The proliferation of largely legalized sports gambling has helped bring sordid, behind-closed-door, conniving characters to the forefront, notably in an NBA bombshell that involves Mafia families, rigged card-shuffling machines and X-ray cameras. We watch movies and read books and so we are familiar with the outline of these stories, of sharks taking advantage of marks.
The baseball scandal that became public Sunday does not carry the same type of heist flair or, frankly, the same kind of brainpower.
Let’s list the alleged missteps of Emmanuel Clase, the Guardians closer charged by federal authorities in a multi-year gambling plot. This is not a list of apparent moral failings — like his alleged involvement in the scheme that culminated with a 23-page, unsealed indictment — but the failings to properly carry out the alleged plan, the mistakes that helped alert authorities that something was amiss.
1. Prosecutors allege that bettors placed “over a hundred” straight bets and parlays on Clase’s pitches. Granted, the indictment does not run through the results of each bet, but only one — in which the Dodgers’ Andy Pages chased a pitch outside of the strike zone to ruin a parlay with wagers of about $4,000 — resulted in a betting loss.
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