What a difference 45 little years make

FIRST, WE GO BACK

The death of Willie Mays this week is a reminder that then-baseball commissioner and Duty Village Idiot Bowie Kuhn had once banned Mays and Mickey Mantle from the game for life, thereby proving that wearing short sleeves to a frigid World Series game in 1976 wasn’t as stupid as he could get.

And now, Major League Baseball under Current Village Idiot Rob Manfred is out to prove that Kuhn may have been dumb — but the level of greed of team owners these days surpasses dumbness on the scale of worthless human behavior by a long shot (see, a betting term).

Kuhn had given two of the greatest stars baseball has ever produced the heave-ho for connections to New Jersey casinos, Mays with Bally’s (see chip, above) and Mantle the Claridge.

Both were long since retired, and neither was accused of ever even playing a slot machine, let alone betting on baseball. In fact, because they were casino employees — both had jobs that were basically just glad-handing — they were forbidden to play, by New Jersey law.

Naytheless, Bowie the Brain said they had to be demeaned. The next commissioner, Peter Ueberroth, disagreed, reinstated both, and said he couldn’t understand why they were ever banned to begin with.

LET’S FLASH FORWARD

Now, Major League Baseball not only doesn’t mind casinos, Major League Baseball is the casino — and so are many individual teams. The White Sox signed away their rights for a cut of the action at Caesar’s, their “Official Sports Betting Partner.” The Cubs, of course, have gone a step bigger, with their own garish betting palace destroying the historic ambience of Wrigley Field.

bloomberg.com

There is no such structure outside the GuRF, but you can be sure that’s only because Jerry Reinsdorf doesn’t own the surrounding land, the state does. If you left it to Reinsdorf there would be a casino in center field, even if Luis Robert Jr. had to run around it to get to fly balls.

Meanwhile, of course, a minor-leaguer has been banned for life for wagering a few bucks on games he wasn’t involved with, and others have been handed long suspensions for placing a buck or two on other sports. Well, to paraphrase Leona Helmsley (she was talking about paying taxes), “Only the little people pay the price for gambling.” (Well, little guys and interpreters who steal millions from superstar employers.)

With more than a billion dollars at stake as their share of the gambling take, MLB and the owners most assuredly aren’t the little people. They’re the people pushing all the little people into the gambling abyss, though (of course) always with a disclaimer about where to call if you have a gambling problem.

(Full disclosure: I played poker for many years, even lived off of the proceeds at one time, and enjoyed trips to Keeneland and Churchill Downs when living in Kentucky, but a little private venturing isn’t what’s going on here.)

It would be one thing if the teams just quietly accepted bets, like Three-Fingered Louie used to do in the good old days. Instead, we have total inundation of gambling info on sports media. No commercial break on 670 The Score is complete without an amazing offer about your many, many free bets which doesn’t happen to mention how the sports book in question can afford to be so generous unless it takes back all that money and more, very quickly … followed, of course, by the hosts inviting in a guest to talk up all the latest odds.

The game broadcasts themselves aren’t content to just carry gambling ads between every inning, the announcers have to shill for the sports book of choice. The over/under change because of the four-run third inning? Some batter more or less likely to have two hits? An update on pitcher strikeout likelihood? Why, how fortunate they just happen to have that information handy, together with a nice logo to suggest where you might like to spend your paycheck.

There has always been betting on sports, of course, going back to the original Olympics in the Peloponnese or even to cavemen wagering on who would kill the biggest rhino, but there’s no record that the cities of Athens or Sparta ran the bookie joints themselves, nor is there historic note of Abner Doubleday saying there should be three outs, four bases, and five betting parlors along each sideline.

Baseball is not alone among sports heading for a fall, as legal sports gambling gets bigger and bigger and computerized data makes odds changes and new opportunities to lose come faster and faster, but baseball is the most famous for opposing gambling. Just ask Pete Rose,

It’s possible MLB will eventually see the light and spurn the easy money that could be its downfall. But don’t bet on it.