a nationwide point-shaving scandal<\/a> that reached 32 players and seven schools. The CCNY scandal prompted schools and regulators to become even more vigilant about the influence of gamblers in college sports. Those efforts didn\u2019t stop gamblers like Lefty Rosenthal from running underground bookmaking operations using the technology of the time: long-distance phone lines.<\/p>\nAs a young man in Chicago, Rosenthal bet on horse races and baseball games involving the Cubs and White Sox. In 1957, he attracted the attention of the criminal division of the Illinois Bell Telephone Company, which found him running gambling operations out of three storefronts: a delivery service, a trucking company and a home remodeling company. Feeling the heat, Rosenthal left Chicago and moved to Miami, where he ran a bookmaking operation out of his condo.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 23, 1960, Rosenthal checked into the Dearborn Inn under the alias \u201cFrank Grosscup,\u201d accompanied by a Brooklyn school teacher and former college basketball player named Dave Budin. The same day, a plane carrying Mickey Bruce and his Oregon teammates landed at Willow Run Airport for a game against Michigan.<\/p>\n
On the surface, Mickey was an odd target for a bribery attempt. He was the president of his fraternity, a former Little League World Series star, the son of an attorney and a team captain who played halfback and defensive back. Rosenthal and Budin didn\u2019t know much about him, and he knew even less about them. The only connection was an Oregon basketball player named Jimmy Granata who, like Budin, grew up playing on the courts of New York City.<\/p>\n
Granata told Mickey he had two friends staying at the team hotel who needed tickets. At the hotel, Budin introduced himself as Jimmy Granata\u2019s friend and invited Mickey to his room. Mickey hesitated at first, but Budin assured him it would take only a few minutes.<\/p>\n
Mickey followed Budin into the hotel room and found Rosenthal waiting inside. As they chatted about the game, Rosenthal mentioned Oregon was a six-point underdog. He asked if it was possible a player could be bribed. Mickey conceded it was. Budin then asked Mickey what it would cost to ensure that Michigan won by at least eight points.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are big-time gamblers,\u201d Mickey said, according to his Senate testimony. \u201cYou should know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout $5,000?\u201d Budin offered.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is fine,\u201d Mickey replied.<\/p>\n
Budin and Rosenthal told Mickey they\u2019d pay him an additional $5,000 if he could get quarterback Dave Grosz to go along with the scheme. Mickey agreed and said he needed to go, as he was late for a team walking excursion outside the hotel. The men made plans to meet again at 9 p.m. to finalize the deal.<\/p>\n
Mickey raced to catch up with his teammates and told an assistant coach about the bribe. The coach told Oregon\u2019s athletic director, who informed the Michigan State Police. Police told Mickey to show up for the 9 p.m. meeting as planned but didn\u2019t attempt to apprehend Budin and Rosenthal that night, which proved to be a crucial mistake.<\/p>\n
When Mickey returned to the hotel room, Budin and Rosenthal gave him tips about how to carry out the scheme without attracting suspicion. Rosenthal also offered Mickey $100 a week to call him in Miami Beach and update the health of Oregon\u2019s team before the weekly betting lines were released. Mickey asked to be paid for the tickets, which were worth about $3 each, and Rosenthal peeled $50 from a roll of $100 bills.<\/p>\n
Rosenthal said he had to leave later that night but told Mickey to see Budin in the morning to collect the money. Mickey agreed and went back to his room. The next morning, while eating breakfast with his teammates, he saw a state trooper leading Budin out of the hotel in handcuffs.<\/p>\n
Mickey played his heart out against the Wolverines, hauling in an interception, but it made no difference. Michigan won 21-0, easily covering the six-point spread. Budin was arrested and charged with registering at the hotel under a fake name, a minor offense. By the time the cops showed up that morning, Lefty was long gone, on his way to Miami with no one in pursuit.<\/p>\n
The Michigan State Police weren\u2019t the only ones on the trail. On the same weekend that Budin and Rosenthal tried to bribe Mickey Bruce, a player from Florida reported a similar bribery attempt involving a game between the Gators and Florida State. Authorities began to suspect these were part of an organized gambling ring.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, police in Miami noticed suspicious activity at Lefty Rosenthal\u2019s condo. On New Year\u2019s Eve of 1960, police chief Martin Dardis knocked on Rosenthal\u2019s door and found him in his bedroom in his pajamas, telephone in one hand and a small black book in the other. Dardis took the phone and answered calls from bettors around the country, including one from a man named Amos who wanted to place a bet on a football game. Dardis handed the phone to Rosenthal, who said, \u201cYou are talking to a cop, you stupid S.O.B.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the raid, Rosenthal complained that he\u2019d paid $500 to keep the local police from harassing his bookmaking operation. \u201cYou guys must be kidding,\u201d he said, according to a sergeant\u2019s sworn affidavit. \u201cEvidently you didn\u2019t get your piece.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1961, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations announced hearings on illicit gambling. The committee was chaired by John McClellan, a Democratic senator from Arkansas who, a few years earlier, oversaw a Senate investigation into corruption allegations involving Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa.<\/p>\n
