Gamblers Know Retro Punishment Doesn’t Change Scores

Bobby Thomson’s death today illustrates a point Barry Bonds and Reggie Bush would enjoy hearing. Punishment after the fact for sports cheaters does little to alter what happened; as gamblers well know, once the final score is confirmed it’s time to settle up and move on to the next game.

Thomson hit the home run that lifted the New York Giants past the Brooklyn Dodgers to the 1951 National League pennant, a blast famously labeled “the shot heard ’round the world.” It came to light years later that the Giants were using an intricate system including a telescope to steal signs from the Dodgers catchers, cheating to give Thomson knowledge of what pitch he’d face.

But trying to go back and alter record books has little effect on the collective memory of sports fans. Victories can be voided and trophies reclaimed, as happened recently to USC due to Bush having received illegal payments, but what occurred on the field is what matters to bookies and fans.

Sports betting patrons know that once a game is ruled final, wagers will be honored based on that score, and any attempt to rearrange the results for posterity won’t turn a losing play into a winner. Likewise, nobody can unremember Barry Bonds hitting 73 home runs, or Reggie Bush leading USC to a championship.

Sports officials may try to discourage cheating by publicizing offenders, but they only create messes like the effort to penalize steroid users when the line between users and honest players was ignored by the authorities for years. Diligence in catching cheating before or as it occurs is the only option for sports enforcers; there is no way to put “the shot heard ’round the world” back into the cannon from which it came.

Vanessa Williams can be stripped of her title as Miss America, but bookies and gamblers, the ultimate realists, know she’s still one gorgeous woman, and that’s all that matters.