April 13, 2024
Baseball is not the only sport dealing with a crisis, but it is once again the one with the most prominent player involved. When it comes to gambling and professional sports in the United States of America, the genie has already escaped the bottle. The NFL, NHL, and WNBA all have clubs in Las Vegas, and MLB is working hard to assure that a team will play in Sin City by 2028 – all of which would have been unthinkable only ten years ago. The same might be argued about how gambling is currently discussed in sports media. Men like Brent Musberger and Al Michaels used to utilize this space to cleverly but sarcastically refer to the \"numbers crunchers\" who were still clinging to every point or run scored as a nationally broadcast blowout was coming to a close. Nowadays, sports betting is so widely accepted in the sports media that ESPN\'s Bottom Line simply displays the points spread and over/under for each forthcoming game. This page, along with every other blog in the SB Nation network, makes it easy to locate any kind of betting information you could possibly want. The moment is ideal to reveal that SB Nation is a DraftKings partner.
Once more, the genie is no longer in the bottle, and it seems unlikely that it will be replaced very soon. Having said that, it is also becoming increasingly obvious that the sports industry in North America failed to consider the full ramifications of its embrace of gambling. The integration of gambling into sports appears to be a sure thing, and controversy is certain to happen eventually. The NFL has already seen a number of scandals involving players and staff who gambled; the NBA appears ready to punish Jontay Porter; Shane Pinto made NHL history this season by becoming the first player to receive a suspension for \"sports wagering\"; and in college baseball, Alabama\'s former head coach nearly ended his own career in the most inane way possible.
In relation to baseball, MLB has the unfortunate distinction of having the highest-profile gambling controversy of any sport. It seems unlikely that Major League Baseball would be able to swiftly and fully move on from a gambling controversy involving the present face of the sport, unlike other leagues where crises have come and gone in a matter of news cycles. It is true that the enigma surrounding Shohei Ohtani and his former translator Ippei Mizuhara may persist for whatever long MLB investigates the situation.
We will see the league investigate the matter thoroughly if MLB is sincere about this issue, which may take many months. Naturally, Ohtani\'s ability to play on the field for as long as possible while things are resolved is a plus, but if baseball\'s best star is found to have been anything other than an innocent party in this whole affair, the league\'s reputation will undoubtedly suffer. It is not a good image for the sport to have such a high-profile person anywhere near to a scenario with this much money being gambled on sports — and illegally, at that! — even if Ohtani walks away from this with his integrity intact!
The distinction between the current scandals and the previous ones is that it is now much simpler for anything of this nature to occur because Major League Baseball and other leagues have chosen to openly acknowledge gambling rather than keep it hidden. Not to add, a gambling scandal can have a negative effect on fans\' faith in the fairness of the games. When many fans immediately compared Ohtani to Pete Rose, it was one of the main reasons that led to Rose\'s ban from baseball in the past. Even though there is no baseball component to the gambling in the Ohtani/Mizuhara scandal, it is still not a good public image.
The only silver lining in all of this may be that politicians may be inspired to take up the cause once more in an effort to curb what appears to be an almost unregulated sports gambling market. Nevertheless, a lot of this seems like it could be too little, too late. It appears that the genie is now free to sell dreams to both players and viewers.
It is particularly troubling for baseball since, traditionally, the game has made a conscious effort to avoid becoming involved in unnecessary controversy. Rather, it appears like the MLB (as well as other sports) and gambling are about to get into a situation or controversy from which they might not be able to recover. Even if the Ohtani scenario might not be the final straw that pushes MLB over the edge, the way things are going right now, it is just a matter of \"when\" rather than \"if\" an even greater controversy will surface.