The chief counsel to the McClellan committee, Robert F. Kennedy, became attorney general in 1961 and was determined to crack down on organized crime. Over three weeks in late summer, the McClellan committee hauled accused gamblers, including Lefty Rosenthal, to Washington, D.C., and grilled them about their activities.<\/p>\n
When it was Rosenthal\u2019s turn to testify, the committee asked if he recognized anyone from a list of accused gamblers and mob figures: Fi-Fi Buccieri, Sam \u201cMooney\u201d Giancana, Gussie Alex, Sam Minkus. Rosenthal took the Fifth in response to every question, including one about whether he was left-handed.<\/p>\n
Finally, the committee\u2019s lead counsel, Jerome Alderman, asked the million-dollar question: \u201cHave you ever specifically tried to bribe any football players in the Oregon-Michigan games?\u201d<\/p>\n
When Rosenthal declined to answer, the committee called its star witness, Mickey Bruce. Mickey described the bribe attempt in detail, recounting how Dave Budin approached him at the hotel and initiated the meeting with another man, a \u201cblond fellow\u201d with a receding hairline.<\/p>\n
ALDERMAN: \u201cDo you recognize anybody in this room as that man?\u201d<\/p>\n
BRUCE: \u201cYes, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
ALDERMAN: \u201cWho is that?\u201d<\/p>\n
BRUCE: \u201cThe man sitting at my left.\u201d<\/p>\n
ALDERMAN: \u201cWould you point him out?\u201d<\/p>\n
MCCLELLAN: \u201cAre you talking about \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
BRUCE: \u201cMr. Rosenthal here.\u201d<\/p>\n
That dramatic reveal doubled as a rebuke of the Michigan State Police, who failed to connect the dots and place Lefty Rosenthal in the hotel room that night. Police in Michigan had gotten Rosenthal\u2019s name from police in Miami by tracing phone calls from his room at the Dearborn Inn, but they let the trail go cold. Lt. Carl Robinson, head of the Michigan racket squad, was asked by one of the senators if police now had enough evidence to pursue bribery charges against Rosenthal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Mr. Bruce would testify,\u201d Robinson answered. \u201cThat was our problem before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Bruce will testify,\u201d the senator responded.<\/p>\n
With Mickey\u2019s help, the committee succeeded in putting a face on the shadowy world of illicit gambling. As the hearings concluded, McClellan applauded Mickey\u2019s integrity and held him up as an example for college athletes around the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope if any of them are ever approached in any way by this crooked element that would defile and corrupt the youth of our country, that they will follow the example that you set here today,\u201d McClellan said. \u201cI certainly commend you, and I think all decent Americans applaud you for what you have done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Days later, President John F. Kennedy signed the Wire Act, which made it a federal crime for gamblers to use interstate telephone lines to transmit betting information. Mickey was hailed as a hero, and people from around the country sent him letters praising his courage.<\/p>\n
Police had what appeared to be an open-and-shut case linking Lefty Rosenthal to the attempted bribe and assurances that Mickey would cooperate. But Lefty was not an easy man to catch.<\/p>\n
In February 1962, a few months after the Senate hearings, detectives knocked on the door of Rosenthal\u2019s condo in Miami. Rosenthal came to the door sporting dapper attire and, according to one newspaper account, painted fingernails.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been expecting you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The detectives arrested Rosenthal, but not for bribing Mickey Bruce. Instead, Rosenthal and Budin faced charges in North Carolina for offering $500 to Ray Paprocky, a basketball player at NYU, to shave points in a 1960 NCAA Tournament game against West Virginia.<\/p>\n
Authorities had uncovered a nationwide network of fixers who conspired to influence hundreds of college basketball games over a five-year period. In all, 37 players from 22 schools were arrested on charges related to point shaving. Rosenthal pleaded no contest and was fined $6,000 for attempting to fix the NYU-West Virginia game, though he later maintained his innocence and said Budin fed his name to authorities in hopes of receiving a lighter sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid Budin would have given his mother up to stay away from what he had to face,\u201d Rosenthal said in a 1976 hearing in front of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.<\/p>\n
