June 23, 2015
It’s hard to believe the Pete Rose gambling saga continues to cause any sort of controversy. After all it’s older than a generation of sports fans, and you have to reach back over a quarter of a century for its origins.
As it turns out – and to the surprise of nobody, Rose did bet on baseball games while he was a player. There are now documents proving that point, and you will excuse most sane people who give a quick SMH that any of this matters.
Rose bet on baseball games, and you can argue one way or another that it is an outrage. The one problem is that gambling is the one big NO-NO in pro sports.
Or is it?
Increasingly, pro sports leagues are losing any sort of leverage in arguments about gambling. What used to be a rock-solid argument that gambling would be the root cause of the destruction of trust in sports in being diminished by the continued involvement of professional leagues with one huge element of gambling.
It is called fantasy sports.
It might seem a far, far cry from Pete Rose betting on baseball, but what once was a very high horse upon which the leaders of those leagues could denounce gambling has now become a sawhorse in terms of stature.
You can check out many of the names, such as Draft Kings or Fan Duel, or whatever particular fantasy sports site you want to join. Technically, the moral lifeline that all sports leagues hold on to in this world of fantasy sports is that they are not games of chance. And yes, the NHL, NBA and MLB do not allow their players to take part in fantasy sports in their own league.
Technically, these are ventures of skill where the participant is using his or her skill to pick a team, or a combination of players to win a game, a week, or a season. It is not a matter of simply plunking down a bet on a game, and waiting for the outcome.
But who is fooling whom?
These fantasy sports leagues generate big bucks from which the leagues profit and they also generate huge interest in the leagues that provide the platform. The NFL would be an enormous ratings success if for no other reason than the people involved in the fantasy leagues watch the games to see how their own team is progressing.
The same is true for the NBA, the NHL, and Major League Baseball. It might seem a far, far cry from Pete Rose betting on baseball, but what once was a very high horse upon which the leaders of those leagues could denounce gambling has now become a sawhorse in terms of stature.
It is simply absurd to think that the rulers of all those leagues do not know that gambling is good for business. While those in charge might gasp at the thought of gambling, they are more than willing to take boatloads of cash from networks that provide entire programs to fantasy sports, and are more than willing to provide point spreads.
In the very recent past, we have heard suggestions from the NBA that legalized sports gambling throughout the country would not be a bad thing – while the NHL is drooling at the possibility of placing a franchise in Las Vegas.
There is no doubt that Rose has lied over the years, and given the time frame during which he bet on games, you can make a very substantial argument that he doesn’t deserve to be back in good standing with Major League Baseball.
The most annoying arguments are those that try to compare Rose to the players who “cheated” while using steroids. Sorry, but that argument is not apples to apples.
The best way for Major League Baseball to finally get past all of this is to simply issue a statement that amounts to let bygones be bygones, and give Rose that Hall of Fame status he so desires. Anyway, it is at the point now that the Rose story is about as old as Shoeless Joe Jackson, and beating up on your grandfather doesn’t do much good.
Rather than point to all the steroid abuse, the better argument is that neither Major League Baseball, nor any of the other leagues that allow their players to be so openly used in fantasy sports – and benefit from it – has nearly the moral high ground of the past.
It’s time for the leagues to admit it benefits from gambling, and endorse gambling across the country. There should still be rules in place that no player should be allowed to bet on a game in his sport, and what Rose did would still be met with banishment.
The Rose debate is old and tired, but given the new gambling bed into which pro sports has decided to leap, it is very hard to work up the outrage of the past.
