The Game They Played by Stanley Cohen

Author:Stanley Cohen [Cohen, Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453295250
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-09-21T22:00:00+00:00

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The “key figure” from Florida turned out to be Lou Lipman, LIU’s high scorer from the teams of 1947–48 and 1948–49. Lipman, who was arrested at his home in Hollywood, Florida, on March 2, was charged with throwing only one game, for which he received the sum of three hundred dollars. These were not very imposing numbers for so key a figure, but then Lipman had a story to tell. It was a story of threats, intimidation, double crosses, and deceit, and it fired a path that led to other players, and a second major fixer who had preceded Sollazzo onto the scene.

Lipman told the district attorney that he first suspected something was amiss after a game with Southern California during the 1947–48 season when a teammate half jokingly told him, “Lou, if you’d made one more basket you’d have gotten us all shot.” During that same season he discussed his suspicions with another player and was told that if he was not careful he would be “tied in a sack and dumped in the river.” That summer, while playing at a Catskill Mountain resort, Lipman was invited into the deal by Eddie Gard, Natie Miller, and a player not yet arrested, whom Lipman called Mr. X. Gard told him they could split seven thousand five hundred dollars among them if Lipman would “go along.” Lipman rejected that offer and two subsequent offers before arrangements were made for the fixing of the LIU-Duquesne game at the Garden on New Year’s Day 1949. Lipman apparently agreed to accept eleven hundred dollars as his share of a five-thousand-dollar package to keep the score of the game below the four-and-a-half-point spread. Hogan said the fixer went to the LIU locker room before the game to notify the players that the deal was on. Lipman contended that he did not know about it until a time-out during the game when Miller told him, “We’re in on this one.” He also said that he did not know that he was being paid to throw the game. He thought it was a “come-on bonus,” he said, “to get me used to money.”

LIU lost the game 64–55, and the resulting payoff did not serve to accustom Lipman to the feel of money because he never got his eleven hundred dollars. A few days after the game, Lipman, Miller, and X met Gard near the campus, but Gard said he did not have the money. The next night Miller and Lipman went to Gard’s home to meet with a former player, identified as Y, who was supposed to have paid the money to Gard. Mr. X was not present. He was to be dealt a short hand and given only six hundred dollars for his efforts. However, when Y arrived, he said he did not bring the money with him. He said the fixer was holding it and that it would be tripled on the next fixed game. Lipman reneged. He said he wanted out. Lipman told the

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