Today, I explain why Emmanuel Clase being suspended for possibly cheating on games and Major League Baseball embracing legalized gambling is not a hypocritical position.
This is “Don’t Got No Sports,” an occasional foray by me into a discussion about sports, which technically IS part of pop culture, but I’ll admit is very different from the stuff that I normally cover here, hence it receiving its own feature. Besides my pop culture and comic book writing, I also manage two sports blogs, one for the Yankees and one for the Knicks. So occasionally I’ll have something I feel like writing about sports.
In case you missed the news, after Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz was suspended as part of an investigation into him apparently conspiring with gamblers to fix moments in games (specifically, Ortiz would throw wildly on the first pitch of the third inning, and gamblers would heavily bet on the pitch to be a ball), Ortiz apparently implicated his teammate, star closer, Emmanuel Clase, in the mess, as well.
Now, of course, we don’t know what Clase did or did not do. As someone noted on social media, it could easily be a case where these guys were being coerced by someone back in their home country to work with them (you know, “throw the ball or we’ll shoot your kid” or whatever).
People on social media have been mocking the investigation in terms of Major League Baseball having various deals with companies like FanDuel and Draft Kings for legalized gambling. You know, like having announcers make their “Bet of the Game” or whatever. Thus, the argument is that in a league that has embraced gambling so much, how can you blame players for being involved in gambling?
And I just think that that is pure nonsense.
If Clase and/or Ortiz WERE involved with manipulating the games to help gamblers, then that’s not a criticism of gambling, it’s just blatantly CHEATING.
You can criticize gambling. Go right ahead. You can criticize how much professional sports are feeding its viewers into the world of online gambling. That’s a totally fair critique.
But “If MLB didn’t want players to manipulate the game to try to make money gambling, they shouldn’t have legalized gambling”? That doesn’t make any sense!
You’re even ALLOWED to gamble as a player. You just can’t gamble on your own sport. That seems like a pretty normal and obvious rule, no?
What Clase and Ortiz allegedly did was pretty straightforward cheating. It doesn’t make MLB hypocrites, and trust me, I LOVE spotlighting times MLB IS being hypocritical (which happens a lot).
