WHO ELSE WOULD THREATEN MCCULLERS AND HIS KIDS? THE GAMBLING CREEPS
The sports industry must protect athletes who are abused by bettors, yet in the case of the returning Houston pitcher, it’s time to confront the biggest sin instead of counting more sportsbook profits
The gamblers never go away. They returned Sunday, on Mother’s Day, for basketball and hockey playoffs and any other televised sports event. It would have been a perfect time to take a day off, because the night before, who else but sick wagerers would care about Lance McCullers Jr.’s weak performance and threaten the lives of the Houston pitcher and his two young daughters.
This is a warped example of the industry’s biggest sin — promoting betting, wanting schlubs at home to blow their money on DraftKings or FanDuel — transforming sport into a life-or-death circumstance. McCullers has been injured since 2022 and is well-regarded on the local level and throughout Major League Baseball. He made his second start against the Cincinnati Reds at Daikan Park. He allowed seven runs in the first inning.
Only a gambler would grab a device and threaten lives? It’s May, and only three years ago, McCullers was starting Game 3 of a World Series won by the Astros. Too bad he is still struggling at this stage, right? There should be no other human reaction than hoping he regains his All-Star command in due time? Who in his right mind would want to take him down and endanger his kids?
It happened. The Houston Police Department and MLB security are probing.
“I understand people are very passionate and people love the Astros and love sports, but threatening to find my kids and murder them is a little bit tough to deal with," McCullers said. “So just as a father, I think there have been many, many threats over the years aimed at me, mostly, and I think actually one or two people from other issues around baseball actually had to go to jail for things like that. But I think bringing kids into the equation, threatening to find them or next time they see us in public they're going to stab my kids to death, things like that, it's tough to hear as a dad.”
Said Astros manager Joe Espada: “There are people who are threatening his life and the life of his kids because of his performance. It is very unfortunate that we have to deal with this. After all he's done for this city, for his team, the fact that we have to talk about that in my office -- I got kids too, and it really drives me nuts that we have to deal with this. Very sad. Very, very sad. Listen, he hasn't pitched in 2½ years. ... It's going to take a little bit of time to get him going. And that's fine. But this can't happen. I'm really upset that this can happen to athletes.”
And all the while, I abhor MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s embrace of sportsbook relationships since the Supreme Court struck down the sports betting law in 2018. How many athletes in all leagues continue to be abused online? The McCullers affair is an obvious case of having a target on his back. We would appreciate Manfred following up and addressing the public with reports. Please don’t let this fade into the police cabinet. We also would appreciate investigative work by ESPN.
Forget that. The network’s idea of an investigation is letting Jeremy Schaap speak to a mascot or two. Baseball is still in bed with the networks. They only care about making money, and snuffing out gambling doesn’t help the bottom line.
“If you fail, you fail on a very large stage (with) a lot of eyes and there's nowhere to hide," McCullers said. "At the end of the day, I just want to do my job. I just want to be a good pitcher for the Astros, and I believe I'll get there. But like I said, I just think that having to worry about that, worry about leaving town and leaving them and things like that or dropping her off at school, I just think ... there should be some type of decency."
Decency? In the sports world? “We tried our best. Everybody’s trying our best. But the fact that I’ve got to go in my office and deal with this, come on,” Espada said. “We’re better than that. We are better than this.”
Nine hundred and fifteen days passed after his flexor tendon surgery. Know how many times McCullers worried about his career and life?
He was returned to darkness in two minutes.
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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.