Columnist Dean Juipe: Pro leagues still wary of gambling

It's time for those pompous elitists who run pro sports leagues to get off their high horse when it comes to legitimate, above-the-board gambling and how they treat the country's gaming moguls and communities.

We all know the dangers of mixing sports and gambling, of course.

Pete Rose crossed the line, placing bets on baseball games as he did when he managed the Cincinnati Reds. Given the warnings all athletes receive about such things, the lifetime ban from the sport Rose incurred for violating the rules still seems appropriate today.

Likewise, as easy as it is to be forgiving toward Shoeless Joe Jackson, the fact that he knew seven of his 1919 Chicago White Sox teammates were involved in attempting to throw that year's World Series arguably makes him just as guilty as the culprits themselves.

Restricting athletes from betting on the games and sports they participate in is one thing. The limitations that are in place protect the sanctity of the sports and are perfectly legitimate.

Yet organized sports, collectively, are stuck in the Dark Ages in several other aspects of their relationship with gambling. They remain at odds, so to speak, with an industry that has emerged from the back rooms to take a prominent place on Wall Street.

It's no longer 1950. Bugsy Siegel is dead and the mob that once had its finger in every Las Vegas pie has, over the course of time, been replaced by the corporate set.

Nonetheless, sports still approaches the gambling industry as if it's a plague.

Examples abound, including a supposed reluctance to ever place a major professional sports franchise in this city simply because of its gambling motif. That's absurd.

So was a NBA and NHL edict that impacted Caesars Palace for a time, while it was owned by ITT. When ITT bought Caesars and, later, Madison Square Garden, the two leagues -- which have teams that play at the Garden -- forced ITT to command Caesars to take down all its odds relating to NBA or NHL games.

It was hard to tell what was crazier: the insisted-upon restrictions or the fact ITT agreed to comply. Either way, for a couple of years Caesars couldn't take bets on any pro basketball or hockey games and it's difficult to see what anyone gained by the alleged purifying process.

Similarly, the Fiesta casino in North Las Vegas does not post NBA lines because its owner, the Maloof family, owns the Sacramento Kings.

Now, this week, comes news from Detroit that the owner of that city's Tigers and Red Wings have a problem brewing as a result of gambling. Michael and Marian Ilitch own the teams and Mrs. Ilitch just acquired 17 percent of a Circus Circus casino that is being built on the Detroit River. She also has an interest in a Native American casino that is scheduled to be built later this year in northern Michigan.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has already expressed his unhappiness and the threat is very much in the air that the Ilitch family may have to divest itself of either its gaming interests or its teams.

How Neanderthal.

Next thing you know, baseball will be banning retired superstars like Willie Mays and (the late) Mickey Mantle from serving as greeters at a New Jersey casino.

Oh, it already did.

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