Gee, what a surprise.
Major League Baseball, almost destroyed by a gambling scandal in 1919, with two of its greatest players, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose (its all-time hit leader), banned from the game and exiled from the Hall of Fame for participating in baseball gambling (Jackson helped throw a World Series for gamblers; that’s him above. He was no Ray Liotta, was he?), is suddenly awash in new gambling scandals. How could this happen, you may ask? Easy. Once the Supreme Court opened the door to online gambling, all of the professional sports leaped into the money pit. Now online sports gambling outfits like DraftKings are the most ubiquitous sponsors of televised sports. In the middle of televised Red Sox games, the screen will show the odds on bets like “Will Rafael Devers hit a homerun?” David Ortiz, a lifetime Red Sox hero and icon, stars in commercials for DraftKings. The obvious message is that gambling on baseball is fun, virtuous, harmless, and…
For Major League Baseball, with its history, of all sports, to take this U-Turn was wildly irresponsible and perilous. How can the sport maintain the fan’s trust in the legitimacy of games played in an environment where billions are being wagered on them, openly and without any fear of corrupting the players?
Fay Vincent, the last real baseball commissioner (the first one was appointed because of the Black Sox scandal in 1919) told the Times, “The inevitability of corruption is triggered by the enormous amount of money that’s at stake. When you pour all this gambling money into baseball, or all the professional sports — or for that matter, even amateur sports — that amount of money is so staggering that eventually the players and I think, tragically, the umpires, the regulators, everybody is going to be tempted to see if they can get a million dollars.”
Vincent is an ethical man. The current “commissioner” (he’s the owners’ toady, just like Bud Selig, his predecessor), not so much. In a statement reacting to baseball this week banning one Major League Player for life for gambling on his own team and suspending four more for a year, Rob Manfred ludicrously said, “The strict enforcement of Major League Baseball’s rules and policies governing gambling conduct is a critical component of upholding our most important priority: protecting the integrity of our games for the fans. The longstanding prohibition against betting on Major League Baseball games by those in the sport has been a bedrock principle for over a century.”
Funny that after decades of no gambling scandals, baseball is suddenly drowning in them. What a coinkydink!
Back in March, I headlined the story about Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter being arrested for supposedly stealing millions from his freind, the Dodger’s two-way superduperstar, to pay off gambling debts as “Baseball Gets the Gambling Scandal It Deserves.” So far, it looks like the interpreter, like a good Japanese is falling on his sword, taking full responsibility and absolving Ohtani of any involvement, and MLB conveniently cut short its investigation. (Yes, I’m still suspicious.) My excerpt for the post reads, “And if the Dodgers’ new superstar isn’t at the center of a gambling scandal that sends the American Pastime into a crisis, eventually some other superstar will be.”
I’ll stick with that. This week’s banned player is a relative nobody. But just wait a bit…
Ethics Alarms 
Sounds like there’s an untapped market for meta-gambling. Place your bets on who gets banned for gambling next!
Nice example of “Ha Ha, Only Serious”. It’s a funny joke that’s far too plausible for comfort.
Ugh… Baseball is really stepping in it of late.
We can’t have nice things, apparently.
All the pro sports owners have gone all in, so to speak. I think for generations the owners have been pissed off beyond imagining that they have to pay gazillions of dollars to the morons who play their stupid games so the bookies and the casinos can make their fortunes off sports betting. I think it literally drove them nuts.
I simply cannot believe television announcers are quoting odds in the middle of their broadcasts. Even GOLF! And of course, the networks are doing on-line gambling joint ventures they’re advertising themselves. And the damned players’ unions are doing the same. Clearly, there’s more money to be made running a sports book where the house always wins than just selling commercial slots to breweries.
Well, it’s harder than it ought to be to find that story on the MLB website – search for ‘banned’ and you get nothing. ‘Suspension’ is the magic word. I am not a lawyer and there are times I really hate legalese.
So the league is making sure players get the message, “Do as I say, not as I do”. I wonder how many hundreds of millions in ad revenue they’ve received so far from sports books and other gambling.
Really, it isn’t betting on games that’s the real danger. The Black Sox scandal demonstrated the big problem — there is so much gambling money that there are going to be people who will hire players to influence the outcome of games. I think that’s the biggest danger.
When it happens, I’d bet (sic!) that they will get caught and then where will the sport be? Why then would fans trust the game — in some cases they already didn’t trust it before the gambling craze.
*sigh* I don’t see a way around it — most of the states already operate their own gambling sites. One has to wonder how many Congresspeople have thought about starting a federal lottery.dd
It isn’t that I think today’s athletes are any more or less honest than in days past, but previously there was a lot of societal and peer pressure against gambling. Today?
Yes, players betting on games is a distraction. It’s fixing that will rear its ugly head in time. Frankly, I doubt gamblers give a rat’s ass about “the integrity of the game.” they probably assume it’s fixed. Certainly, the NBA has had a longstanding perception problem with apparently biased officiating favoring big market teams and stars. Gamblers are betting the fix.
By the way, I can’t believe I was so naive not to have seen Ohtani’s translator’s taking the rap as a cover for Ohtani’s gambling losses. Duh-oh! I saw recently Charles Barkeley stated he’s lost around 25 million buck gambling. Stunning. And then there’s Phil Mickelson.