Why weren't any of the players who stole the 2017 World Series through blatant cheating
ever punished?
Keep watching to find out!
Former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott could be the shadiest sports owner ever.
In 1993, a former employee for the Reds claimed he was fired because he objected to Schott
using extremely racist language.
Schott denied the charges, saying that she seldomly used racist terms and didn't consider
herself offensive.
Schott also confessed that she kept a Nazi swastika armband at her house.
And in a 1996 ESPN interview, she stated that Adolf Hitler, quote, "was good at the beginning,
but he just went too far."
The terminated employee filed a lawsuit against Schott, who was slapped with a fine and banned
from her box seat for a year in 1993, as a result.
For her ESPN comments, she was forced to relinquish day-to-day control of the team for eight months.
But it wasn't until 1999 that Schott was forced out of the organization after 15 years of
ownership.
Marge Schott's name was also all over facilities around the area, but recently many institutions
have decided to remove her name.
The University of Cincinnati's president said in a statement,
"Marge Schott's record of racism and bigotry stands at stark odds with our university's
core commitment to dignity, equity, and inclusion."
In their original labor contract with the Major League Baseball Players Association
in 1968, MLB owners were adamant that collusion be explicitly forbidden in the rules.
According to SB Nation,
"Their fear was that the players, in a pre-free-agency world, would work together in negotiations
to raise their collective salaries."
Instead, the opposite happened, as owners colluded against players to control salaries.
Starting in the mid-80s, many MLB team owners began focusing on turning a profit — by
limiting spending on free agents — instead of trying to win the World Series.
Ultimately, arbitrators ruled in the favor of the players, resulting in many players
becoming free agents again and switching teams, including Kirk Gibson.
The Los Angeles Times reported,
"By 1990, three arbitration rulings established that they had colluded illicitly, and they
ended up paying $434 million, including interest, to settle players' case against them.
That sum would be the equivalent of about $800 million today."
Since then, the owners have been accused of collusion several times, paying another settlement
in 2006, and spurring another investigation in 2018, when many top free agents went unsigned
for long periods.
"Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack," goes the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."
For fans who do just that while attending MLB games, all those peanuts turn into more
than peanuts in the pockets of MLB owners.
Just consider how the league has operated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Forbes, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred reported that the league had
Some Oakland A's fans were appalled to learn that season ticket costs were rising to almost
twice their 2020 prices, with one season-ticket holder telling The San Francisco Chronicle,
"It just feels like they're sending the message to us — you are not important."
"Just my tickets alone went up over $4,000."
For many fans hard hit by the pandemic, spending more money to line the pockets of wealthy
owners was a bridge too far.
But the price gouging worked: Forbes reported that the average franchise value reached an
all-time high in 2021 at an estimated $1.9 billion.
An eight-year contract between MLB and national TV networks ended in 2021.
Even though MLB stood to earn significant revenue for its next TV contract from 2022
to 2028, there was a concerning decision from ESPN, as Forbes reported, that the network
decided to air fewer games on the new contract compared to the previous one.
This may be in part because the number of baseball fans, and sports fans in general,
appear to be decreasing.
And MLB is very aware of it.
The league's chief operations and strategy officer Chris Marinak told The New York Times,
"It's critical to reach a younger portion of the fan base.
They have the longer span of fandom.
We need to do a better job of communicating to Gen Z what it means to be a fan."
MLB has tried to do this with several new initiatives.
On the field, they have introduced pitch clocks and limits on defensive positioning changes
in order to make games faster and more exciting.
And off the field, the league also has recruited high profile TikiTok creators to make content
for the World Series.
After a competition to look for creators that focused on baseball-specific content, MLB
announced the inaugural list of 11 influencers in its Creator Class.
Each creator earned the opportunity to attend games and other sponsored events to highlight
how cool baseball supposedly is in short videos.
The reported use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball became so serious
that the United States Government intervened to investigate.
In 2007, a shocking summary referred to as the "Mitchell Report" rocked the baseball
world, with the New York Times reporting that 89 Major League Baseball players were linked
to the use of illicit steroids.
According to testimonies from both players and people involved in the sport, many of
the biggest names in the league, including Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, allegedly used
illegal steroids for years.
Many of the athletes denied the accusations, and battled both the media and law enforcement.
Clemens went on an awkward P.R.
tour, while Bonds was ultimately found guilty of obstruction of justice.
Still, the damage was done, to both the individual players and the sport itself.
Alex Rodriguez, one of the biggest stars in the league, was ultimately suspended for a
year for using performance enhancing drugs.
And both Clemens and Bonds have been denied their place in the Baseball Hall of Fame,
despite being among the top players in history.
There's still a chance that they'll eventually be enshrined among the other all-time greats
thanks to the Baseball Hall of Fame's Today's Game Committee, but CBS Sports writer Matt
Snyder believes it may not happen during their lifetimes.
