If Rob Manfred, commissioner of Major League Baseball, supports and lobbies for making betting on sports legal, as Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, has done, wouldn’t Manfred have to restore Pete Rose to baseball’s good graces, making him eligible for the Hall of Fame?
Rose, at 75 years old, shouldn’t get excited just yet – and as a man as full of conceit and arrogance as any human being and more than most he nevertheless will. But in the direction Manfred is headed M.L.B. could become a hotbed of gambling in Rose’s lifetime.
Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner, has been telling me for years that baseball would embrace betting with both hands¸ and now he appears to be closer than ever to being right.
The Rose part of this development is only an off-shoot, but the prospect of Congress-endorsed sports betting presents Rose with his best chance of getting on the stage in Cooperstown since he was placed on the permanently ineligible list in 1991. Rose has waited for nearly three decades for a chance to get into the Hall of Fame. If M.L.B. invites betting on baseball games into its halls, how could it keep Rose out?
The prospect of baseball endorsing legalized betting arose last week when Manfred spoke about it at a business conference.
Manfred, who seems to have an agenda full of changes, said he is monitoring the issue and “re-thinking” M.L.B.’s long-held stance against betting on baseball.
“There is this buzz out there in terms of people feeling that there may be an opportunity here for additional legalized sports betting,” the commissioner said. Betting on games, he added, “can be a form of fan engagement. It can fuel the popularity of a sport.”
He added, “Sports betting happens. Whether it’s legalized here or not, it’s happening out there. So I think the question for sports is really, ‘Are we better off in a world where we have a nice, strong, uniform federal regulation of gambling that protects the integrity of sports, provides sports with the tools to ensure that there is integrity in the competition, or are we better off closing our eyes to that and letting it go on as illegal gambling? And that’s a debatable point.”
Why has Manfred changed his view? He hasn’t said, but $$$ could be the reason. Money has a way of changing a lot of minds, including commissioners’ minds and politicians’ minds.
“How can politicians do that in good conscience?” Vincent said. “Politicians see that people are going to play slot machines and gamble. Why don’t we make it legal and benefit from it?”
Vincent then recalled the views of his friend and predecessor, A. Bartlett Giamatti. “Bart said where else can you impose a tax and people will stand in line to pay it. When the lottery gets to $200, $300 million, they flock to the corner store to buy tickets. People are desperate. They think the lottery will solve their problems.”
“Another major point is if you look around this country there’s a craze for gambling. The politicians are meeting what the public wants.”
Baseball’s cardinal rule, 21(d), the one that got Rose, is reproduced in large letters and is posted on large posters in every clubhouse. It warns players against betting on games, threatening one-year or lifetime banishment if violated:
d) BETTING ON BALL GAMES. Any player, umpire, or club official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has no duty to perform shall be declared ineligible for one year.
Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.
This has been the rule since the 1919 World Series scandal, and now Manfred, in his apparent zeal to have Congress legalize betting on sports events, seems ready to junk the nearly 100-year old rule. Manfred hasn’t said it, but his remarks seem to say it for him.
“Once you say gambling is legal, you can’t keep players from gambling,” Vincent said in a telephone interview Friday.
Manfred, of course, could declare that players were barred from betting, but whether or not the players wanted to bet, the Players Association would never accept an edict that said players could not do what was legal for the general public to do.
“If Congress says it’s perfectly legal to bet on sports, are we going to stand in the way?” Vincent said. “If players want to bet on baseball, the baseball rule about gambling goes by the boards.
“How do you keep that from being corrupt, corrupted, corrupting? It would be very difficult. Do you let professional players bet on games, bet on their own teams? If it’s perfectly legal for everyone else to do it, how do you tell players they can’t do it?”
Manfred is in a pivotal position with legalization of betting on sports.
Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, advocated legal betting in November 2014, writing in an op-ed piece in The New York Times, “Betting on professional sports is currently illegal in most of the United States outside of Nevada. I believe we need a different approach.”
