The Most Insane Sports Scandals in Baseball

Scandals are a part of being famous, unfortunately, and sports stars are not immune to behavior that the public deems unpleasant or unacceptable. When a sports star ends up in a scandal, it can cause a huge uproar in the public. People feel betrayed when their favorite stars disappoint them, even though they’re only human after all. We expect better of our famous people than we do ourselves, sometimes. Baseball scandals are a tale as old as the sport itself. Let’s take a look at the most prominent scandals in baseball history.

Due to the nature of the topic, there is a heavy possibility of receiving unreliable information. People love to make stuff up about famous people and then those rumors get repeated. To populate this list, we assessed the most famous baseball-related scandals that were available from credible sources. We primarily sourced from History.com’s article on baseball scandals, it is considered a relatively scholarly source among online publications. Thus, we trusted the information from it. We also looked at other first-party news sources from the past that detailed various scandals that rocked the baseball world throughout its history. When looking at other sources, we ensured the veracity of the sources by cross-referencing them with additional information and checking scholarly news source archives, such as the New York Times, ESPN, and other more reputable, non-tabloid sources.

One of the most prominent scandals that occurred in the baseball world was in 1919 when eight players from the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series. Unfortunately, the popular White Sox player, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, was involved in the conspiracy, leading to public outcry. The players accepted large bribes from the gamblers who bet on the World Series to throw the match five to three and secure the win for the gamblers. It's impossible to bank on a winning team since the other team could easily end up taking victory. However, rigging a loss is much easier. It's possible to play to lose, which makes it a viable strategy to rig a bet.

Seven of the players were still on the team when the rigged bet was found out. All eight players were tried and indicted for conspiring to defraud the public. Additionally, the owner of the Chicago White Sox at the time, Charles Comiskey, suspended the remaining seven players from the team for their transgressions.

Former White Sox pitcher, Eddie Cicotte admitted to receiving a bribe of $10,000. This might seem like a small amount in 2024, especially to lose the World Series, the biggest baseball event in the United States, on purpose. However, it's important to remember that $10,000 was a huge amount of money back then. It had the equivalent purchasing power of $181,000 in 2024.

Eventually, the jury chose to acquit the men of their crimes and spare them the legal ramifications of their actions. However, the baseball commissioner at the time, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, vowed to clean up baseball's image and suspended all the involved players for life.

The day before the beginning of the 1947 baseball season, a historic one in which one of the most famous baseballers, Jackie Robinson, broke through the color barrier in professional baseball. The second baseball commissioner, Albert B. “Happy” Chandler, who had somewhat recently succeeded Kenesaw Mountain Landis, suspended the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The reason given for the suspension was “the accumulation of unpleasant incidents” that Chandler deemed “detrimental to baseball.” Leo Durocher, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers at the time, was known for his colorful behavior and poor choice of friends. He often associated with ne’er do wells and other unsavory characters, such as Bugsy Siegel, a known mobster.

Chandler had already warned Durocher to clean up his act and choose better friends. However, Durocher continued to freewheel and Chandler felt that he had to step in to help improve baseball’s image with the public. So, he suspended Durocher and replaced him with a new manager to try and force him to clean up his image.

When announcing the suspension of Leo Durocher to the public, Chandler was quoted as saying, “ Durocher has not measured up to the standards expected or required of managers of our baseball teams.”

Former New York Yankees owner, George Steinbrenner, was well-known for his larger-than-life personality and colorful character. He has the achievement—if you can call it that—of being disciplined independently by two separate baseball commissioners and doing generally unsavory things while he owned the team. In 1974, just one year after purchasing the New York Yankees, Steinbrenner pled guilty to making illegal monetary contributions to Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign. He also pressured employees at his shipbuilding company to lie about "bonuses" that were later became monetary contributions to Nixon's campaign. For this, commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended Steinbrenner from baseball for two years, which later ended up with a reduction to a suspension of 15 months.

Then, Steinbrenner came under fire again in 1990 when he paid a confessed gambler, Howard Spira, to dig up dirt on one of his players. Steinbrenner had been feuding with outfielder Dave Winfield and hired Spira to get him information on Winfield that could lead to disciplinary action as a form of revenge. For this, commissioner Fay Vincent banned Steinbrenner from operating the New York Yankees at all. However, he regained control of the team in 1993.

