Baseball’s Awkward Dance with Gambling



For years, MLB argued in courts to prevent states other than Nevada from legalizing sports gambling. But then Major League Baseball and MGM Resorts announced last November that they had entered into an agreement to promote legalized gambling just in time for the 2019 season, and ever since, the gnats of irony have been buzzing about.

As you probably know or can glean from the above, the irony he refers to stems from a reversal of a long-standing policy designed to keep baseball and gambling separate following the infamy of the 1919 World Series. As Wulf details and as any baseball historian can attest to, MLB had, until recently, distanced itself in a “puritanical” way from sports betting as a means of ensuring the “integrity” of the game. This shift has all but ensured Pete Rose won’t be in the Hall of Fame despite having the statistical credentials and despite a growing sense from baseball writers like Bob Ryan that the Reds great should be inducted despite the existence of the HOF’s so-called “character clause.”

Considering its earlier protestations against gambling and blanket refusal to let Rose in the Hall, baseball’s 180 on gambling is, in a word, hypocritical.

RESEARCHBaseball’s Awkward Dance with Gambling

ByJoe Mangano
Posted on October 14, 2019
 
 
  
  
  
 COMMENTS

In a wide-ranging article for ESPN about gambling in baseball, senior writer Steve Wulf wrote the following in reference to last November’s deal struck between Major League Baseball and MGM Resorts within the context of “gaming”:

For years, MLB argued in courts to prevent states other than Nevada from legalizing sports gambling. But then Major League Baseball and MGM Resorts announced last November that they had entered into an agreement to promote legalized gambling just in time for the 2019 season, and ever since, the gnats of irony have been buzzing about.
As you probably know or can glean from the above, the irony he refers to stems from a reversal of a long-standing policy designed to keep baseball and gambling separate following the infamy of the 1919 World Series. As Wulf details and as any baseball historian can attest to, MLB had, until recently, distanced itself in a “puritanical” way from sports betting as a means of ensuring the “integrity” of the game. This shift has all but ensured Pete Rose won’t be in the Hall of Fame despite having the statistical credentials and despite a growing sense from baseball writers like Bob Ryan that the Reds great should be inducted despite the existence of the HOF’s so-called “character clause.”

Considering its earlier protestations against gambling and blanket refusal to let Rose in the Hall, baseball’s 180 on gambling is, in a word, hypocritical.


It also reinforces the perception that any business or person has its price. Such is the thinking of James Holzhauer, recent 32-time Jeopardy! champion and professional gambler. Cited in Wulf’s piece, he expresses the belief that while it was high time for baseball to recognize the legitimacy and opportunity of a sports betting relationship, the move also revealed $80 million was the league’s price for its supposed integrity. Unless a century is simply enough time to heal the wounds opened by the Black Sox scandal.

Chiding Major League Baseball as inconsistent has its obvious appeal, especially in an era in which public shaming on social media is a regular occurrence. Whether we truly fault Rob Manfred and Co., however, might depend on our business savvy and personal values. After all, embracing sports betting at a time in which the demand for the product is at a fever pitch would seem to be beneficial. The NBA saw value in it, taking the plunge with MGM Resorts back in July of last year. The NHL followed suit a few months later. Baseball is even better suited to betting on games owing to individual pitcher-vs.-hitter matchups and the pace of play. It was a natural, if not inevitable, association.

On the other hand, gambling is considered by some as a vice. Even if we’re not applying moral/religious standards to people’s behavior, there is real opportunity for someone to negatively impact his or her life owing to an addiction. Though not a perfect analog, the makers of Fortnite have garnered criticism and even a lawsuit from concerned parents for promoting gambling-like elements and for allegedly intentionally trying to make their game as addictive as possible.

A key difference, of course, is the target audience. Betting on baseball is reserved for adults. Fortnite, a free video game with in-game purchases, skews younger. The mechanism, meanwhile, is similar, and for sports betting, the added accessibility through apps and the like is potentially dangerous.

Then again, protecting people from themselves is likely not why baseball had long eschewed an official gaming partnership. We need look only to the existence of fantasy baseball and MLB’s embrace of daily fantasy sports for years in advance of the deal with MGM Resorts. Prior to this partnership, Commissioner Manfred repeatedly sought to differentiate why daily fantasy sports and gambling are two separate entities (Off The Bench Baseball’s own Max Frankel detailed this position in a post back in 2015). As he determined, citing the language of applicable federal statutes, DFS is a “game of skill,” not gaming. In his mind, at least, the dynamics are very different.

To others—myself included—this seems like semantics. I play fantasy sports. Baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. If I understood cricket better, I might even play a fantasy version of that. Do I play for money? No. Do I obsess over my players’ performance and agonize over who goes in my starting lineup and who goes in my bench even so? Yes. If there’s an element of chance involved, that’s essentially gambling. It’s wholly addicting.

Besides, DraftKings (MLB’s official DFS partner) itself includes a section on “Responsible Gaming” on its website, including a link to the National Council on Problem Gaming website. Call it what you want, but the idea is the same: trying to pick the best possible results given an uncertain set of outcomes. It’s a disingenuous bit of hair-splitting on Manfred’s part, if you ask me.

Consequently, to see Major League Baseball unabashedly allied with MGM Resorts is a bit jarring. As the Wulf article underscores—the main thrust of his piece is whether a scandal like the Black Sox could happen again 100 years later—baseball does take pains to try prevent foul play regarding lineup setting, forcing managers to provide their lineup cards to the league office 15 minutes before their public release so as to limit the possibility for shenanigans involving inside information. There is also the sense among professional gamblers that these kinds of things are too well-regulated to yield a repeat the magnitude of 1919’s scandal.

Still, it’s not unreasonable to think that, at some future point, individuals involved with the game might try to tip off people they know based on what they’ve observed. We’re less than 20 years removed from a major cheating scandal involving the NBA, for example. Access to stadium facilities and the field of play invites bad actors. Presumably, this is a minority of people in clubhouses and otherwise working games, but there’s an element of risk nonetheless.

Owing to the popularity of daily fantasy sports, fantasy sports, and sports betting, Major League Baseball may well have had to change its stance on its involvement with an authorized gaming outlet to keep up with the times, as they say. In doing so, however, they should reckon with their past steadfast refusal to get in bed with sports betting on a per-game rather than a per-player basis. They should also re-evaluate their candidacy for the Hall of Fame, particularly for players like Pete Rose who are more than relevant to baseball based on performance and who might warrant ex post facto clemency. As far as integrity is concerned, nothing would seem to put that in question more than MLB’s inconsistent application of its own principles.

This article is a reprint from OffTheBenchBaseball.com. To view the original story and comment, click here.


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