When I was a Brooklyn schoolyard "yoot" (sixth or seventh grade I reckon), I impulsively bragged to a group of fellow ragamuffins, "I'll bet a buck that the Dodgers win the pennant." What prompted me to make so uncharacteristically bold a claim? Way out on a limb, I was. One of the guys in the gang immediately jumped: "I'll take that bet." So there I was, stuck. I backed off a bit: "I meant half a dollar." Against my better judgment, it was set down as a bet, even though he and I never actually locked pinkies on the deal. Then the Dodgers lost; so did I. My antagonist badgered me continually for his money. Eventually I paid him off with a 1950 Franklin half-dollar (a mint example of which is now selling on Amazon for $3751 -- you can look it up!). Even more painful, I must confess, is that the character who beat me was the loathsome kid about whom many years ago I wrote an entire blog post called My First Racist. You can look that up also.
I am sure that that half-dollar disaster was my first and only venture into the world of chance and hazard. My lifetime losings therefore: 50¢ (which of course was worth a lot more in 1950 than it is now). I had been burnt once, and once was enough to teach me a lesson.
I'm not a risk-taker. I don't play cards, not even gin rummy for matchsticks. I don't care about the ponies and never even visited Yonkers or Belmont Park (where my ne'er-do-well uncle lost scads of moolah and came close to losing his wife and family). I've never been to Atlantic City or to Blackhawk. I don't bet on sports and have never even had a clear understanding of what it means to "cover the spread." I was in Las Vegas once, in 1963. We slept in sleeping bags in the desert and rolled into town early the next morning. At one of the many palatial casinos, I came upon addicted gamblers who'd been up all night playing the slots. They were dirty and tired and (is it too strong to say?) degenerate. Desperately in need of Gamblers Anonymous. It was not a glamorous scene.
Moreover, I've never played the numbers. I've never even purchased a lottery ticket.
My resistance to gambling isn't moral -- I don't think that gambling is inherently wrong or sinful. It's just my nature. I'm a frugal guy (some say "skinflint"; others say "cheap as dirt") who can't bear to throw money away.
I think there's a practical reason to resist gambling. Take, for example, the lotteries. They were illegal until a few years ago but now every state seems to sponsor one or more. The result is a huge transfer of money from people who can't afford the loss to the government. Lotteries are in effect a hidden regressive tax -- another subsidy of the rich by the poor. In addition, people who put their hopes in winning a jackpot are, I believe, less inclined to work for the progressive changes that our society needs. People who buy lottery tickets are more likely to become quiescent rather than active. They wait passively for their ship to come in. And it never will.
Now gambling has moved into an even more dangerous phase. Anyone who watches sports on the TV is inundated with ads that encourage gambling. They're omnipresent and unavoidable. It's another gift to us from the Supreme Court, which in 2018, struck down the federal ban on state authorization of sports betting -- a decision that opened the doors to the flood. A peculiar inconsistency: yes, freedom to gamble, but no, no freedom to do what you want with your own womb. And we today learned that gambling has invaded the university. In our state, in 2020, the University of Colorado made a $1.6 million deal to promote sports gambling on campus. A betting company sweetened the arrangement by offering the school an extra $30 every time a student downloaded the company’s app and used a promotional code to place a bet.
To be clear, it wasn't the "University" that made the deal; it was the semi-autonomous Athletic Department -- or, in actuality, the football team. It's an outrageous decision. A respectable university is now in cahoots with a shady industry to promote gambling on campus, and make money off the deal. What future opportunities for corruption with the nose of that particular camel under the tent of innocence!
One solution would be to lessen the emphasis on football. After all, our team is 1-8 so far this year in the Pac-12, having been outscored 374 to 138. Perhaps Colorado should drop down a notch, say to Division III. We'd thrive, I think, against the lesser competition. But don't bet on it.
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