The proliferation of largely legalized sports activities playing has helped deliver sordid, behind-closed-door, conniving characters to the forefront, notably in an NBA bombshell that entails Mafia households, rigged card-shuffling machines and X-ray cameras. We watch motion pictures and browse books and so we’re aware of the define of those tales, of sharks making the most of marks.
The baseball scandal that turned public Sunday doesn’t carry the identical sort of heist aptitude or, frankly, the identical sort of brainpower.
Let’s checklist the alleged missteps of Emmanuel Clase, the Guardians nearer charged by federal authorities in a multi-year playing plot. This isn’t an inventory of obvious ethical failings — like his alleged involvement within the scheme that culminated with a 23-page, unsealed indictment — however the failings to correctly perform the alleged plan, the errors that helped alert authorities that one thing was amiss.
1. Prosecutors allege that bettors positioned “over 100” straight bets and parlays on Clase’s pitches. Granted, the indictment doesn’t run by the outcomes of every guess, however just one — by which the Dodgers’ Andy Pages chased a pitch exterior of the strike zone to destroy a parlay with wagers of about $4,000 — resulted in a betting loss.