Despite the evidence against him, Rosenthal never faced charges in Michigan. The reason, it appears, is that the Michigan State Police missed their chance to get a statement from Mickey Bruce.<\/p>\n
After getting embarrassed in the McClellan hearings, authorities in Michigan tried to salvage their investigation by asking Mickey to travel to Detroit and give a sworn statement. Oregon\u2019s athletic director offered a compromise, suggesting that authorities could interview Mickey in Columbus, Ohio, before a game against Ohio State in November 1961. Mickey, out for the season with a shoulder injury, refused to make the trip and said he was done testifying against Rosenthal.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy obligation has been served,\u201d Mickey told the Eugene Register-Guard. \u201cI have no obligation to do anything anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mickey told the newspaper he wasn\u2019t afraid to testify \u2014 he\u2019d done it once, after all \u2014 but he was busy with schoolwork and his fraternity. In his eyes, Michigan police had botched the investigation once, and there was no guarantee they wouldn\u2019t do it again. Mickey said he\u2019d consulted his father, an attorney in El Cajon, Calif., for legal advice but insisted he\u2019d made his own decision.<\/p>\n
For all the adulation he received for testifying in front of the committee, Mickey got plenty of ribbing, too. He was tired of hearing about Lefty Rosenthal and the bribe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s getting old,\u201d he told the newspaper. \u201cI just want to forget it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mickey had done his civic duty by reporting the bribe and traveling to Washington, D.C., to testify. Still, in all of the reporting about Mickey\u2019s case, the question of why he didn\u2019t return to speak with the Michigan police lingered as an unsolved mystery.<\/p>\n
An answer may be hidden in Lefty\u2019s FBI case file, posted online after his death. Buried in hundreds of pages of documents is a single paragraph from a report made to police in El Cajon, Calif., where Mickey\u2019s parents lived, on Sept. 8, 1961, the day Mickey testified in front of the McClellan committee. The names are redacted, but the story is easy to decipher:<\/p>\n
El Cajon, California, PD advised that on 9\/8\/61, (name redacted) El Cajon received a telephone call from an unidentified male asking if (name redacted) was there. (Name redacted) answered in the negative, at which time this person uttered an oath and added, \u201cYou\u2019re going to get it, and so is he.\u201d (Name redacted) advised the son had recently testified before a Congressional Committee at Washington, D.C., regarding a bribery attempt on him by Frank Rosenthal.<\/p>\n
Paige Bruce let out a gasp when a reporter informed her of the phone call. Her father shielded her from those kinds of details, though she always sensed there was more beneath the surface. Patsy Bruce, now living in Oregon, declined to discuss specific threats but acknowledged Mickey\u2019s parents had reasons to fear for his safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he didn\u2019t feel safe to go back to Michigan to talk,\u201d Patsy said. \u201cHe was really getting directions from his parents. They were greatly affected by it because it was nationwide.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he pointed his finger at Lefty Rosenthal, Mickey had no way to know that the shadow would linger for nearly 50 years, until Rosenthal died of a heart attack in 2008<\/a>. Mickey, who died three years later at 70, didn\u2019t see Lefty\u2019s death as any kind of liberation, Patsy said. He was already at peace, knowing he never played harder in his life than he did that day at Michigan Stadium.<\/p>\n\u201cA kid in college never thinks of that kind of stuff, how this is going to affect you in the long run,\u201d Patsy said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t matter. He would have done exactly the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Illustration: Will Tullos \/ The Athletic; photo of Mickey Bruce courtesy of Patsy Bruce; photo of Lefty Rosenthal via Getty Images; photo of the 1960 Michigan-Oregon game via Bentley Historical Library \/ Bentley Image Bank)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paige Bruce was in fifth grade the first time her father disappeared. As a child, she didn\u2019t know…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[331,339,7,5480,71,49,48,575],"class_list":{"0":"post-87923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-college-sports","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-mens-college-basketball","12":"tag-michigan-wolverines","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-football","15":"tag-oregon-ducks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114591077938477507","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}