LAS VEGAS — Honolulu football betting nearly had no equal.
‘‘Even compared with such big towns as New York and Chicago,’’ a player on the professional Hawaiian Warriors told Honolulu Star-Bulletin columnist Joe Anzivino in 1947.
‘‘They pester us on the beach, and just about everywhere we go there’s people asking questions about the club.’’
The Warriors played in a stadium built in 1926 by private financier John Ashman Beaven, who’d fly in Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig for baseball exhibitions.
‘‘THE place that every young man in this community hoped that someday they could dig their cleats into the soil and be a part of it,’’ Herman Wedemeyer said in a 1996 TV documentary.
Wedemeyer, a pre-World War II football star for the island’s Saint Louis School, is best known as Sgt./Det. ‘‘Duke’’ Lukela on the hit 1970s TV crime-drama ‘‘Hawaii Five-O.’’
Action outside the stadium might have been heavier, at times, than what occurred inside it.
‘‘There was plenty of benign crime drama in plain sight around the ticket office at the front gate of Honolulu Stadium,’’ Ohio judge Kevin Braig writes.
In Hawaii, the act of placing a bet was a misdemeanor, Braig reports, punishable by ‘‘a felony-like’’ one year in jail and $1,000 fine.
Yet a betting scandal rocked the stadium, the city and the Pacific Coast Football League in December 1947, even making headlines in the New York Times.
Braig covered all the sordid and succulent details in the September issue of his newsletter.
Honolulu high jinks
Local star Melvin ‘‘Buddy’’ Abreu served as the Warriors’ ringleader, and the theatrics involved the Yamashiro brothers, bagman Lawrence ‘‘Fat’’ Loo, Abreu pal John Kim and corrupt police.
‘‘Some real characters,’’ Braig tells me. ‘‘Holy cow! The Warriors were like the anti-Black Sox in that they played their [rears] off to win their bet! Suffered a real bad beat. The real crooks were the police and prosecutor.’’
It’s all in the first issue of the second volume of ‘‘QuantCoach’s Eye — The Capitalist’s Sports Newsletter.’’
Braig, who works for the Logan County Court of Common Appeals in Ohio, publishes the missive monthly, except August, at $11 annually. Sign on anytime and receive back issues of every volume. To subscribe, contact his QuantCoach website or its X page.
The title is a nod to Collyer’s Eye, which was produced by Chicago publisher Burt Collyer in 1915-41. It covered horse racing, major-league baseball, boxing and other sports, plus commodities markets.
‘‘From the capitalist’s perspective,’’ Braig writes on the newsletter’s website. ‘‘It honored the customers of sports, especially the most diehard [ones] who bet on games.’’
On Oahu nearly 80 years ago, Abreu had roped more than a dozen teammates into contributing a total of $6,500 (nearly $100,000 today) and coaxed Kim into making two bets with the infamous Masami Ring.
Against the L.A. Bulldogs in Honolulu Stadium, the Warriors bet $1,000 that they would cover a seven-point first-half spread — at Abreu-finagled plus-250 odds — and $5,500 to cover 14 points for the game.
The first cashed, the second didn’t. Angry Warriors player Milo Milicevich publicly exposed the scheme. Averse to spoiling the plot or climax, I’ll leave the color to the newsletter.
A football family
Braig’s father, Raymond, is renowned in the Cincinnati area as a youth football coach. His charges have matriculated to famous Moeller High, even Notre Dame. So pigskin is in Braig’s DNA.
As a lawyer, he had immersed himself in the sports-betting industry as the U.S. Supreme Court quashed the Bradley Bill in May 2018, paving the way for states to legalize the business.
Braig published the superb ‘‘Bookmakers vs. Ball Owners,’’ a tome that unearths the deep history of gambling among pro-sports owners.
That led to the newsletter. The September issue is rich with NFL fodder, forecasts and cartoons by artist Andrew Paavola, along with the 15-page feature about the Warriors. In scope and entertainment value, the feature is Sports Illustrated-worthy.
The October issue devotes space to horses, trainers, jockeys and owners scheduled to appear at the Breeders’ Cup last weekend at Del Mar.
Legendary oddsman Frank ‘‘Lefty’’ Rosenthal’s exploits in Miami and Toots Shor’s famous New York City watering hole have been other recent profiles.
A feast
Braig has extensive newspaper-archive accounts, on which he relies to flesh out his stories. He’s meticulous about adhering to what is or isn’t in the public domain.
During the NFL season, he inserts exotic stats, categories such as play-design and player-productivity differentials, passing and pass-coverage efficiency.
It’s eye-popping stuff, which he based on work by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer, particularly his paper ‘‘Endogenous Technological Change.’’
‘‘It views designs of new technologies as the engines of economic growth,’’ Braig says. ‘‘It discusses a person making a decision to use an alpha or beta technology, a simple choice between one or the other.’’
Braig welcomes ‘‘quality subscribers deeply interested in the true history of the business of betting, vintage sports cartoons and fundamentally sound capitalism.’’
It’s a true labor of love that also includes recipes. Grilled Sonoran-spiced swordfish tacos are on the October menu.
‘‘I love to cook, and one of my favorite features is providing fun and delicious recipes that anyone can make,’’ Braig says. ‘‘They are always linked to the theme of the issue, and I always make what I recommend.’’
As if there already isn’t enough to feast on in the bountiful newsletter.