Baseball is back. Tonight the Dodgers are on Apple TV+. It’s not even April and I’m already mad about Major League Baseball making baseball difficult to watch. But this post is going to be mostly about another issue that sports need to deal with. I’m not optimistic that they’re going to deal with it.
The biggest story in baseball is the Shohei Ohtani interpreter gambling situation. This reminds me of the Manti Te’o situation 11 years ago. Immediately there were people who wanted to jump to the worst possible conclusion. I am totally fine saying that if Shohei Ohtani bet on baseball, then he should get the Pete Rose treatment. I seriously doubt he was betting on baseball. There hasn’t even been any word about his interpreter betting on baseball. Obviously I’m rooting for everything to get sorted out as quickly as possible and for Ohtani to be cleared of any wrongdoing. I suspect it will take a while to get everything sorted out. And like I said, if there’s evidence that he was gambling on baseball, that should be the end of his baseball career. As long as he wasn’t gambling on baseball, I doubt he’s going to be in any real baseball trouble even if he’s not totally innocent in this situation. There might be some legal issues, but I would guess that if he broke any laws, he could probably testify against people and he would be fine.
It is not surprising that the biggest story in baseball involves gambling. Recently, we’ve had NFL players suspended for gambling, a Temple basketball gambling scandal, and a Jontay Porter gambling scandal in the NBA. There might be other stories that I missed. Sports have embraced gambling and that is a huge mistake. If Pete Rose is banned from baseball (and he should be), then sports should not be embracing gambling. They used to not have teams in Las Vegas. If the A’s do move to Las Vegas and the NBA expands with a team in Las Vegas, all four professional sports will have a team in Las Vegas. I know gambling laws have changed in many places, but no other city with professional sports teams was built on gambling. Gambling ads are everywhere. You can’t watch professional sports without seeing them. I listen to a lot of podcasts and gambling ads are everywhere. There are some podcasts that I won’t listen to in the car because I want to make sure I can skip the ads as quickly as possible (not just gambling ads, but I definitely do want to skip those). How can anybody be surprised that we have these gambling scandals when sports have embraced gambling the way they have?
I’m not totally against gambling. If people want to gamble responsibly and make friendly wagers, that’s fine. If people want to be involved in some pools for the Super Bowl or the NCAA Tournament, have fun. If two random Dodger fans have a podcast and they want to have gambling ads, then go right ahead. I’m not against those things, but I am against casinos and FanDuel and Draft Kings and stuff like that. Those things are all built on people not gambling responsibly. If a podcast has any official connection to a team or league, they shouldn’t have gambling ads. There shouldn’t be gambling ads in stadiums and arenas and on TV broadcasts of sporting events.
How likely is any of this to get fixed? It probably won’t get fixed. It will probably just get worse. I am all for making money, but people shouldn’t make money by making things worse. College sports are being destroyed by bad decisions being made because of money. The murder of the Pac 12 by the Big 10 and the expanded college football playoff are the best examples of this. The SEC commissioner wants to destroy the NCAA Tournament, the only thing that is universally loved in college sports. It obviously shouldn’t happen, but I’m expecting it to happen at some point because that’s the direction college sports have been moving in. So they absolutely get the influence of gambling out of sports, but I don’t expect that they will.
Speaking of making sports worse for more money, I have a solution to another problem created because they made something worse for more money. The baseball playoffs have too many teams. We’ve had the two best teams in the NL not make it to the NLCS in back to back years. I already covered this in October, but I came up with another idea. Baseball should use the NBA’s play in tournament format. The 3 and 4 seeds play each other in one game. The winner plays the 2 seed. The loser plays the winner of the 5 vs. 6 game. And the winner of that game plays the 1 seed. I can’t imagine them doing that because they won’t want to use the same format as the NBA and it would also reduce the number of games in that round (3 games per league instead of 4-6). But it would make the regular season more important. Finishing third or fourth is definitely better than finishing fifth or sixth (two games to win one instead of needing to win both games). And it would reduce the amount of time that the 1 and 2 seeds have to not play baseball while they wait for their opponent.
It’s the spring (well, I had my first Summer Ale yesterday for Opening Day, so maybe it’s summer already) so I’ll finish by updating my sports villain power rankings (my most recent rankings are at the end of this post):
25. Logan Webb
I feel like I should have a Giant since baseball season just started. Gabe Kapler isn’t their manager anymore, so Logan Webb gets the spot that would have gone to him. Maybe somebody else will emerge this season.
24. Luka Doncic
23. Ime Udoka
22. Stephen Curry
21. James Harden
Doncic complains too much. It’s also not fun to watch him dribble the ball all game. Udoka and Curry both have the potential to get off of this list if either one of them eliminates the Lakers in the play in tournament. Harden was Doncic before Doncic. He’s not fun to watch. It was funny how people talked themselves into the Clippers when they played well for a while. They’re not going anywhere in the playoffs.
20. Caleb Williams
19. Lincoln Riley
Caleb Williams is still the most dislikable quarterback in football, but he’s not at USC anymore and it’s not football season. In my sports villain power rankings last spring, I said, “I hope Jordan Botelho sacks him a few times and Benjamin Morrison intercepts him a few times in October.” Well, Botelho didn’t sack him, but other Notre Dame defenders sacked him six times. And Morrison only intercepted him once, but Xavier Watts intercepted him twice. That was fun. Lincoln Riley will always be unlikable.
18. Brian Kelly
It’s another college football coach who will always be unlikable.
17. Damian Lillard
16. Kevin Durant
15. Anthony Davis
14. Jimmy Butler
13. Draymond Green
It’s a whole bunch of unlikable basketball players.
12. Manny Machado
11. Fernando Tatis
And now we have some unlikable San Diego Padres (Tatis is also a cheater).
10. Kyrie Irving
He hasn’t done anything terrible in a while. It’s probably coming at some point.
6. (tie) Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman
The most dislikable active baseball players will always be the hitters from the 2017 Astros. Yuli Gurriel isn’t on a team right now so he’s been taken off this list (he’ll be right back on if he ends up on a team).
4. (tie) Tony Petitti and Greg Sankey
The Big 10 and SEC are destroying college sports so their commissioners need to be on this list.
3. Rob Manfred
Rob Manfred is retiring in 2029. Why not five years ago?
2. LeBron James
Until the Lakers are eliminated, he needs to be very high on this list.
1. Jim Harbaugh
He cheated to win a National Championship. His championship is as valid as the 2017 Houston Astros World Series Championship. Whether or not it gets vacated, nobody should ever forget that he needed to cheat to win a National Championship.
And I’ll induct a new member into my Sports Villain Hall of Fame. My original class last year was Barry Bonds, Tom Brady, Reggie Bush, Phil Jackson, and Rafael Palmeiro. Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll are no longer coaching. They are Hall of Fame locks, but there has to be a waiting period (I know there was no waiting period for Tom Brady, but I’m making up my rules and they could conceivably end up coaching again). There are a lot of good options. But if I’m only adding one, it has to be the Barry Bonds of pitching. Roger Clemens is our newest member of my Sports Villain Hall of Fame.
Anyway, it’s good to have baseball back. I hope someday sports will renounce the gambling monster that has enslaved them. It’s time to snatch sports from Gamblor’s neon claws!
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