Baseball Vice: Gambling and Scandal

1
Baseball Vice Gambling and Scandal

• Artemus Ward
• Dep. of Political Science
• Northern Illinois University
• aeward_at_niu.edu

"Any professional base ball club will 'throw' a
game if there is money in it. A horse race is a
pretty safe thing to speculate on in comparison
with the average ball match."  --
Beadle's Dime Base Ball Player, 1875
2
Introduction

• Why have baseball and gambling been linked from
  the sports beginnings?
• Why are baseball officials so sensitive to
  gambling issues?
• Is there a relationship between money in terms of
  player salaries and team revenues (or lack
  thereof) and gambling?
• Should baseball punish individuals for being
  involved with gambling? If so what should be the
  penalty?

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New York Mutuals (1865)

• As with all contests, gambling has been
  associated with baseball from the beginning.
• At the end of the Civil War, a betting scandal
  nearly destroyed the Mutuals, a professional team
  organized by corrupt Tammany Hall boss William
  Marcy Tweed.
• The catcher, third baseman and shortstop, who
  claimed they were victimized by a "wicked
  conspiracy", were all banned from baseball for
  accepting 100 apiece to throw a game.

Ken Burns Baseball Clip Gambling
Synonymous With Baseball 209
4
The National League and the 1877
Conspiracy

• One reason the National League was founded was
  because there was a lucrative market for
  exhibiting baseball games that were free from
  vices such as gambling.
• In 1877, after a great run early in the season,
  the Louisville Grays mysteriously lost seven
  games in a row. 
• Four players were found to have thrown games in
  exchange for bribes from gamblers, or had
  knowledge of such transactions and would not
  cooperate.
• The players (Jim Devlin left, George Hall, Al
  Nichols and Bill Craver) were suspended by their
  clubs, later supported by National League
  President William Hulbert.
• The players claimed they threw the games because
  their owner had failed to meet payroll
  obligations and begged for forgiveness, but
  Hulbert would hear none of it and the players
  were never reinstated.
• Louisville dropped out of the circuit and St.
  Louis followed, partly in consequence.

Ken Burns Baseball Clip National League
Survives First Gambling Scandal 424
5
1905 World Series

• John McGraw, manager of the National League's New
  York Giants, won 400 betting on his team to win
  the 1905 World Series.
• McGraw had held his team out of the 1904 Series
  against Boston because of a grudge against
  American League president Ban Johnson, who had
  suspended and publicly ripped McGraw for his
  boorish on-field behavior during McGraw's tenure
  as an American League manager.
• But McGraw agreed to take on Connie Mack's
  Philadelphia A's following the 1905 season.
• Led by Christy Mathewson's three shutouts (thrown
  in a span of six days), the Giants beat the A's
  in five games and McGraw got his money and his
  revenge on Johnson. The winnings were known to
  the public, and would have almost certainly
  gotten McGraw banned from baseball in a later day.

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1908 Bribery Attempt

• On the eve of the one-game playoff between
  the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants that
  resulted from the Merkle boner and would decide
  the National League championship, an umpire
  refused an attempted bribe intended to help the
  Giants win.
• The Giants lost to the Cubs, and the matter was
  kept fairly quiet. But the story came out the
  following spring, an official inquiry was
  launched by the National League but the results
  were kept secret.
• The Giants' team physician for 1908 was
  reportedly the culprit and was banned for life.
• Recent research has suggested that the team
  physician was allowed to be the "scapegoat" some
  baseball historians now suspect that the Giants'
  manager, John McGraw, was behind the physician's
  bribe attempt, or that it may in fact have been
  McGraw himself who approached the umpire. If
  true, and had it become known, it could have been
  disastrous, as McGraw was such a prominent figure
  in the game.

