"Yep," Rudd conceded, he'd rather be making bets on one game at a time, "but this was a start for Delaware."
Single-game bets on football, basketball, hockey, baseball, college sports, that was Delaware's dream. Lure gamblers from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Use the $53 million they'd leave behind to help hire more teachers and more cops.
(You always need more cops because statistics show that crime jumps 10 percent in areas with casinos and the number of gambling addicts doubles. Yo, stop with the negativity. Don't rain on Delaware's parade, first day of legal parlay betting.)
Let the record show that there was no parade. No brass band. Lots of Delaware Park brass though, including president Bill Fasy, who ignored the odds by asking the cynical media to do a positive story about the event.
You go to a pool party expecting Heidi Klum in a bikini and you get Heidi, the goatkeeper's daughter, in leiderhosen, how positive a story can you write?
So how did Fasy feel when the Court of Appeals stuffed Delaware's dreams in the shredder and told 'em they couldn't book single-game bets on hockey, basketball, baseball and college sports and could only accept parlay wagers on NFL games with a minimum of three teams?
"It felt," Fasy confessed, "like they'd let the air out of the tires, all four tires, while you were driving down the highway."
Delaware Park had already spent a million bucks installing a handsome odds board with color-coded lights, a couple dozen high-def television screens. Harrington and Dover did some expensive renovating, too. Add in the licensing fees, advertising, marketing, added personnel, and those ill-conceived referee shirts for the tellers (somewhere Tim Donaghy is giggling) and you have an $11 million bad bet.
