Charley Hustle, Shoeless Joe And The Golden Calf — Part I
This is the first of a two-part series on sports and gambling. Part I traces the history of gambling and sports, focusing on how gamblers used players to fix games and how the leagues fought back when betting became an existential threat. Part I also discusses how the sports industry gradually discovered that legalized gambling offered too much money to pass up, and decided to ignore what was the cardinal rule: that sports should have no association with gambling and gamblers. Part II shows how lucrative and widespread sports betting is and how co-dependent the two industries are. It makes the case that sports leagues — baseball specifically — should own up to its self-serving hypocrisy that it’s concerned about gambling but has it under control, and start by reinstating two iconic historical figures, Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people.
— Nick Carraway, narrator of The Great Gatsby
The theme which dominates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is how the worship of money corrupts, how it destroys morality, judgement and character, how it devastates lives. In Gatsby, virtually all of Fitzgerald’s characters come to ruin pursuing and venerating wealth. The golden girl Gatsby pursues, Daisy Buchanan, marries a soulless racist, Tom Buchanan because of Buchanan’s inherited wealth. Jay Gatsby is shot and killed by a gas station owner, George Wilson, who thinks he’s being cuckolded by Gatsby, the mysterious stranger from Minnesota. Wilson’s wife Myrtle is carelessly run down by Daisy Buchanan who’s driving Gatsby’s car. Buchanan allows Wilson to believe Gatsby is his wife’s killer, leading to Gatsby’s assassination.
All the characters carelessly pursue wealth and status. And what inflexion point did Fitzgerald choose to drive the plot? Baseball. In America’s mind, baseball is upright and moral. How better to show that money corrupts than to blacken the pristine reputation of America’s Pastime?
So Fitzgerald contrived that his protagonist, Jay Gatsby, forms a partnership with a man named Meyer Wolfsheim, a bootlegger. Wolfsheim is notorious because he pulls off the biggest fix of all. He bribes eight players to throw the 1919 World Series, an enormous crime that the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway, likens to “a burglar blowing a safe.” To make sure you know Wolfsheim is a villain, Fitzgerald unnecessarily demonizes him invoking anti-Semitic tropes, describing Wolfsheim as a menacing fellow who sports cuff links made from human molars.
Characterizing baseball as purer than Caesar’s wife worked as a literary device, but the truth is that by 1919, baseball was anything but corruption free. Beginning in the 19th century, players consorted with gamblers and willingly accepted their money to supplement meager salaries. Before the Black Sox Scandal and even well after it, baseball history is pockmarked with lesser betting scandals. Underpaid journeyman players and stars either bet on games or took money to throw games. Ballplayers frequented saloons and pool halls where they rubbed elbows with gamblers and fixers.
Gambling Didn’t Appear Out of Nowhere
In 1877, a year after the National League was formed, baseball’s first gambling scandal occurred. Four Louisville players were accused of throwing games. They were banned for life. Before the 1903 World Series, star American League pitcher Cy Young was approached by gamblers and offered a bribe to ensure that his National League opponents, The Pittsburgh Pirates, walked away with a Series victory. Smoky Joe Wood, a top pitcher in the American League, advised friends before his final start in the 1912 World Series to place a bet on his Red Sox. “Prince” Hal Chase, perhaps the best first baseman of the Deadball Era, was widely suspected throughout his career of throwing games. Boston was regarded as the epicenter of baseball betting. Some of the gamblers who would later figure prominently in the Black Sox Scandal, like Joseph “Sport” Sullivan, hung out in Bean Town hotels with ballplayers. Four World Series, in 1905, 1912, 1914 and 1918 were rumored to have been influenced by fixers. For the 1919 Series, it was not just a rumor.
In 1919, eight Chicago White Sox players took bribes to throw games in the World Series to allow the underdog Cincinnati Reds to win the Series. The bribe money was supplied by a syndicate run by the notorious gambler Arnold Rothstein. The eight included some of baseball’s brightest stars: “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, long regarded as perhaps the most gifted player ever to play the game; Eddie “Knuckles” Cicotte, one of the game’s top pitchers; and third baseman Buck Weaver, an excellent young fielder and offensive force.
The Black Sox Scandal was an existential threat to baseball and it frightened owners to the core. They worried fans would abandon the sport because they lost faith in its integrity. They were so scared that they jettisoned the game’s management structure, creating a commissioners office and empowering its occupant with dictatorial powers to take any action to restore baseball to the good graces of the American public.
They hired Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a federal court judge renowned for levying a $29 million fine on Standard Oil ($800 million in today’s currency) for violating federal antitrust laws. He also imposed heavy sentences on radical draft resisters. With his stern visage and white mane, Landis looked like a hanging judge out of central casting. No matter that his Standard Oil sentence was reversed on appeal.
