“Nobody pays attention” was Fay Vincent’s comment that prompted me to write this column.

The former baseball commissioner was talking about the baseball writers whom I characterize as having trouble or no interest covering anything that doesn’t take place on the field. He was talking about them because he had received a call a day earlier from a Florida writer who called him with questions about Jeffrey Loria’s attempt to sell the Miami Marlins.

Despite interest from two groups who have been publicly identified and others who Commissioner Rob Manfred has said are interested, Loria has been unsuccessful in finding a buyer at his price and reportedly has been forced to lower his price from $1.6 billion to $1.3 billion and may have to lower it still more.

One of the questions the reporter asked Vincent was about Loria’s seemingly eye-popping billion-plus asking price. The Los Angeles Dodgers sold for $2 billion several years ago, but the Marlins are not in the Dodgers’ talent or economic class.

Vincent said he asked the reporter if he had followed talk about the possibility that Congress will adopt a law permitting betting on professional sports.

“You’re telling me something that hasn’t come up,” Vincent said the reporter replied. “No one has said anything about that. Loria hasn’t said anything.”

Vincent, however, has said plenty. He has been taking about the issue for months, if not years, and he was quoted about it extensively in a column that appeared in this space last Feb. 12.

He might have started talking about it after Adam Silver, commissioner of the National Basketball Association, wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in The New York Times in November 2014. In his column Silver advocated legalized betting on sports events. He also noted that the NBA supported a sports betting bill in 1992.

His reasoning: “…despite legal restrictions, sports betting is widespread. It is a thriving underground business that operates free from regulation or oversight. Because there are few legal options available, those who wish to bet resort to illicit bookmaking operations and shady offshore websites.”

In addition, though Silver didn’t mention it, legal betting would not only benefit states financially but it would also produce revenue for the teams, which naturally are the attraction for bettors.

Rob Manfred certainly had that benefit in mind last February when he addressed a business conference and revealed a position on legalized gambling no previous baseball commissioner ever uttered. Manfred said he was monitoring the issue and “re-thinking” MLB’s position opposing betting on baseball.

“There is this buzz out there in terms of people feeling that there may be an opportunity here for additional legalized sports betting,” the commissioner told his audience. Betting on games, he added, “can be a form of fan engagement. It can fuel the popularity of a sport.”

Is Manfred so concerned about the future of baseball and fans’ interest in it that he is ready to sell out to the gamblers and entice them with the prospect of betting on games?

“Sports betting happens,” he told the conference attendees. “Whether it’s legalized here or not, it’s happening out there. So I think the question for sports is really, ‘Are we better off in a world where we have a nice, strong, uniform federal regulation of gambling that protects the integrity of sports, provides sports with the tools to ensure that there is integrity in the competition, or are we better off closing our eyes to that and letting it go on as illegal gambling? And that’s a debatable point.”

Two months after expressing his new views on sports gambling, Manfred added to his changed outlook.

Talking with a group of reporters in April, Manfred said MLB would be open to consider Las Vegas as a home city if a major league team wanted to relocate. The Oakland Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays play in undesirable parks and have had trouble securing public funds for new parks.

“If we were looking at relocation, Las Vegas would be on the list,” Manfred said, departing from baseball’s long-held position on the country’s gambling mecca.

The city’s position, however, has changed dramatically. The NFL’s Oakland Raiders are scheduled to move to Las Vegas in 2020, and the city has gained a National Hockey expansion franchise for 2018.

Meanwhile, the Marlins are up for sale for $1.3 billion. Do you sense a connection? I mean, the Marlins, under existing practice, are not a $1.3 billion franchise.

For one example, they have probably the worst television deal among the 30 teams. They are said to receive $20 million a year from Fox Sports Florida. Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins’ owner, made that deal several years ago because he was desperate to get cash to pay off debts. He has said privately that he can’t get out of the deal so he’s stuck with it while other teams are getting many millions more.

Loria still has a lot of debt, and a $1.3 billion sale price would take care of it nicely. But why would anyone want to pay that much for a team that has been so poorly run? That’s what Vincent explained to the Miami Herald reporter early last week, but as of Saturday’s Herald, the explanation had not appeared.

