Lyin' down with dogs

 For the second time in as many weeks a Cleveland Guardians pitcher has been caught up in an online betting probe, and, like Claude Rains in "Casablanca," I am shocked, shocked. Imagine, gambling soiling our national game again. And after all that hoo-ha about the 1919 Black Sox, and also Pete Rose.

But star reliever Emmanuel Clase has been placed on leave just as starter Luis Ortiz was last week, and maybe the cases are related and maybe they aren't. All we know right now is Ortiz was flagged by "a betting integrity firm" (now there's an oxymoron for you) because of in-game prop bets on two pitches he threw back in June.

Apparently a whole pile of folks with their eyes glued to their betting apps dropped coin on those two pitches, which the Betting Integrity Firm noticed, flagged and sent on to MLB.

Me?

Right now I'm remembering an old saying: Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

By which I mean it's a lack-of-self-awareness world record for MLB to pretend to care about Betting Integrity when it's green-lighting the Oakland A's to become the Las Vegas A's a couple of years down the road. Or when it enters into a partnership with FanDuel, the official MLB online betting site.

That's a hell of a fence for baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and the gang to straddle, and perhaps only an absent self-awareness gene could make it possible. You'd think they'd want to get as far away from the gambling culture as possible, given baseball's traditionally severe stance post-Black Sox. But, nah. They're all in, as the saying goes.

There's money in them there prop bets, as the saying also kinda goes. So why not shrug at the jarring dissonance of promoting gambling while also condemning it?

And why get all righteous when you send such mixed messages to the players?

Do not bet on the game, gentlemen. That is the third rail of baseball. Betting on the game is very, very bad. Those who do it will be dealt with very, very severely.

Also, here's a sponsor patch from FanDuel. Make sure you display it prominently.

You can almost hear them saying it, can't you?

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Oh, you, um, bet.

And here are your winnings, Mr. Manfred.