During the winter the Philadelphia Phillies, fed up with their series of losing seasons, pursued the two most attractive free agents in the market, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. They didn’t want to sign either or; they wanted the outfielder and the infielder.

Derek Jeter, the New York Yankees’ superstar shortstop, who is on his way to the Hall of Fame, turned entrepreneur and contributed a tiny share to a wealthy investor who paid an astounding $1.2 billion for the heck-of-a-wreck Miami Marlins. It was many millions more than the seller, Jeffrey Loria, could ever have imagined.

In the past couple of years, the N.F.L. Carolina Panthers and the N.B.A. Houston Rockets each sold for $2.2 billion, and the 49 percent share of the N.B.A. Brooklyn Nets that was sold valued the team at $2.3 billion.

The Jeter group was willing to overpay for the Marlins, as were the other recent buyers for the teams they bought, and the Phillies were prepared to spend hundreds of millions for Harper and Machado because the teams were on the verge of becoming awash in cash, the result of the advent of legal sports betting.

Gamblers are betting on baseball games, all right, but Major League Baseball isn’t reaping any of the betting revenue. Like the other leagues, M.L.B. has yet to make a deal under which it could become nouveau riche. It is the most astounding economic story of the year. M.L.B. is giving away its product and receiving nothing in return.

“They’re trying to negotiate it,” a high-ranking club executive said. “Those are the issues they’re talking about. They’re talking about an integrity fee.”

Integrity fee is a euphemism for pay-to-play. That’s what baseball and the other leagues want for allowing sports books to use their games for public betting. A lawyer well versed in the betting issues said Rob Manfred, the baseball commissioner, should be fired for not having negotiated a deal before the season began so that the teams could have begun reaping the riches when gambling money began flowing.

According to SportsHandle.com, nine states and the District of Columbia have approved legal sports betting. New Jersey is one of the states, and its casinos are taking bets on baseball games. But neither the casinos nor the state is paying baseball anything. Gamblers bet on baseball games at Atlantic City casinos, and the casinos keep the money except for what they pay to the state. Everybody profits except M.L.B.

It would seem that the state and the casinos are violating team trademarks, but no challenge has come from M.L.B. There apparently is no law that prevents books from listing, for example, Pittsburgh at St. Louis and not saying Pirates at Cardinals.

Dan Halem, baseball’s chief legal officer and deputy commissioner, did not return a call seeking comment.

It’s not as if baseball hasn’t accommodated bettors and bookies. This season, for the first time in history, baseball is requiring teams to submit their starting lineups for that day’s games at least 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the games.

The M.L.B. announcement of that new and strange rule said the intention was to protect the integrity of the game. If you want to laugh with me, please do. That’s one of the funnier euphemisms I’ve heard. The new requirement is clearly designed to accommodate bettors and bookies, giving them information so they can make informed bets or set appropriate odds: who is the starting pitcher (that’s the most important piece of information a bettor needs), is the team’s best hitter getting a day off, is the injured shortstop ready to play, etc.

That’s not the only gambling-related information baseball is providing bettors and bookies. Earlier this year M.L.B. reached agreement with a Swiss company, Sportradar, to supply sports-betting data. According to some people with greater understanding of the business than I have, M.L.B. sells the statistical information to bettors and bookies, though no details were available on how lucrative this business is for baseball.

Nevertheless, baseball believes state legislatures should include provisions in the laws they pass that bets be offered and settled on the basis of official data that comes from the league.

“Selling this data is a huge part of MLB and other pro sports leagues’ strategy for monetizing legal sports betting,” SportsHandle.com reported.

Baseball also believes that leagues should have a say in restricting which events are wagered on and which types of bets are offered. In addition, baseball wants mobile and Internet betting offered, wants casinos to be required to cooperate with M.L.B. investigations and share real-time betting data to help detect suspicious investments to stage the competitions, that M.L.B. bears the brand risk of state action and that it should be reimbursed for its additional costs for its actions.

It’s very likely that baseball has not achieved an agreement that would pave the way for payments to be made because of its many demands. I’m not saying that M.L.B. should drop some of those demands, but the failure to have them met might have given baseball the idea to forget the whole thing. But that revenue is out there, and by gosh, baseball is determined to get it.

Perhaps the most peculiar development on the betting front occurred in spring training this year. M.L.B. wrote a letter to states with legal sports betting asking them not to accept bets on exhibition games. I cannot imagine why anyone of sound mind would bet on the outcome of an exhibition game.

Of the states that received the letter, Pennsylvania agreed to baseball’s request while Nevada and New Jersey publicly rejected it.

Baseball, you might recall, also has an agreement with MGM Resorts International. Baseball calls it a sponsorship agreement, but is more than a coincidence that MGM Resorts sought a sponsorship agreement with a sport whose games are fodder for gambling.

Meanwhile, as gambling goes on, baseball has not resolved questions that exist whether it acknowledges it or not.

Long-standing Major League Rule 21 bans players from betting on baseball games, but with sports betting now legal, how is baseball going to stop a player’s wife or brother or mother from betting on a game?

If Clayton Kershaw’s wife sees him limping around the house and he’s scheduled to pitch against San Francisco today, what’s to stop her from betting on the Giants or telling her in-laws that their son has a problem? Ideally, that scenario won’t occur. But with betting on baseball already in the ballpark, it’s out there waiting to happen.

Manfred explained the new rule for submitting lineups before games by saying it is intended to protect the integrity of the game. Baseball’s integrity, though, has been pretty good for a century, and Manfred’s greedy dive into legal betting potentially creates a greater threat to that integrity than anything since the 1919 Black Sox scandal.