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The OConnor-Howell Conspiracy (1910)

• On the last day of the regular season in 1910,
  the St. Louis Browns were scheduled to play a
  doubleheader against Cleveland at Sportsmans
  Park. Cleveland star Napolean Lajoie was hitting
  .376 going into the final two games, but was
  losing in the batting title to Detroit Tigers
  outfielder Ty Cobb, who was hitting .385.
• Because Cobb was so hated at the time, Browns
  manager Jack OConnor told his third baseman, Red
  Corriden, to position himself in shallow left
  field. Every time Lajoie came up to bat against
  the Browns, he bunted successfully down the third
  base time five consecutive times. During the
  sixth at-bat, reached base on an error, which
  lowered his average.
• OConnor and his coach, Harry Howell, sought to
  change the error to a hit by attempting to bribe
  the official scorer with a new wardrobe. Their
  efforts were reported to American League
  President Ban Johnson, who immediately ordered
  Browns owner Robert Hedges to fire both OConnor
  and Howell, and then awarded the batting to title
  to Cobb.
• Both OConnor and Howell were effectively banned
  from baseball for life.

Jack OConnor (above) and Harry Howell (right)
9
1914 World Series Upset

• The four-game sweep of the Philadelphia
  Athletics by the Boston Braves in the 1914 World
  Series was stunning.
• Students of that Series suspect that the
  Athletics were angry at their notoriously miserly
  owner, Connie Mack, and that the A's players did
  not give the Series their best effort.
• Although such an allegation was never proven,
  Mack apparently thought that it was at least a
  strong possibility, and he soon traded or sold
  all of the stars away from that 1914 team.
• Unfortunately for the decimated A's, within two
  years they had limped to the worst season
  won-loss percentage in modern baseball history
  (36-117 .235), and it would be well over a decade
  before they recovered.

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Charles Comiskey

• Ban Johnson continually battled AL owners
  including his old ally Charles Comiskey. When
  Comiskey warned Johnson that his players may have
  been bribed to fix games for gamblers, Johnson
  ignored him.
• Comiskey was a star player and manager in the
  1880s and 1890s. He is sometimes credited with
  being the first 1B to play behind the bag and
  inside the foul line, which is common now.
• He became the owner of the Chicago White Sox from
  1900 until his death in 1931 and oversaw the
  building of Comiskey Park in 1910.
• Notoriously frugal with his players, he made them
  pay to launder their own uniforms, hence the
  Black Sox nickname for their often dirty
  uniforms.
• The substandard wages tempted many of his players
  to talk to gamblers about throwing games for
  money. After eight of his players were accused of
  throwing the 1919 World Series he provided them
  with expensive legal counsel. But ultimately
  supported the decision to ban them for life,
  despite the fact that it decimated his team by
  depriving them of its stars including shoeless
  Joe Jackson.

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1917 World Series

• The manner in which the New York Giants lost to
  the Chicago White Sox in the 1917 World Series
  raised some suspicions.
• A key play in the final game involved Heinie
  Zimmerman (top left) chasing Eddie Collins across
  an unguarded home plate. Immediately afterward,
  Zimmerman (who had also hit only .120 during the
  Series) denied throwing the game or the Series.
• Within two years, Zimmerman and his corrupt
  teammate Hal Chase would be suspended for life,
  not so much due to any one incident but to a
  series of questionable actions and associations.
• The fact that the question of throwing the Series
  was even raised suggests the level of public
  consciousness of gamblers' potential influence on
  the game.

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1918 World Series

• In 1918 there were rumors of World Series fixing
  by members of the Chicago Cubs.
• The Cubs lost the 1918 Series to the Boston Red
  Sox in a sparsely-attended affair that also
  nearly resulted in a players' strike demanding
  more than the normal gate receipts.
• With World War I dominating the news (as well as
  having shortened the regular baseball season and
  having caused attendance to shrink) the
  unsubstantiated rumors were allowed to dissipate.

