Gaming the Game Read online

  “Sportswriters—journalists—are really the key. There are so many variables into a team that guys like journalists who are around the team can help a bettor understand. It could be the mood of a team, and whether or not they are tanking the season late in the year because they’re already out of the playoffs. It could also be access to a team trainer, who is giving more detailed information than the public has. The reporters look like they’re gathering information for stories, but some of that stuff is being transmitted to big-time bettors. I used to deal with a guy who used to routinely get into a certain locker room all the time, and let me know what was going on with that team. He was in there on a day-to-day basis, and the information was incredible.”

  A bookmaker or bettor might pay a reporter in cash for his services, but they are most commonly paid in bets or excused from prior betting losses. Battista developed relationships with reporters and with trainers, expressly to groom them as inside sources. The Sheep offers a tidy example of how these shenanigans manifest in betting circles. It involves a Philadelphia Eagles game in which star running back Brian Westbrook’s injury status was not known until just before kickoff. “He was questionable but we got a call out of the locker room before anyone else that he wasn’t playing,” Battista says. “The Eagles were favored by ten points, and the over/under was something like fifty-two. Well, Westbrook being out of the offense was a big deal. The total moved like six points. We bet the dog and buried the under. The under hit and the dog covered.”

  The inside information didn’t have to come directly to Battista or his partners for them to benefit. The Animals often knew who among the world’s bettors possessed such knowledge and piggybacked bets accordingly. “We were trying to pick everyone’s pocket,” Battista says. “The Poker Players were picking sixty to sixty-five percent in baseball. We knew they had inside information, and these guys were con men at their best. They weren’t just conning people at the poker table. Those guys had bundles in their pockets and friends everywhere. If they bet a baseball game, there was a reason why. We found out later that they also had handicappers working for them, but their success had a lot to do with the inside information they were getting. They contacted us to move games for them because they heard we were dependable, our money was good, and we worked every day. They were Southern guys and we developed a good relationship with them. We moved their baseball games for a few seasons, and they were monsters, just like they were at the poker table.

  “We also moved baseball games for a guy named Doc Johnson, who was The Computer’s handicapper back in the 1980s. During football season, Doc would have his ‘Big Ten Game of the Year’ and the line would move like six or seven points, because he had inside information. If the quarterback was out the night before a game, or if he had gotten in a fight, Doc fucking knew. Some of the things he knew were ridiculous.”

  Notwithstanding their access to inside information and the betting successes that resulted from it, The Animals were still just below the premier echelon of sports bettors. That realm consisted of just a handful of sharps, headlined by The Computer, who did all he could to keep the competition down. “Once we got established, people started following us and jumping on our games. Well, we would use that to our advantage,” most commonly to manipulate betting lines to suit their wagers, Battista says. “Meanwhile, as we were doing that, The Computer was putting ten times as much as we were into the market to put us on Queer Street. We were young and aggressive, and he would use that against us. He had better information than we did, had more money, and more people working for him. If he wanted to manipulate the lines and get us on the wrong side, he could.” That is, unless The Animals were really confident in what they were doing and thus would not be influenced by the line moves dictated by The Computer. “We didn’t find out until years later just how influential he was, and how much he was fucking with people like us,” Battista says.

  Sheep, Tiger, and Bull were rising in stature, and their number of outs grew significantly. More importantly, they were increasingly finding and exploiting bookies who would take ever larger bets. A great example of a major out for them was a New York–based bookie named Bluto. “He was a loud, obnoxious, arrogant motherfucker, who told it like it was,” Battista says. “I loved the guy. He was a great bookmaker. If he spoke, people jumped. He knew we had people behind us who would stand for the money if we lost, and he would let us get twenty thousand on baseball games. We developed a relationship with him and pretty soon he let us get fifty thousand a game. We heard rumors that he might be connected to the Gambinos up in New York, so we would only meet up with him in Atlantic City or in Las Vegas. We didn’t want to get involved with any wiseguy nonsense up in New York. We were just gamblers—short, fat, bald gamblers, family guys with kids in the backs of our minivans with buckets of sand from the shore! We bet with him until he got pinched, when his clerk ratted him out. He went to prison for a few years, and was out of commission. We had to move onto other people like him. The thing was, anyone could bet the big places online. We did that, too, but we wanted to find big books in the U.S. who had deep pockets that we could take on.”

  Battista liked it when serious online/offshore betting took off because he no longer had to spend the time getting rundowns. A simple check of lines on the computer ended the hassle of numerous tedious phone calls, even though the actual bets in the early days were still placed by phone. “We were using a bunch of offshore places, and there was a big sportsbook in England that we absolutely destroyed. They didn’t think we were sharp at all and they’d let us bet again and again,” Battista says. “They didn’t respect us, and wouldn’t even move a number when we bet it. We had so many accounts with them, and we’d nickel and dime them. It was great because we could get good money down without affecting the lines in Vegas or offshore. After we took them for a few hundred thousand, they finally realized who we were.” According to Battista, when it came to wagering with offshore sites, “The betting was the easy part. Getting paid was the problem, because of the illegality of everything. You had to develop relationships with the right people in the United States to be able to get the money back from offshore. Moving the money became so important. There was someone whose nickname was ‘Little Guy’ who drove for UPS during the daytime but was the money man for the East Coast. He got paid a thousand dollars a trip to move money, and would do eight or nine trips a week. He was good, carried a piece, and you could trust him.”

