Was Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal, kingpin of Las Vegas, mildly autistic? The recent obituaries point to such tendencies; the New York Times reports that he was obsessive about the number of blueberries in the muffins that came out of the Stardust’s kitchen (ten was the perfect amount, apparently – you wonder if they had to be a certain size, too), while Casino scribe Nicholas Pileggi said Rosenthal was a ‘real Rain Man type with numbers. He didn’t need an adding machine’.
Considering the absurd complexities of sports betting, this must have given the man nicknamed after his left-handedness (nothing more sinister, apparently – but then Victorians supposedly forced the left handed to write with their rights, so it has more of a taint in recent history) a real edge.
Still, saying someone who doesn’t need a calculator is autistic is a bit like saying someone who survives a car bomb is Superman – which Lefty did, incidentally, in 1982.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 