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Originally Posted by sbfinley
I’ve never understood the argument that MLB accepting advertising dollars from Gaming Companies somehow makes gambling within the sport a lesser offense. It’s pretty simple, every major sports entity both professional and amateur forbids sports wagering and the cardinal sin is beating on your own sport/team. It’s not an ethical dilemma without an answer. My company accepts advertising dollars from Liquor and Beer companies, that shouldn’t somehow morally protect me from action if I’m drinking on the job. I wouldn’t somehow be in some deep ethos predicament if Jeff in accounting was fired for pounding airplane bottles of Tito’s all day long just because we advertise InBev corp.
But really Jeff, you need to cool a bit. You aren’t fooling anyone.
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We've come a long way from Bowie Kuhn, motivated by a desire to distance Major League Baseball from any trace of gambling, banned retired superstars Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from working for both major league clubs and gambling casinos at the same time. And they were just shaking hands and kissing babies in their roles at the Casino.
The Black Sox and Joe Jackson were acquitted in a 1921 court, it was Chicago so you can't put a lot of stock in that decision but acquitted none the less. Kennesaw Mountain Landis chose to ban them to send a message to "Gambling" that baseball was off limits.
And now we have Sportsbooks in over a dozen Stadiums with more to come, owned by Fanatics, DraftKings, and FanDuel, to name a few, the same fine folks that lined the pockets of congress to change the gambling laws in this country.
MLB and Manfred have embraced gambling to the point that the ESPN commentators and play by play guys, are quoting betting lines.
It's insidious. Gambling ruins lives, families, and futures. There's a reason Kuhn and Landis took such a hard line on it.
I don't think gambling should be any part of baseball, including advertising, but if baseball is going to cozy up to the gamblers then Joe Jackson should by all means be the first voted in the Hall. Hell, they should retroactively induct him in the 1936 class and make it the first 6 instead of the first 5.