4:08

A cheating scandal has rocked the world of bridge. NPR’s Robert Siegel talks to Newsweek reporter John Walters to get the details.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Now what’s so unusual about this year’s Bermuda Bowl. That’s the tournament played every two years and currently underway in Chennai, India. At stake, the most prestigious title in the game of bridge, the card game. What’s unusual is that three countries – Germany, Israel and Monaco – have withdrawn their teams from the Bermuda Bowl after allegations of cheating. John Walters writes about this year’s big bridge scandal in Newsweek. Welcome to the program.

JOHN WALTERS: Thank you for having me.

SIEGEL: And explain to us what’s been charged here. A game of bridge has two parts. There’s the bidding that determines which pair of players goes on offense and how well they say they can do. And then there’s the actual playing out of the hand. Is the cheating that’s been charged all during the bidding?

WALTERS: It’s all during the bidding. And what has happened is Boye Brogeland, who is a professional player ranked 64th in the world out of Norway, came out with allegations against the team from Israel. He used videotaped footage of them to identify a tell between the two players, Lotan Fisher and Ron Schwartz.

SIEGEL: And when you say a tell, it’s sort of like if somebody burps in a particular way that means I’ve got the queen and the jack of diamonds?

WALTERS: (Laughter). I mean, not that exact situation, but yes. You’ve identified what they do. In the case of the Israelis, Boye Brogeland found that they would put the tray on which you place the cards on the board in a specific spot. And that spot identified what was the high card in each player’s hand.

SIEGEL: So that was the charge against the two Israelis.

WALTERS: Correct.

SIEGEL: There are also two from Germany and two from Monaco. How good are these six players?

WALTERS: Well, the players from Monaco are actually Italians and a month ago were the number one and number two ranked bridge players in the entire world. The reason the Italians are representing Monaco is because even though you only need two players in a hand of bridge, the teams are comprised of six players. What happens in every tournament is a very wealthy sponsor makes himself one of the six players on the team, and then he hires five other players. This is akin to Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots suiting up for a quarter…

SIEGEL: (Laughter).

WALTERS: …And then saying that he was just as responsible for winning the Super Bowl as Tom Brady was.

SIEGEL: And the rich sponsor of the two Israeli players in this case is Jimmy Cayne, the man who had been head of Bear Stearns, the investment bank, and who was – he was criticized for playing bridge as his bank collapsed during the financial crisis.

WALTERS: Yes. In 2007, when Bear Stearns was in terrible crises and high-ranking VPs were trying to contact Jimmy Cayne for answers to their questions, he was incommunicado. He was playing a 10-day bridge tournament in Nashville, and part of the rules are no cell phones.

SIEGEL: Because they could be used for cheating (laughter).

WALTERS: Exactly, exactly. He has never been implicated as having anything to do with their cheating. He was the sponsor, though. But without that, you would not have professional players in bridge. The interest isn’t enough, and it is certainly not a good spectator sport. And that is why the Italians were playing representing Monaco because they had a very wealthy Monegasque sponsor.

SIEGEL: If you look at championship bridge players playing at a tournament, there are screens up so that each player can’t see his partner that easily. There’s a tray that they pass underneath. I think you’re blocked under the tables so you can’t just kick the guy in the shin to tell him how many hearts you have or whatever. What can you do short of having the players in different rooms or having them dress up like the Michelin man? How can you have a guaranteed no-cheating bridge tournament?

WALTERS: For me, that’s what made the story so humorous. The Marx Brothers in the film “Animal Crackers” do a scene about bridge. And Chico begins by asking the women they’re playing against, how do you want to play, honest? So it’s always been susceptible to cheating. Most people who play bridge are retirees. They are not the ones who are committing this skullduggery. It’s only at the very highest levels where this is taking place.

SIEGEL: John Walters, thanks for talking with us about the story.

WALTERS: Thank you for having me on.

