Fixed

On November 3rd of 1928, notorious gambler Arnold Rothstein was dining at Lindy’s in Manhattan with writer Damon Runyan. The meal was interrupted by a phone call for Rothstein. He returned to the table to tell Runyan that he had an urgent meeting at the Park Central Hotel and had to leave immediately.

Runyan accompanied the gambler to the hotel, and while waiting for him in the lobby heard a gun shot. Rothstein staggered down the stairs holding his gut, bleeding from the stomach. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he was asked who shot him. “I’ll take care of it myself,” he said.

He never got the chance. Seventy-eight years ago today he died, and took the name of his assassin to his grave. George “Hump” McManus, another infamous gambler of the period, was arrested for the murder but eventually acquitted. The popular theory for the motive was a marathon high-stakes poker game from September in which Rothstein had lost 320 large but then refused to pay, claiming the game was rigged. Others believe that gangster Dutch Shultz had him bumped off as retaliation for a gangland murder.

Known variously as “Mr. Big,” “The Big Bankroll” and “The Fixer,” Rothstein was one of the larger-than-life crime figures of the Jazz Age, and his name is permanently etched in sports history as the man who fixed the 1919 World Series, although this was never proven. In the picture below, Rothstein hands something to an unknown member of the White Sox in 1919 while another player on the team, pitcher Eddie Cicotte, looks on. Cicotte was one of the eight men permanently banned from baseball in the Black Sox scandal.