Baseball’s newly appointed hanging judge proceeded to permanently exile the eight Chicago White Sox players accused of taking gamblers’ money to throw the Series, even though they were exonerated by a grand jury. Landis permanently banned them from ever playing Major League Baseball again, including Weaver, who was aware of the conspiracy but never accepted any money or tried to throw a game. Baseball, and the team sports which grew up in its wake, was so scarred by the scandal that a succession of commissioners in every major sport did everything in their power to distance their leagues from any attachment — indeed the appearance of any attachment— to gambling.
For the players, it wasn’t only a chance to make more money. It was the thrill of the bet, the opportunity to beat the odds. And it wasn’t just journeymen seeking to double and treble their salaries. Baseball’s biggest stars gambled without fear of retribution. Rogers Hornsby, star second baseman and one of baseball’s all time great hitters, was addicted to gambling on the ponies. So was John McGraw, the imperious manager of the New York Giants. McGraw wagered $400 on his team to win the 1905 World Series. He collected on the bet and escaped punishment when the presidents of both leagues looked the other way. McGraw got away with the same corrupt act that Pete Rose committed 84 years later.
Rose, nicknamed Charley Hustle for his reckless style of play, suffered the same fate as the Black Sox Eight: a lifetime ban from baseball and its Hall of Fame.
There was a double standard for stars like McGraw, Hornsby, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker. In 1927, Speaker and Cobb were accused of fixing late season games so they could collect on bets they placed. By fixing games, stars could also assure that their teammates would score extra cash for finishing second or third in the league standings. It’s not certain whether Cobb or Speaker actually were paid off.
Those details only came to light when a participant in the conspiracy, a pitcher named Dutch Leonard, brought his allegations to Commissioner Landis, probably because Cobb, by then manager of the Tigers, tried to blackball Leonard from baseball. Landis forced the two stars to resign from their teams but allowed them to stay in the game. Both played out the final years of their careers with other teams. Their betting dalliance was glossed over and forgotten.
In 1947, Baseball Commissioner Albert “Happy” Chandler suspended Brooklyn Dodger Manager Leo Durocher because of Durocher’s gambling debts and associations with racketeers and nightlife figures. Durocher was friends with actor George Raft, who was buddies with Bugsy Siegel.
In 1970, both Sports Illustrated and Penthouse published articles about star pitcher Denny McLain’s involvement with bookmakers. McLain was one of the best pitchers in baseball and remains the last hurler to win 30 games, a feat he accomplished in 1968.
SI cited sources who claimed that McLain had a foot injury late in 1967 that didn’t occur on the field. They said it was caused by a mobster stomping on McLain’s instep as punishment for failing to pay off on a lost bet. McLain also tried to set up a bookmaking operation so he could collect the “vig” — the bookmaker’s profit — rather than losing money on bets. McLain was suspended indefinitely by Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who later reduced the sentence to three months.
For decades, major league sports managed to avoid major gambling scandals by neurotically trying to avoid any association with the gaming industry.
— For years, NFL owners vetoed placing franchises in Las Vegas so players wouldn’t be tempted by proximity to casinos and gangsters.
— In 1984, years after they both retired, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were hired as greeters by Atlantic City casino operators. Kuhn barred them from having any association with baseball. Kuhn’s successor, Peter Ueberroth, lifted the ban, implying that his predecessor had gone too far.
— As recently as 2003, the NFL rejected an offer from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to buy a 30-second commercial slot during the Super Bowl.
— In 2009, Commissioner Roger Goodell sent a letter to the governor of Delaware condemning the state’s effort to renew its NFL betting lottery. “By legalizing sports betting,” Goodell wrote, “it will be in Delaware’s interest to create ever larger numbers of new gamblers as the state attempts to maximize any revenue found in this promotion. The negative social impact of additional gambling cannot be minimized in a community.”
The wall insulating professional sports from gambling began to crumble when the Vegas Golden Knights entered the National Hockey League in 2016. The NFL soon followed when it approved relocating the Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2017. In that same year, the Women’s National Basketball Association approved the sale of the San Antonio Stars to MGM Resorts, which moved the team to Las Vegas. To make sure the team’s identification with the city’s main industry was unambiguous, the Stars were renamed the Las Vegas Aces.
No Sport, No Player, No Official is Immune From The Lure of Big Money
College basketball endured numerous point shaving scandals throughout the 20th and early 21st Century. In 1950, seven New York City area colleges and 33 players were accused of taking three-and-four figure bribes from gamblers to fix 86 games over four seasons. Two stars at Northwestern University served prison time for committing the same crime during the 1994–5 college season. During the 1978–79 season, three Boston College players accepted $2,500 bribes to fix nine games. The players intentionally missed shots so that the team would fall short of covering the point spread. In 1985, two Tulane players, including future NBA center John “Hot Rod” Williams, took bribe money to fix games.
