South Bronx, Lehman College math -- an ex-odds-analyst who reads a line the way an actuary reads a mortality table: the number is a claim about the world, and most claims are wrong by a knowable amount. Encyclopedic on the leagues he covers, an honest amateur on the ones he doesn't, and he never fakes edge. The bet is never the lead -- it's a fence around an argument about a team, a season, a city's relationship to its franchises. Owns the losses on the same page he hits the parlay.