Ken Burns Baseball Clip Gambling in the Early
Game 237
13
Hal Chase (1919)

• One of the best players of his era, Chases
  career is tainted by fixing scandals.
• Beginning in 1910 he was accused of laying down
  in games by his own managers.
• Midway through the 1918 season, Chase, playing
  for the Reds, allegedly paid pitcher Jimmy
  Ring 50 (729 today) to throw a game against the
  Giants. He was suspended for the season by the
  team but National League president John
  Heydler acquitted him due to lack of evidence.
• After the end of the 1919 season, an unknown
  individual sent Heydler a copy of a 500 (6,349
  today) check that Chase, now playing for the
  Giants, received from a gambler for throwing a
  game the previous season. Armed with this
  evidence, Heydler ordered Giants owner Charles
  Stoneham to release Chase. No American
  League team would sign him and he was effectively
  blackballed from the major leagues.
• On why he bet on baseball "I wasn't satisfied
  with what the club owners paid me. Like others, I
  had to have a bet on the side and we used to bet
  with the other team and the gamblers who sat in
  the boxes. It was easy to get a bet. Sometimes
  collections were hard to make. Players would pass
  out IOUs and often be in debt for their entire
  salaries. That wasn't a healthy condition. Once
  the evil started there was no stopping it, and
  club owners were not strong enough to cope with
  the evil."

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1919 Black Sox Scandal

• The 1919 World Series (often referred to as
  the Black Sox Scandal) is the most famous scandal
  in baseball history.
• Eight players from the Chicago White
  Sox (nicknamed the Black Sox) were accused of
  throwing the series against the Cincinnati Reds.
• Details of the scandal remain controversial, and
  the extent to which each player was involved
  varied. It was, however, front-page news across
  the country when the story was uncovered late in
  the 1920 season, and despite being acquitted of
  criminal charges (throwing baseball games was
  technically not a crime), the eight players were
  banned from organized baseball (i.e. the leagues
  subject to the National Agreement) for life.
• The eight men out" were the great "natural
  hitter" "Shoeless" Joe Jackson pitchers Eddie
  Cicotte and "Lefty" Williams infielders "Buck"
  Weaver, "Chick" Gandil, Fred McMullin,
  and "Swede" Risberg and outfielder "Happy"
  Felsch.

Ken Burns Baseball Black Sox Scandal 2752
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Shoeless Joe Jackson

• Juries acquitted Jackson of any involvement in
  the conspiracy in the criminal trial in 1921 and
  again in a 1924 civil suit that Jackson filed. In
  the latter, Jackson won a 16,711.04 judgment
  against White Sox owner Charles Comiskey.
• But Jackson, who hit a convincing .375 in the
  Series, setting a major league record for hits,
  did take 5,000 from a teammate after Game Four
  of the eight-game series. Some say that because
  Jackson refused to take the cash in his hand and
  a teammate simply left it on a table, for
  him. Jackson told a grand jury in 1920 that hed
  accepted the money but hadnt participated in any
  effort to lose a game.
• In the years after he was banned from baseball,
  Jackson started a barbecue restaurant in
  Greenville and later ran a liquor store. He never
  learned to read or write. Hes believed to have
  signed his name all of five times in his life
  on his draft card, his drivers license, his
  mortgage, a baseball and his will, which is in
  the museum.
• As the years went on Jackson rarely spoke about
  the scandal, but when he did, he contended that
  he had tried to report his suspicions about a fix
  to Comiskey, who allegedly rebuffed him.
• On his deathbed, Jackson declared just as he
  always had Im innocent.
• In 2005, Congress unanimously passed a resolution
  seeking Jacksons reinstatement.
• Jacksons famous bat, Black Betsy, was sold at
  auction in 2000 for almost 600,000.