SIEGEL: John Walters, a senior writer for Newsweek, has written about the big scandal in the world of bridge.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

3:36

More Americans than ever are signing up for fantasy sports leagues. NPR’s Rachel Martin speaks with Mike Pesca, host of The Gist podcast, about fantasy leagues and gambling.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It’s time now for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MARTIN: Today, we’re diving into the world of fantasy football. More Americans than ever are signing up for these leagues where you are the coach, the general manager and you decide who will be on your team. In the past few weeks, gaming sites have launched huge ad campaigns to try to cash in on what has become very big business. Mike Pesca is the host of Slate’s “The Gist” podcast. He’s here to tell us more. Hey, Mike.

MIKE PESCA: Hi, and isn’t it sad how they’ve defined fantasy down? What if I told you 30 years ago you’d be living out your fantasy. And I’d say yeah, but then they’d say, yeah it’s drafting Davante Adams in the third round.

MARTIN: (Laughter) Somehow seems insufficient, yeah. All right, so…

PESCA: That’s right.

MARTIN: …Remind us how this whole thing works.

PESCA: Well, the big trend now is the daily fantasy league. DraftKings and FanDuel are the two most prominent ones. The people who track ads say that DraftKings took out more ads than any other company in America like McDonald’s or GM…

MARTIN: Wow.

PESCA: …I have to name all the companies. I have a podcast. They do a couple podcasts where advertisers support it. Guess who advertises sometimes on my show? These guys. You can’t get away from it. So how they work is you pick different players. Depending on how the players do, you get points and then maybe you win your contest. You could make the weekend interesting for a wager of $5. You could wager $500 and lose the kids’ savings if you are so inclined.

MARTIN: Wow, OK, so DraftKings, Fanduel, have been really aggressive with their advertising, obviously. But how is it legal to gamble on sports this way when you’re not allowed to do the same thing in real life?

PESCA: Well, you’re not allowed to bet on the outcome of a game. So Chargers against the Bengals, you can’t bet on that. But if I wanted to bet on Philip Rivers, the quarterback of the Chargers, I mean, I would be betting on him. And the answer is the yearly fantasy leagues have existed for a while. They’re sometimes not even played for money or that much money. But you want to say camel’s nose under the tent, you want to say slippery slope, there was a loophole in the law. This loophole was exploited. The only state that bans it is Montana, but federally, it seems fine.

MARTIN: OK, so if this is getting so popular, though, is it likely to open any other doors? Is it likely to loosen the rules about betting on real-life football or other sports, for that matter?

PESCA: I think it will. And there are a few things going on. First of all, both of these companies, if you look at how much was invested, they’re both worth a billion dollars, and they both have partnered with the big sports league, with Major League Baseball, with the NHL, with the NBA. And, in fact, baseball and the NBA, they each own a part of some of the leagues. That’s part of their agreement. And the other big thing is that Adam Silver, the Commissioner of the NBA, he has said that he wants an avenue towards gambling to be legal. So I think rather than these fantasy leagues becoming illegal, what’s going to happen is that regular betting on the outcome of a game, a legal bet on the Super Bowl, will eventually be allowed to happen. But my one hope is that all the advertising – I know I’ve been the beneficiary to some extent – just simmers down a little bit. You can’t change a channel without someone telling you to try out FanDuel. Give it a break. This is fantasy gone awry.

MARTIN: (Laughter) Mike Pesca’s the host of “The Gist” on Slate. Thanks so much for talking with us.

PESCA: You’re welcome.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

5:05

The Toronto Blue Jays are playing their best baseball in years. Howard Bryant of ESPN.com and ESPN the magazine weighs in on the Blue Jays’ resurgence and Canadian fans’ renewed interest in the sport.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: Last night, the Blue Jays beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5 to 3, and with that win, Toronto closes in on their first playoff spot in 22 years. By the way, the Cubs clinch a playoff spot for the first time since Julius Caesar. Howard Bryant of ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine joins us now from Toronto the Good – this year in the American League. Howard, thanks for being with us.

HOWARD BRYANT, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott. Oh, that Chicago hyperbole – Julius Caesar wasn’t around in 2008. It wasn’t that long ago, was it?

SIMON: (Laughter) He’s always around for some of us. The Blue Jays are playing World Series ball.

