The Old Familiar Feeling

That Old Familiar Feeling

by Don

2/15/06



            This is our first article for the hockey section of AverageJoeSports, and it's unfortunate that is has to be on a topic that is likely to leave a bad taste in some people's mouths, but I felt like I had to talk about it.



            So the NHL managed to get through the negotiating and the season is well underway. Thank goodness for that. However, the season is just about at the halfway point and a new scandal has arisen - an investigation of an alleged sports gambling ring involving an associate coach of the Phoenix Coyotes and possibly one of the greatest players in the history of the game.

            Is it possible that Wayne Gretzky is more involved in this than he is letting on in the investigation surrounding Rick Tocchet? There are plenty of hockey fans out there who just don't want to believe that "The Great One" could possibly be directly involved, "He said he has never bet on sports and never will so we believe him." Okay, let's assume he hasn't. It's already starting to surface that his wife may be heavily involved in sports gambling, including a wager of $75K on the Super Bowl alone. Could your wife be gambling on this level and you be blind to any of it going on? Does knowledge of the betting on sports by a spouse matter? Yes, Gretzky has a million-zillion dollars and a mere $75K wouldn't seem like so much to them. But overall, it's still stinks to high heaven.



            With the NHL still hurting in attendance and TV ratings from a strike that cancelled an entire season last year, having something like this come down with the largest living legend of the game involved, even on the periphery, is just something that doesn't sit well with sports purists.

            I'm not the biggest hockey fan ever, but I can imagine what a lot of folks north of Minnesota are probably feeling right now. It's the same uncertainty I felt when they started in with the stories of a gambling investigation involving one of my favorite baseball players from my younger years by the name of Pete Rose.



            When the whispers in the press about sports betting came around about "Charlie Hustle," I was in complete denial. Then, when it came out that he had indeed bet on sports, "but never on baseball," I was still on his side. "Hey, he didn't bet on baseball, so it's okay. He couldn't possibly have had any insider information on games outside his own sport." But then, it came out that he had bet on baseball, but NEVER on his own team . . .THEN . . .okay he did bet on baseball, but never AGAINST his own team. I wanted so badly to still be on his side, but then it was pointed out to me - Did he bet on his team every day? He's admitted that he didn't. So on the days he didn't bet on the Reds, isn't that effectively betting against them? How often did he, as a coach, decide to leave a starter in longer than he should have on those days when he bet on them to try to get the win? Or for those games he didn't bet on, let a guy die on the mound to save the bullpen for the next day when he knew he would have a wager down? Where does it stop?

            Michael Jordan, some of you may remember, left the game of basketball for a couple of years after his father died. Some said that it was the weight of that loss that needed to be removed from his shoulders. Others, mostly around Chicago, said it had more to do with huge debts from golf, poker and other gambling debts MJ had amassed which he wanted to resolve so as to thwart any possible suspicion of point shaving that so many times seems to go hand-in-hand with these sorts of debts. Again, this is all just rumor and conjecture by those outside the boundaries of the game, but I know that the championships Da Bulls won after his return, didn't feel quite as good as the ones before he left.

            So, getting back to Wayne: Was he involved? I don't know. But that itch that can't be reached right in the middle of the back is starting to creep up again. We won't know, until the investigation is complete, but I fear that this is liable to get a lot more ugly before it's over with.

Don is the AJS Editor-in-Chief and Website Administrator

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