Free column today. But they ain’t all free. Hey, I don’t ask for much, so come join us. Please?
Sunday I had a pint of Guinness at a bar. It cost me $7.
I only ask you for $5. And the fun lasts longer than a pint of Guinness.
I don’t care what the calendar says. Spring doesn’t truly start until baseball does.
And so we’re off. This is NEPA so the weather will be silly for a few more weeks at least, but baseball is in full bloom, and the promise of the summer game is what makes summer bearable for summer-haters like me.
The Phillies lost their first two games and their perpetually doomed fanbase started suggesting they’d surely finish the season 0-162, while the Yankees swept their opening series and their fans started making World Series arrangements on Easter Sunday.
I love it all.
The baseball season is long and lovely and languid and already has ensnared its greatest player in a gambling scandal that makes the whole Pete Rose business look quaint in comparison. Shohei Ohtani, he of the $700 million contract, roughly the GDP of Samoa, is probably too big to fail, so I expect his interpreter, the recipient of $4.5 million dollars in wire transfers from his boss, to be “disappeared” soon, sent to the same place where Jimmy Hoffa currently resides. The last thing MLB needs is for this guy to find religion and a witness protection program. I have no evidence to support my wild conspiracy theory that all of this is yakuza (Japanese mob) related…and thus something that will be handled “in-house”…..other than I’m pretty sure I’m right, and would be willing to wager on it if you give me good odds on FanDuel.
And speaking of…….
This is all a strange and hypocritical business, of course. Just last year Major League Baseball and FanDuel Group, “the premier online gaming company in North America”, announced a multi-year partnership making its industry-leading sportsbook a co-exclusive Official Sports Betting Partner of MLB…which is curious behavior for a sport that banned two of its greatest all-time players (Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson) for…well……FanDueling.
Speaking of Pete Rose, I will say this again. He admitted to betting on baseball as a MANAGER. His hall of fame credentials are as a PLAYER. There is zero indication that he ever bet on baseball as a player. So there is nothing that should keep him out of the hall of fame as a PLAYER. To me the argument doesn’t get more simple than that. He belongs in Cooperstown.
If this Ohtani thing doesn’t go away, it’s going to be harder to justify Rose being banished to hover on baseball’s fringes while the Los Angeles Dodgers spent $1.4 billion dollars in the off-season, much of it on a guy who just might be the worst gambler since Remo Gaggi in the movie Casino.
Ohtani is not in Kansas anymore. Or a member of the Los Angeles Angels, whom I had no idea until just now were no longer known as the California Angels, because the last time anybody cared about this team was when it was owned by Gene Autry. Even today, the team is most well known for one of its relief pitchers giving up a 2 run, 2 out home run to help lose the ‘86 American League Pennant, and later killing himself over it. So the legend goes, anyway.
Being an Angel is kinda like being stuck in Kansas. Somehow Ohtani and Mike Trout, two of the greatest players of the last 50 years, have never even sniffed a World Series playing for the that team. The oft-injured Trout has played in 3 total playoff games (losing them all), and might be the only 3 time MVP in history who could walk down a NYC street completely unrecognized. I’m a reasonably engaged baseball fan, and cannot remember ever seeing Trout play outside of All Star games. Ohtani, routinely compared to Babe Ruth, has never played one inning of playoff baseball in the majors. Ever.
This should change now that he’s a Dodger, a perennial playoff team with bottomless pockets and Hollywood mojo. He’ll be showcased endlessly on nationally televised games, with his every at bat (if not his mound appearances, sadly a thing of the past since his elbow has once again turned into a noodle) driving Pete Rose crazier than he’s already been driven.
Initially, reporters were picking apart every single one of Ohtani’s translated utterances, including the one where he claimed to know nothing whatever about any other US sports, despite numerous published photos of him looking like a fanboy wearing various professional hockey and football jerseys. But already I sense an extremely minimal disturbance in the baseball force…much the same way scribes ignored Barry Bonds’s head doubling in size. If if turns out that Ohtani is a degnerate gambler like Pete Rose, that story will probably be broken by somebody other than a baseball writer. In other words, somebody whose job is not dependent on not breaking it.
And so much for all that. I’ve hated the Dodgers for years, and my father never quite forgave them for leaving Brooklyn. Watching the Bronx Zoo version of the Yankees destroy the Dodgers in the 70s remains the only time I’ve ever rooted for the Yankees. Pulling for the Yankees back then was like rooting for the Empire against fresh-faced Luke Skywalker, but at least the Yankees had charisma. It was pretty difficult for a pre-teen to get excited about Steve Garvey and Ron Cey.
For the sake of baseball, I hope Ohtani is not betting on it, and that he pitches again. But as a Dodger hater, I wouldn’t mind some reporter winning themselves a Pulitzer discovering the opposite.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In a bit…
—tf
ah Pete Rose..... nope, never, nada, no way, should a guy who bet on baseball AS A MANAGER be allowed into the baseball HOF. A manager can influence the outcome of a game exponentially more than a mere player could and that's why Pete Rose is such a profound disappointment. Yep I LOVE baseball and your writing Tom so I had to tell you what i think of Charlie Hustle - he hustled us alright!!