MLB is all-in on sports wagering, so time to be up front with injuries
Rube Walker watched a lot of ballgames from the dugout and from the bullpen during his years with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was a backup catcher behind Roy Campanella and in that role he didn’t get many opportunities to play. When he did get into games, however, he proved himself to be tough and smart. But, alas, he ran like a catcher.
Maybe that’s being too kind. He was even slower than most catchers. Some considered him to be the slowest player in the National League. Others weren’t so sure. Some thought that dubious distinction belonged to St. Louis Cardinals catcher Del Rice.
One night, when the Dodgers were playing in St. Louis, it was decided that the time had come to find out for sure. Rice and Walker agreed to race across the outfield prior to the game. Everybody from both clubhouses turned out to witness the spectacle. A few dollars were wagered on the outcome.
Things didn’t go well for Walker. He lost the race and felt as if he had let his teammates down. He was now confirmed — unofficially, at least — as the league’s turtle. Then, the next morning, things got worse. The telephone rang in his hotel room and the voice on the other end of the line belonged to Commissioner Ford Frick, who was calling from New York.
Frick had read about the event in New York’s morning papers and was shocked — shocked, I tell you — when he read that some players had made bets on the race. He demanded that Walker tell him the name of every Dodgers player who had made a wager.
Walker, of course, refused to rat out his teammates. He assured the commissioner that the whole thing had been merely for fun and if any wagering took place he certainly knew nothing about it.
Frick wasn’t pleased, but he eventually dropped the matter when he found his investigation going nowhere. All he could do was harrumph a time or too and issue a very stern reminder that no one associated with baseball was permitted to have anything to do with gambling.
Frick wasn’t the only commissioner with that attitude. His immediate predecessor, Happy Chandler, suspended Dodgers manager Leo Durocher for the 1947 season merely because Durocher had associated with a man who was an associate of known gamblers.
Several years later Commissioner Bowie Kuhn banned Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from baseball after they were hired by an Atlantic City casino. Kuhn expressed dismay that either man would lower himself to work in the gambling industry and barred them from even entering a major league ballpark, and that included old-timers day.
Nothing — absolutely nothing — was more important to these men than keeping gambling out of baseball and they went to great lengths to accomplish it.
I can’t even imagine how Chandler, Frick or Kuhn would react if they were to return today. What would they think when they saw large gambling institutions — legal bookies, if you will — running advertisements between innings of baseball telecasts and offering inducements to fans to become new clients? What would they think when they discovered that Major League Baseball has its own cable TV channel and it regularly runs gambling odds in the crawl space across the bottom of the screen? What would they think if they discovered that betting parlors now operate openly — and legally — inside some ballparks?
It would at least take their breath away, but it’s true. Baseball has executed a full U-turn and done it metaphorically on a dime.
Now it’s policy makers need to scramble to catch up. I realized that a few days ago when Phillies manager Joe Girardi admitted that he had lied to the press about the nature and severity of player injuries and promised to lie again. He said he
Seattle (Sheffield 5-4) at Detroit (TBD), 1:10 p.m.
Houston (Greinke 6-2) at Boston (Rodriguez 5-4), 7:10 p.m.
N.Y. Yankees (King 0-3) at Minnesota (Happ 3-2), 8:10 p.m.
Toronto (Ryu 5-3) at Chicago White Sox (Keuchel 4-1), 8:10 p.m.
Kansas City (Minor 4-3) at Oakland (Montas 6-5), 9:40 p.m. wanted to conceal the information from rival managers. Balderdash!
A good scout can often watch a player and see for himself if the man is favoring an injury. When a manager hides information the people he’s really hiding it from are the media and the fans. And, yes, he’s hiding it from the gamblers or at least trying to. He might only be hiding it from some of the gamblers and that could present a problem.
Every serious gambler wants to know when a key player is unable to play or when his skills are limited because of an injury. If he’s tipped off to that information exclusively he can make a shrewd bet. Inside information is every gambler’s dream. It would be Major League Baseball’s nightmare — something it should desperately want to prevent. Allowing a manager to cover up injuries isn’t the way to do it.
The manager is never going to be the only one who knows when a player is hurt. The other players know it. The team’s trainers and medical staff know it. In many cases the custodians inside the clubhouse know it. There’s always the chance that the word will leak out to someone who can profit from knowledge of the injury.
The National Football League clearly is aware of that possibility. For years — decades, in fact — every team has been required to issue a weekly injury report. The report identifies every player with an injury and identifies the nature of the injury (shoulder, wrist, knee, etc.). Each player is then categorized (probable, questionable, doubtful or out) for his availability in the upcoming game. All that data is then published and released to the public. Thus, it’s available to high rollers and professional odds-makers as well as to casual fans who play a weekly football pool at their workplace.
Major League Baseball, with games nearly every day, cannot copy that system exactly, but it can insist that clubs release honest injury information and threaten serious consequences for teams that don’t. It needs to do it before it’s too late.
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We’re into June now and more than one-third of the season has been played. By now statistics have meaning. They can no longer be dismissed as a small, perhaps inconsequential, sample. New York Mets pitcher Jacob DeGrom has an earned run average of 0.69 and it’s time to look at that as a big deal, because that’s what it is.
The best full-season ERA ever posted was the 0.86 of Troy Haymakers rookie Tim Keefe in 1880. All pitching was underhanded back then and Keefe made 12 starts for the Haymakers late in the season. Because no one wore gloves at that time, errors were much more common then than they are now. His record was 6-6 but only 10 of the 27 runs he allowed were earned.
Which meant errors were much more plentiful than they are today. Keefe gave up 27 runs that year, but 17 were unearned.
Bob Gibson of the Cardinals had a 1.12 ERA in 1968. That’s the fourth best of alltime but, by a wide margin, the best since the “lively ball” era began in 1921. DeGrom is well ahead of that pace. Moreover his strike out-to-walk ration (93-8) is more than double what Gibson’s was in 1968.
One final note: In nine starts DeGrom has allowed seven runs, three of which were scored as unearned. Even if all seven of them were recorded as earned his ERA would still be a spectacular 1.09.
We might be watching something truly remarkable. A FEW STATISTICS (Wednesday games not included): Major league team highs and lows — Runs: Astros 320, Mets 195; Batting Average: Astros .265, Brewers .211; On Base Percentage: White Sox .341, Mariners .284; Slugging Percentage: Blue Jays .439, Pirates .350; Singles: Astros 366, Mariners 238; Doubles: Red Sox 137, Mets 68; Triples: Rockies 16, Yankees 2; Home Runs: Braves 89, Pirates 41; Stolen Bases: Padres 64, Reds 13; Walks: Padres 251, Red Sox 161; Intentional Walks: Dodges 18, White Sox, Tigers, Mariners, Rangers 2 each; Strike Outs: Rays 654, Astros 424; Hit by Pitch: Reds, Dodgers 41 each, Rockies, Yankees 15 each; Double Plays Grounded Into: Mets, Astros 59 each, Rockies, Pirates, Rays 28 each; Sacrifice Bunts: Rockies 20, Twins 2; Sacrifice Flies: Astros 23, Mets 6; Pinch Hits: Nationals 23, Tigers 1; Left On Base: Dodgers, Diamondbacks 445 each, Mariners 349.