When Sherman White Threw It All Away (original) (raw)

March 22, 1998

SPORTS OF THE TIMES

By DAVE ANDERSON

ISCATAWAY, N.J. -- Sherman White is 69 years old with what he calls a "hole in my heart." Emotionally, not medically, emotionally. But that emotional hole has been there for nearly 50 years.

"By not being able to play basketball," he said in his deep voice.

He put that hole there with his involvement in the 1951 college basketball point-shaving scandal. He was the nation's leading scorer (with a 27.7 point average), a 6-foot-8-inch leaper at Long Island University who would have been the Knicks' first-round draft choice. In prison for nearly nine months, he was barred from the National Basketball Association.

Until now, White has never publicly discussed in detail what happened and how it happened.

"They're still blaming the ballplayers entirely," he said Thursday in the den of his two-story brick Colonial home. "Not that the ballplayers aren't responsible for their actions, because they are. I'm not saying I didn't do something wrong, because I know I did something wrong. But there are a lot of things that cause these scandals, not just the ballplayers.

"And if they don't look out, they're going to have another scandal."

Since 1951, college basketball has had several point-shaving scandals, most recently at Arizona State last year. Gambling on sports by students has emerged as a problem on many campuses. On Tuesday night, Home Box Office will show "City Dump," a documentary geared to the 1951 scandal of the City College of New York players who in 1950 had won both the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship and the National Invitation Tournament.

"HBO wanted me, but I told them no," said White, who has viewed a tape of that documentary. "It doesn't tell the truth about the whole thing. There were a lot of people involved besides the ballplayers. Nobody has addressed what was the coach's responsibility, what was the school's responsibility, what was the venue we played in's responsibility. I heard people make all kinds of bets at the Garden.

"I wish I was sophisticated enough at the time to know not to get involved. I did scream out, but nobody listened."

During a 55-52 loss to North Carolina State at the Garden on Jan. 17, 1950, in his junior season, White noticed that Eddie Gard, the L.I.U. playmaker, was "giving me some bad passes." At that time White was not shaving points, but Gard and two other teammates, Adolph Bigos and Dick Fuertado, as they later admitted, were involved.

Gard, who cooperated with authorities, served nine months of a three-year sentence for his role as a middleman in bribing L.I.U, C.C.N.Y. and New York University players for Salvatore Sollazzo, a 45-year-old New York gambler and jeweler who had spent five years in prison in the 30's.

"After that N.C. State game, me and Eddie almost got into a fistfight," White recalled. "His passes were down at my feet. I played with the guy seven days a week; I knew him like a book. I didn't realize they were dumping. I complained to Clair Bee," he continued, referring to the L.I.U. coach. "Much as I respect Clair Bee, you tell me that he didn't know the difference between a guy controlling the game and not controlling the game.

"You tell me Nat Holman," he said, referring to the City College coach, "would not know whether these guys were playing up to par or not playing up to par. When you got five guys playing bad at one time, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to understand that these guys were doing something that was wrong or something that was not right. It's too late in the game to throw stones, but I never hear nobody talk about the coaches.

"After that N.C. State game, Eddie Gard befriends me. We sat down and started talking. He brought in Bigos and Fuertado. He gave me the same old story: 'We control the game. We're good enough to beat these guys anyway and we can make some money. They ain't giving you no money here at L.I.U.' The same old story. We can control the game and nobody will get hurt except the gamblers. Now I'm one of the guys. Peer pressure."

Fixing Games As the Police Closed In

Over the next year, White stashed a total of $5,500 in an envelope taped to the back of a dresser drawer in his room at the Carlton Y.M.C.A. in Brooklyn, where L.I.U. housed him.

"I know I didn't go to L.I.U. to dump games," White said. "It was going on before I got there. It wasn't the money. My family was poor and when you're as poor as I was, you wouldn't know what to do with the money anyhow. They got most of the money back. So what did we know about money at the time? We did it to be one of the guys."

White helped shave points later that 1950 season in two games that L.I.U. lost, both by lopsided scores: 83-65 to Cincinnati, and 80-52 to Syracuse in the first round of the N.I.T. that City College won when college doubleheaders sold out the old Garden.

"We were hoping to play City College in the N.I.T.; we never played any of the local teams at the Garden," White said. "But we lost that Syracuse game outright. In trying to keep the game a certain way, it got out of control. It takes something away when you go into a game knowing it's not on the up and up."

Early in the 1950-51 season, L.I.U. won four games at the Garden while shaving the points in the betting line.

Favored by 7 1/2 against Kansas State on Dec. 2, the Blackbirds won by 60-59. Favored by 4 against Denver on Dec. 7, they won by 58-56, in double overtime. Favored by 11 against Idaho on Christmas night, they won by 59-57. Favored by 8 against Bowling Green on Jan. 4, they won by 69-63.

"You didn't do it on offense; you had to keep your rhythm on offense," White said. "You had to do it on defense. You had to turn your head or you had to slide and let a guy go in to make a basket. But we knew it was getting too risky to continue. We were hearing too many rumors."

Before a Jan. 16 game against Duquesne at the Garden, White was warming up with his teammates when he noticed Gard, who had used up his college eligibility, at courtside.

