The A's have it: Storied Tropicana casino will be razed to accommodate ballpark for Athletics.

LAS VEGAS — The patron, holding an eight-month-old ticket to cash at the Tropicana sportsbook a few days ago, demanded his cash. “Gimme my [bleepin’] money now!”

On the other side of the William Hill counter, the ticket writer, a James Dean look-alike in a black-leather jacket, had no answers. The ticket had been written on a system that the book began fazing out months ago.

The greenhorn writer purposely led the man on a goose chase, to officials who had even fewer answers and nearby security personnel. James Dean told the man he probably could cash the ticket at the Venetian.

There was some incidental hand contact, instigated by the customer as he barked even louder, but James Dean simply walked away.

One of the last wild scenes in the final chapter of the Tropicana. The original Strip property shuts its doors at noon on April 2, capping a tumultuous run of nearly 67 years to the day.

When Cantor Gaming (CG) replaced LeRoy’s sportsbook at the Trop in 2010, just before the Super Bowl, a man approached book manager Keith Fridrich wanting to wager $50,000 on that game’s coin toss.

“That was something [LeRoy’s] never ever would have done,” Fridrich says. “We ended up not taking it, for a variety of reasons. My team, who had never seen a big bet, sees me try to take a 50-dime bet on a coin toss!

“It was an adventure. Fortunately, he got tossed out. He decided to be belligerent about it. We hadn’t been open for two hours and we’d thrown out our first customer.”

ARMADILLODOME?

The Tropicana will be razed to make room for a $1.5 billion, 33,000-capacity baseball stadium to house the Athletics, who are relocating from Oakland, California.

On Opening Day 2028, the Las Vegas A’s plan to make their debut in a domed yard consisting of several armadillo plates,
a poor man’s Sydney Opera House. “ArmadilloDome” might be a given as a nickname.

At $10 million, the Trop was the most expensive Strip property when it opened April 4, 1957. (With inflation, roughly $110 million today.)

Most came from Ben Jaffe, forced to sell his stake in Miami’s Fontainbleau Hotel and another company because of ever-increasing costs. He lost weight and, according to 1963’s “The Green Felt Jungle,” became so nervous friends advised counseling.

Mob figures always hovered, and ‘‘Green Felt’’ authors Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris wrote, “By the time the hotel was complete, Jaffe was a shell of his former ebullient self.”

Underworld skimming tentacles controlled the Trop, especially the Civella crime family in Kansas City. FBI intercepts showed skimming evidence, Geno Munari penned in his 2021 book about the history of the Dunes.

Munari wrote that Carl Thomas, a Trop gambling boss in the mid-1970s, pushed for it to open a sportsbook, “To give us another tool to grab some money.”

Fridrich says, “Oh, 100%,” about those mob connections, which the FBI began quashing in the late ’70s. “But we missed that. That wasn’t part of what we did.”

A FINAL TOAST

Veteran Vegas oddsman Dave Sharapan was 23 when he arrived here on a junket from Pittsburgh. The group reached the Trop and zipped directly to the casino, unconcerned about checking into rooms.

High overhead, its famous arced stained-glass windows are separated by the four-foot-wide mirrors that stripe the center.

“It was the first time I ever went on a craps run,” the 53-year-old Sharapan says. “Turned $100 into more than $4,000. Couldn’t lose! I gazed up at that mirrored ceiling and couldn’t believe it. It’s what you dream about.”

Vegas artist Rick Falzone hopes the A’s incorporate that stained glass, installed for $1 million in 1979, within ArmadilloDome.

However, in a recent social-media post, Roxy Roxborough, Vegas’ oddsman emeritus, made the odds that the franchise opens its ’28 season in a Las Vegas ballpark at Yes +200, No -240.

“Money,” he wrote me in a follow-up email regarding his critique. “Not clear they have it.”

John Fisher, heir to the Gap clothing chain, has owned the A’s since 2005. The team will open this season with a $61 million roster, lowest in MLB by nearly $25 million.

At the bar at the far end of the Trop’s table games, cocktail server Amber informs Charles, visiting from Delaware for a cousin’s birthday bash, of the hotel’s imminent closure.

“They’re going to build a baseball stadium here for the Oakland A’s.”

Charles says, “Get outta here! Then it’s a good time to be here.”

If it gets built, ArmadilloDome’s home plate might reside where his stool stands, someone tells pint-sipping Charles. He supports the Phillies and confirms that he’d visit to watch them play the A’s.

Sharapan soon returned to Vegas and has worked in nearly every major book. At CG, he befriended Fridrich. At the Trop, CG constructed a comfortable, elaborate sportsbook.

That area today is Robert Irvine’s Public House, where Fridrich and past colleagues will gather Tuesday to toast the Tropicana.

“A hidden gem,” Fridrich says. “We all knew we had a gold mine, 160 seats, which lasted five years. The A’s stadium is very important and I hope it works out well, but we’ll miss a piece of our history, for sure.”

Fridrich, now a tennis coach and teacher, plans to attend A’s games.

“I’ll sit in Section 27 and think, I used to work here.”