Gamblin' with the game

 It was so much simpler in the day, if you were Organized Baseball. You posted a warning, big as you could make it, in every clubhouse up and down the food chain. You cast Pete Rose into outer darkness for consorting with gamblers (and betting on the Cincinnati Reds while he was their manager, and maybe before).

The shadow of racist old Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who made Joe Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox his pitiless object lesson in taking on the gangster fixers, still shaded baseball's attitudes about gambling and gamblers.

And now?

Now it's the shadow of online betting services, gambling kiosks outside ancient ballparks and moving venerable franchises to, ye gods, Las Vegas, that shades those attitudes. 

The erstwhile Pastime that for decades stood foursquare against gambling has now fully embraced it, and for the usual reason: Because it represents a gushing revenue stream. And these days not even a tradition as bedrock as baseball's will stand against the insatiable pull of Even More Money.

So MLB now has Official Betting Partners, and the old strictures are fodder for archeologists.  Place a bet on the Cubs right outside Wrigley Field? Sure, why not! What were once Connie Mack's A's moving to the capitol of American gambling? You bet!

Get it? "You bet"?

It's all good, it seems. Except ...

Except chickens have an odd way of coming home to roost. And, boy howdy, does MLB have a particularly nasty one on its hands right now.

You might have missed it, maybe you didn't, but a few days ago the interpreter for newly-minted Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani was fired by the club over $4.5 million in wire transfers sent from Ohtani's account to a shady bookmaking operation into which the feds have been sniffing. Even worse, Ohtani's story on this has already changed once.

First it was reported he was paying off the interpreter's debts. Then it was, oh, wait, the interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, had actually stolen the money.

And if you're thinking here this smells like Mizuhara being scapegoated to protect Ohtani, well, your olfactories are in fine working order. That's exactly what it smells like. And now MLB has a hell of a scandal on its hands, and says it will look into the whole mess.

And if MLB discovers it was actually Ohtani using his interpreter as a beard to place his own bets? What does baseball commissioner Rob Manfred do then, considering Ohtani is the best player in the game?

Especially when baseball virtually guaranteed something like this would happen by climbing into bed with gamblers to begin with?

My guess is the "investigation" will make Mizuhara the fall guy, and either exonerate Ohtani or find a way not to banish him for life. The alternative is unthinkable, because it would force the game either to re-evaluate its cozy relationship with gambling, or be viewed as a farce not to be taken seriously anymore.

All I know is this: Somewhere Pete Rose is laughing. 

No, not laughing. Saying, "What the (bleep)?"

Worst part about that?

America's saying it with him.