"Eddie told us, 'Since we're doing this, why not take half the money and make a bet,' " White said. "But that night against Duquesne when Eddie walked down to the court, I waved my hands to tell him the bet's off. He pointed to Sollazzo and Sollazzo gave me the intimidating look. Dolph Bigos had told me, 'I'd die before I did anything tonight.' By then LeRoy Smith had been involved too, but he told me: 'We're playing tonight, Sherman. We're going to play.' And we did."

L.I.U. won, 84-52, as White, Smith and Bigos combined for 64 points. White scored 29, Smith 20 and Bigos 15 as Sollazzo reportedly lost a $30,000 bet.

"I came out of the Garden with Doris, my girlfriend at the time," White recalled. "Eddie walks over to me. He tells me, 'Send your girlfriend home and get in the car.' Sollazzo's car. I got in the car. Just me and Sollazzo. I thought it was over. I thought he was going to kill me. I said: 'Listen, we couldn't do the game. I can't do the game by myself. The guys didn't want to do the game. I told Eddie that before the game. The cops are all over the place.' He told me he lost a lot of money. He told me, in so many words, don't do this again."

The next day, Jan. 17, two former Manhattan players, Hank Poppe and Jack Byrnes, and three gamblers were arrested for trying to fix a Manhattan-DePaul game.

In the weeks that followed, whenever White drove home to Englewood, N.J., in his black '36 LaSalle, he noticed he was being followed by another car.

"Detectives," he said. "They'd park down the street from my house. Everybody was nervous. But by then, I think some of the guys wanted to be caught."

On Feb. 18, shortly after the City College team arrived at Penn Station after a game in Philadelphia, three players were arrested -- Al Roth, Ed Roman and Ed Warner. Three other C.C.N.Y. players were arrested later -- Floyd Layne, Irwin Dambrot and Norm Mager -- along with Nathan Miller, who had been involved in a fixed L.I.U. game in 1948.

On Feb. 20, two New York detectives knocked on the door of White's room at the Carlton Y.M.C.A. in Brooklyn.

"I knew it was a matter of time," White said. "I was in a fog. As far as I was concerned, my life was shot."

The Consequences: Athletes in Jail

White was questioned by Frank Hogan, the New York District Attorney, and his assistant, Vincent O'Connor.

"I was a very defiant young man," White said, "and Hogan didn't like my attitude. I'll never forget this as long as I live. He said, 'You are going to jail.' Right to my face: 'You are going to jail. Your attitude is not the attitude of a college student. You act like you are an experienced criminal.' He went on and on.

"Then he brought in Eddie Gard, the pigeon they brought from room to room. I called him all kinds of names but eventually I had to say, 'Yes, I'm involved.'

"Then they brought in Bigos. I thought Bigos was the superman of my team. He was older, an ex-Marine. Any team we played, I didn't think anybody could handle Bigos as a man. When I saw him weeping and crying, I knew it was over. LeRoy, I thought he was the most innocent. He was my roommate at the Carlton Y. The only reason he got involved, he saw me with new clothes. I had two pairs of overalls, loafers, a T-shirt, a jacket. That's what I wore. But one day I bought a brown suit. When LeRoy saw that, he said, 'If you're in it, Sherman, why not involve me too.' I said, 'Speak to Eddie.' "

On Nov. 19, 1951, Judge Saul Streit sentenced White to a year in jail. Besides Gard, the others sentenced to jail were Warner, Roth and an N.Y.U. player, Connie Schaff, each to 6 months. Sollazzo served 12 years.

"Most of the guys got suspended sentences," White said. "To this day, I don't know why I got a year. On the HBO show, they say that I went to jail because of a 'petty juvenile record,' but I never had a juvenile record. Never, never. I got out of Rikers after 8 months and 24 days."

The Knicks had planned to select White with what was known at the time as a territorial choice.

"Clair Bee had told me," White said, "that the Knicks were going to offer me a contract for 12,000or12,000 or 12,000or13,000. That was big money then. George Mikan was making $22,000 with Minneapolis as the highest paid player. I was looking forward to playing for the Knicks. They had a good team. Harry Gallatin was a horse around the basket. Dick McGuire was a great passer. Carl Braun, Sweetwater Clifton."

With White, the Knicks might have won the 1952 and 1953 N.B.A. championships instead of losing to the Minneapolis Lakers in the finals both years.

Once out of prison, White played on weekends for Wilkes-Barre and Hazelton in the Eastern League for nine years while selling storm windows, automobiles and liquor. Now retired, he was a respected coach for youngsters at the Newark Y.M.C.A. and East Orange, N.J., playgrounds. He and his second wife, Ellen, brought up four kids and are bringing up two more as Krinsky Films, a Marlboro, N.J., production company, develops his life story for a feature film.

"I still love basketball," he said. "I bought the satellite so I can sit downstairs and watch games all over the country. I drive over to games at Princeton because they play the basic game. The back door, the pick-and-rolls. Most kids today, they just try to jump over the rim. That's not basketball. But I blew the most important thing in the world to me: basketball. The worst part of the scandals were, if they hadn't needed me, I would have never done it."