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The Commissioner
Ken Burns Baseball Commissioners Office Begins
553

• Hoping to restore public confidence in the sport
  following the 1919 Black Sox Scandal in which
  Chicago White Sox players accepted bribes from
  gamblers in order to throw the World Series, the
  owners named federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain
  Landis commissioner of baseball, to replace the
  three-person National Commission that had
  formerly governed the sport.
• Landis accepted but on the condition that he have
  absolute power to take any action he deemed in
  the best interest of baseball. The owners agreed
  and Landis first decision was to ban the eight
  White Sox players involved in the scandal.
• Throughout 1921 Landis came under intense
  criticism for his moonlighting, and congressional
  members called for his impeachment. In February
  1922, Landis resigned his position as a federal
  judge saying that, "There aren't enough hours in
  the day for me to handle the courtroom and the
  various other jobs I have taken on."
• Ban Johnson continually clashed with the new
  Commissioner and was ultimately forced out of
  baseball by the owners who also hoped that Landis
  would follow Johnsons lead and that after the
  Black Sox scandal passed, Landis would retire
  to a quiet life as the titular head of baseball.
• But instead, Landis ruled baseball with an iron
  fist for 25 years. At times he antagonized the
  owners and the players but historians generally
  agree that his actions were consistent with his
  best interest of baseball mandate and the
  independence of the office.

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Claude Hendrix (1920)

• Hendrix was a spitball pitcher for the Chicago
  Cubs and had pitched in the 1918 World Series,
  which was rumored to have been fixed.
• On August 31, 1920, Hendrix was scheduled to
  pitch against the Philadelphia Phillies. Cubs
  president Bill Veeck received telephone calls and
  telegrams saying Detroit gamblers were betting
  heavily that the Phillies, ranked at the bottom
  of the league, would beat the Cubs, a top team.
  The Cubs switched their rotation and went with
  their better pitcher, Grover Cleveland Alexander,
  instead but still ended up losing the game.
• A grand jury was convened in Chicago to
  investigate the incident, and during the course
  of the investigation the Black Sox scandal
  emerged. Needless to say, the grand jury never
  ruled on whether the Cubs/Phillies game was
  linked to gambling.
• Hendrixs career was on a downturn in 1920 and he
  had announced his retirement at the end of the
  season, while the grand jury was still convened.
  In February 1921, the Cubs gave him an
  unconditional release and Veeck issued a
  statement that Hendrixs release had nothing to
  do with events of 1920, alluding to the
  Cubs/Phillies game and the rumors that had
  circulated.
• Commissioner Landis never banned Hendrix. But
  thats been the popular belief because Landis
  1947 biography made the false claim.

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Shufflin Phil Douglas (1922)

• In 1922 New York Giants pitcher, and former
  Chicago Cub, Phil Douglas sent a strange letter
  to former Cubs teammate Les Mann, who was then
  with the Cardinals, one of the teams battling the
  Giants for the pennant.
• Douglas proposed that he would quit the team if
  Mann and his teammates came up with, the goods.
  So you see the fellows, Douglas wrote, and if
  you want to send a man over here with the goods,
  and I will leave for home on the next train, send
  him to my house so nobody will know, and send him
  at night.
• Douglas, it seemed, was trying to throw the
  pennant race.
• Mann turned the letter over to his manager,
  Branch Rickey, who passed it on to Commissioner
  Landis.
• After meeting with McGraw, Landis banned Douglas
  from baseball.

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The OConnell-Dolan Scandal (1924)