In 2007, the FBI accused NBA referee Tim Donaghy of betting on games between 2005 and 2007. Donaghy subsequently pleaded guilty to two federal charges and was sentenced to 15 months in prison. An FBI investigation found Donaghy accepted $2,000 “rewards” for passing along in advance the “winner” each game he officiated. He simply didn’t call fouls on his handlers’ teams, making it clear where they should lay down bets. Donaghy later admitted to authorities that he had a gambling addiction.
A sports gambling expert tracked every game Donaghy worked from 2003 to 2007 and found that during the two seasons investigated by the NBA, teams involved scored more points than expected by the Las Vegas sports books 57 percent of the time. In the previous two seasons, this happened only 44 percent of the time. According to the expert, there was a 99.9 percent chance that these results would not have happened without an outside factor.
States Find The Golden Calf, But You Can Also Blame the Supreme Court
In 1992, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was signed into law. Also known as PASPA and the Bradley Act (for Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, a college and pro Hall of Fame basketball player), PASPA outlawed sports betting nationwide. States were given a year’s grace to create in-state lotteries.
The crack in the dam created by the NHL, NFL and the WNBA settling franchises in Las Vegas opened the floodgates. PASPA was enacted into law to legalize sports betting but also to bring it out of the shadows, wrest control away from mobbed-up bookies and offshore websites and direct once illicit revenues into state coffers. Sports leagues pushed for PASPA citing how it would safeguard the “integrity of the game.” Then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue testified before Congress how necessary the law was.
But before President George Bush’s signature was dry on the bill, a push to undo it began. America was emerging from recession and states saw legalized betting as a potentially rich source of money. So did professional and college sports. They all recognized that government sanctioned gambling was a cash cow, offering endless opportunities to expand betting.
If properly managed, the number of gambling platforms was infinite. Bets could be placed, not just on scores and spreads, but on balls, strikes, hits, at bats, at-bat counts, touchdowns, field goals, extra points, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, home run distances, run totals, errors, penalties, fouls, foul shots, foul shots sunk, won-loss records, game times. The menu of sporting events was similarly boundless: baseball, football, hockey, basketball, soccer, tennis, golf, lacrosse, track and field. Virtually all sports became fertile ground for gamblers.
It goes without saying that at some point in the future, you may even be able to bet on how much money it takes to bribe an official.
So major league sports zeal to distance itself from gambling melted away. One by one, states applied for exemptions from PASPA. By the time the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 to overturn PASPA in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, a suit originally brought by then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, 20 states had opted to allow sports gambling.
And just as major league sports did an about face on gambling, technology became the enabler. Now you didn’t have to attend a casino or a neighborhood parlor to place a bet. You could just pull out your smart phone and call up one of a multitude of on-line applications to wager. In 2013, Commissioner Bud Selig testified that if gambling gained government sanction, baseball would revert back to the dark days before 1919. Six years later, his successor, Rob Manfred, sang the praises of organized gambling and how it would save baseball.
Manfred was talking about financial salvation, not the integrity of the game.
In 2022, the global sports betting market was $96.84 billion. A year later it grew to $104.78 billion, an annual growth rate of 8.2 percent. That figure should reach $130 billion in five years. The number of betting platforms has multiplied arithmetically; line-in-play (where a bookmaker pre-determines the odds), fixed betting, exchange betting, daily fantasy, spread betting, e-sports and pari-mutuel all reached maturity. The number of major players also ballooned: 888 Holdings PLC., Bet365, Betsson AB, Churchill Downs Incorporated, Flutter Entertainment PLC., Kindred Group PLC., Sportech PLC., William Hill, DraftKings, The Stars Group Inc., BetAmerica, Web Holdings PLC., Gala Coral, Bet-at-home, FanDuel, Betfred, Ladbrokes, Entain plc, IGT, TVG, Twinspires, Watch and Wager, Bwin, and Unibet all vied for market share.
The four major sports leagues will earn a collective $4.2 billion from legalized sports betting. The brand names in the United States are FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, which dominate 80 percent of the domestic market. Baseball has a partnership with Draft Kings, a pay-to-play fantasy league, and a multi-year marketing relationship with MGM Resorts International. The NFL has deals with DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars Entertainment. DraftKings and FanDuel co-sponsor the NBA.
Major League Baseball stands to gain $1.1 billion in projected revenue from legal sports betting. The National Football League will potentially see $2.3 billion. Annual revenues for the NBA could reach $585 million; and the NHL, $216 million.
In deciding Murphy by a 6-to-3 vote, the Court delivered the death blow against the ban on sports gambling, not because the justices embraced sports betting, nor because 20 states had by then voted to allow gambling to reap the tax revenues it would throw off. The Court found a constitutional fig leaf to cloak its ruling. The majority held that the Tenth Amendment did not delegate to the federal government a right to regulate sports betting. It fell to the states to do that. And the public policy argument embraced by both the good government types and the betting industry? Legal sports betting creates substantial opportunities for state and local economies, generates tax revenue and creates jobs.
End of Part I