Bob Martin

For 20 years, the world of sports betting revolved around Bob Martin. You could make a bet in any city in America, but the point spread you had to beat originated in Las Vegas, in the mind of one man, and that man was Martin.

"There was a golden age of sports betting in Las Vegas, and it's over, and Bob Martin played a big part in it," said Peter Ruchman, general manager at Gambler's Book Club and author of a pending book called "After the Gold Rush: The Rise and Fall of Sports Betting's Glory in Las Vegas, from Bugsy to Boardroom."

"He was the foundation of sports betting for this city and the country, partly because he was the right man, at the right place and right time," Ruchman continued.

In 1997 Martin returned to his native New York to live out his retirement years, but is fondly remembered in Las Vegas and fondly remembers it.

He was born Dec. 14, 1918, in Brooklyn. His parents were Phillip and Rebecca Blume, who ran a neighborhood delicatessen in the Brownsville section. Sometimes Martin was left in charge, even at the age of 13 or 14. Talking baseball with customers, listening to Philadelphia announcer Byrum Saam broadcast on the radio, Martin developed passionate opinions about the game.

"He liked the Brooklyn Dodgers," said his daughter, Stacey St. Clair. "He pretty much missed the sixth period of high school because that's when they played."

The next step was seeking to validate those opinions by putting money on them, and in Brownsville, it was easy to do. "There were neighborhood poolrooms where you could bet a quarter or two," remembered Martin in a telephone interview from his home in New York. "Every few blocks you had one, and it was wide open. Nobody cared."

He began booking limited action himself; his customers were other high school kids. "I did six-hit bets. You could pick any three players in the majors, and those three had to get six hits among them in the next games they played.

"They would pick lead-off men, they would pick left-handed batters against right-handed pitchers, and ballparks where it was easy to hit. They had this down to a science, even though they were just kids of 15 or 16. It shows you how quickly people can become sophisticated if they get to betting."

The events of Martin's times led him to tour Europe in 1944 with an anti-aircraft battery. "As we were moving through France, I think the series that year was the Browns and the Cardinals and we could hear the game by radio. Baseball was huge anyway, in those days, and guys didn't have a lot to do so there was even more interest. So I put up a price and everybody put up $5. I didn't know what I was doing but it was fun."

Martin came out of the Army with $30,000. "With that kind of money I figured I'm not going to work, I can make a living betting on baseball and football. And I did. I made a living. I got so good I even did it in reverse and went broke," Martin laughed.

An old friend from the Army pointed out that at the Polo Grounds, every day, there were "a minimum of 50 guys who sit in the bleachers and bet on every batter and every pitch." Martin looked it over but decided those players were as sophisticated as he was. He tried boxing instead.

"I went home and found some empty shoe boxes, started reading every ring magazine and getting information wherever else I could, and became kind of an expert."

Martin learned nuances. "If a kid's a pretty decent fighter, with a well-connected manger, you think they're going to put this kid in to get beat? And there were other managers who ran meat wagons; whoever fought for them had to be carried out."

He also noticed, "Certain fighters would get battered for two rounds, then win by a knockout in the third." One can only speculate why such an extraordinary thing should occur, but when this same fighter fought again, Martin would be in the audience. And if this fighter again spent the first two rounds getting thrashed, Martin accepted all bets against another miracle comeback. He did fine.

He started making a line on football, did fine there also. "But the basketball scandals helped break me. Teams started throwing games. You can't overcome a fix."

The insiders broke him about 1950. "For the next couple of years I had trouble raising a nickel to get on the subway." A bookie offered him a job in Washington, D.C., and Martin took it.

One of the important events of his Washington period was a bookmaking conviction that was ultimately overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The issue was that they used no wiretap, but used something they called a `spike mike.' They drove it through the wall and hit my air-conditioning ductwork, and they had somebody sitting in a nearby location with headphones and could hear every word anybody said in the house. We contended that was too intrusive, and the court ruled it was. ... The case is in the law books today."

And it was during the Washington years that he snared his wife of 40 years, a chorus girl named Carlotta Divine.

"He asked her to marry him on the second date," said their daughter, Stacey. "She had been married once and said she wasn't ready to marry again. But they ran into each other years later, and I guess she was more ready." They were married in 1959.