• The Giants and Dodgers were battling for the 1924
  National League championship. As the last weekend
  arrived, the Giants had a 1 ½ game lead in the
  standings with three home games against the lowly
  Phillies. The Dodgers had two games left with the
  even more lowly Braves and should they win both
  and the Giants lose both, the Dodgers would take
  the division.
• Before the Giants-Phillies game of Saturday,
  September 27, Giants utility outfielder Jimmy
  O'Connell, at the instigation of Coach Cozy
  Dolan, sounded out Phillies shortstop Heinie Sand
  as to whether, for 500, he might be willing to
  avoid "bearing down hard."
• Afterwards, O'Connell also contended that Giant
  stars Frankie Frisch, Ross Youngs, and George
  Kelly had spoken with him before the game about
  the feeler.
• At any rate, Sand rejected O'Connell's
  invitation. Growing worried during the course of
  the game, Sand that evening reported the bribe
  offer to his manager, Art Fletcher. The latter
  immediately took the matter to the, executive
  level and soon Commissioner Landis was involved.
• Hearings were promptly held at which O'Connell,
  Dolan, Sand, Frisch, Kelly, and Youngs testified.
• OConnell and Dolan were banned while Sand was
  booed by fans for being a squealer for years
  until he left the game.
• Frisch, Kelly, and Youngs3 future Hall of
  Famerswere likely behind the incident, testified
  that they were simply kidding, and were not
  sanctioned.

Jimmy OConnell
Cozy Dolan
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The Cobb-Speaker Incident (1926)

• Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were permitted by
  American League President Ban Johnson to resign
  from baseball near the end of the 1926 season
  after former pitcher Dutch Leonard charged that
  Cobb, Speaker and Smoky Joe Wood had joined him
  just before the 1919 World Series in betting on a
  game they all knew was fixed.
• Leonard presented letters and other documents to
  Johnson, and Johnson thought they would be so
  potentially damaging to baseball in the wake of
  the Black Sox scandal that he paid Leonard
  20,000 to have them suppressed.
• Commissioner Landis exposed the cover-up and the
  eventual fallout forced Johnson out his job as
  president of the league he had created.
• Cobb and Speaker vehemently denied any
  wrongdoing, Cobb saying that "There has never
  been a baseball game in my life that I played in
  that I knew was fixed, and that the only games
  he ever bet on were two series games in 1919,
  when he lost 150 on games thrown by the Sox. He
  claimed his letters to Leonard had been
  misunderstood, that he was merely speaking of
  business investments.
• Landis took the case under advisement and
  eventually let both players remain in baseball
  because they had not been found guilty of fixing
  any game themselves. It was after this case,
  though, that Landis instituted the rule mandating
  that any player found guilty of betting on
  baseball would be suspended for a year and that
  any player found to have bet on his own team
  would be barred for life.
• Cobb later claimed that the attorneys
  representing him and Speaker had brokered their
  reinstatement by threatening to expose further
  scandal in baseball if the two were not cleared.

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Leo Durocher Suspension (1947)

• After the scandals of the 1920s it appeared that
  baseballs gambling problem had been solved.
• In 1947 Leo Durocher, manager of the Brooklyn
  Dodgers, became involved in a feud with New York
  Yankee owner Larry MacPhail (top left)each
  accusing the other of inviting gamblers into the
  clubhouse.
• Commissioner Happy Chandler was under pressure
  from MacPhail, a close friend who was pivotal in
  having him appointed to succeed Landis as
  Commissioner.
• Chandler first warned Durocher and then suspended
  him for the 1947 season after he discovered
  evidence that Durocher and actor George Raft were
  running rigged crap games in order to take money
  from unsuspecting players.
• Commissioners have always taken an almost
  fanatical interest in gambling, suspending
  well-known individuals for lengthy times just for
  having been seen with gamblers.

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Denny McLain The Rise (1968-1969)

• In 1968 Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain won
  31 games (the last pitcher to do so), the Cy
  Young and MVP awards, and led his team to a World
  Series championship. He became famous, racked up
  endorsements, did TV appearances, and won 24
  games and the Cy Young the following year.
• In February 1970, Sports Illustrated and Penthouse
   both published articles about McLain's
  involvement in bookmaking activities. Sports
  Illustrated cited sources who alleged that the
  foot injury suffered by McLain late in 1967 had
  been caused by an organized crime figure stomping
  on it for McLain's failure to pay off on a bet. 
• Early in his career, McLains interest in betting
  on horses was piqued by Chuck Dressen, one of his
  first managers. McLains descent into his
  gambling obsession was further precipitated by an
  offhand remark made during an interview that he
  drank about a case of Pepsi a day. (When he
  pitched, he was known to drink a Pepsi between
  innings.) A representative from Pepsi then
  offered McLain a contract with the company, just
  for doing a few endorsements. McLain soon
  realized that he and the Pepsi rep shared an
  affinity for gambling when the two realized how
  much money they were losing, and that they could
  earn so much more by "taking the action" on bets,
  they attempted to set up a bookmaking operation
  as hands-off, silent partners.

