Rudolph Said â€å“my Doctor Told Me I Would Never Walk Again
The Temptations of a Man of Integrity
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May 31, 1992
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Susan Rudolph remembers that it happened around 1973, shortly afterward she and Mendy were married. Mendy Rudolph, the night-haired and fastidious National Basketball Association referee, the most respected and one of the all-time, if not the all-time, to have blown a whistle on a courtroom, seemed deeply troubled.
"Information technology scared me," she said. "Mendy was never similar that. He was commonly and then upbeat, and when he wasn't, he was all the same able to disguise his feelings. Merely not now."
She would inquire what was wrong, and he would say, "Nothing." But later on a couple of days Rudolph said to his wife one dark, "Let's take a walk."
"And then he told me near a phone call he got," she said recently, sitting in the same midtown Manhattan apartment that she shared with her late hubby. "The call was from a gambler in Las Vegas. He offered Mendy a lot of money to shave points in games."
"Information technology would be the reply to all our problems," Rudolph said to his wife. Just a Turn of the Head
"Are yous crazy?" she replied.
"He made it audio so easy," Rudolph said. "All I would have to do is look abroad possibly one time during a game. Maybe twice."
At this time Mendy Rudolph, a chronic gambler, someone who loved "the fast lane and bright lights," said Susan Rudolph, was feeling "crushed."
In the by, Rudolph would disappear for a weekend at the craps and roulette tables in Las Vegas, or, because he bet big sums at the ticket window, would wear a Groucho Marx disguise at the race rails so no one would recognize the widely known official. He had owed a groovy bargain to casinos and to friends and family and business assembly he had borrowed from to pay gambling debts and income tax, as well equally pension and child support. He had cashed in his $60,000 from the referees' pension fund and all of that went to pay his debts. He received $10,000 from workmen's compensation for an injury, and that went to pay his debts. He was still perhaps $100,000 in arrears.
With two jobs, one as a referee and the other as a national sales manager for WGN telly in New York, he was earning close to $100,000 a yr, but it was non well-nigh enough to cover his expenses, and his continued loftier life. 'I Love the Game Too Much'
"You lot can't do it," Susan Rudolph said to her husband that night when they had that talk.
She recalled that he nodded, and replied: "It goes against all my principles. I love the game as well much, respect it too much. I couldn't do it to you. I couldn't exercise it in the memory of my male parent, and I can't do information technology to myself. If I take to become into bankruptcy, something I'd hate to do, I'd do it."
Rudolph, born and raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and the son of Harry Rudolph, a celebrated sports official in the area, died in 1979 of a pulmonary embolism at age 52. He never alleged bankruptcy, and until he retired as a referee in 1975 on doctor'south orders considering of a heart status, he retained his reputation as i of the best officials ever, and i with the highest integrity.
Over 18 years, Rudolph officiated in a record 2,113 games. Astute observers -- ranging from Crimson Auerbach to John Nucatola, a Hall of Fame referee and Rudolph's boss equally director of N.B.A. officials during Rudolph's last seven years in the league -- agreed that his high standards and control of the game were unsurpassed.
The little-known story of Marvin (Mendy) Rudolph off the court was recalled recently because the N.B.A. playoffs are heading into the final series, and this used to be Mendy's fourth dimension: he refereed more large games than anyone in history. It was recalled considering the man many consider the finest referee in history is not in the Basketball game Hall of Fame, which earlier this month held its ceremonies for the most recent crop of inductees.
And the story of Mendy Rudolph was likewise recalled because the influence of gambling in the games the nation watches and loves remains a fearsome specter. The story emphasizes once once more how frail the integrity of these games could exist, and that fifty-fifty the best and strongest people involved in them may undergo potentially destructive temptation.
Pete Rose and Chet Forte, the one-time All-America basketball histrion and sports boob tube director, were bedevilled of fraud and tax evasion stemming from their compulsion for gambling. There have been reports of sports gambling rings on college campuses and the questionable gambling associations of Len Dykstra and Michael Jordan. All attest to the vigilance that is necessary to keep the games make clean.
Rarely, however, are officials involved, though 1 was under suspicion during the higher basketball game scandals of 1951 and another was banned from college games in the Midwest in 1961. In baseball, one umpire at the turn of the century was bedevilled of conspiring with gamblers to throw games.
Today, the N.B.A. part has a security department of three plus a security representative in each of the league cities, a set-upward similar to that of the other major professional person leagues and college sports organizations. Due north.B.A. representatives are in close contact with local law authorities. In regard to its officials, the league regularly makes security checks as well as credit checks -- the healthier the officials' finances are, the league figures, the less vulnerable they will be to temptation.
