Clase was making $10 Million a year and was in line to get a huge raise within a year or two if he kept up his performance. What a damn waste.
Never understood major league sports getting into bed with gambling and allowing the prop betting culture and everything the comes into it, into the games.
It's one thing, betting on the outcome of games. It's a whole other level of dystopia betting on individual balls/strikes/ground outs/free throws/volleys/serves/coin tosses/foul calls/injuries/etc./etc./etc.......
We've had decades worth of movies and media essentially making tragic figures out of degenerate gambling behavior for comic or dramatic effect...."Hey, see Paulie over there, He'd bet against the sun coming up tomorrow morning if you gave him good enough odds. He lost his house, his wife left him, his kids hate him, and the mobs after him...but all he needs is a little luck and one more score, to make it all better again!"
......and now we're seemingly encouraging this behavior so the multi-billionaires can pay the multi-millionaires, and then everybody wags their fingers and wrings their hands when everything goes to shit, and acts like this wasn't a complete inevitability.
I just hope the people rooting for Clase to get the 65 years in prison that was hinted at in the article, aren't the same ones that have been whinging over the "injustice" Pete Rose has faced over the years.
Think him and Ortiz will get a pardon? I don't.