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Denny McLain The Fall (1970)

• McLain was suspended indefinitely by Baseball
  Commissioner Bowie Kuhn the suspension was then
  set for the first three months of the1970 season.
• He returned in mid-season, but struggled to pitch
  well. He received a seven day suspension in
  September for dousing two sportswriters with
  buckets of water. Just as the seven day
  suspension was about to end, he received another
  suspension from Kuhn for carrying a gun on a team
  flight that effectively ended his season.
• Later that year, despite being the first 100,000
  player in Tigers history, he was forced into
  bankruptcy, traded, had arm trouble, traded again
  and again, and was out of baseball by the age of
  29.
• McLains troubles didnt end there, however. He
  was imprisoned for drug trafficking, embezzlement
  and racketeering, spending a good portion of the
  1980s and 1990s behind bars.

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Mickey Mantle
Ken Burns Baseball Mickey Mantle 843
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Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays Banned (1983)

• After their retirement, Hall-of-Famers Mickey
  Mantle and Willie Mays were no longer involved in
  Major League Baseball.
• In 1983 they were hired by casinos in Atlantic
  City, New Jersey, for public relations to be
  greet guests and autograph signers.
• Mantle was hired by the Claridge Hotel and Casino
  to become their goodwill ambassador, and Mays
  held a similar position at Bally's Park Place.
• Commissioner Bowie Kuhn banned them from baseball
  saying that any affiliation with gambling were
  grounds for being placed on the "permanently
  ineligible" list. He added that a casino was "no
  place for a baseball hero and Hall of Famer."
• Newspaper articles of the time pointed out that
  Mantle and Mays played before there were large
  player salaries and that they were simply trying
  to make money to live.
• Their bans were finally lifted in 1985 during
  Commissioner Peter Ueberroth's tenure.

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The Steinbrenner-Winfield Feud (1990)

• In late 1980, New York Yankees owner George
  Steinbrenner, who had already developed a
  reputation for spending lavish amounts of money
  on free agents, signed Dave Winfield to a
  10-year, 23 million contract.
• In 1985, Steinbrenner referred to Winfield as
  Mr. May, in an interview with New York Times
  reporter Murray Chass after a late September
  series against the Toronto Blue Jays, saying,
  Where is Reggie Jackson? We need a Mr. October
  or a Mr. September. Winfield is Mr. May. My big
  guys are not coming through. The guys who are
  supposed to carry the team are not carrying the
  team. They aren't producing. If I don't get big
  performances out of Winfield, (Ken) Griffey and
  (Don) Baylor, we can't win.
• In July 1990, after Winfield had sued the Yankees
  for not making a 300,000 contribution to his
  charitable foundation as stipulated in his
  contract.
• Steinbrenner hired Howie Spira, a known gambler,
  and paid him 50,000 to dig up whatever dirt he
  could find about Winfield.
• Word of this got back to MLB commissioner Fay
  Vincent, who suspended Steinbrenner from baseball
  for a period of two years.
• In Steinbrenner's absence, his son took control
  of the Yankees, and then relinquished the team
  back to his father when Bud Selig reinstated him
  in 1993. Steinbrenner retired as owner in 2006,
  passing control to his sons permanently and died
  in 2010.

