| Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 9, 1918 Steubenville, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | April 21, 1996 (aged 77) Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. |
Dimetrios Georgios Synodinos (September 9, 1918 – April 21, 1996), better known as Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder, was an American sports commentator and Las Vegas bookie.
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Snyder was born Dimetrios Georgios Synodinos in Steubenville, Ohio. According to his New York Times obituary of April 22, 1996, Snyder's family roots were on the island of Chios, Tholo potami (Θολό Ποτάμι) in the Aegean Sea. As a teenager in Ohio, he became acquainted with bookmakers. He invested money in oil drilling and coal mining, but when those ventures failed, Snyder moved to Las Vegas in 1956 and began a weekly pro-football betting line. That led to a 12-year stint on the CBS Sunday morning football show, The NFL Today. He was fired by CBS Sports in 1988 after a controversial comment about race.
On November 10, 2009, ESPN aired a show in their 30 for 30 series titled The Legend of Jimmy the Greek, which was produced by Fritz Mitchell. Commentary was provided by, among others, Brent Musburger, Irv Cross and Phyllis George from The NFL Today, plus Anthony Snyder Jimmy's son, as well as his brother Johnny and sister Angie .
Although, outside of America, Jimmy was largely unknown, in 1974 his name achieved international renown. After beating George Foreman to regain the world heavyweight championship, Muhammad Ali, in the midst of an interview with David Frost, looked into the camera and addressed his doubters. "All of you bow" he said. "All of my critics crawl...All of you suckers bow... If you wanna know any damn thing about boxing, don't go to no boxing experts in Las Vegas, don't go to no Jimmy The Greek. Come to Muhammad Ali."
Snyder appeared in a cameo in the 1981 comedy film The Cannonball Run as a bookie. In the movie he offered 50-1 odds against Formula One driver Jamie Blake (played by Dean Martin) and gambler Morris Fenderbaum (played by Sammy Davis Jr.) winning the Cannonball coast-to-coast endurance race. Jimmy the Greek and Dean Martin were childhood acquaintances in Steubenville, Ohio.
As a football commentator on television, Snyder was controversial. He would often give his picks for winners of games and touted his ability to make the right picks, which critics claimed were indirectly encouraging gambling. Snyder countered by saying that he never gave the spread of the games, so his picks couldn't be considered an endorsement of gambling. According to the autobiography entitled Jimmy the Greek by Jimmy Snyder, Steve Herskowitz (editor), and Mickey Herskowitz, he bet $10,000 USD on the 1948 election between Thomas Dewey and Harry S. Truman, getting 17:1 odds for Truman to win. In a later interview he indicated that he knew Truman was going to win because Dewey had a mustache and "American women didn't trust men with a mustache".
On January 16, 1988, he was fired by the CBS network (for which he had been a regular on the NFL Today since 1976) after commenting to WRC-TV reporter Ed Hotaling in a Washington, D.C. restaurant that African Americans were naturally superior athletes at least in part because they had been bred to produce stronger offspring during slavery:
| “ | The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way, because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trade'n the big… the owner… the slave owner would, would, would, would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have ah, ah big, ah big, ah big black kid see…[1] | ” |
According to the New York Times obituary, Snyder expressed regret for his comments, remarking: "What a foolish thing to say." While his CBS co-workers supported the decision to fire him, Irv Cross said in the "30 for 30" documentary about Snyder that he worked alongside Jimmy for a long time and never heard any racist comments nor detected any racist attitudes from him.
Snyder and his wife Joan lost three of their five children to cystic fibrosis.[2]
Snyder suffered from diabetes in his later years and died in Las Vegas of a heart attack on April 21, 1996 at the age of 77. He is buried at Union Cemetery in his native Steubenville.
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