Rob Manfred, Gambling, and Rearticulating “Baseball’s Best Interests”

Abstract

For Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, gambling’s relationship with baseball has been a top priority. His frequent attention to the subject aligns with the history of a commissionership that, since its creation in the wake of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, has prioritized keeping baseball at a safe distance from the negative associations of gambling. In direct contrast with his predecessors, however, Manfred has spent his tenure not denigrating but justifying the union of baseball and gambling. This essay argues that Manfred’s support of gambling comes at the expense of MLB ballplayers who, since sports gambling’s relegalization, have been subject to unprecedented quantities of personal threats. Manfred’s insistence that partnerships with sportsbooks and other gambling companies help protect baseball’s competitive integrity clashes with the presence of threats to ballplayers and a growing list of public gambling-related scandals in the sport. To track the public comments Commissioner Manfred makes is to see the path of gambling in baseball shift from immoral incursion to essential partner. Manfred’s communication about the intensifying integration of gambling into baseball demonstrate that “the best interests of baseball” are being deemed worth the risk to professional ballplayers.