Vincent believes baseball will join the NBA in lobbying Congress to adopt a law that will permit betting on sports events. He thinks it could happen as soon as the next two or three years.

“You have to start with the proposition that the American public is totally convulsed by gambling,” he said in a telephone interview Saturday. “The gambling business is large across the country, extraordinarily large. It ranges from the state-run Lotto’s to DraftKings.”

DraftKings is a major source of fantasy sports betting, having merged with its biggest competitor, FanDuel. They have benefited from a major, if questionable, ruling by Congress that declared fantasy sports to be games of skill and not gambling.

Given that thinking, the leagues may actually have a chance to get what they want from Congress. But back to Vincent’s explanation:

“I read in a reputable newspaper that the amount of money bet world-wide annually is $400 billion. If you say the U.S. share is 10 percent, you’re talking about $40 billion being bet on sports in the United States and I’m assuming a large amount of that is bet on professional sports, and a very large percentage of that is the NFL, which we know is a monster gambling operation because it has the injuries in the paper every week so gamblers can figure out what the spread should be and what the odds should be.

“I couple that with the NBA’s open affirmation of an effort to legalize betting and Silver saying our owners want to share in the revenue that’s produced by betting because we’re the ones generating the revenue and illegal people are benefiting enormously and we think that should be our business.

“It comes down to when will this change take place or will it take place. I say it’s inevitable because there’s so much money involved Congress will say let’s tax it and get some of that 40 billion dollars. With the NBA and others pushing for it, it seems to me the issue isn’t whether but when.

“That’s why the value of franchises has to be on the uptick. I don’t think anyone buying a franchise today wouldn’t say that’s a relevant consideration. When’s that going to happen or is it going to happen? If in two or three years, which is my guess, or sooner, that would be a bonanza. If in 10 years, that would be less of a bonanza but still an enormous plus. But the present value is reduced substantially.

“This is speculation on my part, but you can imagine Congress saying we’re going to legitimize sports betting but we’re going to regulate it. We don’t want it to get out of control. We’ll decide how the sports books would be legalized. Congress would say we’re going to tax the revenue, let’s say 50 percent of the sports revenue.”

The remainder would go to the leagues, which divide it among themselves and their teams. If the tax were less than 50 percent, the more there would be for the leagues and their teams.

And a new Marlins’ owner could tolerate the dumb deal Loria made with Fox if he were receiving a large bundle of cash annually as the Marlins’ share of the gambling take. And who knows? If baseball betting comes, can slot machines in the ballpark be far behind?

Manfred, too, has heard the clink of coins. Money has a way of changing a lot of minds, including commissioners’ minds and politicians’ minds.

“How can politicians do that in good conscience?” Vincent asked. “Politicians see that people are going to play slot machines and gamble. They say ‘Why don’t we make it legal and benefit from it?’”

Who exactly is Aaron Judge?

The New York Yankees’ rookie right fielder has been so spectacular in the early months of the season that he qualifies for the sobriquet of phenom.

But who is Judge really? Let me offer some suggestions:

Roy Hobbs is the main character in Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel “The Natural” and the 1984 film of the same title, a baseball player who overcomes his wound from being shot by a mysterious woman and, with his magical bat Wonderboy leads the New York Knights to the pennant. A telltale clue that links Judge to Hobbs is the crooked owner of the Knights who tries to get Hobbs to throw the playoff game for the pennant. He is known only as The Judge.

Joe Hardy (“Shoeless Joe from Hannibal Mo.”) is the character in the 1955 Broadway musical “Damn Yankees” who makes a deal with the Devil to enable the hapless Washington Senators to beat the mighty New York Yankees. Has the Yankees’ Judge made a deal with the Devil that will enable him to help make the Yankees great again?

“Crash” Davis is an aging catcher, in the 1988 film “Bull Durham,” who catches on with a minor league team to help a young pitcher, “Nuke” LaLoosh. Granted Davis is not a hitter in Judge’s class, but Kevin Costner, who played him, is said to have hit two home runs during filming with the cameras rolling.

