If you want to understand what sets the Massachusetts lottery apart from all its peers,

you have to understand the man at the top of it all.

State treasurer Bob Crane, who built the lottery from an idea on the page to a gambling

juggernaut known throughout the world.

Crane is your classic Boston Irish pole, gleaming white hair, gleaming white teeth, huge, huge

smile.

And there's one story about Treasurer Crane that looms largest in his political mythology.

It takes place long before the state lottery was created, before he was

state treasurer even. But it explains a lot. I first heard the story from Renee Loth, long-time

columnist for the Boston Globe. Okay, so the way I heard it. She heard it from Frank Phillips, one of the elder deans of the local press corps.

You want a good story on Bob Crane?

And he heard it from our sitting Secretary of State, William Galvin.

Obviously, it's not first hand to me, it was 1960.

None of them could verify that this story is, strictly speaking, true.

So we'll treat it, like I said, as mythology.

The legend of Bob Crane and the infamous stickers.

1960, he was running for re-election.

Bobby Crane was running for state rep.

In 1960, Crane had already been in the state legislature for a few years, serving his local

Boston neighborhood of Brighton.

So he was running that cycle as an incumbent.

And no one took out papers against them.

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