Well, the bad news for Brian is that his time on Sports on Earth is probably over. Whether it was a function of that they didn't want him or the project went under, we're not sure.
But Brian has landed on his feet, with a major article on SI.com and the current (August 18, 2014) issue of Sports Illustrated, talking about a major sports fixing story in baseball.
The article, co-authored by Lance Williams and produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting (which, for reasons like what they uncovered here, is becoming an oxymoron in the world of sports reporting these days), can be found here.
It's a fascinating read of an Internet troll which basically tweaked the radars of everyone from Vegas to Major League Baseball itself, making it seem as if MLB had it's largest actual match-fixing scheme on it's hands since the Black Sox.
Now, let me make no secret here: Like all other professional sports of importance, I do believe MLB fixes baseball games. Some of the reported calls during the Cardinals-Dodgers series made me really believe they were going to toss Tony LaRussa and the arrogant pieces of shit playing in St. Louis another one.
But this story is a little different.
A supposed handicapper was contacting people in Vegas and saying he had a friend on the inside (a 2012 call-up, Jeff Locke) who was fixing a game on September 16 between the Cubs and Pirates.
The Cubs were already eliminated a couple weeks before, the Pirates were about to be. If you know of the kinds of games people tend not to keep an eye on (which make good fixing targets), this would be one of them.
Locke wasn't going along with the script early on, but did at least concede enough that he would only go 4 1/3 innings, give up five runs, and the Pirates did lose the game 13-9.
(Locke now is a starting pitcher for the Pirates, 4-3 this year with an ERA of about 4. Actually made the All-Star team last year.)
Now, what I'm trying to do is just Cliff's Notes this so you go over to the (very well-written) article on SI.com, because the people at the Center for Investigative Reporting did a lot of work on this.
The shock waves which these reports (which were resonating in the Vegas baseball-betting community) were creating not only got MLB involved, but the NYPD. Take it from me, the NYPD doesn't screw around on something that makes money in New York...
The article relates to a handicapper who was a teammate of Locke's in Babe Ruth-level baseball, Kris Barr.
Barr now runs a website which gives tips to bettors who wish to bet on sports. (All the likely, he tries to get in league with games he believes will be fixed -- it's about the only way these handicappers can do half the garbage they do and not lose their shirts instantaneously.)
Barr tried to stay in contact with Locke, and it didn't end well.
What happened next is a story of troll-dom, revenge, what have you. It's all the things wrong with the Internet and all the things wrong with many of the people thereon. (And I don't say that statement with anything to do with sports.)
It seemed that Barr wanted Locke to suck, and, like many minor-league call-ups, he did.
Word was getting around, and Barr had far too big a mouth.
The allegations that Locke was fixing games turned out to be false, and Barr (quite correctly!) got his world turned upside down for it.
Read this article. I'm trying just to stoke the interest in it -- nothing more. (It's one of the reasons I've deliberately stayed away from a lot of the Larceny Games stuff which hasn't made mainstream media. A lot of work goes into it, and I have no intention of stealing it.)
Something tells me this ends with a bullet in Barr's head, though -- they've had to all but put a restraining order on Barr not to speak with Locke, who's been needled by Barr when his 2013 season went bad in the second half...
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