Back from the Depths

The Sporting Life:

The Public Professor’s

Saturday Sports Column

Sometimes you take Las Vegas by storm.  From the moment you touch down you own the town.  Cocktail waitresses line up to flirt with you, parlays pop like Springtime blossoms, the maitre d shows you to your private table, and slot machines gush silver dollars as you walk past.

But just as one-armed bandits with real levers to pull and a song of coins splashing into metal trays have been replaced by television screens that spit bar coded receipts, those golden days of panache and profit are sometimes trumped by stumbling, groaning defeat.

Sometimes Vegas drags you through its streets. It pisses on your shoes, splatters mud on your suit, shreds your silk tie, and leaves you bedraggled, limp, and lifeless in the gutter as aspiring showgirls dig their stiletto heels into your supine body on their way to auditions.  Sometimes Las Vegas owns your sorry ass and all you can do is whimper and beg for mercy, knowing that none is coming.

My recent trip to every degenerate’s favorite corner of southern Nevada wasn’t exactly a victory march this time around.  In poker…well, let’s just say that Texas Hold `Em isn’t my game, and it showed.  Beyond that, the meals were mediocre, Gilbert Gottfried told jokes I’ve already heard, my prop bets went south, and not a single cocktail waitress fell victim to my charms, much less Fredo Corleone’s legendary rate of two at a time.

But if you can’t revel in a Godfather moment (at least no one shot me in the eye during that overpriced massage), then you can always steal one from The Hustler. Like Jackie Gleason in a hole to the kid, walking into the bathroom, pulling himself together, and coming back out to take a quiet revenge, you just grab a shower, change clothes, and make one last valiant effort to stick it to the man, or at least recover a sliver of your dignity.  For me, that opportunity came on Sunday.

I had a series of prop bets in the Chicago-Green Bay game.  They ended up splitting, and I broke even, surely a sign that things were finally turning around.  Now, as a devoted  fan, I don’t bet on or against the Steelers.  Although I certainly know them better than any other team, I don’t want to cloud the enjoyment of watching them play, and I stuck to that policy last week.  Well, kinda…

Here’s the thing.  There was this one prop bet on the Pittsburgh-NYJ game that looked too good to be true.  The total sacks were marked at five.  It seemed like a no-brainer to go over.  I figured that the vaunted Blitzburgh defense would nail Pretty Boy Sanchez two or three times, while on the other side, Rex Ryan would certainly figure out a way to bring down Roethlisherberger, a guy who’s at the top of the board in sacks during good situations but who of late has been limping around with only two healthy linemen and one good foot.  With a push at five and profits at six, I couldn’t resist and laid my single biggest wager of the weekend.

But then, in a flash, Dick LeBeau’s targeted zone blitz brought Sanchez down twice in a single drive.  The second of these, a corner blitz in which Ike Taylor jarred the ball loose and nickle back William Gay scooped it up and ran it in, produced to what would prove to be the deciding score.

In the second half, things started for me slowly again.  Between them, the two QBs managed to fumble and recover three snaps behind the line of scrimmage, including the safety on Roethlisberger.  Sanchez also spastically dropped forward at one point, barely making it back to the line of scrimmage.  None of these, I found after checking the league’s official in-game box score, would count as a sack.  I was still one short of a push.

As the Steelers hunkered down for a final drive to seal the game, I realized my dilemma: they would mostly run the ball, all but killing my wager.  If I had any chance at hitting this bet, I needed them to punt the ball back to the Jets and hope the game would end with a QB hammering, much like the Super Bowl against the Cardinals had a couple of years back.  And so with a brutal choice in front of me, I made up mind.

To hell with the money.  My allegiance cannot be bought, not by corporations, not by pitch men, and not by bookies.  Vegas may not be my town this weekend, I thought to myself, but the Steelers are always my team.

So when after a couple of rushing plays Big Ben rolled right on his mangled ankle and found rookie Antonio Brown for a 14 yard completion, a first down, and the right to hoist the Lamar Hunt trophy, I stood and roared.  It was a good day.

And as we left Caesar’s, I could have sworn I heard slot trays singing as I passed.  True, their song wasn’t for me this time, but the tune sounded as sweet as ever.