Tank McNamara by Bill Hinds for April 11, 2024

“And we had to walk a mile to the phone booth. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways!”

When I called my bookie, I usually got a busy signal!! (Something else which seems to have disappeared…)

I don’t bet. I can’t afford to lose anything.

I take bets on whoever the camera closes-up on picking that moment to spit.

I was in the 8th grade when I figured out why my barber had a regular phone and a pay phone in his shop and why guys were hanging out there who weren’t waiting for a haircut!

I will say, I learned a lot about sports when I went to get my haircut.

Burning up over a NY TIMES article on Tuesday 4/9

For ten years, a group of morons specialized in stealing sports memorablia from small museums t hat didn’t have full security systems. One guy who turned State’s Evidence was “rewarded” with an interview on 60 MINUTES>

They stole Yogi Berra’s World Series rings, melted them down and sold them for scrap!!(His kids know about it).

And if we lost the bet we moved on. We didn’t denigrate and threaten the players or the officials.

The phone booth has been replaced with a burner phone.

72-75 I was stationed in NoCal and gambled on pro football and college . Our local Bookies would pass out cards, we would fill them in with our bets and someone would take them all up to Reno or South Lake Tahoe and bet them legally. He got $5 for every card plus 10% of the winning cards. Everything worked great until one idiot talked to an MP about betting on the upcoming games who arrested him and got him to talk. The AP came around to our base and arrested the bookies and put an end to it. I won enough over 3 years to buy my 59 Beechcraft Bonanza

“Also, in my day we had phone booths!”