It's here! For those of you who have been on Mars, escaping a harsh winter, I'm talking about the game. You know, that celebration of American marketing called the Super Bowl. The game, as you know, is normally played in a stadium located where the weather can be expected to be balmy and mostly sunny. After all, how could a game that was designed to be played in all kinds of weather - unlike baseball - have mother nature get in the way of the joy of watching the best of the best play some football in between attempts at selling us everything from soda (to ruin our teeth), to fast food poison (designed to kill us slowly), to various cars of the future that we are told get a gazillion miles per gallon on the highway - never mind that most of our driving is not done on the highway.
Well, this year the gods of football took a look at the teams playing and saw that both of them were based in cities that normally are not thought of as winter vacation spots and decided to make the teams feel at home. Today the Super Bowl host City of Dallas is expected to get 3 to 4 inches of snow, something that will paralyze this southern metropolis until April. In Pittsburgh and Green Bay people wear shorts when they only get such a small amount snow, but in Dallas the city should come to a screeching halt bringing the gods much joy as they watch the limos driving the big shots to the game slide off the highways as they careen into a ditch. Hopefully, the gods are planning an ice storm for Sunday that will force the league to cancel the half time show, sparing us from having to watch mediocre talent interfere with our half time gluttony. Personally, I think they ought to show a replay of the 2004 Janet Jackson performance which would certainly keep the desired 19-34 male audience in front of the TV instead of at the dip bowl. [Editor's note - They went with the Black Eyed Peas this year. Where's that dip bowl?]
The weather will also affect the millions of us who plan to place a wager on the game. I do mean millions - since the Super Bowl is the biggest day of the year for the sports betting industry by far. It is Christmas, New Years, and Arbor Day all rolled into one day and there are estimates that over a billion dollars will be put on the line.
Nowhere will the action be any stronger than at a beer distributor in Strafford, PA (suburban Philadelphia), the home of Johnny Dollar, a man who would bet on high school games if there was a line for it.
I don't know how old Johnny was when he placed his first bet, but I'll bet that it was before he could walk. He didn't grow up to be the degenerate gambler that he is without help. His older brother Big Tommy and his mother set the example for the young Johnny - they too will bet on just about anything.
I met the dollar man around 1992 when some friends and me would eat lunch at the restaurant owned by Big Tommy. The food was good and the conversation was about sports - perfect for the male bonding experience. Our lunch bunch could have been created by Damon Runyan as we were certainly a colorful bunch of characters. There was Big Tommy, a hulk of a man who had once played football at Villanova, and showed no evidence of having a neck. There was Chootz, a successful stockbroker skilled at separating seniors from their life savings. There was Pauly Espo, a not-so-successful insurance man who dreamed of winning the lottery and finding the perfect Nubian beauty for his edification and pleasure. There was Doc, a Main Line dentist who loved nothing better than to look at someones mouth (where he saw next year's new BMW). My favorite was Mrs B, the lovely mother of Big Tommy and Johnny Dollar who would put your lunch tab on the house if you gave her a can't-miss pick. If she won on your tip, lunch was free for at least two weeks. If she lost, well then she would tell everybody that you didn't know anything.
The restaurant was sold and the family opened up a beer store, which became the place where we all hung out on Friday nights. It replaced the corners that we all had when we lived in the city. Everybody checked in on Friday night, especially during football season when the talk always revolved around point spreads. My role was to review the college spreads with Johnny Dollar. Johnny could not watch a sporting event without having action on it, and he enjoyed watching his football on Saturday. Since he knew that I watched a lot of college ball he came to depend on me to help him decide which games to bet on. We would review 20 or 30 games and the Dollar man would bet on at least 10 of them every week. Given my horrible habit of picking losers I look back in amazement that he would come to me for advice, but he did.
Johnny would bet on games like Montana State vs Idaho, especially if those kind of games were televised. He always thought that the late TV games could help him make up his losses from earlier in the day, giving him momentum going into Sunday's NFL schedule where he would play every game - every single one. He loved long odds and believed that parleys were invented to give him joy. Bookies love parleys since they win those sucker bets 80% of the time.
Johnny Dollar and his brother Big Tommy never seemed to agree on what games to bet and their arguments became the stuff that legends are made of. Big Tommy believed that it was better to play fewer games with a great deal of money on each one. Tommy's minimum bet was a dime ($1000), while Johnny would take the same dime and divide it ten ways to bet $100 on ten games. (On games that he cared about Johnny would up the ante and sometimes would have 5 dimes riding on the outcomes)
Once Johnny Dollar decided on how he was going to play it was time to call Jackie Da Bookie. Now Jackie was a guy who had grown up with Chootz the Stockbroker and at the time was affiliated with a local organization where most of the members last names ended with a vowel. He was an up and coming member of this organization who, besides running his own book, was used as a mediator of debts. By that I mean that Jackie specialized in debt collection for his bosses, and when Jackie went collecting you either paid what you owed (sometimes with money that Jackie would lend you) or you went to the ER with various broken bones. Jackie employed two large gentleman to help collect. They enjoyed their work. Most of the time, they didn't speak aside from an occasional grunt. The only English I ever heard was when on a Friday night they showed up at the beer store to discuss why Johnny hadn't met Jackie Da Bookie on Tuesday to settle up. The English I heard went like this, "Wheres the fucking money? You owe, and you gotta pay."
Johnny Dollar had overextended himself by placing bets with bookies other than Jackie Da Bookie, and now owed Jackie and the other guy, a local tavern owner. The matter was resolved when Jackie Da Bookie threatened to cut the entire family off - a situation that Big Tommy and Mrs B could not tolerate. Mrs B came up with the money and the family was back in business.
Johnny Dollar was such a degenerate gambler that even when he had to do 6 months in the county slammer he continued to bet. He has smashed a beer bottle upside the head of some guy at a local watering hole when the guy looked at him in a manner that Johnny characterized as "funny." Johnny's claim of self defense didn't cut it. Big Tommy would visit Johnny every week and take his bets for Jackie Da Bookie.
Football was not the only sport the Dollar man would bet on. Baseball, basketball, hockey, and the horses were all areas that Johnny had interest in - and were all areas that he had difficulty in picking winners. He also enjoyed "going down the road." Wednesday nights were road nights, and his midnight runs to Atlantic City were legendary. He went every Wednesday after the store closed, and tried to make the trip in under an hour, which meant that he traveled at a very high rate of speed. Johnny always had guys go with him - but in separate cars. Johnny was so crazy that nobody would ride with him. He thought they were pussies.
I haven't seen Johnny for many years but, as sure as I'm sitting here, Johnny has all kind of bets already placed for Sunday's game. His first bets would have been placed at a sportsbook in Vegas. Every spring, Johnny and Big Tommy would do the Haj to Vegas where they would lay down proposition bets - legal in sin city. Now that the game is at hand he is preparing for the call to Jackie Da Bookie, who I'm told is back in the business after a 37 month stay at a federal facility. The brothers are probably still fighting over how to bet. Big Tommy was always a big Packer fan and the Dollar man, well he wears a lot of black and yellow. Good luck guys!
As for myself, I haven't bet on anything for many years but I do have fantasy pick for you to consider. Going into this game, my playoff fantasy record is 6-4 and I expect to end up at 7-4 by taking the points and the PITTSBURGH STEELERS! What do the oddsmakers know anyway!
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