  In addition to the more consequential online sites and the volume of local bookmaking outs throughout the U.S., the traditional Las Vegas market remained. Regardless of where they were living or working, The Animals employed a cadre of full-time runners to get down as much money as possible in Vegas casinos. “Some runners got paid a salary and others got paid on volume. They usually got paid twice a year—at the Super Bowl and during the All-Star break in baseball,” Battista says. “There were so many variations. Runners just had to cut the best deal they could with the bettor or the mover. The problem with using runners was that you really had to stay on top of them. They’d fuck up the bets, take the wrong teams, get the wrong numbers, and you had to cover the losses. You’d have to worry about them stealing, selling your information, worry about them getting robbed.” As for who was recruited for this fairly important part of a major betting syndicate, Battista says, “Runners could have been anybody. We had drop-outs, retirees, people with all sorts of backgrounds. Ideally, you’d have people sent to you from family and friends, so you could trust them. We’d shuffle them around from casino to casino so that they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves in the same day. The next day, they’d be stationed somewhere else. The key was always keeping them running.”2

  Though the betting operation was in high gear and more profitable than they ever expected, the traveling back and forth between Las Vegas and Delaware County got to be too much after a few years. For the three men who each had wives and little kids back home, the profits gained by being physically p
resent in Vegas didn’t offset the travel hassles and time away from family. The Animals returned to the East Coast for good, though they retained a presence in Vegas with their group of runners.

  By this point, the immaturity and brashness that characterized a good portion of Battista’s early gambling career was long gone, replaced by a more serious and inward-disposed persona. “Mostly, I stayed out of the limelight,” he says. “I didn’t want to be known for anything. I wanted to be Plain Jane and fit in; the ‘family guy.’ Because after my years of living the life, I wanted to be able to gamble without anyone knowing what I was doing. The more I did that, the better my life was. I was an ‘everyday’ father and husband, and could still control the numbers gambling. That was the greatest high in my life. I didn’t have to be twenty-one again.” Though The Sheep’s partying days were long over, and although he was physically present more than he had been in years, his ridiculous work schedule still caused grief at home. Battista rarely had time for his wife and kids, even during otherwise routine gatherings and celebrations. This was particularly the case during the Th anksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons, when college and pro football were in full swing. “Those holidays were tough. I brought stress into the picture because I was always working,” Battista says. “I’d bring my laptop everywhere. We couldn’t eat until after the fucking game kicked at four o’clock on Th anksgiving! It was always an argument, “Why can’t we eat before then?!”

  If Battista’s family matters at home were taxing, the ties to his parents were even more strained. “My relationship with my parents wasn’t super tight because they always knew I had something going on,” he says. “They were always unsure of what I was going to do next, because it was never like, ‘Hey, mom, I got a job here!’ at some legitimate place. I thought it would be best if I didn’t tell her what I was doing as I got older. My mom didn’t like the choices I made. She didn’t like my chosen lifestyle. She wanted me to finish college. She didn’t like the restaurant business, because she knew that was another world. She also didn’t like that I was involved with gambling. She never understood why I couldn’t just work a normal job. She was very bothered by what I was doing. If friends would ask about what I did for a living, she would say, ‘I don’t know what he does’ or ‘He works in the restaurant business.’ She was also very religious and I wasn’t. There was one time where I was asked to be the godfather to one of my nephews and I had to get papers from the Catholic Church. At that point, though, my first marriage wasn’t annulled. The priest told me that if I paid the parish fifteen hundred dollars, they’d let me be the godfather. I told the priest, ‘I can get a cheaper deal from the boys downtown! This is extortion!’ I figured I’d give them two to three hundred dollars, give the altar boy ten bucks for doing the service, and make everyone happy. My mom was upset and couldn’t believe the way I spoke to the priest and the way I handled myself. She knew, though, that I always speak my mind.”

  As he grappled with his myriad family matters, Battista had work-related concerns to address. “Life was good, but we were always on the run,” he says. “You never knew what was going to happen. You always had to worry about the idiots downtown coming out to shake you down. Then you had the police and the FBI always looking for people like you. And then you had all the squares trying to find out what you’re doing. So, you were constantly on guard to remain low-profile, work hard, and get in and get out of whatever you were doing. It wasn’t fear, really, it was just that you never had time to rest. And, you always had to deal with stiffs. At the end of the 2001 football season, a big guy at a major online sportsbook stiffed us for eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars. To make it worse, we had a hundred thousand on the Patriots in the Super Bowl with him.3 I can remember being out in Vegas sitting in the Bellagio waiting to meet the guy, and he never showed. I kept calling his cell phone, and when he wasn’t answering I kept hoping he was in a car accident or had some other emergency, because otherwise I knew we were getting fucked. It turned out the sportsbook fucked a lot of people, and owed a total of something like thirteen million dollars, including seven million to The Computer. They just took the money and ran. Shit like that happened every few years. It was the nature of the business. Nobody ever figured out whether they just took the money and ran or if they just didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. There were some years we didn’t get stiffed, but on average you expected to get burned for a few hundred thousand one way or another.”

