LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The scouting report says that I generally withhold book recommendation for Christmas gift suggestions.
Some books can't wait that long.
"Gamble: Secrets from a Life at Risk," written by Billy Walters and published Tuesday, is certainly one of those books.
Some people move the pile. Walters moved point spreads.
I can't think of another guy nicknamed "The Michael Jordan of Gambling." Walters was. Lara Logan profiled Walters on 60 Minutes a dozen years ago. Some people argue the story helped put Walters in federal prison.
Walters had such a strong feeling that New Orleans would beat Indianapolis in Super Bowl XLIV that he bet $3.5 million on the Saints — who won and covered.
Odds are you're already aware of the juiciest excerpts from the book, which went directly to No. 1 on the list of best-selling sports books at Amazon.com. (Published by Avid Reader Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, the book is 384 pages and retails for $35.)
Walters, 77, is the guy who said that Phil Mickelson, a six-time major champion, called him from the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Club in suburban Chicago and wanted Walters to place a $400,000 bet on the U.S. team to win.
Walters declined.
Walters also wrote that he believed Mickelson has lost more than $100 million in wagers while betting more than $1 billion in his career.
Tom Brady, Paul Hornung, Frank Sinatra and dozens of other characters draw mention in the book.
But this is what pulled me through the first 75 or so pages: The Billy Walters story is a Kentucky story and in many ways a Louisville story.
The man who showed how to beat the point spread as well as how to move the point spread is as Kentucky as Churchill Downs, which, of course, is one of the first places Walters worked, mucking stalls and walking horses. He also delivered the morning and afternoon newspapers in this town.
Born into a broken home in Munfordville within a pitching wedge of the Green River, Walters learned survival skills at a young age.
His father died when Walters was barely 18 months old. His mother left Walters and two older sisters to live with other family members when she moved to Louisville.
Walters stayed in a tiny house in Hart County with his grandmother until he was 15 before rejoining his mother and her third husband in what he called a "one story rental on the backside of Hazelwood projects," in Louisville.
From there, it was a wild ride. Walters attended duPont Manual High School, a place he intensely disliked. He fought off a pedophile as a young hitchhiker and was married with a child when he transferred to Male High School to earn his diploma.
But his real education came in the streets, pool halls and bars. Walters hustled a living by pitching coins, playing poker and clearing pool tables. Sometimes, that resulted in Walters taking a pool stick across the bridge of his nose.
Walters learned to bet on anything that moved, including the direction of two birds sitting on a power line. He learned to talk himself into and out of a life of carousing, drunkenness and debts.
He used his ability to hustle and charm into a lucrative career as a used-car salesman. Working at a lot in the south end of Louisville, Walters wrote that, in 1966, he sold an average of 32 cars per month.
He said that his commission checks that year totaled $56,000, the equivalent of more than $500,000 in today's dollars. Ever the competitor, Walters said the second-best salesman state-wide was a 29-year sale veteran who earned $22,000.
Maybe you bought a car from Walters, who eventually owned his own lot.
But if Walters was twice the salesman of anybody in Kentucky, he was not twice the husband or twice the father. He admitted that his gambling, drinking and hustling cost him his first two marriages as well as strong relationships with three children. Walters checked himself in and out of Our Lady of Peace Hospital.
Fortunately, Walters figured it out and scripted a chunk of Happily Ever After into his relentless odyssey. He credits his third wife, Susan Humphries, a Louisville woman, with helping him turn his life in a better direction.
In 1982, Billy and Susan moved to Las Vegas. That is where he set himself on a path to become the most analytical, sophisticated and successful sports handicapper of all time.
With sports gambling weeks from becoming legal in Kentucky, Walters outlines the highlights of his wagering system in the two chapters that follow his take on Mickelson.
Walters incorporated analytics into his wagers long before analytics became a sports buzzword. His best advice is not how to crush a college football weekend. His best advice is to set aside a small amount of money that your bank account can survive losing without pain — and to understand that it's highly unlikely you're going to consistently beat the house.
You will not.
Even Walters sustained heavy losses — none more than the five-year federal prison sentence and $10 million fine that he earned for insider stock trading.
That was the dust-up that fractured the long friendship Walters shared with Mickelson. It's understandable that his claims about Mickelson have grabbed the early headlines from Walters' book.
But "Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk," is more than a story about Walters and Mickelson. It's a Kentucky and Louisville story, too.
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