Ron Borges

Great athletes live on adrenaline. They reside on the edges, places most of us try all our whole lives to avoid. When they can't find that rush in athletics, they seek it elsewhere.

High-stakes athletes like golfer John Daly, basketball stars Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan, Hall of Fame baseball players like Pete Rose, All-American quarterbacks like Art Schlichter and any number of other athletes gamble with their emotions, their reputations and their bodies every time they go out to play the games that have made them special in our society. So it should come as no surprise to learn that many of them, too many of them probably, also gamble obscene sums of money, much of which they lose.

This week, Daly, and then Barkley, admitted to what many might call addictions (although they don't) to high stakes gambling, the kind in which the losses are calculated in millions of dollars, not hundreds.

Anyone who knows his way around Las Vegas knows they are not the exception.

They are the athletic rule.

Not all athletes lose $50 million, as Daly claims to have done playing $5,000 slot machines, or the $10 million Barkley claimed to have probably lost over the years during an interview that began innocently with a question about his thoughts on Daly's recent revelations, which are part of a new book coming out next week on the troubled golf star's battles with weight, alcohol, golf, ex-wives and, it seems, Las Vegas.

That question led, as it often does with Barkley, to an explosion of truth as he spoke candidly that "I gamble too much. I gamble for too much money. It's just a stupid habit I've got to get under control. You can't beat the casino. I understand what John Daly was saying.''

Barkley later denied having a gambling "problem'' because, he claimed, although he lost big and too often he could afford the losses and it's his money so he can do what he wants with it. He also made a point of saying he never bet on basketball games, only on casino games. Probably so, but any trip to Las Vegas likely will include running into any number of professional athletes, and more than a few coaches, at the tables. Why are so many of them there? Because they need the rush of high-stakes competition, the surge of adrenaline that comes only when you are tottering on the edge of either a big night or big failure.

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Perhaps that is what Barkley really meant when he said he understood what Daly was saying. He, and many of his peers, understand the need for speed. The need for that rush that can only come when everything is on the line and you either win or you go home busted. No gray area. You win or you lose.

It is a feeling you seldom get in the real world, where most everything is shaded. But in sports and in gambling everything is on the line and the outcome is clear. Where else can you get a feeling like that?

Well, they could try disassembling bombs for a living or putting out 12-alarm blazes but that's not the kind of gamble most athletes want to take. So they head to Vegas instead and get it there when they can't get it on the field of play.

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Charges that Jordan had major gambling problems were leveled at him late in his career and some say it is why he took a year off to pursue a failed baseball career. Although no such thing was ever proven, there was rampant speculation it was a quiet deal cut with NBA Commissioner David Stern to disappear for a season while Jordan got his gambling house in order and things died down. Certainly Jordan is a regular at casino gambling tables and is legendary for betting on golf. And not on a $20 Nassau. That we know for sure.

While the depth of Jordan's issues with gambling were never fully explored, there's no question he is a legendary gambler on the basketball court, at the blackjack table and on the golf course. Now we learn Barkley is a regular as well and Daly claims to have lost millions playing the games one has the least chance of winning — high stakes slot machines.

Why are they and so many other professional athletes drawn to high-stakes gambling? Because there is no rush for them at the $5 tables of life.