Roy Tucker is “The Kid from Tomkinsville,” one of a highly regarded series of books by John R. Tunis, an author who in his day was to young male readers what J. K. Rowling is has been in this era.

Calico Joe Castle is the central character in John Grisham’s 2012 novel “Calico Joe,” which was inspired by the 1920 death of Ray Chapman, who was hit in the head by a Carl Mays fastball. After an improbably brilliant start to his first season¸ Castle is intentionally hit by a pitch, ending his career.

Joe Shlabotnik, Charlie Brown’s favorite baseball player, is an unlikely candidate to be Judge’s alter ego, but I thought I’d throw him in here because Charlie Brown has long been my favorite cartoon character.

All right, all of these characters are fictional. But so is Judge, isn’t he? Could any real person produce the numbers he has put next to his name? Here, at a glance, were those numbers before Saturday’s games:

• Batting Average:  .339 (AL Leader)
• Home Runs:  23 (ML Leader)
• Runs:  60 (ML Leader)
• Total Bases:  164 (AL Leader)
• Walks:  43 (AL Leader)
• On-Base Pct.:  447 (ML Leader)
• Slugging Pct.:  713 (ML Leader)
• OPS (On-Base + Slugging):  1.160 (ML Leader)

Is there any category that Judge doesn’t lead? Going into Saturday’s games, he was one r.b.i. behind Nelson Cruz of Seattle and one extra-base hit behind Corey Dickerson of Tampa Bay. He was also seventh in hits, 10 behind Dickerson.

Putting Judge’s performance in major league perspective, it would take several National League players to match Judge in terms of league-leading performance: Ryan Zimmerman (Washington) leading in batting average, slugging and OPS and tied in home runs with Joey Votto (Cincinnati) and Eric Thames (Milwaukee); Paul Goldschmidt (Arizona) leading in runs and walks; Charlie Blackmon (Colorado) in hits and total bases; Jake Lamb (Arizona) in r.b.i.

As unbelievable as Judge has been, he has shown recently that he is only human, offering several examples.

Before June 13, he struck out three times in a game only once, actually striking out four times May 21 against Tampa Bay. Suddenly, however, pitchers for the most part have had their way with the 6-foot-7 Judge.

In the Yankees’ current five-game losing streak, their longest of the season, Judge struck out three times in three of the losses, twice against the Athletics, once against the Angels. In those games he had only 5 hits in 20 at-bats, striking out 11 times.

In the June 14 game against the Angels, the Yankees went into the ninth inning losing 7-5. With Judge in the on-deck circle, Aaron Hicks rapped a two-out double. Judge, however, would not produce any last-minute heroics. He hit a grounder to third, and the Yankees lost.

The next night Judge was the leadoff hitter in the ninth inning with the Yankees losing to Oakland, 6-5. He did not tie the game with a home run, instead taking strike three.

Despite his wobbly five-game performance, Judge maintained his monstrous hold on his status as the most productive player in the American League.

The sudden strikeouts and reduced production will matter only if they are a sign of what is to come. If the season ended today and baseball writers turned in their award ballots, Judge would have to be rookie of the year and most valuable player.

Only two players have won both awards for the same season. Fred Lynn was the first, winning both awards in 1975 after leading the Boston Red Sox to the American League pennant.

Ichiro Suzuki won both awards with the Seattle Mariners in 2001, though some disputed his rookie status because he had played in the Japanese major leagues for nine years.

Think what you will of Ichiro in 2001; look at him in 2017. He is still playing, though not often (54 games, 83 at-bats) at the age of 43. He’s the kind of player every team should want on its roster.

Aaron Judge seems like that kind of player, and he’s just starting his career.

MR. ROSE, MEET MR. DOWD

What greater coincidence could occur than the one that has occurred with the re-emergence of Pete Rose and John Dowd to public attention?

Rose and Dowd go back a quarter of a century and here they are in the news at the same time, though this time for reasons unrelated to each other.

