$Unique_ID{BAS00046} $Pretitle{} $Title{Scandals and Controversies} $Subtitle{} $Author{ Hall, Stephen S.} $Subject{Scandal Scandals Controversy Controversies Vincent Commissioner Resigns Gambling Bribery Fixing corruption Black Sox Kenesaw Mountain Landis Duffy Wansley Devyr Devlin Hall Craver Nichols Higham Chase Shoeless Joe Jackson Gandil McLain Pete Rose Alcohol Controlled Substance Substances Drinking Barleycorn Welch Kelly McCormick Babe Ruth drug drugs marijuana hashish cocaine Brawlers Perverts Felons Bergen shooting Strawberry Machado Ty Cobb Martin Steinbrenner Sex} $Log{ Jackson, Shoeless Joe*0029601.scf 1917 White Sox*0001301.scf Black Sox in Court (1921)*0002501.scf Landis, Kenesaw Mountain (right) & Will Harridge*0026501.scf} Total Baseball: The Players Scandals and Controversies Stephen S. Hall Scandal is in the eye of the beholder. The biggest scandal of baseball's 1876 season was the failure of the New York Mutuals and Philadelphia Athletics to fulfill their obligatory season-ending western road trip, resulting in their expulsion from the National League. Yet when black players were virtually excluded from the first eight decades of organized ball, few saw it as a long-running institutional scandal. When the likable but wayward Babe Ruth cut a broad swath through most notions of civilized behavior, the Sultan of Swat's charmed, forgiving public responded with winks and nods. But when Walter O'Malley, in a business decision calculated to maximize profits (surely one of baseball's most enduring and honored traditions), moved his Dodgers to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, he traumatized an entire generation of Brooklyn fans. When several New York Met players faced allegations of rape (ultimately not prosecuted), in 1992, the story blazed from the back pages of tabloids for weeks. But when baseball owners secretly conspired between 1985 and 1988 to subvert the economic spirit of free agency, cheating their employees out of tens of millions of dollars in potential salaries, the crime of collusion merited only a few grey paragraphs on the sports pages. From its earliest days, baseball has indulged gamblers, fixers, drunkards, brawlers, disreputable moguls, bad actors, felons, homicidal maniacs, crooked umpires, vindictive owners, pyromaniacal fans, and at least one ax murderer. Just as a Dickens novel reflects all the voices and vices of Victorian London, baseball hears from all precincts of the American experience, including the seedy. And just as in Dickens, baseball's seediness is not confined to gambling parlors and bars, but extends to the executive suite. A harbinger of the economic controversies and financial hard ball to come could be read in the ouster of baseball commissioner Francis (Fay) Vincent in September of 1992 by a majority of owners, in what more than one writer described as baseball's "civil war." A Commissioner "Resigns" Although Vincent's three-year tenure was not without its own controversial moments (his handling of the Steinbrenner expulsion, for one, and his peremptory manner in dealing with critics), the orchestrated movement that drove him from office reiterated a baseball truism overlooked in times of economic and sportive harmony: the commissioner serves, and always has served, at the pleasure of the owners. Circa 1992, the pleasure of the owners seemed to be to force a confrontation with the players union on the issue of contracts, free agency, and spiraling salaries. Vincent threatened to act as a dangerously moderating force in that looming power struggle, for his track record suggests he would have been likely to invoke his favorite clause--the commissioner's power to act "in the best interests of baseball"--to squelch a possible 1993 spring training lockout of the players by ownership. The whispering campaign to unseat Vincent bore a strong Chicago accent. The ringleaders of this insurrection, according to numerous press accounts, were Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and Stanton Cook of the Tribune Company, owners not only of the Cubs but of television stations that broadcast games of seven teams (the Cubs, White Sox, Yankees, Angels, Phillies, Dodgers, and Rockies--all of whom, incidentally, opposed Vincent's continued service). Chief among the allies of the Chicago crowd were Dodger owner Peter O'Malley and Milwaukee owner Bud Selig. Their campaign to depose Vincent provided a map of the economic controversies that may well convulse major league baseball in the coming years. Vincent took over as interim commissioner on September 2, 1989, one day after the death of A. Bartlett Giamatti, and one of his earliest official acts may have sealed the enmity with which many owners viewed his leadership. In the spring of 1990 Vincent intervened in a labor dispute, helping both to end a month-long spring training lockout and to negotiate a four-year collective bargaining agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association. Many owners viewed the agreement as too accommodating to the union, and Vincent's unpopularity only grew over his handling of the ban of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, his position on television contracts, and divisional realignment. To all appearances, discontent boiled to a head in early July, when Vincent, invoking "the best interests of baseball," announced his decision to realign the National League. According to the plan (and common-sense geography), Atlanta and Cincinnati would join the eastern division while Chicago and St. Louis would shift to the west. The Tribune Company, arguing hardship for Cub fans (a novel strategy, given the club's history), promptly sued the commissioner. But in fact the anti-Vincent sniping had begun