Ken Burns Baseball Steinbrenner 733
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Pete Rose
Ken Burns Baseball Charlie Hustle 207 Big Red
Machine 201 Rose Breaks Record 143 Rose Banned
532
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Pete Rose Betting Scandal (1989)

• Pete Rose, baseball's all-time leader in hits and
  games played and manager of the Cincinnati
  Reds since 1984, was reported as betting on Major
  League games, including Reds games while he was
  the manager.
• Rose had been questioned about his gambling
  activities in February 1989 by outgoing
  Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and his
  successor, National League president A. Bartlett
  Giamatti.
• Three days later, lawyer John M. Dowd was
  retained to investigate the charges against Rose.
  During the investigation, Giamatti took office as
  the Commissioner of baseball.
• A March 21, 1989 Sports Illustrated article
  linked him to gambling on baseball games.
• The Dowd Report asserted that Pete Rose bet on
  fifty-two Reds games in 1987, at a minimum of
  10,000 a day. It included testimony that Rose
  had bet on his own players while managing, phone
  records to known bookies moments before ball
  games (while no other major sports were in
  season) and a betting slip filled out in Rose's
  handwriting and covered with his fingerprints.

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Pete Rose Betting Scandal (1989)

• Rose, facing a very harsh punishment, along with
  his attorney and agent, Reuven Katz, decided to
  seek a compromise with Major League Baseball. On
  August 24, 1989, Rose agreed to a voluntary
  lifetime ban from baseball. The agreement had
  three key provisions
• Major League Baseball would make no finding of
  fact regarding gambling allegations and cease
  their investigation Pete Rose was neither
  admitting or denying the charges and Pete Rose
  could apply for reinstatement after one year.
• To Rose's chagrin, however, Giamatti immediately
  stated publicly that he felt that Pete Rose bet
  on baseball games.
• Then, in a stunning follow-up event, Giamatti, a
  heavy smoker for many years, suffered a
  fatal heart attack just eight days later, on
  September 1.

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Aftermath Pete Rose Banned for Life

• The consensus among baseball experts is that the
  death of Giamatti and the ascension of Fay
  Vincent, a great admirer of Giamatti, was the
  worst thing that could happen to Pete Rose's
  hopes of reinstatement.
• On February 4, 1991, the twelve members of the
  board of directors of the Baseball Hall of
  Fame voted unanimously to bar Rose from the
  ballot. However, he still received 41 write-in
  votes on January 7, 1992.
• Bud Selig, the former owner of the Milwaukee
  Brewers, succeeded Vincent in 1992.
• Rose was allowed to be a part of the All-Century
  Team celebration in 1999 as he was named by the
  fans as one of the team's outfielders. He
  appeared with all the other living selected
  players before Game 2 of the 1999 World Series.
• Rose applied for reinstatement in
  September 1997 and March 2003. In both instances,
  Commissioner Selig failed to act, thereby keeping
  the ban intact.
• In 2004, after years of speculation and denial,
  Pete Rose admitted in his book My Prison Without
  Bars that the accusations that he had bet on Reds
  games were true, and that he had admitted it to
  Bud Selig personally some time before. Rose,
  however, stated that he always bet on the Reds
  never against.
• Should Rose be reinstated to baseball and be
  eligible for the Hall of Fame?

32
Conclusion

• Gambling has been a part of the game since its
  inception.
• Early players said that they gambled due to low
  salaries.
• Modern players have gambled for other reasons.
• Whatever the reason, in the quest for greater
  profits, baseball has been extremely strict in
  penalizing those associated with gambling.

33
References

• Fisher, Marc. 2012. At the Shoeless Joe Jackson
  Museum iin Greenville, S.C. It Aint So.
  Washington Post.February 3.
• Ginsburg, Daniel E. 1995. The Fix Is In A
  History of Baseball Gambling and Fixing Scandals
  (Jefferson, NC McFarland Co.).
• Longoria, Rico. 2001. Baseballs Gambling
  Scandals. ESPN.com, July 30.