LAS VEGAS — At ABC Island Sports in Curaçao, Dave Sharapan answered the phone, like he did scores of times daily, like he’d do hundreds of times every week in 1997 and ’98.
“Guy calls in, wants to bet the Bulls for $50,000,” he says. “We were like, ‘Ahhh, okay.’ He had sent the money in, we took it, and he wanted to bet it. We sweated it.”
On Feb. 27, 1997, the Cavaliers defeated Michael Jordan and the Bulls 73-70 in Cleveland. The dynastic Bulls lost for only the seventh time in 56 games that season.
“I was a young kid, hadn’t been there that long,” Sharapan says. “I thought, Man, this business is easy!”
When Sharapan’s parents, Nancy and Elliott, visited, he took them to the Mikvé Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, in Willemstad. The floor of the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas is completely covered in sand.
Consecrated in 1732, it features vaulted ceilings, azure stained-glass windows, a carved mahogany Holy Ark, pulpit, galleries and benches, and grandiose chandeliers.
“Not really being religious, just trying to survive each day, when you step foot in there you felt something. I will never forget that. How many people have been in here? Unbelievable.
“I’m getting goose bumps, right now, thinking about that day.”
A profound respite during his Bookmaker’s Baptism of Fire.
BIG E’S BLESSING
At 26, in January 1997, Sharapan packed two gym bags full of shorts and T-shirts, and swim trunks, and ventured south from Pittsburgh to the southern fringe of the Caribbean Sea, 40 miles from Venezuela.
He’d hoped his Penn State degree would beget a broadcasting career, but his pop’s discount store required attention.
At 12, his odds acumen had bookies asking him for insights. At 21, he’d travel to Vegas with Pittsburgh Philly, an established gambling fixture, and friends on junkets.
Philly was assembling an offshore operation in Curaçao. No friend or relative of Dave’s liked the idea, but Elliott, known as Big E, gave the eldest of his five kids his blessing.
Big E said he would regret it the rest of his life if he don’t go.
ABC is Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, the three westernmost Dutch islands of the Leeward Antilles. Curaçaoans speak Dutch, English, Spanish and Papiamentu, a Creole mix of that trio with a splash of Portuguese.
The Rabbi, who wasn’t Jewish but had earned the moniker as a Colt League baseball coach in Pittsburgh, awaited Sharapan, holding a DAVE sign, at Hato International Airport in Willemstad.
The dark drive to an apartment featured sporadic wild goats. Sharapan awoke the next morning, peeked out the rear window and, on a large hill, saw nothing but goats and stray dogs.
“What did I just do?”
He’d clock in at 8 a.m., leave around 11 p.m. Food was brought to the office.
Every day.
“Daily banter, back-and-forth. No yes-men. Is that the number you want to use? You’d know why, good or bad. You need people with opinions, and you need people to see what you don’t see. That’s a lesson for life, let alone in a book.”
Those first three months, the swim trunks stayed dry. When Arizona beat Kentucky for the NCAA hoops title, Sharapan hit the tropical wall with a single thought.
I’m not going to make it.
MYSTERY MEATS
Sharapan met with Philly, an acerbic, gruff individual with whom only he seemed able to communicate. At once, he was assured of having more of a life while his role was expanded.
“Then,” Sharapan says, “it got real crazy.”
Baseball wagers for $10,000 were typical, six figures for football.
“All kinds of bets for all kinds of people in all kinds of places, but just a number and a password on the screen, to me. We were already handling a ton of money. It just blew up.”
Curaçao’s many vices and work demands wore down the undisciplined. Sharapan saw many last only a few weeks.
He and Pittsburgh pals visited the Sonesta Beach casino, and those trunks finally got wet at Mambo Beach. He obtained a Papiamentu dictionary.
He’d answer that phone, repeating, “6-7-8-2 . . . five dimes . . . Cubs . . . hopi bon!”
Meaning, very good.
Bon Bini. Welcome.
Te aworo. See you later.
Awa. Water.
“I’d try Papiamentu and they’d laugh, ‘Dave, you sound like a 5-year-old.’ I learned enough to be dangerous. To keep ’em laughing, keep it light.
“By then, I was adjusted. The siesta every day, noon to two. I thought, These people have it figured out. I learned so much about life, and the pace of life.”
Monday’s USA Today arrived in Willemstad on Wednesdays. He’d attend cookouts, savor fish and conch, relish meals from food trucks, friends averting him from certain vehicles.
“The ones that served goat, or mystery meats,” he said.
He’d attend meetings in Otrobanda, across St. Anna Bay on the pontoon Queen Emma Bridge. When phones were silent and they awaited games to end, the office girls rarely sat still.
“They’d say, ‘Let’s dance!’ Those girls taught me how to tango. Awesome. Changed me forever, forget about the [bookmaking] stuff.”
SUPER VEGAS
Offshore books multiplied in the Caribbean, Costa Rica and elsewhere. Business boomed.
Twenty years before the U.S. Supreme Court sacked the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, letting states pursue sports betting, Sharapan saw the future. The lures of offshore sign-up bonuses and parlay boosts, for example, proliferated.
Kentucky recently became the 34th U.S. jurisdiction to legalize sports betting.
Last Sunday, for the first time, a legal sportsbook (Fanatics) offered wagers inside an NFL stadium during a game, between Arizona and Washington at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland.
“Déjà vu, all over again,” the 53-year-old Sharapan says. “So many books. People burned out quickly. In the U.S., it’s a free-for-all. Everyone jumps in and thinks they can run a sportsbook, books jumpin’ in with media companies.
“It’s still 11-to-10 [odds], or supposed to be.”
Those 18 months were sufficient. He didn’t depart on amicable terms with Philly, who was salty with Sharapan on Tuesday when he rang to confirm details for this piece. ABC, having shifted ownership several times, still exists.
Sharapan would work at many Las Vegas shops and, on occasion, a voice at the counter would ring familiar.
“You ever call ABC? I’m Curaçao Dave!”
“Oh yeah!”
“Nuts,” Sharapan says. “I was a young kid in Curaçao and basically got a tour of duty. I grew up, literally got that Ph.D, in the business and in life.”
With pal and Boston native Matt Perrault, Sharapan is the other half of the sharp and popular podcast “The Bostonian vs. The Book,” whose listeners comprise The BvB Brigade.
“The irony of it all,” Sharapan says, “is the Super Bowl being here in Vegas!”
For this column, he snapped a photo of himself — wearing the model Caribbean jersey and cap Curaçao kids wore in the recent Little League World Series — before a huge Super Bowl LVIII football outside the Westgate SuperBook.
Allegiant Stadium stages the game Feb. 11.
“I think about, and say, it every day — Vegas is hosting the world’s biggest TV show, the world’s biggest football game! I cannot believe the full circle of the whole thing.”