BRYANT: They are playing some great baseball and the town – it’s great. It’s really nice to be up here. I hadn’t been up here since 2003 when I was covering the Red Sox. And the Toronto Blue Jays hadn’t been in the playoffs since 1993. They’re getting really close. It’s nice to see a town, just like with Pittsburgh, just like with Kansas City, that is alive with baseball, that cares about the sport. And that they – they’re not one of those teams that is now saying, oh, we’re eliminated on opening day. They’re in it. They’re – they can win, and they hit the ball like nobody else. Believe me.

SIMON: And, I mean, there was even some talk that they might – the Blue Jays after – although they won two World Series a number of years ago – might actually leave town and now they’re back and there’s even talk that Montreal might get a team back.

BRYANT: Well, let’s not forget that Canadians view labor very differently than Americans. And after the 1994 strike, baseball in Montreal virtually went away and then they ended up leaving and moving to Washington. And here in Toronto, let’s not forget that this was one of the franchises that was getting 4 million fans a year and then after the strike, baseball disappeared for a long time and it’s nice to see that it’s back. And they’re going to finish at about 2.6-2.7 million this year, so the fans are coming back.

SIMON: Another note about baseball, but certainly in a different direction, we had to say goodbye to Yogi Berra this week. People used to say he looked more like the guy selling beer at Yankee Stadium than he did an athlete. But, look, he was the American League’s Most Valuable Player three times. That’s as many times as Mickey Mantle. And of course, Yogi Berra was quoted almost as much as Winston Churchill. Can I share my favorite with you?

BRYANT: Absolutely.

SIMON: Yogi said, we made too many wrong mistakes. That’s also very wise, isn’t it?

BRYANT: It’s very wise. And one of the reasons people like to say how much they hate the New York Yankees, but one of the reasons to love the New York Yankees is because the Yankees do something better than anybody else in sports. And that is that they maintain their history. When you walked into Yankee Stadium, you saw everything that that organization had ever done. When you covered the Yankees as I did, you would go into the clubhouse, you’d go into spring training and you’d see all those guys. Rizzuto was there and Reggie’s there and Yogi was there. And at 90 years old, Yogi had been there all the time. It wasn’t just that he was a great player. He was always present. You could see him in the clubhouse with these 22 year olds. There’s Derek Jeter walking by Yogi Berra. And that is what we’re all about. It’s really terrific. My favorite Yogi-ism was also true – nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.

SIMON: (Laughter) Howard, next book in your “Legend” series is out. The first was about baseball. This one is about football. We’re a few games into the season. How do you tell middle school kids about the greats of football when you also have to tell them how much damage we now know that the game could inflict on those who play?

BRYANT: Really big challenge, Scott, and I love the book “Legends: Football.” It was one of my – it really was a favorite to write, and I was surprised how much I liked it because it reminded me how much I love the sport. But at the same time, it was reminding me that – in the forward, I talk about how much I loved playing and playing with all the different kids and we would all get our shirts ripped off and get crushed by each other and that was the beauty of being kids and playing football. But today, that takes on a very, very different connotation. Today, we know about concussions and we know about trauma and what this is going to do not only when you turn 60 or 70, but what it does to you already when you’re a teen. And so that changes the dynamic. It changes the sort of the intimacy of the game, but it’s also a reality. But at the same time, it’s a viewer sport now and not a playing sport for a lot of people.

SIMON: And how long does it survive depending on that?

BRYANT: Well, it depends on economics, and I think that’s the sad part of it.

SIMON: Howard Bryant of ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine, but that doesn’t mean no one should pick up your book. I’m looking forward to it. Howard, thanks so much for being with us.

BRYANT: Oh, my pleasure, Scott.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

I hope Luke McCown plays well. Otherwise, people will think that @verizon back up generators don’t work.

— tim hasselbeck (@tthasselbeck) September 25, 2015

All those Luke McCown commercials worked. He’ll be starting for the Saints against the Panthers.

