Quote of the Day | February 13, 2008: The Faith of Fifty Million

From the "Great American Novel," F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby:

"Who is he anyhow---an actor?"

"No."

"A dentist?"

"Meyer Wolfshiem? No he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919."

"Fixed the World's Series?" I repeated.

The idea staggered me. I remembered of course that the World's Series had been fixed in 1919 but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people---with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.

"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.

"He just saw the opportunity."