Let's Celebrate The Texas Pokemon Gambling Scandal

I’ve never watched an episode of Young Sheldon deliberately, though I have seen every episode as a result of my daughters both deciding they were going to view every episode approximately 147 times and we all live in the same house.

It’s a good show.

And one particular storyline jumped out at me while they watched. At the time — this is about two years or so ago — I laughed because it involved gambling and was basically a blueprint for what the sweepstakes model was (and still is, though, you know).

Basically, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the names, Meemaw was running an illegal casino out of her east Texas laundromat, and Georgie’s big idea was instead of paying winners cash, give them stuffed animals. Then buy the stuffed animals back from them.

See? Nobody’s winning money gambling. They’re winning teddy bears. And then, in a completely separate transaction that has nothing to do with anything, they sell those teddy bears for money.

Brilliant.

Now replace “teddy bears” with “Pokemon cards,” and “east Texas” with “south Texas,” and that’s exactly what actually happened in real life. Allegedly.

Last Wednesday, Bexar County deputies raided seven suspected illegal gambling operations in the San Antonio area. According to Sheriff Javier Salazar, some were handing out Pokémon and sports cards as prizes, which winners could then sell for cash at another business. At one location, that business was right next door.

Win here, cash out there, please respect the very important wall between the two.

“We know what they’re doing. They’re trying to skirt the law. It doesn’t make it any less illegal,” Salazar said, according to News4 San Antonio.

Sure, but it makes it a lot more fun.

The scoundrel score

Listen: I don’t know about you, but I’m attracted to the scoundrels, the Elmore Leonard characters who are “bad guys” but not really bad guys.

Now to be fair, I know nothing about the 23 people who were arrested. They could all be serial killers for all I know, or they might just be … a bunch of meemaws. They were described as being part of “organized crime,” but that just might mean “a bunch of guys who probably watched the same storyline on Young Sheldon.”

And if they watched the storyline play out, Meemaw ended up seeing the whole operation get shut down and having to do 140 hours of community service, so, risk/reward isn’t so bad in that universe.

Anyway, scoundrels: Isn’t this sorta-kinda why we all love gambling to begin with? Gambling used to be on the hush-hush and in backrooms and with people who you definitely would not trust with your teddy bears.

Today, gambling is loud and legal and everywhere and populated by people who I would absolutely let babysit my kids (just put ‘em in front of the TV, it’s fine).

Point being, the allure of olde-time gambling is 100% tied to characters who are, in equal measure, dangerous and dangerously smart, and when I see a story like this make the rounds, I do not tsk-tsk it. I celebrate it.

And sure, I know I’m probably romanticizing something that probably wasn’t all that romantic to begin with. We only hear about the fun and funny and sweet and nice and clever stories of yesteryear, and less about shooting your uncle and stealing his ill-gotten gambling gains.

But I do miss the idea that gambling was something in which you had to know a guy if you wanted to do it. And that guy had a guy, and there was always another guy that no matter what his given name was, his nickname was “Big.” But if he was really big, his nickname was “Tiny,” and …

And now “the guy” is an app on my phone, and it’s asking me to fill out a customer satisfaction survey.

Gambling is very easy to do these days, and I appreciate it. It’s easier to lose a parlay from my toilet than to have to go to the bank and get cash and put it in an envelope and hand it over to Tiny. So this is good. Progress. But I’m never going to tell my grandchildren about the time I successfully reset my password on BetRivers.

So yes, that’s why I applaud a room full of people feeding money into slots, winning Pokémon cards, and walking next door to sell them. That’s fun. I want to have a beer with everyone in that room.

Which — if you’ll pardon my Texan — is why I reckon the writers gave Meemaw an illegal casino as a storyline. That’s a fine mixture of sweet and saucy. Come on — a laundromat, some slot machines, a pile of teddy bears, and I’m standing outside the family room watching TV for 22 minutes.