— Eric Rosenthal (@ericsports) September 25, 2015

#Saints Drew Brees OUT for Sunday’s game. Guess we’ll see if Luke McCown really means what he says in that Verizon ad pic.twitter.com/gfByQrUN18

— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) September 25, 2015

0:52

Yankees Hall of Fame catcher, Yogi Berra, died Tuesday at the age of 90. In case you haven’t heard enough Yogi-isms, we have more for you.

Transcript

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

We have been saying Yogi-isms around the office all day.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: It’s deja vu all over again.

MCEVERS: And at some point, it hit us. Yogi really did have nuggets of wisdom for, like, every situation. About learning…

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: You can observe a lot by watching.

MCEVERS: About time…

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: It gets late early out here.

MCEVERS: Fan mail…

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Never answer an anonymous letter.

MCEVERS: Oh, and sleeping…

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I usually take a 2-hour nap from 1 to 4.

MCEVERS: And of course, traveling…

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel.

MCEVERS: Now, some question if Yogi Berra actually said all of the Yogi-isms he’s credited with. Even Yogi himself did…

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: I didn’t really say everything I said.

MCEVERS: So if you think…

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: We made too many wrong mistakes.

MCEVERS: Just remember…

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.

MCEVERS: …Some of the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED staff with their tribute to Yogi Berra. Thanks guys.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

3:38

For those who have never seen the show American Ninja Warrior: Imagine an Army obstacle course, redesigned by Dr. Seuss and a team of rock-climbing acrobats. Competitors have to thread their way through the daunting obstacles, completing a number of stages before they can hope to finish the whole thing.

That means leaping onto 2-inch ledges, climbing rope that stretches several stories in the air, grappling forward along hanging poles — and doing all of it under a time limit.

Since the show (based on a long-running Japanese show, Sasuke) first aired in 2009, not a single person has completed the course and won the American competition … until last week.

A busboy named Isaac Caldiero — who also happens to be a world-class rock climber — became the first of thousands to achieve what the show calls “total victory.” He completed all four stages of the course to win the million-dollar grand prize.

In fact, two people completed all four stages this season: competitor Geoff Britten finished the course first. But Caldiero had a faster time, and won the money — and the title.

In an interview with NPR’s Arun Rath, Caldiero puts it simply: “Heck, you’re talking to the first American Ninja Warrior.”

But it didn’t come easily, not least because competitors have to attack the course without getting to practice on it first, he says.

“I mean, all it takes is one slip and you’re done. One shot, one kill — you don’t get any rehearsal on any of these obstacles.”

This made things especially difficult on his final obstacle: a 75-foot rope climb.

“Even in my training, I had never done anything like that,” he says. “So all of a sudden, when it’s like, ‘You have to do this in 30 seconds,’ I was very nervous. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, here we go.’ “

Yet, despite a brief scare as his arms slowed, Caldiero says his adrenaline carried him through. Now, though, he faces another difficult task: letting the news of his win sink in.

“It still to this day is unreal,” he says. “I’m still kind of in disbelief.”

And about that million-dollar prize?

“We considered ourselves to be rich and happy before all of this, so this is just a bonus,” Caldiero tells Rath, speaking of himself and his girlfriend, Laura Kisana. “You definitely aren’t going to see us out driving around in fancy cars and living it up. You know, we’re going to keep down to our roots, and we’re going to go rock climbing.”

9:07

Not My Job is the game where we quiz well-known people about things that they wouldn’t have any reason to know anything about. So we’ve invited Tom Ricketts, owner of the Chicago Cubs, to answer three questions about celebratory parades.

Transcript

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

And now the game where we ask knowledgeable people about things they know nothing about. It’s called Not My Job.

Chicago is a huge and diverse city with all kinds of people speaking dozens of language, but one that unites us all is our love for a sports team, one that represents the spirit of the city. I’m talking, of course, about the Chicago Bears.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Meanwhile, there’s another very popular team called the Chicago Cubs, and Tom Ricketts is that club’s owner. Tom Ricketts, welcome to WAIT WAIT …DON’T TELL ME.

(APPLAUSE)

TOM RICKETTS: Thank you.

SAGAL: Now, just so we understand the story, for many years, the Cubs was owned by the Tribune Company, publishers of the Chicago Tribune. And you and you family decided to buy it. And why the Cubs? ‘Cause ou couldn’t afford a winning team?

