Watching from the bench during the Missouri game, assistant coach Bobby Sand had become increasingly frustrated with the team’s poor play, and several times he turned to the freshman coach, Mike Wittlin, to say, “What the hell’s happening out there?” These were smart, experienced players, and it wasn’t like them to take those low-percentage shots or commit that sort of clumsy foul. Finally in exasperation he said, “Nat, get them out of there. Put in the second team.” Holman, though, waved off the suggestion: These were his best players, he said, and if he lost with them there was nothing else he could do.
On the way home, Sand ran into some friends on the subway, who told him they had heard rumors that the game was fixed and that some bookmakers, alarmed by the unusual betting patterns, had taken it off the boards. Sand was troubled by the information, and the next day he brought his concerns to Frank Thornton, a fellow economics professor and a member of the Faculty Athletic Committee, the group that oversaw the college’s athletic programs. “Frank,” Sand said, “you’ve got to do something about it—you’ve got to have an investigation to clear up this situation now. Otherwise we’re in trouble.”
Thornton had heard similar talk from one of his students, and that day he called faculty manager of athletics Sam Winograd and suggested that the committee look into the matter. Winograd sounded skeptical about the claim, but he agreed to bring the story to the attention of Frank Lloyd, chairman of the hygiene department, and to Nat Holman. Lloyd told Winograd that he didn’t think an investigation was warranted “unless you have hard evidence.” Holman asked whether Thornton had provided any specifics, beyond what appeared simply to be rumors; speaking of Holman, Winograd would later say, “He wanted something on which he could hang his hat, and I couldn’t give an answer to him.” No investigation was ever pursued.
As Floyd Layne had anticipated, Eddie Roman and Al Roth stoutly denied working with anyone else on the Missouri game, and they were irate about being stiffed on the payment they were owed. Floyd said that he understood and would do what he could to get the money for them. A meeting was arranged a few nights later for the corner of Central Park West and Seventieth Street, a block from the Majestic.
Eddie showed up at the appointed time and was shortly joined by Fats; they were two unusually tall young men standing by themselves on a street corner, and under the circumstances they could not help but hope that nobody would recognize them and stop to talk about the previous game or the next one. It was mostly quiet here, where the park met the city; streetlamps cast pools of light on the sidewalk, hexagonal paving blocks meticulously fitted together by long-gone workmen. Eventually Salvatore Sollazzo appeared, strolling down Central Park West. He was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, which with his wide-brimmed fedora and camel’s-hair overcoat gave him the mien of a prosperous businessman, and he didn’t seem quite as intimidating in the open air as inside his golden apartment. Eddie gathered himself for a moment and demanded their money; they were entitled to it, he said indignantly, just as much as Floyd and Ed were. Sollazzo pointed out that he had not been able to make all of his bets, that word had somehow gotten out before the game and he suspected that they—who, unlike their two teammates, had worked with other gamblers in the past—were doing business with someone else. In a rush of words Eddie and Fats insisted that they had not told anyone, that they were not double-crossers, they had a deal only with him and if he just paid them what they were owed for the Missouri game they would continue to work with him in the future. Sollazzo seemed satisfied with their assurances and, given the prospect of additional fixed games, agreed to pay them what they were owed; he said he didn’t have the money with him but would get it to them soon.
Meanwhile Sollazzo wondered what they thought about their upcoming game against Washington State University—that is, what they thought the outcome might be. The Cougars had won their four games that season, but they were not regarded especially highly by basketball aficionados, and Eddie and Fats both expressed confidence that City would win by a large margin. Sollazzo said that he appreciated the information, and he promised to pay the four players $250 each if the Beavers exceeded the point spread that night. If they wanted him to, he told Fats and Eddie almost as an afterthought, he would lay that money on the game for them—if they did beat the spread, two hundred fifty could turn into five hundred.
Fats and Eddie looked at each other; they had never contemplated betting on themselves before. Unlike most instances of point-shaving, in this case they were being asked simply to perform as well as they were able, which is exactly what they would be doing anyway, what any athlete did as a matter of course. The two players told Sollazzo to go ahead and place their money on City College. Sollazzo said that he would arrange with Eddie Gard to get them their money, and they said goodbye and the players turned and walked to the subway. Only later did it occur to them that Sollazzo did not seem to have included Floyd and Ed in the betting on the Washington State game, and that it would probably be best if they kept that information to themselves.
Only 10,473 fans were in attendance for the Washington State game, slightly more than half of capacity; many rows of the arena were empty, and Madison Square Garden, which had on so many occasions shaken with excitement from floor to rafters, on this night often fell into the weary, slightly embarrassed silence of a Broadway audience sitting through a flop. The small crowd, Irving T. Marsh observed in the Herald Tribune, “yawned, although politely” during the opening game of the doubleheader, as City College “toyed with Washington State and won as it pleased.” The Beavers had a ten-point lead at halftime and eventually built it to twenty-two, at which point Nat Holman rested his first team and began sending in substitutes. The final score was 59 to 43, a solid victory for City College and comfortably above the bookmakers’ ten-point spread.
