The End of the Innocence (1950)

Nearly 75 years after the CCNY scandal, what happens now with sports and gambling?

This is Throwbacks, a newsletter by me, Michael Weinreb, about sports, history, culture and politics, and everything in-between. Please join the mailing list and share, on social media or through e-mail or however you feel comfortable sharing. (It’s still FREE to join the list for now: Just click “None” on the “subscribe now” page.)

---

I.

The gambler and the ballplayer met in the summer of 1950. The gambler was married to a former model who used to lounge around the pool at Grossinger’s in the Catskills, where the ballplayer and his Long Island University basketball teammates would often gawk; the gambler drove a black Cadillac and rented a sprawling four-bedroom apartment on Central Park West in a building called the Majestic. The ballplayer was 23 years old, calculating and ambitious; he would occasionally bring his friends into his bedroom and open a dresser drawer that was filled with cash. The gambler carried all the trappings of wealth, but in reality, he was broke.

The gambler’s name was Salvatore Sollazzo; the ballplayer’s name was Eddie Gard. That summer, according to Matthew Goodman’s book The City Game, Sollazzo took Gard out on the town, buying him drinks and ensuring him that easy money awaited if he cooperated with Sollazzo’s scheme. Gard didn’t need much convincing to buy in; he was already imagining an entire network of fixers on basketball teams throughout New York City. He imagined himself becoming as rich as he presumed Salvatore Sollazzo to be.

Their names have long been forgotten, lost amid nearly 75 years of tumultous American history marked by scandal and deceit. But at this moment, in this unprecedented era, the gambler and the ballplayer feel as relevant as ever.

---

II.

Back then, and up until recently, sports gambling in New York City was straight out of Casablanca, one of those things that everyone knew was happening and no one really concerned themselves with. Every weekend in the winter at the old Madison Square Garden on 49th Street and 8th Avenue, they would play college basketball games, and every weekend people would pack the gym and choke the air with cigar smoke and pass money back and forth. But it felt as if what was happening on the floor and what was happening in the stands were separated by an ineffable ethical barrier.

By then, the idea of the point spread had become a thing, and one of Eddie Gard’s teammates had passed the idea down to him: Shave a few points here, and few points there, make the right people happy, and walk away with some extra cash. In the summer, Gard and his friends would play games up in the Catskills, and they would fix those, too. And eventually, a network was formed, and teams began to shave points, including CCNY, an eclectic conflagration of mostly black and Jewish players who had become the toast of the city after winning both the NIT and the NCAA tournament in 1951.

CCNY was a beautiful team to watch; they played the City style of basketball, cutting and weaving and passing and scoring. During that NIT run, they handed the racist Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp the worst loss of his career; it was, one observer told the documentarian George Roy, as if “three Jews and two blacks had whaled the shit out of middle America.” They were, Goodman said, the embodiment of New York City’s vision of itself as a city: Flawed, but ultimately uncorruptible.

---

III.

Eddie Gard built up the network of point-shaving he dreamed of. And then it quickly unraveled. The authorities had zeroed in; they observed Gard meeting up with Sollazzo near Central Park, and they uncovered a widespread scheme that implicated CCNY and LIU and others. It went far beyond Gard and Sollazzo and New York City; after Adolph Rupp declared that gamblers couldn’t touch his players with “a ten-foot pole,” three stars on Kentucky’s 1949 championship team were implicated, and Kentucky had to suspend its basketball program for a season.