(LAUGHTER)

RICKETTS: (Laughter) No, no – the Cubs are really close to our heart. I mean, we’re all – all my siblings and I are big Cubs fans. And there was, really, no other sports team we cared about.

SAGAL: So you’re from Nebraska, we know. But you’ve always been a Cubs fan. We understand you even met your wife at Wrigley Field, is that right?

RICKETTS: That’s 100 percent true. We used to sit in the center field bleachers, pretty much every Saturday and Sunday all through the summers. And I was at a game one afternoon and we were just sitting next to some girls who were talking about Omaha because they went to college there. And, actually, we used to sit in the same spot in center field every game because before the tyranny of the two-beer limit, you could buy as many beers as you wanted. So we would send one guy down with all the money, and he could hand them straight up to us in center field.

SAGAL: I’m sorry, just to interrupt.

AMY DICKINSON: Strategy.

SAGAL: Did you just refer to the two-beer limit? What you mean by that is you can buy two beers at once when you go to the stand.

RICKETTS: Correct.

BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: And per person, actually. Yes.

SAGAL: I can’t help but note that you actually own the team.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: If you wanted to do away with that ridiculous rule, you could you could wave your scepter and it would be.

ADAM BURKE: Over the years, how many drunk Cubs fans have there been who’ve yelled at a vendor – oh, yeah, well one of these days, I’m going to own this place, and…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So – I totally buy – so you met your wife, you started having beers with her.

RICKETTS: Yep.

SAGAL: And did you actually sit there and say to yourself, someday I’m going to own this place?

RICKETTS: (Laughter) No, not at all.

SAGAL: Really?

RICKETTS: Actually, in my business school application…

SAGAL: Yeah.

RICKETTS: …It asked for your dream job. And I wrote down owning a Major League Baseball team like the Cubs.

DICKINSON: No.

RICKETTS: True story.

DICKINSON: Oh, wow.

BURKE: Well, which one did you want to own?

(LAUGHTER)

RICKETTS: Well, at the time we lived above the Sports Corner bar right across the street from the ballpark, so was kind of (unintelligible).

PETER GROSZ: You lived above the Sports Corner between the L and Sheffield.

RICKETTS: Yeah, Sheffield and Madison.

GROSZ: I had improv team rehearsals there for, like, three years or something like that – not your apartment but in the…

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: …Sports bar.

BURKE: Wait, so you bought the Cubs just ’cause it was a convenient commute?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here’s the thing I don’t understand. I love baseball. I would love to be a team owner maybe someday if this public radio thing gets it, but I’m just trying to imagine you. You’re living in Wrigleyville, and for those who have never been to a Cubs game, they’re great. It’s a great field. But after the game, the neighborhood is filled for hours and hours with the most obnoxious drunk people. And you’re like, I want this.

RICKETTS: Those were not obnoxious drunk people. Those are passionate fans.

SAGAL: There you go. Well done.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Yeah, I want to get back to something you said. You said that you put – and this is your business school applications, so obviously you’re a grown man, but you wrote down that your dream job is to own a baseball team, or the Cubs specifically. When I was a kid, my dream job was to play baseball. Did you have that dream? Did you want to be a player at some point in time?

RICKETTS: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, as a kid and then, you know how it goes. You get to be 12 or 13 and some of the other kids get bigger and hairier and next thing you know you’re captain of the debate team.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

RICKETTS: You just got to play the cards you’re dealth.

SAGAL: This is public radio. We know about that.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I do want to ask you about your interactions with fans because Chicago has a pretty rabid fan base. Have you – you must have had at least the occasional moment in time where you were…

RICKETTS: No, honestly – 100 percent honest, like, I walk through the park just about every single game and I’ve had almost no issues with people. There’s a few people that, you know, once in a while they just misunderstand something about, like, why they can’t hear the radio in the bathroom or why beer costs nine bucks or something like that. But the – you know, generally, it’s been great.

SAGAL: Why does beer cost $9?