Though the nation's favorite pastime has long been a source of entertainment for fans of
all ages, it has also revealed an ugly truth about inequality in the country.
According to MLB itself,
"For nearly 60 years baseball was a segregated sport as the American and National Leagues
that formed Major League Baseball unofficially banned African-Americans from their ranks."
Black athletes had been part of baseball from the game's earliest roots, with the National
Baseball Hall of Fame recording Black baseball players as far back as the 1850s.
But with the surge of Jim Crow laws and racist sentiments in the early years of the 20th
century, Black players were systematically excluded from MLB.
Those players formed barnstorming teams, traveling around the country to play anyone who would
take them on.
Ultimately, the Negro National League was founded in 1920, and with the addition of
other leagues, these became collectively known as The Negro Leagues.
One of the most famous Black players in baseball history is Jackie Robinson, who joined the
Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, breaking MLB's color barrier.
It was a momentous occasion, but the superstar still had to deal with hatred from both fans
and players alike.
MLB wrote that
"[...] opposing players hurled verbal insults at Robinson but they also played rough and
employed tactics that many saw as outside the bounds of acceptable play."
Fortunately, Robinson endured all the animosity and paved the way for future progress.
Before joining MLB, many players start in the minor leagues to grow their skills in
preparation for moving up to the biggest stage in the sport.
Not only is their time in the lower leagues less prestigious, but it can be a truly difficult
experience.
According to ESPN, players often have to use side hustles to add to their $500-per-week
salary.
Barely making ends meet, these journeymen drift from team to team, dealing with
"[...] substance abuse, financial hardship, inadequate housing, lack of access to healthy
food, anxiety and depression."
"We don't have any big league time, so, you know, Uncle Sam gets his cut, you're talking
about walking away with a grand, 1200 bucks a month?"
Considering how rich MLB is and how wealthy the owners are, these financial hardships
are unnecessary, another sign of greed trumping all.
One former player in the Los Angeles Angels organization specifically called out the team's
owner, Arte Moreno, who, according to Forbes, was worth an estimated $3.6 billion as of
2022.
The player told ESPN,
"Arte Moreno wouldn't have his kids live like this."
But many other players feared speaking about their experiences for fear of damaging their
chances of making it to the big leagues, especially in a job where players are often fired at
a moment's notice.
In 2020, for instance, the pandemic hit many minor league teams hard, and without financial
support from the top level owners, hundreds of players were cut to save money.
MLB pitchers have an amazing ability to hurl a ball towards home plate with lightning speed
and wickedly deceptive spin.
While this is definitely due to training and natural abilities, some players look for an
additional edge with sticky substances like pine tar, spit, and mud.
As one baseball analyst put it to The Washington Post: "Pitchers definitely cheat."
Famous pitcher Nolan Ryan once talked about what he considered a gray area in cheating.
He said in an interview on ESPN,
"Using pine tar to help your curveball, stuff like that, those are things that are done
in the game that are accepted as part of the game."
After widespread reports of pitchers cheating, MLB decided to crack down by enforcing rules
against the use of foreign substances.
But there was backlash from pitchers who said they used these materials not just to cheat,
but to simply grip the ball well.
Many pitchers blamed the new rule enforcement for loss of control leading to players being
hit by pitches, and to injuries suffered by pitchers forced to change their throwing mechanics.
In a sport known for a dazzling amount of data and records, there are a few that may
never be broken.
For example, the "Hit King" Pete Rose has 15,890 career plate appearances and 4,256
hits in his time as an MLB player for 24 seasons.
Yet he isn't in the Hall of Fame, as he was permanently banned from baseball in 1989 for
betting on baseball games while acting as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
Rose applied to be reinstated into MLB in 2015, 2017, and 2020, but was denied by the
league's commissioner, Rob Manfred, each time.
Rose's chances of ever being enshrined among other legendary players in the Hall of Fame
don't look great, meaning the game's greatest hitter remains a pariah in his own sport.
So why exactly was his betting activity such a big deal for baseball?
In the early days of MLB, the league dealt with an embarrassing scandal in the biggest
event of the season, the World Series.
In the 1919 championship, several players on the Chicago White Sox worked with gamblers
to rig the World Series.
They intentionally threw games so that the underdog Cincinnati Reds would win the series,
allowing gamblers in the know to rack up huge wins.
After losing several games of the best-of-nine series, some of the players apparently wanted
their money.
When they didn't receive the amounts promised by the gamblers, the team vowed to try and
start winning games.
However, the folks in organized crime didn't take kindly to this, and players later suggested
they had received threats against their families.
Ultimately, the White Sox lost in eight games, giving the Reds their first World Series victory.
Many people began speculating that something seemed wrong about the entire series, and
months after the last game, an article came out titled, "Is Big League Baseball Being
Run for Gamblers, With Players in the Deal?"
The owner of the White Sox denied the allegations, but the focus turned back on the team when
a regular-season game the following year was proven to be rigged.
