Max and Me and Uncle Itch:
Lessons About Sports Betting
by David Blumenfeld
In the 1950s when I was in high school, my father Max and I and a close family friend, my “uncle,” Itch Fink, each learned a lesson about betting on sports. This is the story of those lessons.
Max’s Lesson
“Hello, Potsy? It’s Max. Let me have $100 on the Sox today, and $500 on the Pirates against the Cubs tomorrow. Yeah, I’m splitting that one with a few friends. You know, the usual: Put it all on my account. I’ll get back to you later today for the odds on a couple of fights.”
“Right Maxie. You got it.”
For as long as I can remember, Max had regular phone conversations with his bookie and close friend, Morris “Potsy” Pearl, a leading figure in the Chicago bookmaking racket. Max was the biggest sports nut I have ever known. I realize that sounds like hyperbole but it’s true. He had two passions in life: his retail jewelry business in the steel mill town of East Chicago, Indiana, and sports. But sports — and especially betting on sports — was the bigger passion. Max followed just about every sport popular in the U.S. except hockey and he always had a bet on the games that interested him most. He’d fly across the country to see important ballgames or boxing matches, frequently to Las Vegas where he’d stay up for as much as three days and nights straight, gambling and going to sporting events with his pals Louis Prima and Prima’s ebullient sax player Sam Butera. He’d also fly to New York, where he could buy merchandise for his store, Max Blumenfeld Jewelers, and go to games at Yankee or Dodger Stadiums or boxing matches at Madison Square Garden and St. Nicholas Arena (aka “the Bucket of Blood.”) Max would take me to big, local sporting events, such as when Joe Louis boxed an exhibition nearby, when Willie Pep did the same, or when Satchel Paige pitched a game in our area. I must have been awfully young when I saw Paige because I exclaimed, “He cheated, Dad!” when in his first time at bat Satchel laid down a bunt and Max had to explain to me what a bunt is.
To appreciate just how much Max loved sports and betting on games, consider this. No one I have ever known disliked cold weather more than my dad. He’d do anything to avoid it, including staying inside as much as possible during the mean northern Indiana winters. Yet he always had season tickets on the 50-yard line for the Bears football games, many of which were played in freezing rain or on snowy, windy Chicago days and nights. Despite the occasional subzero weather, there was Max shivering on the 50-yard line, packed up in a Parka, sheepskin gloves, heavy wool sweater, and — underneath it all — long winter underwear. While watching the Bears, Max would have a radio to his ear listening to another game, on which he also had a bet. Once, I seem to recall his having two radios, one to each ear. (Can this be true? Memory is a poor historian but that’s what I recall.) Potsy Pearl would sometimes be at his side, ready to take yet another bet, if necessary. When I was in high school, Max told me with an earnest look and resolute voice, that although he occasionally had more than one bet going at a time (“occasionally” ha!), he never bet a lot and never, never more than he could afford. I’m not sure why he told me this: I had no problem with his gambling and didn’t regard it as any of my business. I assumed his little speech was advice on prudence and rectitude for me. It wasn’t long thereafter that Max had a lesson on prudence and rectitude himself.
A lot of my father’s buddies bet on sports and a couple of them had accounts with Potsy Pearl. A few others patronized Hymie “The Black Jew” Lazar, so named for his faith and his exceptionally dark skin. (Hymie was aptly named since his skin was considerably darker than that of many of my African-American classmates.) But quite a few of Max’s pals were reluctant to deal with a bookie directly, and they began asking him if he would mind placing a bet or two on their behalf. Because he was a good guy, and probably also because he liked being the center of the action, he obliged. In time, Max became the intermediary between a lot of his bookie-shy acquaintances and Potsy. Max would place the bets in his own name and pay off or collect from Potsy as if those bets were his own; my dad’s friends would then pay him back or collect their winnings from him, depending on how they had fared. Eventually, given the bets he placed for himself and his friends, Max became one of Potsy’s bigger accounts. This had some favorable and some unfavorable consequences.
