Sports ticker floating in Yankee Stadium visitor’s clubhouse

O/U, Kid. (that’s Mercer not Murcer)

While Major League Baseball says it’s doing all it can to keep tabs on packages coming in and out of stadium clubhouses, always on the lookout for performance enhancers, there apparently is less interest in the betting odds being posted every afternoon on a scrolling ticker inside Yankee Stadium’s visitors’ clubhouse.

Hanging on a back wall, beyond the lockers and just above a tiny dining table where players chow down on a snack before the game, is a sports ticker with gambling lines, one after the other, on everything from the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, Sunday’s Indy 500 and - perhaps most surprisingly - MLB games.

So, with the Orioles and Yanks set to take the field in a matter of hours, the digital ticker scrolling just above the players’ heads reads, “Baltimore (-155) at New York (T9).”

...“I would look into it,” says former MLB commissioner Fay Vincent. “I would want to know what (the Yankees’) argument is for it. But I would want to know more about what it’s showing. If it’s 90% gambling odds, I would take it out.

...“Gambling is corrupting sports,” says Vincent, pointing to the recent NBA scandal involving referee Tim Donaghy, who pleaded guilty to betting on games he officiated. “Gambling has become a pervasive aspect of our lives and our culture and it shows up all across the sports world and it’s a very big concern.”