"Sure, you get approached on occasion," said Earl Strom, the former North.B.A. referee who was a gimmicky and friend of Rudolph'south. "Gamblers are e'er looking for an edge. I remember once getting a telephone phone call in a hotel room just before I was to work a game. The caller said, 'Remember, nosotros had a drink together concluding year?' And and then he asked me what the condition of Wilt was. I hung up immediately." Asked to Curtail Gambling
Mendy Rudolph said he welcomed scrutiny. When he was asked about a Federal investigation of bespeak-shaving into pro basketball game, which included its officials, in the early on 1970'southward, he told Robert Vare of The Hamlet Voice: "I think information technology's good that they scrutinize the game. They should patrol it. I recollect that'south a healthy sign."
But there were pleas from the N.B.A. commissioner at the time, Walter Kennedy, for Rudolph to cool his gambling.
"I call up Walter Kennedy calling me with great concern," said Strom. "He wanted me to speak to Mendy almost his gambling. He had been observed at the $fifty and $100 ticket windows at the rail and buying packs of tickets. I did talk to Mendy. And I recall he did try to absurd it. But my wife, who handled our finances, used to say to me when I got my paycheck in the postal service, 'How much should I put aside for Mendy?' He was always borrowing from us. But he ordinarily paid us back."
At that fourth dimension, referees were allowed past the Northward.B.A. to get to the race runway. They no longer are. 'I Saw the High He Got'
"I really never knew the depth of Mendy's gambling," said Susan. "I saw the high he got at the gambling tables, and the exhilaration he felt betting at the track, but I was xviii years younger than he was. And he was an accomplished man, a glory. I thought, 'I'm sure he knows what he's doing.' "
And she also liked the life style and the bon vivant flair of Mendy Rudolph. They met in 1961 when she was a receptionist at the WGN office in New York. He was 35, she was 17 -- she had lied to him well-nigh her historic period and said she was 20. "I call up I got a shell on him the minute I first saw him," she said.
Rudolph was then married to his childhood sweetheart and had 3 children. But at that place were problems in the marriage and one day Rudolph asked Susan out for a beverage. Over fourth dimension, their romance blossomed.
But they had, she said, "a roller coaster matter." And gambling was oftentimes at the center of their travels, from race tracks to the casinos in Las Vegas and Puerto Rico. And some of their numerous breakups were over his dependence on gambling, and his lost weekends. "Once I called the Dunes Hotel in Vegas and had him paged," she said. "I was aroused and hadn't heard from him and merely guessed he might exist at that place. He picked up the page. 'You're sick, practise y'all know that?' I said. 'You're sick.' " Stricken on the Courtroom
While he refused to seek professional help, Rudolph did brainstorm to cutting back on his gambling. And despite their bug, Susan and Mendy remained in love, and were married in 1973. 2 years later a daughter, Jennifer, was born to them. That same year, 1975, Rudolph suffered a claret clot in a game in Washington -- it was to be his last game -- and had to exist carried off the court.
Nucatola said that no referee that he has seen could handle a game with the grace and power of Mendy Rudolph. "He had an instinct for being in the right place at the right time, and knowing how to let the players play," said Nucatola. "I've written to the Basketball Hall of Fame that Mendy should be in it. There are 11 referees in the Hall of Fame. Sometimes you just never can sympathize how and why the voters vote the way they exercise."
"Mendy Rudolph was simply the greatest referee of all time," said Earl Strom.
"Y'all knew that when Mendy was refereeing a game, it would be squarely officiated," said Tom Heinsohn, the onetime North.B.A. player and coach. "I tin nevertheless see Mendy on the court during a timeout. He'd pull out his handkerchief with a flourish, motion-picture show sweat off his eyebrow with his thumb, then neatly fold his handkerchief and carefully slip it back in his pocket. Then he'd call to us, 'Let's play brawl.' " 'He Died of Anguish'
Rudolph was employed as a sportscaster when, on July 4, 1979, while going to a cinema on Tertiary Artery, he collapsed on the street in front of the entrance. Susan Rudolph was at his side and badly gave her married man oral cavity-to-mouth resuscitation until an ambulance came. He was taken to a infirmary, where he died about an hour subsequently.
At that place is nevertheless pain in Susan Rudolph's eyes and voice when she speaks of that time. "Mendy was and then total of life that information technology'south hard to believe he'southward dead," she said. "Just I believe he died of ache, of trying to pay back all his gambling debts and the coin he owed the I.R.Due south. He was gambling relatively footling at the end of his life, though he still loved to go to the OTB. He'd take Jennifer at that place and tell her they were 'going to the bank.' But he still owed a lot, and was as well proud to declare bankruptcy. He was also also proud and honest to get coin by devious means. He might have thought about it, yes, simply in the end he said, 'No,' and hung up the phone."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/31/sports/the-temptations-of-a-man-of-integrity.html
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