Lance Armstrong Loses His $10-Million Hustle

2/17/2015

Bob Hamman in New York, 2008/ The New York Times/ The Great Chang Lee

Anybody remember the movie “The Hustler” – Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in a contest of pool talent, and guile, and will.

Newman is Fast Eddie and Gleason is Minnesota Fats.

I thought about “The Hustler” this week when I read about the latest verdict in the Lance Armstrong saga – an arbitration ruling that Lance owes $10-million to the man and the company that made a legal insurance bet about how many Tours de France Lance could win.

Even when witnesses like Betsy Andreu provided extremely creditable testimony that Lance had been doping all along, Armstrong was sure he could bluster his way through.

Even when Lance admitted – on Oprah, America’s ultimate confessional – that he had cheated, he seemed to think he could avoid this judgment from a three-person panel.

I once interviewed Bob Hamman, the world-level bridge champion and proprietor of SCA, a company that makes insurance policies on odd events. He was in from Dallas, and used somebody’s board room for our interview. He exuded power and money.

In her knowing column in the Times on Tuesday, my colleague Juliet Macur wrote: “In going up against Hamman, who is 76, white-haired and stocky, Armstrong underestimated his competition.”

That reminded me of the scene in the “The Hustler” in which Fast Eddie makes a midnight challenge to Minnesota Fats, who returns, all shaven and dressed, for another round.

Eddie: (unsteadily) You look beautiful, Fats, just like a baby, all pink and powdered up. (In contrast, he looks down at his own ragged, wrinkled shirt.)

What follows -- I am not surprising anybody about a 1961 classic -- is the pool equivalent of a $10-million arbitration.

The common denominator between the Newman character and Lance is callow arrogance. Fast Eddie had only a small-time manager but Armstrong had lawyers and investors from a murky company called Tailwind. Captains of 1990’s financial entitlement assured Lance that nothing could go wrong, go wrong, go wrong. And Fast Lance believed them.

He still does not get it, as Macur reminds us, bringing up the recent episode in which Armstrong’s lady friend tried to take the rap for an auto collision, to keep Lance out of it. How gallant of him. What does Oprah think about that?

I want to swerve here and note how much Armstrong has meant to some people touched by cancer. He truly did survive a terrible bout with cancer, and he put himself out front as an example – and he still does. I heard about him recently reaching out to an amateur cyclist who has been stunned by a cancer diagnosis. He deserves that slice of respect for what he means to cancer patients.

I also need to say that, despite all the things we know about him, I keep rooting for Armstrong to get it. Meantime, he says he is going to challenge the arbitration ruling.

What does the insurance version of Minnesota Fats have to say about this? The terrific reporter Macur quotes the lawyer for SCA: “This is just a very good start to getting SCA full compensation. Oh, no, we’re not finished with Mr. Armstrong yet.”

I don’t remember that line from “The Hustler.” But this is real life, isn’t it.

Anna Hansen tried to take the rap for Lance/ Photo from the Aspen Police Department

Roy Edelsack

2/17/2015 02:30:48 am

But you do remember this line from George C. Scott as Bert the gambler in "The Hustler":

"Eddie, you owe me money!"

But in the end, when Eddie learns it's character not just skill that makes you a winner, he beats Fats and Bert. So if we're not over- torturing this analogy, maybe someday Lance will "get it" too.

George Vecsey

2/17/2015 02:52:26 am

Roy, hi. Forgot that George C was in that. The link to the movie has 3 pages of dialogue and detail. I just looked up the "beautiful" line.
I do hope Lance has another act sometime, but that girl-friend gambit was bad. GV

Dee Scott

2/17/2015 08:57:58 am

LA is a SOCIOPATH. Unfortunately, no wishing or hoping will ever change that fact and him. He doesn't have a conscience or conscious. He is just a master manipulator that serves himself on every level. Respectfully speaking, I would advise you both to put your energy and well wishing into someone who truly can use the good tidings. Take care...

Mike from Whitestone

2/17/2015 05:54:35 pm

I remember the movie GV, thanks for bringing it back to the table.
"How can I lose?"
Denial-101.

Great movie, great lessons. Great piece here.

Thanks again

Scratch the sequel. ....

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7/28/2015 08:42:38 pm

The movie “The Hustler” is the greatest!

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Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Lance Armstrong Loses His $10-Million Hustle

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