NBA Scandal Shows Faults of Gambling in MLB

by Bill Pruden

Special from the IBWAA

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Note - This article ran in the IBWAA's daily newsletter Here's The Pitch on November 3, 2025 and is used with permission.

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“Say it ain’t so Joe."

Are there any more poignant words associated with the game of baseball than this plaintive plea supposedly uttered by a young boy, desperate for a confirmation from his hero “Shoeless Joe” Jackson that the White Sox outfielder had not been a party to the alleged throwing of the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds?

And yet, while the famous plea and the Black Sox Scandal itself are over 100 years old, they were the first things that came to my mind when I heard the news of a gambling scandal with ties to the NBA erupted just as the season was set to tip off less than two weeks ago.

Admittedly it might be easy for baseball, in the midst of a post season that has offered a slew of memorable moments, to simply dismiss it as just basketball, but it would do so at its own peril, ignoring both its own recent problems as well as policy and cultural changes that have made gambling a bigger than ever threat to the game’s integrity.

Given the historical amnesia that too often characterizes the American populace, it is worth remembering that while a jury found Jackson and his teammates not guilty, the case has nevertheless been the ultimate cautionary tale ever since.

Indeed, the jury’s decision notwithstanding, baseball’s owners, desperate to restore the public’s faith in the game, named a new commissioner, a flamboyant federal judge named Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and endowed him with almost dictatorial powers to act in the best interests of baseball.

And his first step in that direction was to issue a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball on all those who had been charged in the scandal. It was a decisive first step in the effort to reaffirm MLB’s commitment to the integrity of the game and to restore the all-important bond between players and fans.

Unhappily, baseball has slipped away from the ethos that helped maintain the barrier between baseball and betting, and which went hand in hand with the clear prohibition against gambling articulated in the hallowed Rule 21 that hangs in every MLB locker room.

Some say everything changed the day the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018 - giving states the go-ahead to legalize betting on sports - with the MLB Players Union reporting that within 24 hours of the ruling, players were reporting they were suddenly being followed by gambling sites and other online entities. Clearly, the landscape was prime for change.

But that legal change did not mean that baseball needed to get in bed with gambling. It did not mean that MLB teams needed to begin taking the gambling industry’s money or to include its ads in their ballparks and on their telecasts, actions that serve to create an inexorable connection between the sport and gambling. It is only common sense to recognize that once the wall is breached, it becomes easier for real problems to arise.

Indeed, too, beyond the legalities and the commercial considerations is the human impact and what gambling can do to the relationship between player and fan.

Being a fan has long meant dealing with disappointment, but there is a big difference between being disappointed when things didn’t go their team’s way and a bettor blaming a player for the loss of substantive amounts of money when the batter does not deliver or the pitcher blows a save. Not only does it run counter to the fundamental aspect of sports — the winning and losing — but when the disappointment manifests itself in threats to players and their families, that is very different.

Quite simply, betting, especially as practiced today, fractures the team concept, undermines fan loyalties and detracts from what the games are really about, and we must ask ourselves whether baseball really benefits by the addition of fans whose sole interest in the game is based in betting - in some cases literally on whether the next pitch will be a ball or a strike.

Indeed, that question is at the center of the investigation of Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis L. Ortiz, who last summer was placed on paid administrative leave while MLB investigated him, the investigation triggered when what were deemed suspicious bets were placed on two individual pitches thrown by Ortiz. On one of those pitches, an ad for the gambling site FanDuel is clearly visible behind and to the left of the catcher. How ironic is that?

It was not that long ago that the baseball world held its collective breath upon the news that Shohei Ohtani’s friend and interpreter was involved in a gambling scandal. The whole of Major League Baseball breathed a sigh of relief when it was made clear that Shohei had in no way been involved but was simply an innocent victim. But surely the powers that be had to realize that with the increased connections, Rule 21 notwithstanding, between baseball and gambling, it could all blow up at any moment.

The situation is complicated. Whether it is buying a literary ticket or entering a March Madness office pool, Americans love to gamble, and certainly, it is not up to baseball to dictate how people spend their money. But it can lead and stand up for things that for years it termed right or wrong.

Baseball is a business. But that is not the foundation upon which a love of the game is built. Surely there are people who profited financially from Shohei’s otherworldly performance in the fourth game of the NLCS or game three of the World Series, but for true fans, the ones the game should be trying to attract, what Shohei did, and not how it played out against the odds, is what mattered and what will be the enduring memories of fans for years. It is those things that baseball should be celebrating, encouraging and protecting!

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Bill Pruden is a recently retired high school history teacher. He has been writing about the game—primarily through SABR-sponsored platforms—for about a decade.