he turned 9, even while his older brother, Harry, was studying to become a rabbi. "Who cares about that stuff?" Arnold spitefully asked his disappointed father. "This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew." By 1910 Arnold owned several brothels and a prosperous casino in Manhattan, for which he hired the most talented mechanics as dealers, and part of the Havre de Grace track in Maryland, where he and his jockeys fixed a goodly percentage of the races. In 1919 he fixed the biggest sporting event in America. The luck factor in square baseball, as in poker and racing, he knew, was simply too great to risk betting large sums, even on what was clearly the better team that season.



During the Roaring Twenties he branched out into bootlegging and narcotics, working with Meyer Lansky, Legs Diamond, Lucky Luciano, and Dutch Schultz. Rothstein's nicknames included Mr. Big, The Fixer, The Man Uptown, The Big Bankroll, and The Brain. Whatever they called him, he effectively served as the intermediary among the various Jewish, Irish, and Italian outfits and levied handsome fees for this service. His office was Lindy's Restaurant, at Broadway and 49th Street. To foil eavesdroppers, he conducted business while standing on the corner surrounded by bodyguards. At night, to relax, he played in the biggest poker games in the city.



On Saturday, Sept. 8, 1928, he sat down in a stud game hosted by bookie George "Hump" McManus. The other players were California stud artist "Nigger Nate" Raymond, golf and poker hustler "Titanic" Thompson, up from Arkansas, and New Yorkers Joe Bernstein, Meyer Boston, and Martin Bowe. Though much less an underworld force than Rothstein, McManus was well-connected in the city, with one brother serving as an NYPD lieutenant and another as a Catholic priest. The Hump's floating stud action in and around Times Square was a prototype of the Executive Game run by Junior and Johnny Boy Soprano and later by Tony. As host, the Hump was responsible for security, meals and drinks, and for making sure the game was on the level and all debts were settled up afterward.



One version of events is that the New Yorkers, the road gamblers, or some combination of the two colluded against Rothstein, perhaps to avenge losses they'd suffered in rigged games on Rothstein's home turf. Whether it was due to collusion, mechanical manipulation, or plain old bad luck, Rothstein began to lose early and kept getting second-best hands as the stakes, at his insistence, were steadily raised. As the weekend wore on, he chased his losses by playing more and more recklessly. Long after the others wanted to quit, Rothstein demanded the action continue, which made his opponents nervous for a number of reasons. One was that, instead of cash or chips, Rothstein made his larger bets using chits, small pieces of paper with dollar amounts scribbled above his "A.R." By dawn on Monday, A.R. owed Thompson $30,000, Bernstein $73,000, and Raymond $219,000 in chits.



"I think, my friends, that some of you play cards with more skill than honesty," he said, getting up. "I think I've been playing with a pack of crooks." The clear implication, that cheaters didn't have to be paid, seemed confirmed when he left the room without signing any IOUs. Some say he even had $19,000 in cash in his pockets.



"Is this the way he always does business?" Thompson demanded to know.



"Not even a scratch," Raymond said angrily, meaning no scratch of his pen on an IOU.



McManus did his best to reassure them. "That's A.R.," he said. "Hell, he's good for it. He'll be calling you in a couple of days."



Yet a couple of weeks passed without Rothstein calling. As McManus dunned him more and more aggressively, Rothstein spread the word that the game had been fixed, while the Hump remained adamant that it had all been legit. So, had The Brain been outplayed or bamboozled? We can never know for sure, but several sharping experts and gambling historians, John Scarne and David Pietrusza among them, have reckoned that Rothstein was cheated. Thompson never made any bones about being a hustler, and all three New Yorkers were known as skillful professionals, which in those days meant sharps; this also was made clear when Rothstein equated skillful with crooked. Decades later we even have Bernstein's Hall of Fame bio, describing him as "a sharp road gambler."



On the other hand, there has never been a high-stakes marathon, square or crooked, in which someone didn't lose a lot of money, and the tough competition combined with fairly dealt second-best hands could have been the reasons Rothstein got busted. But like so many players, especially professional cheats, he refused to believe he'd lost fair and square – that the risk-averse genius who'd paid off the Black Sox had been bitten by a random black swan. (A black swan is a statistically improbable run of good or bad luck.)



