Being Oscar (37 page)

That’s the image I had in my mind as I walked out of the store. Then I realized that I had no idea where my hotel was, the name of which had escaped me. I panicked. I had a cell phone that didn’t work in Rome, and even if it did, I wouldn’t know who to call or what to say. I broke into a cold sweat. After walking around in circles for about five minutes, I heard someone call my name.

“Mayor Goodman, Mayor Goodman.”

I turned and saw a woman beckoning me over.

“I’m Bill Russell’s wife,” she said.

“I’m lost,” I replied.

We shared a cab to the hotel where she and Bill, the great Boston Celtics center, were staying. I was never so thankful to be recognized.

That night, Rossi and I, along with Julian Dugas, who was the Convention Authority’s sports guru, and Vince Alberta, a public affairs man, were supposed to present the key to the city of Las Vegas to the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, at the arena before a basketball game. But Mayor Veltroni had left a message at our hotel that because of a transportation and media strike, we should go to his City Hall office instead, where the ceremony would take place. I thought there might be a problem since I was traveling with the showgirls, Porsha and Jen. Would they be allowed in City Hall in their suggestive outfits? I called the mayor, and without hesitation, he said that absolutely they would be welcome.

This didn’t surprise me. By this point, the brand—me, the showgirls, and my martini—had been well established. We had
come a long way from that first night back in Cashman Field when I “threw” that first pitch.

The showgirls and I had probably made several hundred appearances by that point. And every time we did, people would flock to us. They wanted their pictures taken with us. They wanted autographs. The martini was part of the routine, and after I signed that deal with Bombay Sapphire, it expanded as well. They gave me a watch that only had the number five on it. All around the face there were fives. No other number. Five o’clock was the traditional “cocktail hour.”

If we were at an event at 7
A
.
M
., I’d be holding a martini and I’d wave my watch and say, “It’s five o’clock somewhere. Drink up!”

When we arrived at Mayor Veltroni’s office, he introduced us to his wife and daughters. They weren’t interested in the mayor of Las Vegas—they were there for the showgirls, captivated by their class and charm. As the girls were socializing, Mayor Veltroni invited me out onto the balcony. He pointed and said, “There is the Palatine Hill where Romulus and Remus were born.”

It was an awesome sight.

“And Mayor Goodman,” he said, “there’s the Forum where public speeches and gladiator matches took place in the presence of Rome’s great men.”

Then he said, “Look just beneath this balcony where we’re standing. There stood Julius Caesar.”

What could I say?

“Mayor Veltroni,” I said, “when you come to Las Vegas to visit me and we both look out the window from my office at City Hall, I’ll show you U.S. Route 95 and Interstate 15.”

Today, if Rome’s mayor visited the new City Hall, he would see from the mayor’s balcony the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center
for Brain Health, the Smith Center, the Premium Outlets, and the World Market Center.

After the basketball game that night, the Las Vegas contingent went to the best restaurant I have ever been to in my life. We drank wine and toasted the guests who were there. I handed out “good luck mayor chips” with caricatures of my likeness that described me as the “Happiest Mayor in the Universe.”

We danced like Zorba the Greek. We were served sea bass the size of small whales, and it was delicious. I’d recommend the food and ambience to kings and queens.

Several years later, I told a Las Vegas reporter who was traveling to Rome that the restaurant was a “must” visit. When she returned, she called me. I asked whether the place was as great as I had remembered.

“It was closed down,” she said. “Apparently it had been the front for a heroin smuggling operation. They were hiding narcotics in fish bellies that they brought into Rome.”

Maybe that’s why the sea bass tasted so good!

During that five-day trip, we visited arenas in each of the cities and watched basketball games. The commissioner and his right-hand man, Adam Silver, were always sitting in front of me, and we got along well. I think it helped that they got a kick out of the showgirls. Whenever I travel for the city, two beautiful showgirls are part of my entourage. At each game, I was taking bets. I was just fooling around with the other people on the trip, but I became their bookie. Stern seemed to like my
schtick
, and our relationship improved. That might explain how Las Vegas was chosen as the site for the NBA All-Star game. It was the first time the game was played in a city that didn’t have an NBA team, so I
took that as a good sign. It also was the first time the game was played on a college campus, at the Thomas and Mack Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

When I heard we had gotten approval to host the game, I thought a miracle had taken place. And I wanted everything to work out. We were to have the game in 2007, and the site was chosen a couple of years in advance. Houston had the game in 2006, so I made a point of going there to check things out. I remember being at the airport in Las Vegas leaving for Houston. I’m standing there and I see all these working girls, call girls, high-priced hookers, waiting for the same plane. I struck up a conversation and asked a couple of them what they were doing.

“Are you going to the game?” I said.

They laughed.

“No Oscar, we’re going to party.”

I got a bang out of that, but I think it said a lot about the All-Star Weekend. Talk to people in law enforcement, and they’ll tell you the NBA All-Star Weekend is unlike any other professional all-star venue. Instead, it’s a weekend party that brings together celebrities, “gangstas,” and athletes. Drug dealers from cities throughout the country show up with their entourage, take up a suite of hotel rooms, and party all weekend. I didn’t know this at the time, so when we were about to host the game, I went to all the casino executives and said we want to put on a full-court press. This was our chance to show off the city and make our pitch for a franchise.

