GAMBLING OVERWHELMS SPORT, EVERY DAY, WITH SCANDALS BIGGER THAN THE GAMES
As the Cleveland Guardians bring more chaos to baseball — after Rob Manfred created the crisis — the feds have more issues with Gilbert Arenas, who ran poker games while the NBA faces investigations
So why not dance to the music, high rollers and degenerates? Corny gambling jingles, the ones you hear at casinos, now should be played in ballparks and arenas. The realm of sport has reached the gloomy point where anyone not aware of perpetual betting has lost the total vibe.
Does anybody watch to see who simply wins the game — in natural and faithful terms — and not care about the spread or prop bets? Do people routinely expect two pitchers from the Cleveland Guardians, or another franchise in Major League Baseball or another league, to enter investigation phases for wagering? Thanks to closer Emmanuel Clase and starter Luis Ortiz, close friends from the Dominican Republic, a normally respectable ballclub has lost the 2025 season while likely trading Shane Bieber, a former Cy Young Award winner, and outfielder Steven Kwan.
Each and every day, a nation’s fun devolves into waste. Did Ortiz’s suspicious loss of control lead to screechy gamblers making money on a ball or a hit batsman? Was Clase also avoiding the plate as, well, a three-time All-Star? How scummy are athletes to make extra bucks with winks, knowing federal authorities are scrutinizing Malik Beasley and Terry Rozier as well-known NBA players? Wednesday, Gilbert Arenas returned to trouble with the feds when he was arrested for hosting high-stakes poker games at his home near Los Angeles.
How many active and retired players showed up to watch the former star operate “Pot Limit Omaha” games? Who didn’t love the chefs, the security guards, the women who served drinks and took tips to do whatever the men wanted? Also arrested was Yevgeni "Giora" Gershman, part of an Israeli organized crime group. Once, Arenas was so involved in card games that he and a Washington teammate, Javaris Crittendon, brought guns into a locker room. He could do five years in prison for each of three counts.
These people are sickening. They are wrecking sports for all of us.
Why would fans return to Cleveland’s Progressive Field and with hard-earned money? Why would fans watch the Guardians on TV? How many other teams are next on the chill list? Rob Manfred was the commissioner who needed sportsbooks and had the most to lose by adding them. By going into business with FanDuel and DraftKings and opening minds to schemers, baseball had to explain why Pete Rose and Joe Jackson were suspended for life amid gambling mayhem. That’s why a hypocritical Manfred dropped those bans and might enable both to reach the Hall of Fame. In the process, he has ruined seasons and might chase away the sport in certain cities. The Guardians rank 22nd in the major leagues in attendance, in a city where the NFL and NBA rule. They are among several teams courting trouble in baseball’s haves-and-have-nots wreckage.
Don’t we all know Manfred has created his own crisis?
And yet he still begs players, in a strong union, to accept an ownership-demanded salary cap after the 2026 season? What if Clase and Ortiz broke rules and become permanently ineligible? This is not only a Cleveland problem. The pitchers happened to be caught. Who’s next in the ongoing slime?
“It makes it hard. I’m not happy. This stinks. It’s a different part of our game that we’re now dealing with because it’s legal,” manager Stephen Vogt said. “You don’t know what’s going on. There have been a number of stories over the last year and a half related to this. Two of our guys are being investigated. And that hurts.”
Yet can we blame the Guardians for not teaching players about gambling. “I don’t think it’s a question of people not knowing the rules,” president Chris Antonetti said. “What’s important is that we understand what the reality is and figure out, ‘How do we move forward from here?’ ’’
He should have known about Clase, who tested positive five years ago for Boldenone, a banned substance that led to an 80-game suspension. Yet, silly fans invested $315,000 with a San Diego company that, believe it or not, offered them an opportunity to earn a share of his future earnings. Like him now, make money off him later through Finlete? Consider it another way of losing money in what is supposed to be a nice night at the park.
“I think we do a great job of informing,” Vogt said. “As a player, you know exactly what the parameters are. I managed each game to win the game. We didn’t know. We didn’t know if or when or how or why.”
If the men in charge don’t know, who would? Football players have been busted. College football and basketball players have been busted. Hockey players have been busted. Tennis players have been busted. Golfers have been busted. Sports reporters have been busted.
But today, in a furious world, expect gambling to be a daily story. If you bet, you are a big part of the problem. Stare in the mirror.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.