5:18 PM ET, March 25, 2024
Baseball has a dark past with gambling.
From CNN's Jacob Leff
1919 World Series game between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds, played at Redland Field in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cincinnati Reds/MLB/Getty Images
Baseball has a troubled history with gambling. The most famous or infamous case is the “Black Sox Scandal.”
During the 1919 World Series, the heavily favored Chicago White Sox lost to the Cincinnati Reds 5-3 in a best-of-nine series. But a year later, eight White Sox players were accused of colluding with gamblers to intentionally lose the Fall Classic.
They were all acquitted at trial in 1921, but then-commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis sentenced them to permanent bans from professional baseball.
The other involves Pete Rose, MLB's all-time hitting leader, who was banned for life from the sport for betting on a Cincinnati Reds game in 1989 while he was a player and manager for the team. received punishment.
Rose, who was ineligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame due to his suspension, admitted in his 2004 autobiography that he bet on baseball while he was the Reds' manager, and three years later said he was betting on the Reds to win every night. he told ESPN Radio.
Americans gambled a record $119.84 billion on sports in 2023, up 27.5% from the previous year, according to the American Gaming Association's Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker.