First, the good news. At least a couple of times a year, Potsy would make a trip to Las Vegas to do some gambling of his own, taking a few of his biggest clients with him as his guests, covering their airfare and hotel expenses. Max was Potsy’s guest on several of these junkets, which is how my dad made friends with Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and Sam Butera. On one of these trips, Max was shooting craps next to Potsy, who was a “high roller.” That is, Potsy would make a large initial bet and if he won, he’d let it all ride on the next six, seven, or even eight tosses of the dice, thereby doubling his winnings each time and making a fortune or losing everything on a single toss. Max, by contrast, was betting small amounts and playing conservatively. When it was Potsy’s turn to throw the dice, a casino attendant told Max he had a phone call at the desk. As he left to take the call, Max glanced at the couple of hundred dollars he had on the table and, without thinking about it, said, “Potsy: play my chips for me while I take this call, will you?” The call was brief but when Max returned to the craps table, Potsy was still rolling the dice and Max was dumbfounded: at his place next to Potsy where a couple of hundred had been only a few minutes earlier was a cool five thousand dollars in chips, the equivalent of nearly $55,000 today. Potsy had played Max’s chips the way he played his own, letting the winnings ride over and over again in what had been a really hot hand. Max didn’t say whether Potsy’s lucky streak continued or whether he eventually “crapped out” and lost everything. Maybe it didn’t matter that much to Potsy either way: he was a major Chicago bookie who was in town to be seen as a high roller, and the excitement his hot hand caused achieved that goal win or lose. But whatever Potsy did — continue pushing his luck or stop while he was ahead — Max swore to me that he took his chips off the betting line immediately and didn’t gamble another cent the rest of the trip. Probably true, I thought, though the spiel was starting to sound like one of those set-the-right-example-for-son-David lectures. Or maybe that’s how Max got that dark green Cadillac Coupe Deville with those neat little fishtail lights a few weeks later.
Now for the bad news. At the time Max was booking bets for his friends, the Feds were looking into bookmaking in the Chicago area. With the aid of wiretaps, they had compiled a list of the names and addresses of some of the bigger clients of bookies like Potsy. Of course, the name Max Blumenfeld was on the list. One afternoon, to my father’s eternal mortification, federal agents entered Max Blumenfeld Jewelers at 3514 Main Street in East Chicago, Indiana, and took one Max Blumenfeld out of his store in handcuffs. Fortunately, I was away at college since the last thing I would have wanted to see or that Max would have wanted me to witness was him being taken from his own store by the Feds. In front of his employees and customers. And in handcuffs to boot! I only learned about the incident later from one of my dad’s salesmen who was present at the time. Max never mentioned it to me, and I never asked him about it.
The arrest understandably scared the life out of my dad. Although he certainly rubbed shoulders with some shady characters, he himself was a legitimate businessman who made his living legally.[1] To be whisked off like that by federal agents was the most humiliating thing that ever happened to him. Luckily, the matter didn’t go very far. The Feds questioned him but didn’t press charges and released him fairly quickly. I never discovered exactly what transpired but it seems likely that they weren’t interested in ordinary citizen gamblers but merely wanted to put the squeeze on them to see what they might reveal about their bookies. I’m sure Max didn’t reveal anything incriminating because he never got a visit from “Maish,” the 350-pound baseball-bat-carrying enforcer who took care of welchers or others in the area who ratted on the mob. My dad also remained fast friends with Potsy. But Max definitely learned a lesson from the experience: the handcuff incident marked the last time he ever booked bets for his friends. Despite Max’s diminished betting transactions, Potsy took him for one more trip to Las Vegas, not as thanks for his current bets but for the ordeal he had endured and for old time’s sake. And possibly because Max didn’t “sing.”
Uncle Itch’s Lesson and Mine
Uncle Itch’s lesson and mine were twins, or mirror images, of each other. We learned them together. Some background about our relationship will underscore the poignancy of those lessons.
Itch’s real name was Gene Fink. His family’s surname in the Old Country had been Finkelstein, which they shortened to Fink when they came to America, long before the term “fink” acquired negative connotations. But Finkelstein, Fink or whatever name with which Uncle Itch had been graced would not have mattered. He was a dynamic personality and nothing, least of all a name, could have held him back. He had the drive, the personality, and the charm to succeed under almost any circumstances.
Uncle Itch wasn’t physically attractive. He had a long, flat, bulbous nose with a point at the end, and a broad, flat face. But his looks, like his name, didn’t matter. He knew how to make everyone feel as though they were the most important person in the room, or anywhere else for that matter. Take me for example. For a seventh-grade writing assignment, I interviewed him about his World War II experiences in the tank core, where he was his unit’s cook. I listened raptly to his stories about advancing across Europe in those cramped Sherman tanks that were like hot tin cans, likely to break down or explode at any minute, if not from Nazi shells, then from their own defects. At the end of the interview, he gave me his tank corps insignia, which I kept for years, clutching it now and then as a kind of talisman to remind me of how Uncle Itch and his army buddies had fought their way to Berlin to defeat Adolf Hitler.
Even after Uncle Itch had children, he continued to treat me like a son and always had some surprise or gift for me. One day when I was home from my freshman year at Northwestern University, he came into my father’s jewelry store wearing a beautiful pink and black silk tie, which I admired. “What a good-looking tie, Uncle Itch,” I said. Off came the tie, which he gave me on the spot. A few minutes later he left for a business meeting in a suit and dress shirt but no tie. There’s the old saw about the good friend who would give you the shirt off his back. Uncle Itch gave me the tie from his neck. That same year, I learned to like cigars and would smoke one after dinner, dipping it first in Drambuie or Grand Marnier and savoring the taste and aroma of the sweetened tobacco. Itch was a cigar smoker too and when he saw me do this on an evening out together, he thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Thereafter, he’d hand me a fine cigar whenever he’d see me.