as early as the winter of 1990-1991, when the commissioner acknowledged the discontent and stated publicly, "I'm not going to resign. Unless somebody has a technique that I'm not aware of, the decision whether I stay or go is mine." Fueled not so much by a technique as by a technology, disgruntled owners began to whip up anti-Vincent sentiment by fax, and this country club coup d'etat was well underway in the summer of 1992. Ominously, the labor issue resurfaced that June, when Reinsdorf, Brewers owner Selig, and Richard Ravitch--the owners' chief labor representative--tried to persuade Vincent to relinquish his authority in labor relations; he would not. The labor issue was the handwriting on Vincent's crumbling wall of support. The owners convened in Chicago on September 3 to hold a vote of confidence on Vincent's stewardship. By an 18-9 vote, they requested his resignation (the teams voting for Vincent's ouster were the White Sox, Cubs, Dodgers, Yankees, Brewers, Angels, Twins, Phillies, Pirates, Indians, Blue Jays, Cardinals, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Tigers, Braves, and Rockies; Cincinnati abstained, and the rest voted for Vincent). For one tense weekend (ironically, the Labor Day holiday weekend), Vincent refused to cave in, vowing to fight the issue all the way to the Supreme Court and hiring Brendan V. Sullivan, Jr., the lawyer who so ably defended Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings, to give sinew to the threat. Still reeling from the Pete Rose debacle, Major League Baseball seemed headed for yet another major showdown in court. But upon reflection Vincent thought better of going the court route, and in a capitulatory statement issued with his resignation on September 8, Vincent explained his decision, perhaps with intended irony, by invoking the very governing clause that most annoyed his detractors: "Simply put, I've concluded that resignation--not litigation--should be my final act as Commissioner, `in the best interests' of baseball." The following day, September 9, baseball's executive council met in St. Louis to assume control of the game and unanimously elected Bud Selig to be chairman of the council, acting in effect as a caretaker commissioner. Baseball's palace coup came at a time when the owners, having fueled the fires of free agency for fifteen years, now claimed to have been burned by it. The game's economic woes were indeed pressing: numerous teams plead dwindling profits (if not poverty); the league's billion-dollar national television contract with CBS expired at the end of the 1993 season (and a new contract saw decreased revenues); ESPN announced that it would not renew its option to televise games beyond the 1993 season because of flagging viewership (ultimately ESPN re-signed but again at a far lower rate); and the resistance to revenue sharing between teams in large and small markets threatens to carve the leagues' talent pool into haves and have-nots. But the controversial dumping of Vincent stirred up even deeper problems, arousing the concern of several U.S. senators, including Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio and Alan Simpson of Wyoming. The former's antitrust subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a one-day hearing in December of 1992 to examine baseball's antitrust exemption. "If decisions about the direction and the future of Major League Baseball are going to be dictated by the financial interests of team owners," said Metzenbaum, "then maybe baseball should be required to operate under the same business rules as any other sport." At the same time, that exemption came under renewed inspection in light of the proposed sale of the San Francisco Giants to a group of investors in St. Petersburg, Florida, for an estimated $115 million--a sale blocked by National League owners in favor of a lower bid from a San Francisco based group. The vote renewed scrutiny from potential outside regulators. "If they don't accept the offer," said Florida senator Connie Mack, grandson of the legendary Athletics manager, prior to the decision, "there is serious question about the exemption baseball enjoys from antitrust laws." All this comes at a time when the the owners were already a bit thin in both integrity and the wallet following a series of legal setbacks in the landmark collusion judgments. On September 17, 1990, baseball arbitrator George Nicolau ruled that the owners had secretly coordinated efforts to prevent the free agent market from working in the 1987 and 1988 seasons, and ordered the owners to pay $102.5 million in compensation. Coupled with previous rulings and factoring in salary losses from 1986 to 1990, the owners reached an agreement to pay the players union the staggering total of $280 million. In financial terms alone, the owners' collusion to violate baseball's basic labor agreement--in effect, a secret plan that not only cheated the players but arguably cheated fans from seeing the best possible home team on the field--surely ranks as the greatest scandal of baseball's modern era. The willingness of owners to undermine the basic agreement, despite the enormous financial and public relations cost of such high-risk sabotage, suggests the degree to which they are willing to take a hard line in labor negotiations with the players in the future. And the absence of a nominally independent commissioner to mediate those deep divisions virtually ensures economic controversy for years to come. Gambling, Bribery, and Game-Fixing Baseball's greatest scandal is unquestionably the fixing of the 1919 World Series, but the Black Sox scandal merely climaxed more than five decades of dubious collusion between players and gamblers. Half a century before the World