B1 is stepping up to the plate (no pun intended) and filling in for me while I travel. He did his research and came up with the 5 biggest baseball scandals. Please to enjoy.
#5 – Wife TradeOn March 5, 1973, at the
New York Yankees’ spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., pitchers
Mike Kekich and
Fritz Peterson announced they had swapped wives, two children apiece and even family dogs. (For the record, the Kekiches had a terrier, the Petersons a poodle.)
“Neither Fritz Peterson nor I will ever make it into the Hall of Fame,” Kekich said years later. “But I know our names keep popping up in the Hall of Shame. I don’t lose any sleep over it, but I really don’t think it’s fair.” Kekich seemed the biggest loser, in more ways than one. Previously noted mainly as the pitcher who surrendered Frank Howard’s home run in the Washington Senators’ last game two years earlier, he was traded early in the 1973 season to Cleveland, where he went 2-5 with a 7.48 ERA. The following year, the Indians cut him.“My whole career went into a black hole (after the swap),” Kekich said. “It was awful.”Of his short-lived fling with Marilyn Peterson, Kekich recalled, “Marilyn and I thought we were perfectly suited, just like Fritz and Susanne. Marilyn was all for the swap in the beginning, but then she backed off. All four of us had agreed in the beginning that if anyone wasn’t happy, the thing would be called off. But when Marilyn and I decided to call it off, the other couple already had gone off with each other.”
#4 – Cocaine ScandalsPirates players
Dave Parker,
Dale Berra,
Rod Scurry,
Lee Mazzilli,
Lee Lacy, and
John Milner as well as
Keith Hernandez,
Tim Raines, and
Lonnie Smith were
summoned to appear before a
Pittsburgh grand jury. Their testimony led to the
Pittsburgh Drug Trials, which made national headlines in September,
1985. (Barry Bonds just missed this scandal ... he was a Pirate rookie in 86).
Despite the problem of cocaine use and abuse being a baseball-wide problem, it was perceived as just a "Pittsburgh problem" by the national media. Arguably, it led to the more widespread awareness of use of other drugs such as
amphetamines ("greenies" in baseball vernacular) and
marijuana in the game. Both have a long history in baseball; Milner (who had retired two years earlier due to recurring
hamstring injuries), in fact, spoke of
Willie Mays (Bonds’ godfather) and
Willie Stargell, both iconic figures and Hall of Famers, giving him "greenies". Milner died at age 50.
Testimony revealed that drug dealers frequented the Pirates' clubhouse. Stories such as Rod Scurry leaving a game in the late innings to look for cocaine and John Milner buying two grams of cocaine for
$200 in the bathroom stalls at
Three Rivers Stadium during a 1980 game against the
Houston Astros shocked the grand jurors. Even Kevin Koch, who played the Pirates'
mascot, was implicated for buying cocaine and introducing players to a drug dealer.
On
February 28,
1986,
Peter Ueberroth suspended a number of players for varying lengths of time. A primary condition of reinstatement was public service. It would have also included
urine tests, but the
players union was able to successfully halt its implementation. To this day, drug testing, particularly of this sort, is a polarizing issue.
Rod Scurry died at age 36 on
November 5,
1992 in a
Reno,
Nevada intensive care unit of a
heart attack after a cocaine-fueled incident with police officers led to his hospitalization. Drug abuse also ruined the promising career of Dale Berra, the son of
Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. Dave Parker's cocaine abuse likely cost himself possible induction into the Hall of Fame
#3 – Black Sox ScandalEight players from the
Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the series against the
Cincinnati Reds. Details of the scandal remain controversial, and the extent to which each man was involved varied. It was, however, front-page news across the country when the story was uncovered late in the 1920 season, and despite being
acquitted of criminal charges (throwing baseball games was technically not a crime), the eight players were banned from organized baseball (i.e. the leagues subject to the National Agreement) for life.
Although betting had been an ongoing problem in baseball since the 1870s, it reached a head in this scandal, resulting in radical changes in the game's organization. It resulted in the appointment of a
Commissioner of Baseball, a former federal judge named
Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who took firm steps to try to rid the game of gambling influence permanently. The ancillary fallout - regrettably Landis was a racist - he perpetuated the
color line and prolonged the segregation of organized baseball for another quarter century. His successor
Happy Chandler said, "For twenty-four years Judge Landis wouldn't let a black man play.
One important step was the lifetime ban against the Black Sox Scandal participants. The "eight men out" were the great "natural hitter"
"Shoeless" Joe Jackson; pitchers
Eddie Cicotte and
"Lefty" Williams; infielders
"Buck" Weaver,
"Chick" Gandil,
Fred McMullin, and
"Swede" Risberg; and outfielder
"Happy" Felsch. In 1988, a movie was made about the scandal called
Eight Men Out, based on the book of the same name by
Eliot Asinof.
#2 – Pete Rose GamblingThe
Dowd Report asserted that Pete Rose bet on fifty-two Reds games in
1987, at a minimum of $10,000 a day. Rose, facing a very harsh punishment, decided to seek a compromise with Major League Baseball. On
August 24, 1989, Rose agreed to a voluntary lifetime ban from baseball. The agreement had three key provisions:
- Major League Baseball would make no finding of fact regarding gambling allegations and cease their investigation;
- Pete Rose was neither admitting or denying the charges; and
- Pete Rose could apply for reinstatement after one year.
To Rose's chagrin, however, Giamatti immediately stated publicly that he felt that Pete Rose bet on baseball games. Then, in a stunning follow-up event, Giamatti, a heavy smoker for many years, suffered a fatal
heart attack just eight days later, on
September 1. Many believed that the Rose case gave Giamatti the distress which led to his untimely passing. The fact that Rose is still not allowed to be reinstated, in the face of such divisive inclusion of racists like Ty Cobb and Kennesaw Landis (to name two of many) and drug cheats of the past 25 years is a joke. He has paid his dues.
#1 Steroids ERA... The Mitchell ReportMitchell's investigation focused on players, without investigating the role teams played. Mitchell reported that the
Major League Baseball Players Association was "largely uncooperative". According to Mitchell, the Players Association effectively discouraged players from cooperating with the investigation.
Over 700 people were interviewed during the investigation. Of 500 former players contacted, 68 agreed to be interviewed, and three others had interviews arranged by law enforcement. Interviews with current or former club officials, managers, coaches, team physicians, athletic trainers, or resident security agents accounted for another 550 interviews. The teams and the Commissioner's Office supplied Mitchell with more than 115,000 pages of documents and 2,000 electronic documents.
Jose Conseco has stated that more than 50% of ball players playing during his career were taking steroids and/or HGH but hell, let’s say its only 25%. Bud Selig should have the baseBALLS to ban them all from the game, strip them of all records and implement a policy as serious as cycling has and tell the players union to stuff it! Guys like Aaron, Maddox, Glavine, Robinson, Mantle and others deserve respect and honor while the cheaters should be driven from the game and the record books.
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As a side note to the Clemens lovers, outside of an experimental approach to combat chronic fatigue syndrome -- many doctors universally reject the efficacy of B-12 shots for healthy people who don't suffer from vitamin deficiencies. Insiders from the bodybuilding community believe vitamin B-12 is an effective masking agent for urine tests.
Original caption from Yahoo News Photos:
