Wherever professional gambler and mob associate Arnold Rothstein is today (hint: It ain't heaven), he's probably dancing in his grave.
Rothstein was never convicted of conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds. But it's almost certain he was the money behind it.
The eight Chicago White Sox players who received money from gamblers to fix the series ended up being banned for life. Some of the players, such as "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, claim they never did anything, and played as hard as they could to win.
But the hard-nosed judge that the owners brought in as Major League Baseball's first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, wasn't listening to Jackson's excuses. His statement on his unprecedented punishment of the eight players used to be the gold standard that organized sports used to punish those who consorted with gamblers or did their bidding.
“Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball," Landis wrote.
The ban lasted until 2025, when Commissioner Rob Manfred reinstated Jackson, as well as Pete Rose and several other players banned for life for gambling, making them eligible for the Hall of Fame. Manfred's reasoning displays the problem with allowing gambling to touch any aspect of the sport.
"Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game," Manfred wrote. But that's not why Judge Landis excommunicated the eight players, or why other players "banned for life" have never been eligible for any honors, posthumous or not.
Landis didn't ban the players to maintain the integrity of the game. He banned them as a warning to all players, present and future, that gambling or consorting with gamblers, or hanging around with them, or any hint of association with gamblers, was a mortal sin that would send the player into permanent exile.
The "Black Sox Scandal" almost destroyed Major League Baseball. However, in the years prior to the scandal, gambling on the games and players was so common that many fans assumed the games were rigged. Gamblers would roam the stands at games openly soliciting bets. Players hung around known gamblers (and their women), often showing up in cars or expensive suits that few players could afford at the time.
Judge Landis's admonition served its purpose. Gambling went underground, and players were cautious in who they associated with. For 100 years, Judge Landis's lessons of integrity and fairness were the gold standard in all sports.
There were other gambling scandals in all sports, including the 1951 betting scandal that destroyed one of the biggest college basketball programs in the country. In 1950, City College of New York (CCNY) won both the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) and the NCAA Championship, an unprecedented feat never duplicated. The next year, CCNY, along with six other schools and 32 players, was caught up in a point-shaving scheme.
CCNY, Manhattan College, and NYU never recovered; none are major college basketball schools today.
There were other scandals as well: "the 1978-79 Boston College point-shaving scandal, the 1985 Tulane University cocaine-and-cash scheme, and the 2007 disclosure that NBA referee Tim Donaghy bet on games with, and supplied inside information to, the mafia," according to the New York Sun.
This past week, the gambling bug bit again in the NBA, with a case that promises to be the tip of the iceberg. Portland Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier have been indicted on several charges relating to "prop bets" and a rigged poker game.
Two days before the indictments were announced, the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, called for tighter regulation of prop bets, including restricting the league’s sportsbook partners from offering props on two-way players, or players who shuttle between the G-League and the NBA. In 2024, a former Toronto Raptor, Jontay Porter, was banned from the NBA for manipulating his in-game performance as part of a gambling scheme.
Speaking with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation Thursday, Mr. Donaghy warned that today’s charges are just the “tip of the iceberg in many different ways.”
“I think you’re going to see maybe more of a bigger scandal coming out of the college level,” he said. “You have these young athletes that aren’t going to make it to the next level, and somebody’s going to offer them money to maybe fix a game.”
What's needed, before the integrity of the games is completely destroyed, is "The Landis Treatment" of players, coaches, officials, and hangers-on who challenge the idea of a fairness. Sports betting is now too entrenched to be banned (as it once was). There's too much money involved.
But gambling is infecting every aspect of sport, including rule changes that gamblers demand to true-up prop bets.
The only way it stops is when fans lose interest in rigged games and turn off the TV.
