I'm not a big gambler. I'll join the odd poker game, make a season-long baseball bet, but that's generally about it.

I blame the Pitt basketball team for leading me astray. I became so enamored of this team's unique ability to win without being able to shoot that I started following college basketball too closely, and dropped five bucks in the office NCAA pool for the first time. I also threw 10 bucks down in a blind pool that was based on the point spreads.

By Saturday night, I was golden. There was hardly any way I could lose. In the conventional $5 you-pick-'em pool, I had picked three of the Final Four teams. I had Duke beating Connecticut in the semifinal game and winning the final.

In the other pool, based on point spreads, I had Connecticut. All it had to do was win by at least two points for me to stay alive for a potential $320 payoff.

With a team in each pool, I seemed assured of winning some money. The only way I could possibly lose everything would be if Duke lost to Connecticut by a single point. But given all the other potential scores in the basketball universe, what were the odds of that?

Last Saturday night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I watched a Duke player make a "meaningless" 38-foot shot at the buzzer, a three-point play that saw Connecticut's margin of victory drop from four points to one as time ran out.

With that shot, I became one of tens of thousands of schlemiels across this great land of ours.

I am not fluent in Yiddish, but I dabble in it as much as any goy. A friend once explained to me the difference between a schlemiel (an unlucky bumbler) and a schlimazel (born loser): The guy helping someone take his luggage down from the rack on a plane, only to have it open and spill all over the place, is the schlemiel. The guy upon which the underwear lands is the schlimazel.

So maybe I'm both. But I'm hardly alone.

We can do a computer search for anything these days. (How do you think I found the spelling for "schlimazel"?) So I know approximately how many dollars were lost when Duke's Chris Duhon made the basket his team didn't need, but which Team Schlimazel needed desperately.

According to Bettor's World:

"With approximately $100 million being bet on March Madness each year in Las Vegas and about $2.5 billion wagered online according to the FBI, the Duhon shot transferred anywhere from $30 million to $100 million from those who bet on UConn to cover the point spread to those who bet on Duke to cover, as estimated by those closely tied to the sports gambling business."

That's without even figuring in the $10 I lost.

I suppose there's some satisfaction in participating in something of monumental national importance. Though the shot by Chris "Why Don't You Watch What You're" Duhon didn't change the outcome of the game, in terms of pure dollars, it was one of the top 50 last-second turnaround plays of the past 16 years, according to one Las Vegas bookie.

Imagine that: This only makes the top 50. Is it possible that we as a nation average three such excruciating and exhilarating plays each year? Is it possible $100 million and more is passed that blithely that often? Do you understand how much money that is?

That's enough to cover the Pennsylvania attorney general's entire budget.

That's how much President Bush has spent on advertisements aimed at Hispanics.

That's how far I got in my computer search before I got bored.

But I can do this much in my head. If everyone in Pittsburgh had taken Duke and the points, the city's fiscal crisis would be over.