Just because a sucker’s born every minute …

By Jeff Haney

Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008 | 2 a.m.

If I’m listening to the radio at all on a weekend morning, it’s almost exclusively either “The Howard Stern Show” or NPR.

So a fellow sports bettor had to clue me in to the abomination that airs at 7 a.m. Saturday on ESPN 1100-AM.

I was a bit bleary when I tuned in last week after stumbling into the sunlight at the tail end of an overnight gambling session, but there was no doubt what I was hearing.

It was the attack of the “scamdicappers” — slimy football touts peddling worthless predictions as they yell and scream in voices so grating they make Scott Ferrall sound like Bob Ross.

The phrases “750,000-star parlay of the year” and “million-dollar star lock” (huh?) were actually uttered on this show, in earnest. So, more than once, were “monster winning week” and “1 billion-star NFL blowout of the year.”

I must harbor the faintest shred of an idealistic streak, because I thought Las Vegas gamblers were too sophisticated to get suckered by this kind of junk.

Guess I’ll never learn.

I thought back to an incident at a blackjack table when I was a much younger man visiting Las Vegas. I was playing alongside a woman who was bragging about being a savvy local regular.

When I made a play that violated basic strategy because the count dictated it, she chewed me out for “messing up the flow of the cards” or something.

I laughed, because I thought surely she was doing a clever, impromptu parody of a typical blackjack loser.

Then I realized she wasn’t doing a parody of a mental defective.

She was one.

Even now, many years later, I recall the chill that came over me.

I felt like the hero in an old “Twilight Zone” episode at the moment he realizes the nice man behind the lunch counter is actually a zombie whose brain has been eaten by Martians.

I felt a similar chill Saturday as I came to understand that at least a couple of people in Las Vegas must think it’s a good idea not only to listen to the scamdicapper show on ESPN Radio, but also to pay real money for useless sports picks because a loudmouth on the radio said he’s on a 10-2 run.

Oh, excuse me, I mean a documented 10-2 run.

The very notion that people would fall for this sort of scam, to borrow a phrase from professional handicappers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, staggers the mind.

Yet they do. And they walk among us. Here in Las Vegas. Much like the “Twilight Zone” zombies — especially that part about the missing brains.

Otherwise, the scamdicapping operation wouldn’t bother paying for the airtime, right?

Then another thought occurred: There’s a reasonable chance these people are registered voters in Nevada.

But I’ll let someone else pick up that strain of the argument, along with its rich vein of punch lines, many ending with “... in the Governor’s Mansion.”

The scamdicappers on the show in question do give their names — or should I say “names”? — though I don’t really know or care what they are, nor do I wish to give them publicity.

But here are some more delightful excerpts from the infomercial-style program, which evidently lasts for a couple of hours each Saturday morning:

“Listeners, you stop what you’re doing! You make the call!”

Um, no. I don’t.

“I have a game that you can bet everything you own on!”

Always a wise idea.

“A free lock! Burial! Blowout! Pummel!”

Seriously. This aired on a major Las Vegas sports radio station.

Fezzik, the respected one-name Las Vegas professional gambler, was once asked whether he agreed with the statement that 90 percent of sports touts are good guys, with the remaining 10 percent bad apples who give the legitimate handicappers a bad reputation.

In a classic reply, Fezzik said that particular estimate was oh-so-close, off by only one digit: In fact, perhaps 9 percent are good guys. The remaining 91 percent aren’t.

So here’s my appeal to the bosses at KWWN ESPN 1100-AM:

Sure, I know I can change the station (or flick over to satellite, as it were). That doesn’t change the fact that airing these scamdicapper scums brings down the quality of your station, and, albeit in a small, indirect way, the quality of life in this city.

When I’m not listening to Howard & Co. or “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me,” I often tune in to your station for its regularly scheduled local sports programming.

I am a fan.

Hear me out.

I know you’re better than this.

You don’t have to treat your Saturday morning listeners as if they were “marks” — the old crooked carnival term for ignorant jerks primed to be fleeced.

Come on, be menschen.

Acknowledge the concept of good corporate citizenship.

Do your part in making Las Vegas just a little bit of a better place.

Lose the trashy scamdicapper show. Lose it for good.

And Baba Booey to y’all.