Seeking a friendly but expert opinion, Rothstein called on his friend Nicky Arnstein. An aristocratic con man, bond thief, and sharp who did time in Sing Sing and Leavenworth, Arnstein had polished his sleight-of-hand skills in stud games across the country as well as on trans-Atlantic luxury liners. And while he sympathized about Arnold's losses, he reminded his khaver that sharping was part of their business. Both of them hadn't made millions this way? Rothstein supposed that they had. "Arnold, rigged or not, you have to pay it off. Even if it was crooked, no point to your advertising you were a sucker."



If Rothstein could not disagree, nor could he entirely swallow his old friend's advice. And so, without firmly deciding how to proceed, he continued to stiff McManus, hoping to make him sweat and maybe take a smaller amount. "I'm not going to give them a cent," he made a point of saying in public, "and that goes for the gamblers and gorillas. I can be found any night at Lindy's, if they're looking for me. And if I get killed, no one is going to get any money." But money wasn't really the point. Rothstein was reputed to be worth $50 million, so it was the principle that stuck in his craw.



Muscling him was thought to be out of the question, so McManus went to Jimmy Hines, his connection in the Tammany political machine and who also did business with Rothstein. "They'll get their money," Rothstein told Hines, "but when I want to give it to them and not a minute before." Four more weeks passed. With all the pressure he was under from both Rothstein and his creditors, McManus, a heavy drinker, began to drink even more. One evening, while drunk, he told a gorilla named Willie McCabe that he would personally kill Rothstein if he didn't pay up right away.



At 10:15 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 4, McManus called Rothstein from room 349 of the Park Central Hotel, where he was registered as George Richards. He requested that Rothstein come over to negotiate a settlement, guaranteeing his safety in what would be a two-person sit-down. Rothstein hung up and handed his gun to a protégé, saying, "Keep this for me, I'll be right back," then made the short walk to the Park Central.



Shortly after Rothstein entered the hotel, a single gunshot clapped through the brisk midtown evening. Moments later, a Colt .38 "Detective Special" flew from the window of 349. It bounced off the hood of a taxi and clattered across the sidewalk. Inside, hotel employees found Rothstein limping down the service stairs. Clutching his lower abdomen, he asked for a cab to take him home. Instead, a police officer summoned an ambulance, and Rothstein was taken to Polyclinic Hospital, where a .38 slug was removed from his belly. It had entered just above his groin, severing an artery and causing massive internal bleeding. He left the OR in a coma.



After being given a transfusion and morphine, he regained consciousness long enough to tell his wife, Carolyn, he wanted to go home. When detectives interrupted to ask who had shot him, he muttered, "I'll take care of it myself." Pressed further by an Irish detective, he summoned the strength to scornfully answer, "Me mother did it."



Before anyone could take care of anything, Rothstein died at 10:20 the following morning, Nov. 6, 1928 – Election Day. Back in September, he had bet heavily on Herbert Hoover to beat Alfred E. Smith, and in the New York governor's race on Franklin Roosevelt to outpoll Albert Ottinger. He would have collected $570,000, but according to common bookmaking practice, a bettor's death cancelled his wagers.



McManus hid out from Rothstein's henchmen for another three weeks before arranging to be safely arrested in a Broadway barbershop. Players in the stud game were arrested, as well, but they all had unimpeachable alibis for the night of Nov. 4 and were quickly released.



The State's Attorney contended that McManus had murdered Rothstein for welching. McManus' story was that he didn't have the slightest reason to shoot someone who owed him that much money. Although a Chesterfield topcoat with his name sewn into the lining was found in room 349, no hotel employee could – or would – place him there at the time of the shooting. Nor were the prosecution's forensic witnesses able to tie him to the .38. Their overall case was so weak, the defense felt no need to call even a single witness. After Judge Charles C. Nott Jr. directed the jury to acquit the prisoner, McManus walked out of the courtroom wearing the Chesterfield that only moments before had been tagged as a prosecution exhibit.



Whether it was baseball's World Series or the biggest poker game in the country being fixed, or the sucker was gutshot for welching, the gangster code of silence had prevailed once again with a vengeance. And despite all the progress poker players had made in reclaiming their game from the outlaws, it was clear that the job wasn't finished.



Next: luck in baseball and poker.