The Bet

I learned many lessons from my dad. Some of them were useful, but there is one I’ve had to unlearn.  

When I was a child, I loved Major League Baseball. I even remember taking a transistor radio to school to listen to the World Series games during recess and on my walk home.

This was before major league baseball was broadcast on television — only on the radio, reported by a sportscaster who wasn’t watching the game live. With play-by-play narration and added sound effects (crowds cheering and bats cracking) the sportscaster would make it sound as if he was actually at the game, even though he was just recreating it after the fact. (A little-known story: Ronald Reagan early in his career was a sportscaster recreating games in this way for the Chicago Cubs).

One weekend my dad offered to bet me a nickel that the Yankees would be leading the game 1-0 at the end of the third inning. A strangely specific bet, but I thought my odds were pretty good so I took it. 

When the Yankees were at bat at the top of the third inning the score was 0-0. I felt extremely confident, so I kept betting more and more, until I was risking the hefty sum of $2.50 (money I didn’t have) against my dad’s fifty-five cents.  (I gave him odds, as the game progressed.)

What could possibly go wrong?  Merely a Yankee solo home run, with two outs, in the top of the third inning.

I lost the bet, and was devastated thinking about the hours I would have to pull weeds or perform other chores to earn the money I now owed to my father. An hour later Dad innocently said, “Didn’t Mom tell you?  I had advance information.” My father had known the outcome of the game and had lured me into betting against him to teach me a lesson. 

 He did. 

Perhaps the intended lesson was that I shouldn’t gamble. But at the tender age of eight, I felt as if my father had cheated me, and learned, basically, not to trust my dad.  

And the last time I bet on anything was more than thirty years ago in Las Vegas when I bet $5,000 on the Super Bowl. My team was covering the spread until late in the game. And that’s why I’ve never bet on a sporting event since.

After all, I sit at the gaming table of real estate, five days a week. 

Alan