Written by :
Published on :
It's one thing to practice what you preach but we all know that saying: "Rules for thee, but not for me".
Yeah, Major League Baseball had rules back when the late great Pete Rose got caught betting on his beloved sport. Its stance was clear: No gambling on sports PERIOD.
Today, MLB doesn't just promote gambling, it's in bed with sportsbooks.
So even if you didn't agree with the league's prior stance when it came to Pete Rose, at least they could not be accused of promoting said activity.
To be clear, Rose was found to have bet on games (something that today might land a player a one-year suspension, if that). He did not FIX games.
Gabe Lacques of USA Today offered his opinion piece hours after learning of Pete Rose's death at the age of 83.
"MLB's Pete Rose ban, gambling embrace is hypocritical. It's also the right thing to do".
Rose, who died at 83 Monday at his Las Vegas home, lived the last 35 years of his life in a state of permanent grievance after an exhaustive report concluded that he bet on Cincinnati Reds games in his position of significant influence as Cincinnati Reds manager.
The accusations, the revelations and the hammer that ultimately came down were stunning. It was a highly compressed gut punch to the game, the equivalent of its steroids era and its sign-stealing cheating scandals compressed in a roughly 90-day period that saw one of the game’s icons toppled.
Lacques goes on to explain how Rose worked tirelessly to clean up his image, yet nothing changed.
Well, something has changed actually.
MLB’s embrace of gambling has been inevitable but at times disgusting, nonetheless.
Look, this arranged marriage was sown in 2018, when a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for legalized sports gambling on a state-by-state basis. In 2024, you can wager on the big game – or even the littlest one - in 38 states and the District of Columbia.
It’s reasonable that sports leagues would have a significant interest in helping regulate this new frontier. It’s understandable that, sure, they’d want to get a little piece of the action, too, what with fresh revenue streams available as their most reliable and lucrative – massive national and regional sports network deals that greatly enrich the biggest franchises in baseball and the NBA – wither.
Yet they certainly didn’t need to pepper stadiums with gambling advertising. To construct sports books literally within the gates of their arenas and stadiums, sad places where the destitute can enjoy some chicken wings while trying to beat the house’s increasingly impossible odds. To blast the airwaves with incessant ads for every janky-ass book offering a promo code and a gateway to addiction.
Amen to that!
|
|