Pete Rose, a star hitter for the Cincinnati Reds and an all-time hit leader was accused of gambling on baseball games. He denied this claim but the commissioner launched a lengthy and deep investigation into the accusations nonetheless. Eventually, Rose decided to settle with the authorities in Major League Baseball and accepted a lifetime ban from the sport for his transgressions. For many years, he maintained that he never bet on baseball. However, in his 2004 book, My Prison Without Bars, Rose admitted that he had previously bet on the Cincinnati Reds games before. He said he always bet that the Reds would win.

Despite being a leader in the hitting world, holding one of the best hitting records of all time, Rose is ineligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His lifetime ban from the sport renders him ineligible for Hall of Fame induction. Rose has repeatedly appealed to the authorities that oversee the Hall of Fame to reinstate his record performance in the Hall. However, Major League Baseball has repeatedly rejected Rose's appeals for reinstatement.

In 1993, Marge Schott owned the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. She was a woman who was, likely, profoundly racist; you sort of have to be to make racist comments in public, in our opinion. That year, Schott received a suspension from the Major League Baseball authorities and they fined her $25,000 for bringing “disrepute and embarrassment” to the sport. The suspension came when former employees filed a lawsuit against her for a series of offensive and racist comments. A former employee said in a deposition that she occasionally used racist terms, had a Nazi swastika armband at her house, and made derisive comments about Japanese and Jewish people. A 1992 New York Times story quoted her as saying, “Hitler was good in the beginning, but he went too far."

Schott said the swastika armband was a gift from a World War II veteran, but the fact that people knew about it meant that it wasn’t a closely guarded secret or solemn and respectful display. For her actions, Schott received a one-year suspension from baseball. However, authorities eventually reduced her punishment to eight months for good behavior during her suspension.

During the 1990s, offensive moves in baseball became more prominent. Between 1961 and 1994, only three players managed to reach a mark of at least 50 home runs in a season. However, starting in the mid-90s many sluggers started not only reaching but surpassing that mark. In 1996, Mark McGwire led the home run totals with 52. Then, in 1997, McGwire and Ken Griffey of the Seattle Mariners would challenge the all-time home run individual record of 61 set by Roger Maris in 1961. However, this wasn't a result of hard work and more effective training.

In 2007, a former United States senator, George Mitchell, released a stunning, 400-page exposé on a period in baseball's history where home runs were plentiful. The report alleged that roughly 90 current players were using or had used performance-enhancing drugs to improve their game, including steroids. Some of the names on the report were quite famous, such as slugger Barry Bonds and pitcher Roger Clemens. The report included proof of doping by many players as well as referring to the period as "Baseball's Steroids Era," a name that would catch on when describing the incidents.

The conclusion of the report alleged that the whole organization of Major League Baseball shared the blame for the situation, saying, "Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades—Commissioners, club officials, the Players Association, and players—shares to some extent in the responsibility for the steroids era. There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on. As a result, an environment developed in which illegal use became widespread."

In 2019, the paper, The Athletic published a startling exposé which alleged that the World Series champions that year, the Houston Astros had used TV monitors to steal signs from the opposing teams during home games. A center field camera would broadcast the opposing catcher's sign to the dugout where the team would watch it. When they had decoded the meaning of the sign, they would signal what kind of plays the opponents were planning to make by banging on a trash can in the tunnel between the dugout and the field.

The investigation also found that the Astros team was using other methods of communication, such as texts sent to smartphones and watches in the dugout. Investigators confirmed that there was illicit communication between both the players and coaches. As punishment, the Astros' general manager, Jeff Luhnow, and manager A.J. Hinch both received suspensions for their involvement. Additionally, the authorities forced the team to forfeit several draft picks at the beginning of the next season.

However, the Major League Baseball commissioner at the time, Rob Manfred, decided not to strip the Astros of their 2017 World Series title, a decision which garnered a lot of attention and criticism. Manfred also diminished the value of the Commissioner's Trophy given to the Astros after their win, calling it a "piece of metal" during a 2020 ESPN interview about the topic. The comment generated more criticism from players who took the game very seriously and cared a lot about the industry. Manfred later apologized for the comments.