News emerged last week that the Hall of Fame’s board of directors had voted to retain its 1991 decision that no one on baseball’s permanently ineligible list be considered for the Hall of Fame. The board adopted the policy when Rose became eligible for the Hall after his five-year waiting period expired.

The board voted to retain the Rose rule in acting on Rose’s request for consideration. Rose has been unable to convince former Commissioner Bud Selig or current Commissioner Rob Manfred to remove him from the permanently ineligible list.

Rose, 76 years old, has always had hope of getting into the Hall as the player with the most hits (4,256), but he now must face the reality that if he wants to get into the Hall he will have to buy a ticket.

As for Dowd, the 76-year-old Washington, D.C., lawyer, he is the man whose investigation led to Rose’s seat on the permanently ineligible list. The investigation was brilliant and left Rose no wiggle room.

Dowd is back in the news because last week President Donald Trump hired him for his legal team to deal with possible ramifications of the special counsel’s investigation into contacts Trump or his staff might have had with Russian officials and the President’s dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James Comey.

Dowd will join Trump’s other lawyers in trying to persuade him to stop unleashing early morning tweets, which often seem to work against his best interests.

MISGUIDED WISHFUL THINKING

Over the many decades I have covered baseball, I don’t think I have ever heard anything so silly as the comments last week of Democratic and Republican Congressmen and women saying the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise could lead to better, more civil relations between the two sides.

Whom are they kidding? Themselves?

Democratic members of the House of Representatives showed proper respect and concern for the seriously wounded Congressman, Steve Scalise, and they certainly hoped he would recover, but there is plenty of fight left on both sides.

And it would be wishful thinking to believe the Washington warriors will reach agreement on critical issues, such as health care, any faster than they otherwise would. That may sound like cynical thinking, but I would call it realistic thinking.

There’s nothing wrong with contentious discussion. Just keep the weapons locked up.

When Albert Pujols recently hit the 600^th home run of his career, I went to the Elias Book of Baseball Records to check its list of players Pujols joined. I was struck most by three names: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa.

Bonds heads the list with 762, Rodriguez is fourth with 696 and Sosa eighth with 609.

I cite these three former players because their home run totals are questionable. Their totals are questionable because the players who hit those home runs have been linked to the use of performance enhancing drugs. They hit the home runs, but how many did they hit that were chemically aided?

None of the 600 home runs Pujols hit has been questioned because he has never been linked to PEDs or accused of using them. He has nothing to confess. The same cannot be said for Bonds, Rodriguez and Sosa.

But it was Pujols who called my attention to the select 600 circle and prompted me to call Elias. The call puzzled Steve Hirdt, Elias’ executive vice president.

“People have brought up that awareness now for a generation of baseball players, maybe two,” Hirdt said in a telephone interview.

I had asked about the legitimacy of Bonds, Rodriguez and Sosa on the list.

“All we’re trying to do is record what happens in baseball games,” Hirdt said. “Our job is to record what happens in the games and the results of the games and the components and statistics of the players who got them. It’s a little far afield for us.”

In other words, the good people at Elias do not put themselves in position to judge or determine the legitimacy of home runs and home run hitters. They let someone else assume that role.

Elias cannot be blamed for avoiding taking a position on steroids-aided home runs. Major League Baseball has taken no position, which means all of the statistics stand, whether they be homes runs, other types of hits, runs batted in, ground outs or fly outs.

In fact, the only organization asked or required to take a stand is the Baseball Writers Association of America, whose qualified members vote on candidates for the Hall of Fame.

Occasionally, a writer or writers say the Hall should provide voters with steroid-era guidelines on how to view players, but Hall officials have declined, leaving voters to decide for themselves on players like Bonds, Rodriguez and Sosa.

Sosa’s 609 home runs have not impressed the voters. Neither has the fact that he is the only player in major league history to hit 60 or more in three different seasons. Rather than working for him, those totals have worked against Sosa, raising suspicion about a player who after never hitting more than 40 homers in a season struck 66, 63 and 64 in a four-season span.

In the same period, Bonds, whose career high had been 46, smacked a record 73 at the age of 36-37 and 258 in a five-year span near the end of his career.

