Another metaphorical shoe dropped in what promises to be a veritable centipede-level shoe shower as the major league sports leagues finally get what they asked for by greedily getting into bed with online gambling interests. Let’s’ count those shoes, shall we?
In this 2023 post, I wrote in part,
The theory is that players make so much money that they won’t be tempted to engage in the addictive activity their own teams are promoting with the general public. It is a stupid, naive and ignorant theory. Rich gamblers don’t gamble for the money. Athletes, moreover, are not generally known for their intellectual acumen, ability to resist temptation, or skill at navigating mixed and contradictory messages.
Sports leagues can’t have it both ways. They can’t make millions off of gambling, and simultaneously insist that players gambling threatens the integrity of the game. If the team owners really cared about the integrity of the game and wanted to avoid the betting and game-fixing scandals that surely are coming (baseball will have a team in Las Vegas next year, and Moe Green is licking his metaphorical chops), it would stick to the policy that sports and gambling is a volatile mixture that must be avoided.
This will not end well. You can bet on it.
Also in 2023, Isaiah Rodgers and Rashod Berry of the Indianapolis Colts and free agent Demetrius Taylor were suspended indefinitely for betting on NFL games. Tennessee Titans offensive tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere was suspended six games for betting on other sports.
Next came the betting scandal involving baseball’s most famous star, pitcher-slugger Shohei Ohtani, whose translator was caught illegally using the star’s name to pay off a bookie. But there was, and is, more to come.
In the NBA, Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was banned after an investigation proved that Porter tipped off bettors about his health and then claimed illness to exit at least one game, creating wins for anyone who had bet on him to under-perform. Porter also gambled on NBA games in which he didn’t play, and once bet against his own team.
Then we had the tale of Pat Hoberg, an MLB ump and a good one (no robo-umps needed when he was behind the plate), being fired early this year for sharing a legal sports betting account with a professional poker-playing friend who bet on baseball, and then tried to cover up his involvement by deleting messages between him and his gambler friend.
Meanwhile, President Trump stepped in it (and you know what “it” is) when he “pardoned” the recently dead Pete Rose and declared the gambling, lying, banned sleaze-ball (but a great player!) should be admitted to the baseball Hall of Fame.
Last month, an NBA gambling scandal of major proportions broke, which I wrote about here. That post concluded with this: “The NBA won’t be alone for long in the major sports gambling spotlight. And baseball is just starting its World Series! It could be 1919 all over again.”
Sure enough, today Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were indicted by prosecutors in Brooklyn on charges involving sports betting. Ortiz was arrested; Clase is not yet in custody. I wrote about the two relief pitchers being investigated in July.
The two pitchers were charged with “wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery, and money laundering conspiracy, for their alleged roles in a scheme to rig bets on pitches thrown” according to the Department of Justice, as explained by The Athletic. The indictment details an alleged scheme that involves the pitchers purposely throwing balls so gamblers could bet on pitches being balls or strikes. It began as early as May 2023 with Clase, according to the indictment. The indictment includes a specific incident on June 15, 2025, when Ortiz was paid $5K for throwing an intentional ball, and Clase received $5K for facilitating it. Gamblers won at least $400K on fraudulent wagers relating to Clase and at least $60K on similar bets relating to Ortiz, prosecutors allege. The pitchers face up to 65 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
But if pitchers were throwing intentional balls (that is, non-strikes) in pennant race games in July (the Guardians made the play-offs), who has confidence that some pitcher wasn’t making 10 times as much to throw non-strikes in the acclaimed World Series just completed? I sure don’t.
The cascade of ruinous gambling scandals in pro sports is just beginning, and I have no sympathy whatsoever. The executives charged with maintaining the integrity of their games and the trust of their fans were greedy, lazy, willfully blind and stupid, if not criminally corrupt.
Ethics Alarms 
One of your best, and best written, posts. So insightful and a well-justified victory lap over an accurate prediction. Predicting that greed and corruption wouldn’t be a problem because professional athletes are so rich ignores so much evidence about human nature.
Thanks JD, and much appreciated.
I’m a fan of car restoration, so I’m well aware that a bit of surface bubbling on a body panel is usually more than “just a rough edge to be sanded, smoothed, and painted.” It’s usually a sign of bigger – and sometimes much more sinister – rot below the surface. When only the surface malady is addressed on a car, the rust always returns to the surface, while simultaneously spreading further and further underneath. The only way to truly fix the problem is to completely eradicate the rust by cutting it out all the way to source, replacing it with fresh, rust-free metal, and then insulating that metal against future rust.
Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz are baseball’s “bubbling body panels.” A “restorer” of some sort – I’m guessing it’s the FBI/DOJ – needs to eradicate all this rot from professional sports, all those involved need to be cut out from the sport, and then each sport’s governing body needs to insulate itself from future rot by creating immediate, permanent bans of all players convicted of gambling on ANY sport. And I would make the ban retro-active, so that a player is stripped of all prior-year awards and honors, up to and including induction into the Hall of Fame.
That wasn’t a great analogy, but it’s one analogy.
Our society is comprehensively destroying its ability to trust anything or anyone any longer.
“centipede-level shoe shower ” is witty quasi-alliteration that could almost become the base of a new tongue twister. Something about a centipede went shopping for shoes in a snow storm…
And what about the hack state legislative bodies that legalized all kinds of gambling in their states so they could pocket the paltry amounts of money paid them by the mob owned “sports books” to do so and purportedly reap a bonanza of additional tax income. It’s shocking how little it costs to buy a state legislator. Ten or fifteen thousand in campaign contributions is enough to secure their vote.
It’s funny how the mob is playing both sides of this situation. They run the “sports books” and they also run the scams to take advantage of the bets the “sports books” offer. I guess they don’t really care as they profit on both ends. They get the vig on the pumped up, scam bets. It’s just the suckers on the other side of the bets that lose. But they’ll be back!
The owners are trapped now. If gambling were put back in the genie’s bottle, their franchises would revert back to half their current values, and they’d be in default on their loans. I guess they’ll just blame it on the idiot players they have to hire. They’ve always been contemptuous of the players anyway, even before they had to pay those morons millions of dollars.
Think the credit card companies deserve mention, here?
Me too. I had to cancel a VISA this week-end because someone in Atlanta tried to use it for their prizepicks…um…expenditure.
IMO, Prop Bets are easily the ripest for abuse.
PWS
Speaking of cancelling credit cards, there’s the old joke:
Someone stole my wife’s credit card but I didn’t report it because they were spending less than she did.
Rodney? Is that you?
And how does American Express underwrite cardholders who are gambling? AmEx has always said it imposes no limits on its cardholders.