Baseball and Gambling
Together At Last
Ten years ago, you could sit through a baseball broadcast from first pitch to the final out and enjoy the ride. You could zone out for a few innings, paying attention when Duane Kuiper’s voice started to rise on a long fly ball. You could watch and get caught up in the drama of a slow-building rally. Along the way you’d see plenty of advertisements and commercials. Beer ads, local air conditioning companies, pitching changes brought to you by Speedy Oil Changes.
Then, in 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not ban sports gambling and left it to the states. Fast forward to 2023 and thirty-two states have legalized it, with several others inching their way toward joining the club. Now, in a perfect merger of an industry flush with marketing cash and a sport in love with probabilities, baseball and gambling are a newly public power couple and eager to draw attention to themselves.
What does that mean for you? Well, sure you can now bet on baseball. Unless you’re involved in the sport. I believe there are some slightly famous stories about what happens to those fellas. It also means everything related to baseball and baseball coverage has been changed to reflect this new reality. There’s the in-your-face part. The ads (which I swear all have louder volume than any other commercial), the sponsorships, the constant offers of betting $10 to get $250 in bonus bets! And then the hastily read disclaimers warning you that no, sports betting is not a way to get rich. The sheer volume of sports gambling websites and apps and the marketing campaigns they flood you with, it’s overwhelming.
But on top of that, the coverage is also tilted towards gambling. Lines and odds scroll along the bottom of ESPN and MLB Network. Picks of the day and other prop markets are regular segments on shows, as well as articles. There is no shortage of “experts” ready to make you money. Some hide behind a paywall, some do not. Some are sponsored by sportsbooks. Some have simple, quickly put together picks. Some put out crazy parlays that hit once in a billion tries, but when it does they get featured on commercials for the next 12 months saying anyone can do it.
How are you supposed to gamble on a sport where every team wins 60 games and loses 60 games? The difference comes down to the 42 wins or losses in the middle. And now, you can bet everything else. First pitch ball or strike? Check. A player to get a hit? Two hits? Three hits? FOUR hits? Check. Home runs, first home run, last home run. Inning winners and final score predictions. It’s all enough to make you want to watch baseball on mute and go back to reading box scores in a paper.
So do I gamble? Yes. *Responsibly. Baseball is hard and frustrating since so many things can happen and the odds can be so off for basically a 50/50 bet. I’ve tried to filter out noise and distractions to just keep it simple. Last year I tried to beat the odds on everything. Underdogs, prop bets, strikeout totals, over/unders. It got overwhelming. And even though I made money over the season (nothing life changing), it was usually more stressful than fun. Especially when I’d make all these great ideas for bets and then the starting pitcher gets hit by a comebacker off the ankle in the first inning and that bet is dead already. Or betting on Mike Trout to homer only to have him walk three times.
With baseball and gambling, I hope we see a cooling off period coming. It’s here to stay and I’m more than okay with that. I just want the marketing side to stop pushing so hard. And I want to have the willpower to say no to stupid bets just for the fun of it so I can go back to enjoying a game for the game, which is hard to do when you’re only bet was on a player to homer and so those 4 plate appearances overshadow the rest of the action. So gamble or don’t, just make sure it doesn’t ruin your life or enjoyment of the game. Or else:
