Smoke

Did I mention the NBA is dealing, again, with gambling allegations involving one of its players? Oh, right, I did. What about baseball, this time with an umpire involved? Yesterday, MLB fired umpire Pat Hoberg for placing bets through a professional gambler and then covering it up. Umpires are allowed to bet on their own, which seems plenty dangerous to me, as long as it’s not on baseball. Hoberg got in trouble for letting someone else do it. Wait, there’s more. Basically, Hoberg used an intermediary who did bet on baseball, 141 times between 2021 and 2023. Not only that, the gambler made eight bets on five games where Hoberg was either part of the umpiring crew on the field or handling replay reviews. [information from mlb.com story of 2-3-2025]. Oh, and Hoberg admits that he never told the guy to avoid baseball bets. What we have here, my friends, is a failure to communicate, as the late Strother Martin put it in “Cool Hand Luke.” To say the least. What we also have is a growing temptation that someone somewhere in professional sports will give into, with bigtime consequences. It’s just a matter of when.