Bet On It: Gambling Ads Threaten Baseball

By Russ Walsh

Special from the IBWAA

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Note - This article was written by Russ Walsh and published by the IBWAA in their newsletter, Here's the Pitch, on September 17, 2025. The article is used with permission from the author. ***

Near the end of the 1959 major league baseball season, an obscure journeyman pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies, Humberto Robinson, foiled an attempt by gamblers to fix a baseball game.

On September 22, the Phillies were scheduled to play the Cincinnati Reds in a twilight night doubleheader. Both teams were playing out the string in losing seasons. Robinson was scheduled to pitch the second game. The night before the game, Robinson was approached by Harold (Boomie) Friedman in the bar of the Warwick Hotel on 17th Street in Philadelphia.

Friedman was the part-owner of the Moon-Glo Supper Club in Philly and was well-known to Robinson and the other ballplayers who frequented his club. Boomie followed the pitcher into the bathroom and offered Robinson $1,500 to throw the game. Robinson, visibly upset according to witnesses, soon left the bar.

The next morning, Friedman came to Robinson’s room at the Rittenhouse Hotel and threw what he said was a $300 “down payment” at him. The money landed in Robinson’s water basin. Robinson turned him down flat, told him to fish his money out of the sink and leave.

At the ballpark, Robinson told his teammate, veteran pitcher, Rubén Gómez, about the bribe attempt. He said, “I am going to win this game.” Robinson went out and pitched one of the better games of his career, hurling seven innings of three-hit, two-run ball and picking up the win in a 3-2 decision. He later said, “I love baseball too much to take a bribe.”

Gomez reported what Robinson told him to Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer, who in turn informed general manager John Quinn, who then contacted baseball Commissioner Ford Frick. Eventually, Robinson testified at Friedman’s trial, where Boomie was found guilty and sentenced to 2-5 years in prison. His lawyer argued that his client would have to be awfully dumb to try and fix a game between two bad teams at the end of a season by bribing a nondescript pitcher, but the jury convicted Boomie anyway. Commissioner Frick praised Robinson for “nipping the issue in the bud.”

I relate this story to illustrate one point: Gambling makes you stupid. Specifically, gambling on baseball makes you stupid.

Baseball’s recent embrace of sports betting, in my view risks, ahem, gambling with the games’ integrity. I take this position not as a prude (I like to lay down a few bucks at the racetrack now and again), but as a fan of baseball. Historically, baseball has taken very strict stances against gambling.

The 1919 Black Sox scandal, which resulted in the banning of eight players for game fixing, is the most famous example of baseball’s hard line. In 1924, the New York Giants’s Jimmy O’Connell and Cozy Dolan got lifetime bans for trying to bribe Phillies shortstop Heinie Sand with 500 bucks. Sand turned them in. Pete Rose had to die and get an intervention from a U.S. president to get his lifetime ban for betting on games lifted.

Now, however, gambling on the games is not only possible, but encouraged. The baseball fan watching a game on TV is exposed to as many as fifty ads for gambling during a single game. Perhaps even worse, the local radio and television announcers frequently interrupt the game with the odds on a particular hitter “getting a hit in this at bat” or similar types of in-game gambling opportunities.

What better way to tempt the at-home viewer than the engaging voice of the Phillies television announcer Tom McCarthy encouraging fans to lay down a prop bet?

The Responsible Gambling Council has indicated that sports betting is increasingly shaping how people watch and engage with games, with some fans prioritizing their bets over their favorite teams. This shift is particularly evident in younger viewers, who may be drawn to gambling as a central part of their sports experience rather than a secondary activity.

According to The Gambling Clinic, the relentless marketing of sports betting can make it seem like everyone is gambling, pressuring casual fans to participate just to keep up. The fear of missing out drives many to place bets, not necessarily because they enjoy gambling, but because the industry has normalized it as part of fandom.

At least one man is sounding the alarm. Vin Bickler, a self-described recovering gambler, who mans the gambling hotline in New Jersey says, "The advertising is just like the old beer ads and the cigarette ads that were on TV for years. It's the same situation. People are being sucked into thinking that it's glamorous, thinking they're going to win, and they don't win. In the end, they lose everything."

And then, of course, there is the potential for players being corrupted. Today’s salaries might seem to preclude a repetition of the Black Sox days, but the evidence is that money always has the potential to corrupt. Last year, San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Mercano was banned for life for gambling violations. At the same time, Athletics pitcher Michael Kelly and four minor leaguers received one-year suspensions for gambling.

This year, of course, pitcher Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians was placed on leave. Investigators seemed to be focused on corruption related to “prop bets”, those in-game bets are being encouraged by MLB advertisers. Then, just as his name was being bandied about as a prime target for the July trade deadline, Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase—the most prominent name yet to be connected to illegal gambling activities—was suspended by MLB. His suspension undoubtedly impacted this year’s playoff race, with one possibly game-changing player suddenly removed from the trade market.

Bad for the game. Bad for the players. Bad for the fans.

No effort by baseball or state or federal government agencies is going to stop gambling. But by being a major advertising outlet for these ubiquitous gambling sites, MLB is complicit in destroying its own product and endangering the very fans they court.

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Russ Walsh is a retired teacher, writer, baseball coach, and long-suffering Phillies fan, who writes for the Society for American Baseball Research and has recently begun posting his own newsletter about baseball history called The Faith of a Phillies Fan on Substack.