This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.
--
For these people, baseball players being suspended for betting on baseball games is evidence that MLB is being corrupted by the league’s gambling relationships. For a smaller number of people, the suspensions are morally tenuous, MLB taking with one hand and banning with the other.
I don’t think the two stories are related at all. Marcano, Kelly, Jay Groome, Andrew Saalfrank, Jose Rodriguez...they all walked past Rule 21(d) every day, they all got the lectures each spring about the rules. Granted the ability to play professional and even Major League Baseball, they elected to break the one rule that would forfeit that privilege. MLB has every right to suspend them even as game odds scroll across the screen on MLB Network while it’s covering the story. They’re just not related. Baseball players are governed by Rule 21(d), the larger public is not. MLB is pitching bonus bets and strikeout props to tens of millions of people while holding those in its employ to a higher standard.