The Beavers had played with confidence, and the outcome of the game had never been in doubt; still, there were some distressing indications for the team, particularly regarding absences in the lineup. Herb Cohen, whom Holman had originally projected to be the fifth sophomore on the starting five, had been out the entire season with a case of jaundice. More troubling, Ed Warner had sprained an ankle at the end of the game against Missouri, and although the injury was not considered serious, he may have been still unsteady on that leg, because in the Washington State game he took a bad fall and staggered painfully off the court. In the locker room he was examined by the Garden physician, Dr. Vincent Nardiello, who determined that he had pulled lateral ligaments in his right knee. He missed the second half of the game and for the next week he showed up to practice on crutches.
A few days after the Washington State game Al Roth met Salvatore Sollazzo just north of Rockefeller Center; Sollazzo hailed them a cab, and in the back seat he handed Roth an envelope containing $4,000 in cash—the three thousand he owed Fats and Eddie for the Missouri game plus another $500 each, as promised, for the Washington State game. Floyd and Ed would receive only $250 apiece. Ed Warner picked up the money from Sollazzo in a bar near Rockefeller Center. Sollazzo, he recalled years later, “was covered in gold jewelry. He gave me a ring and I threw it away. There were always good-looking women around him. I was kinda crazy but I wasn’t stupid. I would get my money and get as far away from him as quickly as possible.”
Not long after the double championship, the Crown publishing company had gotten in touch with Nat Holman, wanting him to write a book about basketball strategy. Holman asked Bobby Sand to ghostwrite the book for him for a flat fee of $800, and he had agreed to do it. Bobby had been writing furiously all through the fall, turning out page after page on his lined yellow notepaper, and in December, Crown released Holman on Basketball. More than three hundred pages long, the book discussed every aspect of the game, from passing, dribbling, and shooting to team offense and defense, and provided advice to young coaches as well as “scouting points” that Sand had compiled over his years of researching opponents and potential recruits; it also included dozens of play diagrams and sequences of photographs from game films that illustrated various maneuvers step by step. (Sand had set up a filmstrip projector in his living room so that he could select frames while he was writing.) Holman on Basketball opened with a foreword by Ned Irish that lauded Nat Holman as one of basketball’s “greatest personalities and technicians” and assured the reader that “Nat Holman the author is as skilled and thorough as Nat Holman the coach.” Sand’s name appeared nowhere other than in the introduction, in which Holman wrote, “In the preparation of this book I have had the invaluable assistance of Bobby Sand, Assistant Coach of C.C.N.Y., whose services and contributions I desire to acknowledge with deep gratitude.”
The reviews were glowing. Scholastic Coach began its review of the book this way: “The greatest basketball technician of all time, a man equally at ease with the spoken and written word, Nat Holman is ideally qualified to write on the game. And if you want any proof, just grab hold of his latest book. You won’t have to get much past the opening tap to realize you are reading the greatest technical text on basketball ever written.”
Concluded Scholastic Coach (one of the magazines for which Holman had forbidden Sand to write): “The book is a four-star beauty. Chalk up another remarkable achievement for ‘Mr. Basketball.’ ”
One day in December, Floyd Layne dug through the flowerpot to retrieve the bundle he had hidden there; he pulled a couple of bills from the handkerchief and then replaced it, carefully smoothing the dirt again. Stuffing the money into his pocket, he headed out to Fordham Road, a few blocks from his apartment, where the appliance chain Davega had one of its stores. The store was large and well lighted, its many aisles lined with the dazzling goods of postwar American abundance: refrigerator-freezers, electric ovens, television sets, pop-up toasters. All were displayed to advantage: The porcelain gleamed, the chrome sparkled, the wood veneer was lustrous. These were items that Floyd had never even considered purchasing; now, if he wanted to, he could buy anything in the store.
The washing machines looked like robots from a science fiction movie, with cylindrical white bodies and head-like automatic wringers on top, and a long black hose in the back that attached to the kitchen faucet. The model he selected cost $110. Floyd paid in full—no need for any layaway plan for him—and arranged to have it delivered before Christmas.
Until then, he worried about how he was going to explain the purchase to his mother. When Christmas came and she looked in amazement at the huge box, he told her that he had been saving up for a long time, that he had used the money he earned after his high school graduation, when he’d spent part of the summer working in a brush factory on 169th Street. Lina knew Floyd was like that—he was careful with his money—and she believed him, which imparted a certain sadness to the gift but was still far better than the alternative.
He was indeed careful with his money; when he came home that day from Davega he returned to the handkerchief the money left over from his purchase, and he never again removed any of the bills buried in the flowerpot.
Salvatore Sollazzo had wanted the players to shave points on the Christmas Day game against Brooklyn College, but they refused—it was asking too much to do business on Christmas, and there was no way they were going to try to come in under the points and risk losing against Brooklyn, a team that City had beaten fifteen straight times. Ed Warner was still sidelined with an injured knee, and in his absence Eddie Roman dominated the game. He finished with thirty points, three times as many as anyone else and the most ever scored by a City College player at Madison Square Garden. The final score was 64 to 40.
Sollazzo and Eddie Gard persisted in their solicitations, and the four players agreed to shave points in their next game, three days later, against the University of Arizona, in which City College was favored by nine points. Warner was included in the deal, although he wasn’t sure he would be ready to play, and now, surprisingly, Roman was questionable as well. At some point during the past week he had gotten a cut on one of his toes; he didn’t think much of it at first, but after the Brooklyn game the cut seemed to have become infected, because by the next practice the toe was an angry red, tender and throbbing, making every step a misery. Gamely he hobbled through practice until finally he asked the team’s trainer to cut a hole in his sneaker, to allow more room for the swollen toe, and that seemed to help a bit. For the rest of the week Eddie did what he could to tend to the problem, keeping the toe clean and bandaged, and he saw a doctor to have the affected area lanced and drained, but by Thursday night the toe was still no better, and in the Madison Square Garden locker room before the Arizona game he sat down with Nat Holman, trainer Al Maxtutis, and Garden physician Vincent Nardiello to decide how to proceed.
Holman suggested that the bad toe might be injected with novocaine to dull the pain and allow him to play, and neither member of the medical staff objected to the idea. After Eddie consented to the procedure, Dr. Nardiello removed a hypodermic syringe from his bag and filled it from a small glass vial; he inserted the tip of the needle into the toe, injecting first one side and then the other, and each time Eddie felt a moment of excruciating pain, followed by a slight tingling and ultimately—it was the strangest sensation—a total absence of feeling, as if his toe had been replaced by a length of wooden dowel. The trainer then taped up the toe and his ankles; Eddie put on two pairs of socks (cotton socks next to his feet and woolen ones over those), and the pair of sneakers with the hole cut in one of them, and he was ready to play.
Ed Warner’s game status was similarly hazy. Talking to Holman before the game, Al Maxtutis said that Ed’s knee was bad, that he had been complaining about it all week, and in his opinion he shouldn’t be allowed to play; Bobby Sand was also there, and he agreed with Maxtutis. Holman, though, said that he had discussed the matter with Warner at practice that afternoon; he had asked, “How’s the knee? Will you get off your feet?” and Warner had assured him that everything was all right and that he wanted to play.
Ed Warner did start the game, but he was visibly limping, listing like a smashed ship, and after only two minutes, shaking his head in pain and frustration, he returned to the City College bench, where he would remain for the rest of the game.
Although Eddie Roman’s toe didn’t hurt at first, he still felt an unusual pressure inside his shoe; as the game went along, he found that the novocaine was wearing off, that he was increasingly aware of the pain in his foot like a police siren growing ever louder, and even before the first half had ended he understood with a kind of desperate feeling that he was not able to adequately plant himself to take a hook shot or lift for a jump shot or make a sharp move on defense. He did what he could to keep his team in the game, blocking out for rebounds and shooting whenever he was open, and City managed to overcome an early twelve-point deficit and midway through the second half took the lead. In the Journal-American David Eisenberg wrote that Eddie played “nobly” despite his injury, scoring nineteen points, twelve more than anyone else on the team.
In the end the Beavers fell 41 to 38; it was the team’s third loss of the season against five victories.* After the game an angry Holman told reporters that he didn’t know what to do with his starters, that he couldn’t go in there and play for them himself, that Roth and Layne especially seemed lethargic, and finally he said in exasperation, “Right now they look like a one-man ball club—Ed Roman.”
Eddie Roman, the Post’s Sid Friedlander pointed out after the Arizona game, “has been playing great ball, better than last year both offensively and defensively.” In eight games he had scored 153 points for a 21.8 average—more than four points per game better than the previous season, when he broke City College’s single-season scoring mark. Meanwhile, all around New York basketball fans were wondering about the outlook for Tuesday, January 2. The annual City College–St. John’s game was always the high point of the regular season, and the previous year’s game (won by City when Ronnie MacGilvray’s last-second shot rolled out) was already considered one of the more memorable entries in the colleges’ thirty-year basketball rivalry. The prospects for another classic, however, were doubtful at best. Ed Warner was still nursing his injured knee; for his part, Eddie Roman skipped the team’s workout entirely on Saturday, and on Sunday he glumly watched the practice in street clothes. By Monday—New Year’s Day—the infection in his toe seemed to have spread, for Eddie was now laid up with a 101-degree fever and had to have the toe lanced and drained once more. It was a perfectly miserable beginning to 1951.
Complaining about his team’s poor play after the Arizona game, Nat Holman had predicted, “St. John’s will beat us by fifteen points.” In fact, with Warner’s and Roman’s participation undetermined, bookmakers were a little kinder, installing St. John’s as a nine-point favorite. St. John’s coach, Frank McGuire, believed the game would be close and hard fought, and on New Year’s Day he made a confident prediction, telling a reporter: “You can take five stars on one side and five pigs on the other. If one group is City and the other St. John’s, the coaches might as well sit in the balcony. The game is going to be a rat race and I don’t care which side it is that’s got the pigs.”
McGuire could make another prediction with a fair degree of certainty: that the team’s number one fan, William P. O’Brien, would as usual sit directly behind the St. John’s bench, as he had been doing for years. The main difference now was that O’Brien was no longer police commissioner of the city of New York.
Harry Gross had started to talk.