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What: “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel”

Where: HBO, tonight, 10.

Too bad radio legend Jim Healy isn’t still around to see this show. One of his favorite tapes was of Ed Garvey, former head of the NFL players’ union, saying, “Leonard Tose has lost it.” Well, Tose has lost it all right, as shown in this edition of “Real Sports.”

Tose, who bought the Philadelphia Eagles for $16 million in 1969, was forced to sell the team in 1985 for $65 million to cover his gambling losses. Now 86, he is penniless, lives in a small hotel room, and former Eagle coach Dick Vermeil pays his day-to-day expenses.

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Vermeil, interviewed by “Real Sports,” says, “The worst thing that happened [to Leonard] is Atlantic City, really. ... It became a passion with him, an obsession.”

Tose is a fascinating story. Besides Vermeil, others who provide some insight for “Real Sports” are former Eagle general manager Jim Murray, Tose’s driver John Finch, who now takes care of him, and Tose’s daughter Susan Spencer, who helped her father run the Eagles.

“Real Sports” obtained records from the Sands casino that show Tose lost nearly $10 million there in 1981 and another $10 million in ’82.

Correspondent Frank Deford asks Tose why he gambled. “It fascinated me, I guess,” says Tose, who admits he was no good at it.

At the end of the piece, Deford asks Tose if there are regrets. “Oh, I guess if I sat down and analyzed it there would be a lot of them,” Tose says. “So why waste my time?”

After Tose says he would not go back to Atlantic City, Deford says, “You wouldn’t? If I gave you a million dollars right now, would you go gambling?”

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Tose, smiling, says, “Would you give me two?”

The lead segment on this edition of “Real Sports” looks at gambling in Las Vegas and betting lines. There’s also a segment about the role religion plays in sports, particularly in the NFL, and another is about a successful Pop Warner League football program in the Marshall Heights section of Washington, D.C.

Larry Stewart

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