Culture
After MLB's reckoning on sports betting offenders, what can leagues do to enforce the rules?
By Rustin Dodd, Stephen J. Nesbitt and Cody Stavenhagen
When Major League Baseball announced a lifetime ban for San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano on Tuesday, the particulars of his wrongdoing were laid out in specific detail: 387 bets placed at legal sportsbooks, 231 wagers related to MLB and 25 on the Pittsburgh Pirates, his employer at the time. He allegedly bet more than $150,000 on baseball.
Marcano was not a particularly savvy bettor; according to MLB, he won just 4.3 percent of his wagers, most of them parlays. But the copious facts released by the league on Tuesday — the same day Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s ex-interpreter, pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud — underscore a recurring theme as the sports world grapples with more blowback from the precipitous rise of legalized gambling in the United States.
In a majority of states, it’s never been easier to place a bet. But in a world of legal online sportsbooks and smartphones, it’s also never been easier for leagues to track the betting and, as they see it, protect the competitive integrity of the sport. In addition to Marcano’s lifetime ban, MLB announced year-long suspensions for Oakland A’s pitcher Michael Kelly and three minor leaguers — the Padres’ Jay Groome, the Philadelphia Phillies’ José Rodríguez and the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Andrew Saalfrank. All four were found to have placed bets on MLB while in the minors.
The announcement came, according to MLB, after an investigation that included interviews and cooperation from the league’s sportsbook partners, a process that offers a window into the monitoring system in place at legal sportsbooks. That system includes outside firms like U.S. Integrity, a monitoring service that works with major sports leagues and sportsbooks.
“As betting becomes more acceptable and widespread, having these players getting in the sports betting market is dangerous,” said John Wolohan, a sports law professor at Syracuse. “It’s really uncomfortable for the leagues. That said, the leagues are in bed with the DraftKings and the FanDuels of the world anyway, and casinos, so in some ways they’re taking the money and hoping things don’t blow up in their face.”
While leagues like MLB increasingly court gaming partners, they have attempted to implement safeguards to deter athletes, coaches and team or league employees from gambling on their respective sports.
When a bettor — any bettor, for that matter — logs into a betting app, their location is immediately pinned by integrity analysts within a matter of feet. Global positioning is one way of ensuring no athlete can place bets from within a team facility without being caught. There are other methods, too. Social media is monitored closely, and companies use real-time data and proprietary algorithms to monitor betting trends and flag any unusually large line movement. If a troubling trend is spotted, it is generally sent to a person on an investigative team who will look deeper into the matter.
If a case rises to a higher degree of suspicion, a monitoring service alerts both sportsbooks and the league. In some cases, sportsbooks have internal teams watching for abnormal line movement and betting behavior.
U.S Integrity is now part of a joint venture called ProhiBet working to use encryption technology that will prevent athletes, coaches and league officials from placing bets in the first place. In May 2023, the company launched a tip hotline to allow people within the sports world to report gambling suspicions.
U.S. Integrity did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
In the case of Marcano and the other suspended players, MLB said a legal sports betting operator alerted the league in March of past betting activities from accounts connected to major- or minor-league players, none of whom were found to have played in a game on which they bet. A person briefed on the league’s investigation told The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, “This information came to light as a result of a legal sportsbook’s new proactive measures to enforce their policies,” though they did not detail the changes.
Peter Bayer, a former A’s minor league pitcher, went public last year saying he’d been ruled ineligible by MLB since 2021 for betting on baseball. League investigators found that Bayer placed over 100 baseball-related wagers in 2020, including at least 12 on his organization, and accused him of attempting to obstruct the league’s investigation.
Bayer’s bets were first discovered by the Colorado Division of Gaming, which identified him as a prohibited bettor and reported his bets to MLB.
From the perspective of Dan Hartman, who was director of the Colorado Division of Gaming at the time, cases such as Bayer’s are a testament to the collaboration between regulators, law enforcement and leagues.
“We’re not gonna stop incidents like this,” Hartman said last year, but proper oversight allows leagues to address them.
A player placing legal bets under their own name may come with obvious consequences.
“Honestly, in the years I’ve been involved in this, I see it time and time again,” said Steve Paine, co-founder of the advisory firm Evolve Sports Integrity. “It’s those basic checks. You think, if they were trying to do wrongdoing, they’d go out of their way to really hide it — use pseudonyms and fake accounts. But they don’t. They just bet in their own name.”