Noting that his league, in 1992, supported Congressional passage of a bill that “generally prohibited states from authorizing sports betting, Silver wrote, “But despite legal restrictions, sports betting is widespread. It is a thriving underground business that operates free from regulation or oversight. Because there are few legal options available, those who wish to bet resort to illicit bookmaking operations and shady offshore websites.”
Alone, Silver is unlikely to make a dent in Congressional opposition to legal sports betting. Adding Manfred or the N.F.L.’s advocacy, though, could make the necessary impact to nudge Congress to act. The government also likes new streams of revenue.
In addition, we need to remember that the head of the current government used to own casinos in New Jersey before they went bankrupt.
The state of New Jersey has attempted to enact legal sports betting in that state and is currently awaiting a decision from the United States Supreme Court on whether it will hear the state’s appeal of a lower court decision against its effort.
In his two years as commissioner Manfred has reversed his position on the issue.
“The most fundamental rule in baseball – it has been there forever – is Rule 21,” Manfred said in a television interview early in his first year as commissioner. “It prohibits anybody who is on the field from betting on baseball or betting on any sport. And in fact, the rule is clear that if you bet on baseball, you will be banished for life.”
He also said, “I think the gambling rule is so fundamental to the integrity of the game that it should always stay where it is.”
However, if Manfred decides to lobby Congress with Silver and is successful, there doesn’t seem to be any way for 21(d) to survive.
“Bart used to rail and rant against the casinos and legalized betting in Connecticut, where he lived, Vincent related. “It was largely because it was a copout by politicians. He argued that it’s a tax on poor people because people in upper level of the economy didn’t gamble, didn’t play slot machines.”
In casinos, which thrive in Connecticut, Vincent added, “People playing slot machines were poorer. Bart was offended. How can politicians do that in good conscience?”
But, Vincent added, “The politicians are meeting what the public wants.”
The day may not be far off when highway signs in major league cities announce: “Coming soon to a ballpark near you, casinos, slot machines and more.”
As for Rose, Vincent, who as deputy commissioner worked with Giamatti on the lifetime ban, said, “It’s almost inevitable. It would be hard for baseball to say that rule 21 has any viability.”
NEXT UP ON MANFRED’S FIX-IT LIST
Next on the Manfred menu of magical game-time tricks: If a game goes to extra innings, each extra inning could start with a runner at second base.
The experiment will be conducted initially this coming season in the lowest level of the minor leagues. The idea apparently is to shorten games, allowing fans to get home earlier.
I always liked extra innings – except when I was working. Rules, however, are not made to benefit writers. When I was paying to see games, I liked extra innings because I got to see more game for the same amount of money. It was a bargain.
Joe Torre, a Hall of Fame manager, has been quoted as saying the idea is worth trying, but he is baseball’s chief baseball officer, meaning he works for Manfred and is unlikely to say anything publicly that might offend the boss.
I wonder if there’s a Plan B. For example, Team A’s designated extra-inning runner scores in the top of the 10th. But Team B’s designated extra-inning runner scores in the last of the 10th and the game goes to the 11th inning.
Will the teams start each half of the 11th with a runner at second, or why not a runner at third base or better yet, runners at second and third?
Can a runner be used more than once? Can a player who has been replaced earlier in the game return as the extra-inning runner? Can a player who has been used as an extra-inning runner be used later in the game as an infielder or a reliever?
Torre said something about not wanting to see a utility infielder entering a game as a relief pitcher in an extra inning. How about a team running out of infielders and a relief pitcher going into the game as a second baseman?
How would a team feel if its extra-inning runner pulled a hamstring and had to miss six weeks?
I have a better question. Why not just play the game the way it has been played for more than 100 years and let the people who want to or need to leave before the 16th or 18th inning leave and listen to the game on the way home or wake up in the morning and find out the final score on their gizmos.
Don’t bother checking the morning paper. It won’t have the final score. Newspapers are too busy going out of business to have final scores of late-finishing games.
An entire World Series was played last October without my edition of The New York Times having a result of any of the games. If I hadn’t watched the games on television, I wouldn’t have known if the Series was played.
But it was a learning experience for me. I learned that the sports department isn’t the newspaper’s only bad department.