(LAUGHTER)

RICKETTS: Why does a starting pitcher cost $25 million?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I guess that’s a better question.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Wrigley, of course, is famous for its old, shall we say, fashion style, including the urinal troughs. Do you, as the owner, do you have, like, a luxury gold trough in your suite?

RICKETTS: You know, I don’t. I don’t, but I like that idea.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Just for you. Like, 10 feet of urinal trough just for you your friends.

GROSZ: You just made beer cost 10 bucks.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: Way to go, Sagal.

SAGAL: Tom Ricketts, we are so delighted to talk to you. We have asked you here to play a game we’re calling…

KURTIS: Wave to the left, wave to the right and don’t fall off the float.

SAGAL: So you are the owner of the Chicago Cubs and since we wanted to ask you about something you don’t know anything about, we thought we’d ask you about celebratory parades.

(LAUGHTER)

DICKINSON: Oh.

SAGAL: Answer two of these three questions correctly, you’ll win our prize for one of our listeners – Carl Kasell’s voice on their voice mail. Bill, who is Tom Ricketts playing for?

KURTIS: Thomas Foster of Minneapolis, Minn.

SAGAL: All right, here’s your first question.

RICKETTS: Yeah.

SAGAL: You may be familiar with the Stanley Cup. That’s a championship that has been won numerous times in recent years by a team here in Chicago. One of the great things about the cup is that the winning players on each hockey team that wins it gets to take it home. In 2008, a Red Wings player did what with it? A – he pawned to buy a really sweet new Fender electric bass; B – he put his baby daughter inside it where she promptly pooped; or C – he filled it full of Red Bull, drank the whole thing and was then hospitalized for taurine poisoning.

RICKETTS: Wow, you know, I imagine that number three’s happened more than once, so I’m going to go with B.

SAGAL: You’re going to go with B, the daughter. That’s exactly what happened.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: He had a baby daughter, put her in the cup, she immediately did what babies do and don’t worry. He says he had it cleaned. All right, that’s very good. Just weeks ago, sprinter Usain Bolt was celebrating his win in the 100 meters at the world championships with his victory lap around the stadium when what happened? A – a photographer plowed into him, knocking him flat with his Seway; B – a little bottle of steroids fell out of his pocket; or C – he stopped halfway around, calmly vomited, then kept going.

RICKETTS: I think Bolt’s too cool to throw up. I’m going to take A.

SAGAL: You’re going to take A, he was knocked over by a Segway.

RICKETTS: Yeah.

SAGAL: You’re right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: OK, here’s your last question. We’ll see if you can go for perfect. In 2002, the town of Lauderhill, Fla., held a Martin Luther King, Jr., celebration. They didn’t entirely nail all the details, though. What went wrong? A – the banners they put up all read thank you Marty; B – all the pictures they used of Martin Luther King, Jr., were actually just of Martin Luther; or C – they presented a plaque to actor James Earl Jones, but the plaque read thank you James Early Ray.

(LAUGHTER)

DICKINSON: Oh, no, no.

RICKETTS: Wow, all those are bad. That would ruin a lot of celebratory parades. I’ll take C.

SAGAL: You’re going to take C. I’m glad that you somehow knew we would never dare to make that up. That is in fact what happened.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: They gave him a plaque and they looked down and they’re like, oh, my God. The organizers felt really, really, really, really bad about that. Bill, how did Tom Ricketts do on our quiz?

KURTIS: You know, he did just like the Cubs are going to do for the rest of the season.

SAGAL: There we go, perfect.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Tom Ricketts – he is the owner and chairman of the perhaps future world champion Chicago Cubs. Tom, thank you so much for joining us.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “A DYING CUBS FAN’S LAST REQUEST”)

STEVE GOODMAN: (Singing) Do they still play the blues in Chicago when baseball season rolls around? When the snow melts away, do the Cubbies still play in their ivy-covered burial ground?

SAGAL: In just a minute, Bill drinks several toasts to the pope in the Listener Limerick challenge. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to join us on the air. We’ll be back in a minute with more of WAIT WAIT …DONT’ TELL ME from NPR.