During that weekend, I met with Commissioner Stern. He sat across from me in my City Hall office, and we were talking about a lot of different things. His son was working for the governor of Montana. We talked about family and kids and what it was like living in New York and in Las Vegas; just a friendly, general conversation. After an hour, he got to the point.

“Okay Oscar,” he said in his charming manner. “You win. The ball’s in your court. I won’t stand in the way of you getting a franchise if you build a first class arena and if you’re able to convince the owners.”

I was doing a jig; this was a major movement on his part.

As a concession to Stern, I had gotten the casinos to take the game off the board in the betting parlors, so there would be no action on the all-star game. It was a big concession, but the casinos went along. Everyone was on board.

“We’ll do whatever we have to do,” the casino executives told me.

I felt good they had that much confidence in me. This was great. We did everything we could. But sometimes the best plans don’t give you the best results.

The weekend turned into a disaster.

It was President’s Day Weekend. There was a huge convention for men’s apparel companies in town, and it also was a great celebration of the Chinese New Year.

A group of thugs came up from Southern California for the game. They ransacked rooms, stiffed waitresses, and scared people. When the weekend ended, those same casino owners told me, “Forget about it. There’s no way we want a franchise if this is what comes with it.”

Even though it was a big setback, I knew that over time, I’d be able to convince the casino owners that the All-Star Game Weekend was an aberration. Having a team doesn’t mean that each of the forty-one home games would be like that game. I took their complaints with a grain of salt. I’ve since had discussions with the owners of several franchises, and none of them seem to have a problem with a team out here.

We have to get the arena built, of course, and the economy will have something to do with that. But I think it’s just a matter
of time. I believe Las Vegas will eventually get an NBA franchise. It’s no longer a question of if, but merely when.

Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, has told me not to talk to any team about relocating. And the NFL is completely unreasonable. Its commissioners, Paul Tagliabue and then Roger Goodell, took the same position; they didn’t want to hear about it.

The NFL is the biggest hypocrite in all of this. Football generates more gambling than any other sport. They put out the injury report on Thursdays: who’s unable to play, who’s injured but likely to perform. They provide information about the weather forecast for game day. What do you think all that’s about—do you think the NFL is just being fan-friendly? That information is for setting the line and for helping the bookies and the odds makers. It’s to entice the bettors.

Does it hurt the integrity of the game? Of course not. But let’s not kid ourselves; the NFL’s popularity is built in large part from the action that comes to the bookies each week.

Back in 2003, we tried to advertise on television during the Super Bowl. It was something like $2.5 million for a thirty-second spot. We wanted to promote Las Vegas. The Convention and Visitors Authority came up with the idea, and I was wholeheartedly in favor of it, but Tagliabue said no way. He said, “We don’t want our game to be associated with Las Vegas.”

I went bonkers. In an interview with a reporter for the
Las Vegas Sun
, I said that I couldn’t believe the double-standard. I said the NFL’s image had been tainted by former and current players who have been accused of and, in some cases, convicted of crimes ranging from murder and child molestation to burglary and sexual assault. I added, “As far as I’m concerned, Tagliabue has the most deviant athletes in professional sports.”

The paper went on to list various football players who had been the subjects of criminal investigations in several high-profile cases. The media all over the country picked it up, and
the television networks played our proposed Super Bowl “ad” over and over. I was screaming and hollering about the hypocrisy of it all. I think I generated about $20 million worth of advertising for Las Vegas, and it didn’t cost us a cent.

I even wrote an op-ed piece that the
New York Times
published. Here’s what I said:

The National Football League has made another bad call: It has denied the city of Las Vegas the right to advertise itself during Sunday’s televised broadcast of the Super Bowl. Why? Because we are Las Vegas.

The NFL has long had a policy that prohibits gambling-related advertisements during televised games. And even though our ads—promotional spots commissioned by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority—do not make direct reference to gambling, the league has said that the basic reason for their rejection is simply “because Las Vegas is so synonymous with sports betting and gambling.” The ads—which have already been shown on several cable networks—are based on real-life tourist experiences, none of which involve gambling.

Are the commercials provocative—even racy? Sure. One features an alluring woman on a limousine ride through Las Vegas. But this is Vegas, after all. Will the ads, as the NFL says, “have a uniquely negative effect on the public’s perception” of the game of football? I am willing to bet the NFL commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, that they won’t.

At any rate, NFL telecasts are constantly interrupted by ads that aren’t just negative but offensive. What about the beer ads that run during nearly every NFL broadcast? Does alcohol (or the bevy of scantily clad women who appear in so many of those ads) not have a negative effect on the public?

There seems to be a bit of hypocrisy going on here: To some degree, NFL games have and always will attract betting. Almost
every newspaper in the country publishes point spreads. And the league’s own web site is associated with CBSSportsLine.com, which lists the odds on upcoming major sporting events and tips on how to bet.

The NFL needs to face the reality of what is going on outside its stadiums. Some form of gambling is now legal in almost every state—and many states, like California, are hoping to balance their budgets by allowing an expansion of gambling. Nevada may be the only state where betting on sporting events is legal, but we have always been honest and consistent about what we are and what we offer.