  One way pro gamblers like The Animals offset such predictable and expected losses is by simultaneously entertaining more traditional business ventures. In Battista’s case, this typically meant being involved with nightclubs and restaurants, like Marina’s, a sports bar that was located in Havertown, PA. “I was approached in the late ’90s to manage Marina’s because I had a background with restaurants,” he says. “I liked it because people knew I was a gambler, and now I had something that looked more legitimate. I could run the place and still gamble, but it meant really long days starting with prepping everything in the restaurant early each morning. I’d be down there by nine or ten in the morning, and wouldn’t get home until around midnight. I would stop into the betting office off and on during the day. Marina’s opened around St. Patrick’s Day, which was good because I didn’t bet basketball that year and could spend the time between the Super Bowl and baseball season working on getting Marina’s ready.”

  The Marina’s gambit also allowed for an experience that captured The Sheep’s multi-faceted persona. During the 2001-02 Eagles season, Battista often listened to 610AM WIP sports radio when he was in the kitchen overseeing things. One day, he says, co-hosts Mike Missanelli and Howard Eskin “were talking about what the Eagles record for the last five games of the season would be. Well, I called in as ‘Jim from Havertown’ and bet them the Eagles would close out stronger than they expected. If they won the bet, my restaurant, Marina’s, would cater an event for WIP up to a thousand dollars. If I won the bet, they would have to come and work for me at a benefit I was organizing for the family of Timmy Soulas. Timmy Soulas and I played rugby together in high school, and he was one of the people killed in the September 11th World Trade Center terrorist attacks a few months prior. I was trying to raise money for his wife, who had five kids and another one on the way. I had five kids and I knew what she must have been going through, and all of us were devastated. So, if I won the bet, Eskin and Missanelli would have to bartend at Marina’s during the Soulas benefit. Our bet came down to the Eagles’ last game of the season against Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay was favored by three. If the Eagles won, Howard and Mike would have to come work for me at Marina’s. At the same time, though, the guys I was moving for were on Tampa Bay, and had Tampa minus two, two-and-a-half, and a little three, for something like twenty thousand dollars total. I didn’t know which side I wanted to win more. The Eagles won in the last few minutes of the game, so I lost the bets with my guys on Tampa, but won the bet with Eskin and Missanelli. They honored the bet, and we wound up raising a few thousand dollars for the Soulas family, which was nice.4 Howard and Mike had no idea who ‘Jim from Havertown’ was, and even when we got together, I don’t think they knew what I did for a living or who I was connected to.”

  After about four years, Battista’s venture with Marina’s came to a necessary end. “It was just too much on me,” he says. “It was forty-five minutes away from my house and between that and the twelve-hour-plus workdays, I was never home. It also wasn’t worth it because by then I realized how much more money there was to be made gambling full-time.” And this was before an offer was made to Battista that he and his Animal pals simply couldn’t refuse.

  Footnotes

  While Tiger and Sheep were in Las Vegas, they were visited by a mutual friend who expected to go out and party all night in Sin City. After all, he knew his pals were among the most consequential bettors in town and figured they’d be up for showing him around what he considered “their” town. The friend was dismayed to find t
hat Tiger hadn’t been down to The Strip in six months—despite living within walking distance, and that these gamblers lived amidst pizza boxes and fast-food wrappers in an around-the-clock betting office. His hopes of partying it up big-time were dashed, and he wound up seeing the sights by himself. Such was the life of this cast of pro gamblers in Las Vegas.

  Regarding the issue of runners carrying such large amounts of cash around Las Vegas, Tiger says, “In some casinos they had lock boxes, so the runners were always told not to go home or come back to the office with the money. They were just supposed to leave the cash, chips, and tickets in the boxes. As for taking money from the office or someplace to the casinos, which really only happens at the beginning of a betting season, I would tell my runners, ‘Always pay the “dollar.” Th ere’s always somebody willing to park your car for a “dollar.” Valet park, and you alleviate the only way you’re going to have trouble, which is being carjacked on the streets away from the casinos. Once you’re out running from casino to casino, there is really no worry because there’s security, police, and cameras everywhere.’ Tourists were walking past runners who were carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars on them all the time, but they just didn’t know it.”

  The New England Patriots, who were two-touchdown underdogs, beat the St. Louis Rams 20-17, and thus Battista et al. would have won their Pats-plus-fourteen bet, aggravating the theft.