Yank Poleyeff is a longtime reader of this column, and to further prove that there’s no accounting for taste, he’s a lifelong devotee of Cleveland’s
baseball team. Poleyeff last week sent an email worthy of sharing, as it underscored the human condition and those in the highest authoritative positions eager to exploit that delicate condition for every nickel it’s worth: “I don’t do any straight gambling, thank God, but my daughter and I do put in 10 bucks for a March Madness pool. We are still very much alive, but we really needed Clemson to beat
Alabama … even though we didn’t pick either team and ordinarily would have zero interest in the outcome. “But we were glued to the screen, and every time [Alabama’s Mark] Sears hit a 3-pointer it was like a dagger to the soul. “I cannot imagine what it would be like if I had a significant amount of hard-earned (or borrowed) money riding on these games.” On the contrary, I think he has a pretty good idea of the temporary or persistent insanity to afflict one’s life on the turn of a card or a ball that rolls around and then out, be it roulette or basketball. You don’t have to be a genius, let alone hold a degree in social studies to figure out the rest. It’s a drug-pusher and client deal. The ruin to careers, families and society makes it essential to warn prospective clients, especially the young and “indestructible,” far away from such an easy and corrosive addiction. Thus I surmise that Poleyeff can, in fact, imagine the daily anxieties of daily sports bettors — daily until the inevitable losses can no longer be washed. No one, I suggest, had a better handle on this than Roger Goodell , now paid approximately $70 million per to play stupid. In 2003 he forbade Las Vegas’s Convention & Visitors Authority from placing a 30-second
Super Bowl spot promoting Vegas tourism. He knew “Vegas” and “tourism” were fool’s code for bad-odds gambling, including bets made in sports books. In 2009, Goodell sent a soul-searing letter to the Governor of Delaware to protest the state’s plan to attach the state lottery to NFL teams. It read: “By legalizing sports betting it will be in Delaware’s interest to create ever larger numbers of new gamblers as the state attempts to maximize any revenue found in this promotion. The negative social impact of additional gambling cannot be minimized in a community.” Three years later, Goodell protested New Jersey’s attempt to legalize sports gambling with, “It’s a very strongly held view in the NFL, it has been for decades, that the threat that gambling could occur in the NFL or fixing of games or that any outcome could be influenced by the outside could be very damaging to the NFL and very difficult to ever recover from.” Then, in 2017, “We still strongly oppose legalized sports gambling. The integrity of our game is No. 1. We will not compromise on that.” Now so much of the NFL’s revenue is predicated on gambling — on NFL fans and TV viewers losing their money as the only business mission — that Goodell’s NFL is the official business partner of legal bookmakers who are no less motivated for clients to lose their money as the illegal bookies who preceded them answering phones bets in boiler rooms. Thus I think Poleyeff — and now, perhaps, his daughter — have a pretty good idea on what it would be like “if I had a significant amount of hard-earned (or borrowed) money riding on these games.” Thursday afternoon I watched Marlins-Twins on the Rob Manfred-boosting MLB Network. Throughout the telecast that night’s betting lines on MLB games scrolled, over and over and over. That this MLB season, as was last season, would be vastly improved by artificial additives and removals of baseball in its unexpurgated form, remains a canard, something repeated despite evidence to the contrary. As seen on SNY on Thursday, in the first of two, Tigers-Mets at Citi Field was 3-3 in the bottom of the ninth. The Mets had a runner on second, none out. Alert the grounds crew: This one would shortly be over. Francisco Lindor then struck out, swinging. Francisco Alverez ended the ninth by grounding into a double play. That runner on second, none out, never even reached third. Bottom of the 10th, still 3-3, that new-age automatic runner — the one Michael Kay pointedly (and cleverly) calls “The Manfred Man” — on second, none out. Brett Baty — after a futile, awkward attempt to bunt the runner to third — strikes out. Ron Darling laments that bunting, at baseball’s highest levels and especially among middle-of-the-order batters, is a senselessly lost significant fundamental, as it’s either no longer called or practiced. Sterling Marte pops out to short, Jeff McNeil walks, Tyrone Taylor strikes out. Thus in consecutive innings, with none out and a man on second, the Mets couldn’t even reach third. The Tigers won, 6-3 , in 11. Fourteen pitchers totaling 21 K’s. Yep, MLB, new and vastly improved. What does it take for “fans” of a “sport”to learn ? Rangers yahoos who chanted “Rempe!” after Matt Rempe’s latest exchange of fists to the head Wednesday vs. the Devils, were equally excited when Chris Simon and Derek Boogaard swapped bare-fisted punches to the head of opponents while with the Rangers. Simon died last month , at 52. A suicide his family suspects was triggered by CTE — brain damage from being too often hit in the head. Boogaard died at 28. His post-mortem revealed CTE. What did this season’s Pirates-Marlins season opener have in common with the 1996 World Series champion Yankees? Marlins pitcher Ryan Weathers is the son of David Weathers, who pitched for the Yanks in the ’96 Series. Bucs third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes is the son if Charlie Hayes, the Yanks’ third baseman who caught the final out vs. the Braves. NCAA Tournament notepad: Can’t get this one out of my head:
Arizona is up five, deep into the second half when Dayton’s Kobe Ellis leads a three-on-two fast break. But he pulls up to take — and miss — a 3. He then fouls an Arizona player on the other end. Arizona goes up seven, wins by 10.
basketball 2024. Why not identify NCAA loophole con artistry for what it is? Instead of “graduate transfer portal” call it “master’s degree transfer portal.” Now that Illinois’s basketball season has ended, star Terrence Shannon faces a rape charge from December. Brings to mind Michigan State guard and future NBA coach Scott Skiles, who had to report to serve a sentence for DWI — right after Michigan State was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament. So LSU star Angel Reese plays with conspicuously long false eyelashes, makeup and strikes come-hither poses for Sports Illustrated in teeny-weeny bikinis, then last week, after LSU’s loss to Iowa , she complained that she has been “sexualized.” Well, alrighty, then!