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7:17

“On FanDuel I’ve won over $62,000 — try FanDuel today.”

“This is DraftKings. Welcome to the big time. You can play when you want with the team you want. Just pick your contest, pick your team, and pick up your winnings.”

These types of ads have been inescapable on NFL broadcasts so far this season. They are encouraging fans to play a type of fantasy sports game — and bet real money on their performance.

DraftKings and FanDuel each say they’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors and paid out millions in prize money to winners. That success has become apparent in the sheer saturation of ads on sports broadcasts, podcasts, websites and more.

The business has become so big that some professional sports leagues are getting a piece of the action.

The websites want to change the way that fantasy sports traditionally have been played. About 50 million people in North America play fantasy sports games each year, but until recently they’ve been low-level competitions among friends, neighbors and co-workers, often for little more than bragging rights.

Typically the games start with the pool of players in a professional league — the NFL or Major League Baseball, for instance — who are then drafted onto fantasy teams by a dozen or so fans playing against one another.

If your team’s pro players — who typically play for many different teams in real life — do well in their games, then based on their stats, you do well in your fantasy game.

These sorts of games were played for decades using pens, paper and newspaper box scores, but the Internet made them much easier to organize and run, so most major sports sites got involved.

What companies like FanDuel and DraftKings have done is broken down what usually have been season-long competitions into many single-day contests — while pulling a lot more money into the games.

DraftKings, for instance, runs a contest every week with a $20 entry fee and a grand prize of $2 million.

“It’s just one of those things that, once you do it, and you’re already into fantasy sports, you will get hooked immediately,” says John Reidy, a sports fan from Denver. “Because you get to pick something new every week — and I know that’s what the commercials say, but it’s really true.”

For Monday Night Football, when the Minnesota Vikings played the San Francisco 49ers, Reidy had money on the line. But he wouldn’t win or lose based on which team won, or by how the teams performed against the point spread.

Instead, it was about how players Reidy had drafted — including longtime Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, “which I’m not thrilled about, don’t really like him as a person, but he’s a great fantasy asset,” he says — would perform versus the teams others in the competition had drafted.

Reidy was up a few points going into Monday’s game, but the next-best team had 49ers running back Carlos Hyde, and could catch up if Hyde had a better game than Peterson.

Reidy: “Annnnnnd I lost.”

Former league MVP Peterson ran for just 31 yards, while Hyde, making his first NFL start, got 168 yards and scored two touchdowns.

“Very frustrating,” Reidy says. “But the beauty of it is that I can try again next week.”

That’s the way these companies market themselves — instant cash, instant gratification, and a clean slate as soon as the day’s or week’s games are over.

It’s been near-instant gratification for the companies involved too, says John Ourand with Sports Business Daily: DraftKings and FanDuel didn’t even exist five years ago but so far this year have spent $500 million on TV ads.

Much of that money came from big-name investors.

“If you take a look at the list of investors in let’s just say FanDuel, you have the NBA, Google Capital, you have Time-Warner, Turner Sports, NBC Sports, Comcast,” Ourand says. “DraftKings, if you take a look at the sponsorship deals that they’ve signed with individual teams, it’s Cowboys, Broncos, Patriots. And their investors are another who’s who — MLB, the NHL … Major League Soccer. … You have big, blue-chip media companies and sports leagues that are investing in these two companies because they see a lot of potential in daily fantasy.”

The windfalls from professional sports leagues and teams may seem unusual, given their long-standing opposition to legalized gambling. But the leagues know that fantasy players are more engaged than the average fan — and more willing to watch a game they otherwise might not care about, which means higher TV ratings.

And while players on FanDuel, DraftKings and other sites put up money for a chance to win a lot more, it’s not considered betting — thanks to an exemption in a 2006 law regulating online gambling.

Nigel Eccles, CEO and co-founder of FanDuel, says it’s a game of skill not chance.

“When Congress sat down to decide what was legal and illegal, they clearly made a distinction that fantasy sports was legal,” he says.

Of course, back in 2006, fantasy sports were mostly just small-time games among friends. Today, they’ve become a gigantic, still-growing industry — with a lot of money on the line.