Wanna Bet? : Sports Fan Roots for the Underdog by Channeling Love of Stats Into Humorous Tip Sheet

Larry Trusley isn’t sure he wants the world to know that he’s the Head Cluckster. But on most other questions, the odds are that he’s got the odds figured out.

Trusley loved sports as a kid, but eye problems kept him from playing. Instead, he began keeping sports statistics, which he continues to do, sidelining his convenient computer to do it all by hand. With his stats and some theories about their import, he tries to predict which underdog sports teams make a good bet.

During the past four years, he’s shared this information in a national tip sheet called Foul Tips in which two cartoon characters (the Head Cluckster and Underdog) reveal his picks. He also uses faxes and cartoons to distribute sports jokes and lampoons about sports personalities and salaries to subscribers across the country.

The Head Cluckster, by the way, is a goofy chicken wearing shades--which Trusley himself often does because of his light-sensitive eyes. The dog is a cartoon namesake of his two sons’ pet Shih Tzu--Underdog.

Most of the subscribers to Trusley’s tip sheet--which he faxes an average of 20 times a year--don’t know that the Head Cluckster is a fit, mustachioed 45-year-old printing broker working out of his Newport Beach condo. He prefers anonymity, because it enhances the fun of the faxes and also because he doesn’t want to be overly associated with gambling.

Not many people would entrust their fortunes to a chicken in sunglasses, and that’s just the way Trusley hopes all subscribing “Clucksters” relate to his tip sheet.

Indeed, he makes no claim of being a jockstrap Nostradamus. Trusley never plays hunches or trusts luck--though he does admit to always wearing a tattered University of Nevada at Las Vegas T-shirt when he has a bet riding. More important, he doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as a sure bet.

“I’m basically telling people that this is for fun,” he says. “Don’t take my selections and bet your rent money, your mortgage payment, your food money. I think I mostly have people who are fun bettors and can see the humor in it.

“I’m not a big bettor myself,” he adds. “I’ve got two little boys, and I don’t want to live that life. I don’t want to have to be sitting here watching the TV and going, ‘Kids, we need this game.’ That’s not my lifestyle.”

Sports betting, however, is becoming a lifestyle for millions. And Trusley insists that people keep things in perspective.

“I’m not promising anybody anything,” he says. “If you want to be a Cluckster, you bet for fun. I just heard on ESPN that sports betting has grown over 500% in the last decade, and it’s not just people who are desperate, hanging around the liquor store waiting for something to happen. They said it’s mostly white-collar activity. I think that’s what the Clucksters are.”

They’re also diverse. A surprising number of his subscribers are women.

“I think women are getting frustrated with the old man lying on the couch all day watching games, and for some reason the Head Cluckster thing appeals to them,” he says. “They think it’s humorous.”

As one might expect, Trusley’s faxes carry a disclaimer discouraging the use of his tips for illegal gambling. He rarely bets on his own tips, even though he says his picks came in comfortably more than 60% of the time last year.

In the college bowls this past season, for example, five of his six choices won. On Labor Day of last year, he picked the Buffalo Bills to win the Super Bowl. The team lost, but they did play in the bowl, which isn’t bad for a prediction nearly five months before the event.

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You win some and you lose some. But one constant has been Trusley’s inability to whack a slow-pitch softball. In his hometown of Akron, Ohio, he was well-known as the only guy at Akron High School who could play softball all afternoon and strike out every time.

Born cross-eyed and with other ocular problems that have grown worse, Trusley found a way to stay close to the sports he loved.

“I would have the batting averages of all the Major League players updated on a day-to-day basis, by hand,” he says. “I’d have sheets and sheets of it. My sister used to make fun of me because I’d spend the summer walking around with a shoe box full of statistics.”

Trusley still keeps his stats by hand, in part because he doesn’t trust the security of computer systems and also because it’s a link to his youth. He often starts working on his tips at 3:30 in the morning, a time at which he’s been accustomed to rising ever since his late teens when he lived in a flophouse hotel. It was his home while he worked full time at Firestone Tire and Rubber to put himself through college.

Trusley has worked in business printing for 20 years, but says his job has become obsolete. Meanwhile, his eyes make it harder for him to constantly make business calls. With two young sons to support--for whom he is now entering the fourth year of a custody battle--he’s been trying to create new business opportunities. One, which he calls Fax-a-Form, is a self-service business stationary system he’s hoping to place in mailbox-fax shops.

His sports business began at the suggestion of friends with whom he’s always shared his picks. Some four years ago, he created Foul Tips, which he first marketed as a tip sheet in stores, then as a newsletter, before joining the fax age. With the help of a cartoonist friend in Georgia, Trusley introduced the Head Cluckster and Underdog cartoon characters to the fax.

Currently, he’s trying to sell comics syndicates on the idea of a Foul Tips sports tip/humor cartoon to run on newspaper sports pages.

“Foul Tips is a hobby, but it’s my first love,” he says. “If I could make a living doing them, I’d do it in a minute.”

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In his early morning studies, Trusley reads three newspapers daily and checks fresh info on his computer service, also sifting through magazines and books on sports handicapping.

Later in the day, he periodically watches games on TV, but with the sound muted so he won’t be influenced by the commentators’ babble. When he spots a sports pattern or theory with potential, he doggedly watches it to see if it follows through.

Trusley’s specialty is underdog teams. Although he makes individual game recommendations, his favorite picks are the futures, where you guess months in advance who will have winning seasons. On Labor Day he faxes out his choice for Super Bowl champ. On Super Bowl Sunday, he sends out his choice for the National Basketball Assn. victor. On Kentucky Derby Day--in early May--he announces his baseball futures. (This year, Trusley tabbed the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros in the National League, and the California Angels and Detroit Tigers in the American, all of which are currently in contention).

When picking his futures, he routinely tosses out favorites and repeaters. If his stats suggest that a favored team or past season winner will win, he doesn’t make a pick. The return on such teams is so poor that it doesn’t justify laying out the bet, he explains. Trusley also scouts the odds offered by Las Vegas casinos, because they can vary wildly on futures betting.

The outcome, of course, is never a sure thing. During this year’s NBA finals, he picked the Phoenix Suns over the Chicago Bulls. Among Trusley’s reasons: Since the NBA has adopted its present series format, the teams with the home-team advantage have won 10 tourneys and lost one. Additionally, teams that have lost the first game at home have come back to win the trophy 58% of the time.

Trusley doesn’t believe there’s a liability associated with offering such tips, noting it’s no more than sports announcers routinely do when predicting game outcomes: “If you turn on the TV any given Saturday or Sunday, all the channels have got guys standing there saying, ‘Today my best bet is blah blah blah.’

“I’m very suspicious of anyone who can pick four or five games they like in a given weekend,” he continues. “There aren’t that many good betting propositions. If you keep track like I do of what some of these guys say, you’d realize it’s a joke. Some of them are terrible, picking way under 50%.”

All that said, Trusley admits to being disturbed by what the national increase in betting might portend for those who aren’t affluent enough to be plugged into a fax.

“There are people out there who are desperate, so their enjoyment is sitting in front of a TV all weekend pouring beer down their throats and betting these games. It’s really sad to think that’s what they live for.

“I don’t want to raise my boys as bettors,” he says with a dismissive laugh. “I’ve got a little boy who loves sports. . . . Do I want him to know that, given the chance, I’d bet against him if he were a Major League Baseball player?”