If alleged killers can be convicted on circumstantial evidence, Bonds and Sosa, by their production, produced enough circumstantial evidence to hang themselves. Neither, however, ever tested positive for PED use, and Bonds beat a perjury rap in Federal court.

But is there anyone, other than their staunchest supporters who believes they didn’t cheat and hit a significant number of their 600 home runs on their own without chemical aid?

Rodriguez, on the other hand, confessed to PED use, though only when he was nailed by authorities and only after telling as many lies as can fit into a baseball career.

He initially said he used PEDs only when he played for the Texas Rangers. Then after he was caught in the Biogenesis web of drugs, he conceded that he used illegal substances after he joined the Yankees.

Rodriguez, to me, was the most disappointing of PED users. He seemed so clean and pure, unlike players such as Bonds and Sosa, but he turned out to be as phony as the others. Not only did he lie when he denied using banned substances, but he also lied when he finally admitted using.

“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure,” Rodriguez said in February 2009, putting a phony face on his excuse for using. “I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me, and I needed to perform – and perform at a high level – every day.

“Back then, it was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naïve. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all-time.

“I did take a banned substance, and for that I’m very sorry. I’m deeply regretful. I’m sorry for that time, I’m sorry to my fans, I’m sorry to my fans in Texas. It wasn’t until then that I ever thought about substances of any kind. Since then, I’ve proved to myself and to everyone that I don’t need any of that.”

Only a year later, though, Rodriguez was back at it – using and lying about it.

In November 2014 he admitted to Federal agents that he had used banned substances and that Anthony Bosch, the man behind Biogenesis, instructed him what to do to beat the system.

Rodriguez was not so cool in his ensuing fight with Major Leagues Baseball over his 211-game suspension. He sued MLB and the Players Association, and he screamed at the arbitrator and stalked out of the hearing, though I believe that was his way of getting out of having to testify. Had he testified, he would have had to have told the truth about his PED use or subjected himself to a perjury charge.

When Bond was enmeshed in accusations about steroids use, Rodriguez was seen as the great hope who would rise to the top of the star heap and rescue MLB from the scourge of steroids. But then Rodriguez tumbled down the hill and wound up buried at the bottom with Bonds.

Years ago, before Rodriguez became entrapped in his own wrongdoing, Frank Robinson was outspoken in his view of PED-aided home runs. He was fourth on the career list with 586, behind only Aaron, Ruth and Mays, and he resented PED-aided hitters passing him. His feeling was perfectly understandable. However, when he began working in the commissioner’s office in 2012, he toned down his comments.

His reluctance to talk about the thorny problem prompted me to look for something he had said about the issue and I found this from 2005 after Rafael Palmeiro had been suspended for testing positive.

“Asked by MLB.com if he would wipe out Palmeiro’s records, Robinson answered: ‘I would. He was found to have used steroids, and he served a 10-day suspension.

“’I was surprised and taken aback that he was using steroids, because I never thought about him being a person that might be a steroids user. I always admired him for the way he went about his work, the way he performed on the field and the way he conducted himself off the field.’”

Elias’ Hirdt, speaking of Robinson said, “Frank Robinson was overlooked even when he was playing because he played when Aaron and Mays were playing. His entire career has been overlooked to some degree too easily. Mays, Aaron, Mantle, even Clemente now.”

Nevertheless, Hirdt added, “I can understand Robinson’s concern. The same if I were Reggie Jackson or Mike Schmidt or anyone of that era when home runs didn’t come as cheaply.” But, he said, “We’ve come through that period of awareness. It’s not as if new evidenced has come forward. The evidence is what it is.”

And no one has suggested evidence that even one of Pujols’ 600 home runs was tainted.

“He’s escaped the stigma that some players have,” Hirdt said.

For anyone who likes landmark achievements, enjoy the Pujols 600^th. No other player is within 150 of 600.

Closest to 600 is Miguel Cabrera of Detroit with 451, at 34 years old the youngest of the three active players who have hit at least 250 on Elias’ list. Adrian Beltre of Texas, 38, has 446. Carlos Beltran of Houston, 40, has 429.