In 1963 Martin decided Washington was not big enough for both him and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He relocated to Las Vegas, where bookmakers were legal. For a few years he made his living mostly as a bettor, he said, but in 1967 was invited by Harry Gordon to manage the sports book in his new Churchill Downs betting parlor. He also spent three years working for the Union Plaza book in the mid-1970s, but it was at Churchill Downs that his posted numbers first became the "Las Vegas line" followed by bookmakers, legal and illegal, all over the country.

People disagree about who invented the point-spread system, but everybody in the business would agree with the anonymous gambler who told Ruchman, "The invention of the point spread is the single greatest creation since the zipper!"

Ruchman explained, "Now, instead of Notre Dame being a 7-1 favorite, they are a 14-point favorite, and if you think the underdog will get beat by less, you bet on the underdog." The new system attracted more bettors, and bookmakers could move the number to attract more customers on either side of a bet. They could cautiously attempt to balance the money on both sides, making a profit entirely from the commission, or "vigorish."

The line Martin posted at Churchill Downs, the industry quickly noticed, hardly seemed to move. "He used to say he tried to create a number that was so good he couldn't decide which side to play himself," said Ruchman.

"That was the genius of Bob Martin, that he put out numbers like that day after day, so the bookies didn't have to move their numbers. And I do not use the term lightly; it takes genius to do that.

"The moment he posted the odds there was a stampede for the phones and all the guys with the clipboards would call their locations. This was highly illegal, but nobody made a stink about it."

Martin says his numbers probably had credibility others might not have enjoyed, because somebody would actually take bets at those prices in the gambling mecca of Las Vegas. "Anybody could announce a theoretical line, but these were real numbers you could actually bet against, and that's good enough for somebody in Kalamazoo, Michigan."

"Furthermore, he was incorruptible," said Ruchman. "So his numbers were trusted from Las Vegas to New York. "

It was also important that they were first, Martin said. "As soon as the last pro football game closed, I put up a line for college games. ... The other guys in town wouldn't put their numbers up because they wanted to see what we did."

He was right even more often than many people realized. A famous example was Super Bowl III, when Martin set a now-infamous opening line of Colts minus 17 against the New York Jets. The Jets and their upstart quarterback, Joe Namath, pulled off one of history's great upsets, beating the Colts 16-7.

Martin said, "I got a letter from somebody at Columbia School of Journalism, saying aren't you embarrassed? And I said, `Of course not, that was a great number.' "

The Columbia student, he explained, confused the betting line with a prediction of the score. Instead, it was merely a price meant to attract action on both sides, which it did -- Super Bowl III drew some of the heaviest betting to that date.

Stacey remembered that her dad did most of his work in his home near Bishop Gorman High School, in a den equipped with sofa, chair, mahogany desk, bookshelves and a TV hooked to a satellite dish. "He never used a computer or even a calculator, just a legal pad and a pencil. He worked seven days a week from 7 a.m. until 10 or 11, then about 11:30 he would go to lunch with his friends. "

The crowd gathered at Jackie's Deli in Commercial Center, or later the Celebrity Deli at Flamingo and Maryland. Regulars included Johnny Quinn, who ran the Union Plaza Sports book; Johnny's brother Larry Krantz; "Pittsburgh Jack" Franzi, who ran the book at the Barbary Coast; Lem Banker, the famous sports bettor; Gene Maday, businessman and fearless bookmaker; Marty Kane and Joey Boston, who could make the odds, manage a book, or bet astutely enough to scare one, and did all three.

And then it was home to work some more.

In 1983, Martin was convicted and sent to prison on interstate betting charges. In the 1999 interview he said he no longer remembered the details, but when his memory was younger, he was quoted in Art Manteris' book, "Superbookie."

"A guy from Providence (R.I.) called me a couple of times. I never asked him to call me, but I knew him from Las Vegas. Anyhow, he asks my opinion on a game and mentions that his son wants to get down a bet.

"So I say, `How much does he want to play? I'll place it for him.' That was the extent of it. Except that the guy was being wiretapped as the subject of an investigation, and I fell into the web. I was insulted. I wasn't even the target."

Martin served 13 months in a federal prison at Boron, Calif.

"I'm sure it might have changed him inside, but when he came out he acted as if everything was the same," said his daughter. "He handled it better than the rest of the family did, and I think he did so to make it easy on everybody else."

Now 80, he quit making a line, even for his own use, two years ago, and simply bets football and fights whenever the price looks good to him.

Asked if he had any last point to make before concluding the interview, the old handicapper pointed out, "You should ask me what advice I would offer to be a successful professional sports bettor."

Good idea, so we asked him.

"Marry a rich wife," he answered.