I’m sure that everyone called Gene Fink Itch because he was always itching for something to do, somewhere to go, some scheme to hatch, some deal to make. On returning from the service without a nickel in his pocket, he was itching to make a buck. When he began selling insurance, Max switched all of his insurance business to him and introduced him to several other people who did the same. Like my father, Gene Fink was a born salesman and in surprisingly short order, he became extremely successful. In 1954 or so, Max told me that Itch had written more policies for one of the major U.S. insurance companies than any other salesman in the United States.
Our lessons came on June 20, 1960, when I was 22 and old enough to know better than to do what I did. A group of us went to a movie theater in Hammond to see the live TV broadcast of the return heavyweight title match between Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson. In the previous fight, Johansson had stunned boxing fans by dealing Patterson a humiliating defeat. The fight was stopped in the fifth round after Johansson had knocked Patterson down an astonishing seven times. Many believed that Patterson was the better fighter and had simply taken Johansson too lightly. Now, knowing to stay away from Johansson’s right hand, Floyd would be sure to vindicate himself in the next go-around, they thought. Itch agreed. When we all discussed the question in the car on the way to the fight, he said he planned to make a big bet on Patterson. I piped up and took issue with that idea. Speaking in a confident tone, I asked: “How can you bet on Patterson, Itch? Johansson’s right is lethal. He knocked Floyd down seven times. One Johannsson right and it could be curtains. It’s crazy to risk your money on Patterson.” Itch changed his mind and placed a big bet on Johansson.
At first, it seemed that my judgment would be confirmed. In the second round, Johansson connected with a hammering right hand that staggered Patterson. I thought the fight would soon be over and congratulated myself on saving Uncle Itch a lot of money. What would he do without me? Instead of going down, though, Patterson shook the punch off and recovered his composure. Later, at about two minutes into the fifth round, Floyd unleashed a tremendous, leaping left hook. Some say it was the best punch he ever threw. It landed on Johansson’s neck, and it was all over. Ingemar Johansson landed on his back, out “cold as a cucumber.” Floyd was champ again and due to my sage advice Uncle Itch had lost his bet. But I had yet to find out how much he lost.
When we left the theater, Itch met Hymie “The Black Jew” in the parking lot to pay off. I was standing near enough to witness the transaction. Pulling a large wad out of his pocket, Uncle Itch peeled off seventeen one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Hymie, who folded them neatly, put them in his pocket, and was off. My confident little speech had cost my uncle $1,700, the equivalent of over $16,000 in 2022 currency. Even as I sit here now over 60 years later, my stomach turns to think about it.
The trip back from Hammond to East Chicago was quiet. I didn’t say a word but sat sheepishly and guiltily in the back seat. Itch neither reprimanded me nor mentioned my ill-starred advice. He wouldn’t have. He was an adult, he knew boxing, and it was his decision what bet to make. He never mentioned the incident to me and even kept giving me cigars and treating me like a son. I, on the other hand, learned a lesson I would never forget: if someone else has a lot to lose and you have no skin in the game, keep your big mouth shut. Uncle Itch surely learned a lesson too: if you are confident in your own judgment, don’t let some punk kid who shoots his mouth off change your mind.
I went on to graduate school at Berkeley, studied a lot of famous authors, and eventually became a philosophy professor. Now, even after more than 30 years as a student and 40 more as a teacher or higher education administrator, in my reveries, I occasionally still hear Max repeating a tired adage that used to get my goat when he’d say it: “There are some things you just can’t learn from books.” That old bromide still annoys me. But when I think about the incidents I’ve just described, I’m also forced to admit that it’s true.
[1] Actually, Max did a little more than rub shoulders with some shady characters. Among his good friends were Sonny Sheetz, Al Capone’s chief lieutenant in the African-American community, and my “uncle” Freddie Brenman, prison-mate of John Dillinger and Dillinger’s bagman. At his first business, The Island Queen, an early-1930s speakeasy on Chicago’s South Side, Max unwittingly became John Dillinger’s host and even took a sightseeing trip around Chicago with him.
David Blumenfeld, professor emeritus of philosophy, taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Illinois at Chicago; Southwestern University, where he held the McManis Chair in Philosophy and Religion; and Georgia State University, where he was philosophy chairperson and associate dean for the humanities. In retirement, he has returned to an old interest, writing nonfiction and children’s literature (under the pen name, Dean Flowerfield). Recent publications include Best New True Crime Stories: Well-Mannered Crooks, Rogues & Criminals, Mono., Balloons Lit. Journal, The Caterpillar, Beyond Words, and more. He and his wife (an artist/photographer) live on the Georgia coast, where they do much of their work on a small, semi-wilderness island accessible only by boat.