#Tom Barton

LAS VEGAS - In the late 1970s, cocky young prognosticator Danny Sheridan boasted of his magnificent acumen picking football winners to Mort Olshan, who brainstormed a test. Give me the team that won and whether it had covered the spread, Olshan said, of two games that were played last weekend. Sheridan, who claimed to have a photographic memory,…

LAS VEGAS - Tom Barton stands at the southwest corner of Tropicana and the Strip. It's high noon, two weeks ago, but he peers back a couple of decades, to the wee hours of a particular day. Pedestrians surrounded this intersection, one of the busiest on the planet, and gawked. Outside their rigs, shifted into park, drivers and passengers stood and…