The Natural is a special kind of movie that gets better every time I watch it. I was recently pondering on the dangers of sports betting, and this movie came to mind.

Gambling in The Natural

You see, there are several villains in The Natural who conspire to prevent a star athlete named Roy Hobbs from reaching his full potential as a baseball player. One of those villains is named Gus Sands, and he is a compulsive gambler. Rather than appreciating baseball for its many positive qualities, like Roy does, Gus is only interested in making a buck off of it.

In their first conversation, Roy naively assumes that Gus can only bet on the outcome of a game, who wins and loses. But Gus sets Roy straight by saying that betting is only limited by one’s imagination. He bets on each player’s hits, strikes, balls, outs, errors, and other statistics. And he’s betting against Roy, which gives him a powerful incentive to trip the player up.

From that moment on, Roy is in Gus’s crosshairs. When he loses, Gus wins. When he wins, Gus loses.

A corrupt newspaper reporter named Max Mercy is another story. Whether Roy wins or loses, Max wins because he gets a great story out of it. He doesn’t recognize what he does as gambling. And yet it is in a way because he’s betting on Roy’s goodwill and effort. He just thinks that he’s running the house and can’t lose. Roy literally shatters his echo chamber when he accidentally knocks a foul ball into Max’s private booth at the final game. Max isn’t as untouchable as he thinks, especially when the people he’s counting on don’t act the way he expects them to. We’ll return to him later.

How This Relates to Modern Sports Gambling

What does this have to do with modern sports betting? Quite a bit.

Roy Hobbs fought against the gamblers. He sought to preserve the purity of the game for the sake of children watching and his own sense of moral rectitude. He isn’t enriched because of his efforts. In fact, he has to put his entire reputation on the line to push back against the gamblers who want him to throw the final game. But he gains far more by doing what’s right than anything that can be quantified in monetary terms. Roy receives a wife and son, and he retires to a quiet life with them in the beautiful countryside where he grew up.

Gambling has exploded in the world of sports since the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates in 2018. I’m troubled that so few in power seem to be following in Roy’s footsteps as gambling encroaches on every aspect of sports. Rather than fighting the good fight and resisting this great evil, all of the major sports leagues have bent over backwards in the past few years to get a taste of the spoils.

Ordinary people are being lured into making terrible choices by clever marketing tricks and advertisements. I don’t watch sports, but I’ve heard that hardly an ad break goes by without promoting sports betting on some app or another. That’s dangerous. Sports are supposed to be a level playing field for the greatest athletes in the world to showcase their talents. Instead, they’re turning into a financial paradise for gamblers like Gus Sands to make a fortune while ordinary people pay the price with bankruptcy and familial destruction.

Making Money at a Heavy Cost

Sports leagues are betting big on gambling. And it seems to paying off handsomely for them. But I don’t think that can last forever. If an organization becomes known for profiting off of others’ misery, they will eventually lose trust and turn good people away. This seems to be a situation of short-term gains and long-term losses.

On the other hand, if sports leagues stood on principle and said no to gambling, it would hurt them for a while. They would appear to be leaving money on the table. Dirty money. In the end, though, they would succeed because they would maintain the respect of their players and viewers. Morality is worth more than a quick buck. Good guys endure hard times rather than doing what’s easy. That’s the example Roy gave.

Unlike Roy Hobbs, I fear that sports leagues are going down the path of the Judge, Gus Sands, Memo Paris, and Max Mercy. How long until players start throwing games to enrich themselves, fans start attacking players for losing them a fortune, or everyone burns out from the exhaustion of endless parlays and picks? Such things would taint sports, perhaps fatally.

The Worst Villain, and How to Defeat Him

The reason I brought up Max Mercy earlier is because I feel like he’s worse than Gus Sands. At least Gus recognizes the fact that what he’s doing is dirty and wrong. Max likes to pretend that he’s untouchable. He is the house, and the house always wins. Companies that are fighting to normalize gambling on everything may look like they’re above it all. No one can touch them because whether gamblers win or lose, they win. Addicted people will continue to bet big until they lose everything. And successful people will be shown the door to make way for more profitable suckers.

Gambling is a game with no winners, though. Just like how Roy shattered Max’s worldview with his moral stand, I think that most people will eventually see through the lies spread about the virtues of gambling. It’s not designed to make people rich; it’s designed to extract wealth from them as efficiently as possible.

When I lost my job in May and was worried about what to do, I remember receiving an email that said I could make easy money by gambling. It promised untold wealth if I learned their system and made strategic bets. I immediately deleted it. That was snake oil offered to a sick man or poisoned water to a thirsty man in a desert.

One day the house will learn the power of people who ignore it. The house’s only power is in weakness, fear, and temptation. If we are strong, confident, and resilient against sin, those who wish us harm can have no power over us to drag us down.

It cost Roy Hobbs a lot of money to do what’s right. But the ending of The Natural is remembered not because of what Roy gave up, but what he received. He won the game at great personal cost. He left the field with his head held high. And he showed that darkness has no power when it’s exposed to the light.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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