Leagues and integrity companies, however, are also working to eliminate more complicated occurrences, such as an athlete placing bets through a friend or family member.
In 2020, an independent regulatory commission found former Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge guilty of giving his brother inside information about a potential transfer to Sevilla FC. In 2021, Atlético Madrid defender Kieran Trippier served a brief ban for allegedly tipping off friends to his transfer destination. More recently on U.S. soil, it was revealed one of the more than two dozen Iowa and Iowa State athletes penalized for gambling-related offenses used a FanDuel account under his mother’s name.
Last spring, Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon was fired just days after U.S. Integrity flagged suspicious wagering on an Alabama–LSU baseball game made in Cincinnati by a man named Bert Neff. The incident produced a black eye for the NCAA and has since led to criminal charges against Neff, but it also served as a prime example of the sports-gambling machine’s monitoring process working properly and swiftly.
“The system worked,” Louisiana Gaming Control Board chair Ronnie Johns said last year of the Alabama case. “We have to protect the integrity of sports wagering or the system will crater.”
It’s not difficult to imagine a scheme evading the system for some time. Especially if an account isn’t in the name of the prohibited bettor, or someone with the same last name, or if it makes only modest and unalarming wagers. But as time passes sportsbooks, regulators and betting-integrity companies are becoming more streamlined, sophisticated and savvy to new ways bettors are trying to game the system.
“I think it’s always going to be a bit of a cat-and-mouse scenario,” Paine said. “People who are trying to place bets that they’re not supposed to place, they’ll always look for methods to try and disguise that — whether it be betting through family members, or betting through using other third parties, or trying to use technology like VPNs to make bets appear like they’re coming from another country. All of those things exist.”
But the technology used to monitor such activity is not rudimentary. There are ways to identify even those who attempt to find loopholes.
“If they’re using the same iPhone that they used to place the bets when they placed it in their own name two years ago, the companies can find links,” Paine said. “It’s not just the account name. It’s, ‘Was it your home router that you came through when you placed bets? Was it the same device?’ There’s lots of technical data points these sophisticated companies can use to detect fraud.”
A problem leagues face: These safeguards only apply to legally placed bets, not wagers placed through illegal sportsbooks, like in the case of Mizuhara, who admitted to stealing more than $17 million from Ohtani to pay off gambling debts. “Those you’ll never catch,” Wolohan said. “Or you shouldn’t catch, unless there’s a criminal investigation into the bookie.” Mizuhara’s case stemmed from a criminal investigation into the bookmaker believed to be at the center of a Southern California-based gambling ring, Mathew Bowyer.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement Tuesday spoke to the importance of the league’s continued collaboration with regulators and sportsbooks.
“Since the (2018) Supreme Court decision opened the door to legalized sports betting, we have worked with licensed sports betting operators and other third parties to put ourselves in a better position from an integrity perspective through the transparency that a regulated sports betting system can provide,” Manfred said. “MLB will continue to invest heavily in integrity monitoring, educational programming and awareness initiatives with the goal of ensuring strict adherence to this fundamental rule of our game.”
Paine led the UK Gambling Commission’s sports-betting intelligence unit before co-founding a betting-integrity firm that advises the governing bodies of several European and international sports leagues. He recalled hearing an official for an international federation discussing the overarching gambling issue. The official, Paine said, mused that the league could do everything right, and be prepared for every possibility, yet still there would be a small number of bad actors who’d disobey the rules — no matter how robust the education, no matter how diligent the enforcement.
“You can’t prevent everything bad from ever happening,” Paine said. “But when it does, can you identify it? And can you tackle it swiftly, fairly and robustly? I think that’s the key. It’s unrealistic to think any sport is immune to this. Put the right safeguards in place. Take it seriously. Invest in it properly. Work with the stakeholders. And when bad stuff does happen, be prepared for it and tackle it. I think that’s what (MLB) have done here.
“No one wants a big news story like this, but they’ve identified it and dealt with it. I don’t see what stronger message they can send out.”
(Top photo of Marcano: George Kubas / Diamond Images via Getty Images)
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself — or have a lasting influence on an author. With that in mind, this week’s literary geography quiz highlights the final stops for five authors after a life of writing. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
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