PHILADELPHIA – For the better part of 90 minutes Tuesday, July 14, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and MLB Players' ****** ociation interim executive director Bruce Meyer laid out their alternative visions of reality, staking out opposite poles on a salary cap, revenue sharing, and perhaps the color of the sky as the sport grinds toward a Dec. 1 owners' lockout.
Yet there's one subject in which they were in full agreement: If sports gambling and prediction markets are legal, they most certainly should get a piece of it.
Meyer, in his first major press briefing since Tony Clark's February resignation, acknowledged that widespread legalized sports betting has created "an environment where our players are subject to constant threats, harassment. Always has been, but I think the players will probably say it's reached a new low."
Yet in late April, the MLBPA struck a long-term licensing agreement with Hard Rock Bet, which it said integrates "MLB player name, image, and likeness directly into the core of the betting experience across Hard Rock Bet's digital and retail platforms throughout North America."
That would seem to put the union at odds with one of its core principles, protecting player safety and welfare. Yet both league and union have adopted a mindset that could also serve as the ****** les of a '90s album: Everybody else is doing it, so why can't we?