Eight players were indicted for conspiracy and banned for life from the league.
The players were then forever known as the Black Sox.
That wasn't the last scandal involving the World Series being rigged.
Almost a hundred years later, the Houston Astros found themselves at the center of one
of the biggest cheating scandals in MLB history.
The Astros concluded their underdog story by going from one of the worst teams in the
league in 2013 to winning the World Series in 2017.
But in 2020, an expose by Major League Baseball revealed that the Astros had used a scheme
to use illegal electronics to steal the signs from opposing teams.
This allowed the Astros hitters to know exactly what pitches were coming, which helped them
win the World Series in 2017.
As punishment, four people involved, including the team's general manager at the time, Jeff
Luhnow, lost their jobs in the league.
Also fired was Carlos Beltran; a senior player with the Astros and allegedly a mastermind
of the scheme, Beltran was fired from his new manager position with the New York Mets.
However, none of the active players involved faced any punishment, which enraged fans and
opponents alike.
Hilariously, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred suggested to ESPN that the public shame was
punishment enough for the multi-millionaire players who got to keep their tainted World
Series rings.
"I think if you watch the players, watch their faces when they have to deal with this issue
publicly, they have paid a price."
Behind the scenes in MLB, women have often been discriminated against.
In 1977, Melissa Ludtke sued the league when she was a reporter for Sports Illustrated
because she was denied entry to clubhouses at Yankee Stadium due to her gender.
"This is an area where they're dressing and it's an area where we think they're entitled
to some reasonable privacy."
Decades later, after new sexual harassment allegations surfaced in the league, Ludkte
told The Los Angeles Times that she was disappointed at how little progress Major League Baseball
had made.
"I'm dismayed that after 42 years since the decision came down basically saying that women
reporters should be treated equally to men, the attitudes don't seem to have evolved in
the way you might have expected they would."
There has at least been some very slow progress in one area.
In 2020, the Miami Marlins named Kim Ng as its GM, making her the first female general
manager of a major North American men's professional sports team.
It was a good first step, but one that was also long overdue as she had received an award
way back in 2000 for her work as assistant GM for the Yankees — a full two decades
before finally getting her promotion.
Corks are made for champagne but not for baseball.
Yet, some players have used the material inside their bats to get a little extra pop while
swinging for the fences.
For example, player Albert Belle of the Cleveland Indians was caught using an illegal bat in
1994, leading one of his teammates to crawl through the ceiling like a movie action hero
in order to steal the corked bat from the umpire's dressing room.
"Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs!"
Years later, in 2003, famous Chicago Cubs player Sammy Sosa was ejected from a game
for using a corked bat, after his bat broke while swinging, revealing the cork core.
Sosa claimed it was an accident, and that the bat was intended only to show off for
fans during batting practice.
Early on, baseball became intertwined with politics when a legal case made it all the
way to the Supreme Court.
In the 1922 case "Federal Baseball Club v. National League," the justices somehow ruled
that professional baseball was an exhibition instead of a business.
This controversial decision had long-standing repercussions in business because professional
baseball was then exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was passed in 1890 to
help stop monopolies.
As a result of the ruling, professional baseball teams could then control wages and take other
measures that would be illegal in regular business.
Even judges who were later appointed to the Supreme Court felt that the ruling was a bad
call, and politicians over the years have tried to gain points by removing the exemption.
And in 2022, a lawsuit by the Staten Island Yankees and three other minor league teams
once again challenged the "Federal Baseball" case.
So far, though, MLB's government sanctioned monopoly still remains.
At the end of the 19th century, the Cleveland baseball team was officially called the Spiders.
But thanks to the presence of Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Maine who is widely
considered the first professional baseball player with Native ancestry, fans started
calling the team the Cleveland Indians.
After the Spiders were dissolved, a new Cleveland baseball team started up, and after several
name changes, they officially adopted the name Cleveland Indians in 1915.
But while many white fans viewed the name as a tribute, the team's history with offensive
and sometimes racist imagery — most famously with the 1947 debut of their Chief Wahoo mascot
— led to decades of efforts from Native Americans to have the name changed.
In 2018, the Cleveland Indians finally announced they would retire the logo.
Two years later, Washington, D.C.'s professional football team announced they would be dropping
their racist moniker; later that same day, the Cleveland Indians announced they would
immediately begin a thorough review of their own nickname.
Ultimately, in 2021, they changed the name to the Cleveland Guardians.
The team wrote in an official statement,
"The decision to change its nickname was based upon the desire to be inclusive, which led
to a survey of 40,000 fans as well as 140 hours of interviews with fans, community leaders
and front-office personnel."
So far, though, the Atlanta Braves have shown no sign of making any changes to their name,
nor have they worked to curtail the use of the offensive "tomahawk chop" cheer by fans.
Who knows?
Maybe in another hundred years, MLB will finally fix that one too.
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