#PGAM2025: To lend or not to lend?
If someone close to you started asking to borrow money, would you ask questions of them? That’s the dilemma that many of Jake Sanford’s family and friends faced when he was secretly building up casino debt, but given that he didn’t give them straight answers, they had no clues to work with about the root cause of his issues.
In our final ‘Seeking Understanding’ feature of Problem Gambling Awareness Month 2025, the professional baseball player – who also combines his playing career with a role as an associate with EPIC, sharing his story with collegiate and professional athletes – explains where the realization of his situation started to take hold, and how he managed to keep it secret from those who were unwittingly helping to continue his spiral of losses at the casino.
Thinking back to the point in his life where gambling began to affect his promising MLB career with New York Yankees, he explains:
“I think the point where I realized problem gambling was affecting my life was when I started to borrow money from my friends and family to pay my casino line of credit off, started spending more then I could afford and was chasing my losses. I came on really quick in my personal situation.
“They didn’t understand the issues I was facing because during that time I was lying to myself and them as well, saying there was no problem. So I never fully let them know about the full situation before it was too late.”
As Jake explains in the video insert below, his path to recovery – and to understanding where he needed to make sense of his issues and get his life back on track – was crucially mapped out by a phone call after finding out he was no longer going to be part of the Yankees organization.
“Treatment services were very important to me,” he recalls. “One of the first things when I got released by the Yankees was to sit down with my mom and call 1-800-GAMBLER and get set up with a counsellor and work to get back on track.”
The issues of his past, however, have led to the opportunities of the present and future, and with EPIC, Jake knows he’s in the right arena to now make a major positive impact on the lives of others. He concludes:
“It is an amazing opportunity we have in front of ourselves here with EPIC. We have the platform to share our lived experience to help others gain knowledge on responsible gambling. Other then just listing facts, we have personal stories that can relate to our clients and give them a better understanding of how quickly it can get out of hand.
“Over the past year working at EPIC, I have had many individuals reach out to me about a family member or partner that was going through a tough time with gambling. I help by using the resources we have and also some of my co-workers to help get them out of some of their darkest days and get back on track. Not just with gambling, but with other addictions as well.
“Every day I pick up on things I see through habits of others and gain knowledge to help them out as well, try and better myself each day but helping others avoid the path I took.”
