You Can Bet on It

According to the Associated Press, bettors in New Jersey wagered north of a billion dollars on sports during September. No wonder the Cubs and White Sox want to throw out the welcome mat for now-legal bet makers. What I fail to understand is how baseball can ignore its past while trying to cash in on the future. You would think—at least I do—that, at some point, the powers that be would address the Black Sox Scandal. A pity no one working in the office of Commissioner Rob Manfred is good at irony. Because it’s nothing short not ironic that Sox fans can bet on their team while Buck Weaver, a player who didn’t bet on his team, went through life labelled as a cheat. Weaver spent his post-Sox life in Chicago and died there in 1956. Later, two nieces he helped raise, Pat Anderson and Bette Scanlan, tried to clear their uncle’s name, but Manfred and predecessor Bud Selig couldn’t be bothered. Anderson and Scanlan are gone now, just as Manfred and Selig will be one day, too. The odds are pretty good, though, that baseball’s hypocrisy will remain in place, impervious to irony and mercy alike.