Series fix, in 1872, the New York Times harumphed editorially that the aim of baseball was "to employ professional players to perspire in public for the benefit of gamblers . . ." Many small scandals lit the way to the disgrace of 1919. Baseball began as a gentlemanly avocation, but any disputatious athletic event quickly caught the attention of gamblers. As early as 1857, crowds at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, one of amateur baseball's most hallowed venues, came to bet on games. It was but a short step from gambling to influencing the outcome of games. Soon word drifted eastward that gamblers on the West Coast were not averse to firing their guns into the air at crucial moments to disrupt the concentration of fielders--and, of course, to protect their investments. A slang term, "hippodroming," soon emerged to indicate a game played with the illusion of spontaneity when, in fact, the outcome had already been fixed. Gamblers reportedly harassed members of the Brooklyn Excelsiors in an 1860 game with the Brooklyn Atlantics--after which the Excelsiors refused to play the Atlantics again. Another team, the Haymakers of Troy, New York, was suspected of hippodroming, largely because its owners included renowned New York gamblers like John Morrissey. Rumors of fixed games so dogged baseball in its early years that a Buffalo writer once suggested, "Any professional base ball club will "throw" a game if there is money in it. A horse race is a pretty safe thing to speculate on, in comparison with an average ball match." Gamblers freely circulated in baseball parks, occasioning such warnings as the BETTING POSITIVELY PROHIBITED sign that graced the wall of the Washington Nationals' ballpark in 1867. A forerunner of bookmaking, called pool selling, sprung up in conjunction with baseball, and by the 1870s as much as $70,000 might be riding on a single game. With all the betting, it was inevitable that gamblers would approach players with bribes--even during the "amateur" era. Players of that era--ill educated, often immigrants--were particularly susceptible; the under-the-table payments they received as amateurs did little to instill moral probity. Indeed, patronage jobs were often offered in lieu of outright salaries by such well-connected owners as Boss Tweed, part owner of the New York Mutuals. A lot of baseball players found well-paying jobs in such unlikely spots as the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington and the coroner's office in New York. Indeed, a scant six years after the formation of the amateur National Association, organized baseball confronted its first gambling scandal. On September 28, 1865, the heavily favored New York Mutuals lost to the Brooklyn Eckfords, 28-11. It later developed that two Mutuals players, Ed Duffy and William Wansley, offered money to Mutuals shortstop Thomas Devyr to throw the game. For their role in the conspiracy, which was investigated by the Judicial Committee of the National Association, Duffy and Wansley were banned from match play; the Mutuals, in desperate need of a shortstop, helped to have charges against Devyr dismissed. By 1870, all three players had won reinstatement--a prophetic indication that organized baseball was not yet prepared to take a firm stand against gambling. A little-known footnote to the amazing 60-0 season of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's first avowedly professional team, is that the lone blemish in their record came as the result of a tie with the hippodroming Haymakers of Troy, who walked off the field in the sixth inning of a 17-17 game on some reportedly dubious pretext to save their gambling bosses from a probable loss. Five years into the professional era, the legendary baseball writer Henry Chadwick felt compelled to charge in print that players were in cahoots with gamblers and had staged "rather questionable" games during the 1874 campaign. The charges remained just that--accusations--until the Louisville Grays scandal of 1877. It was, according to historian J.E. Findling, "the first documented case of player crookedness after the founding of the National League." The senior circuit was barely a year old when Chadwick's worst fears came true. The National League had been organized in February of 1876, at least in part as a response to growing public disenchantment with baseball's wayward ways--the influence of gamblers, the appearance of fixed games, the drunken, salacious antics of players. In August of 1877 the league-leading Louisville Grays embarked on a long eastern road trip. After a disastrous stretch of seven losses and a tie, in part facilitated by suspiciously inept play, the team returned home. Sportswriters openly hinted that Louisville had dumped its games and deliberately blown the pennant. Since a Louisville newspaper magnate served as club president, the Courier-Journal ran speculative articles intended to smoke out the suspected fixers. The ploy worked when one of the players confessed. On October 30, 1877, the Louisville directors expelled four players--Jim "Terror" Devlin, George "Gentleman George" Hall, Bill "Butcher" Craver, and Al "Slippery Elm" Nichols--for life. Nichols, a utility player, had befriended a "pool seller" named James McCloud, who paid Devlin and Hall $100 to throw a game. An examination of Western Union telegrams conclusively established links between the gambler and the players. Craver refused to sign a loyalty oath, thus earning his expulsion, but Devlin, Hall, and Nichols were accused of selling games and "tampering with players." In their defense, they claimed that the Louisville management had failed to pay their salaries as promised--not an unlikely charge, given the parlous finances of the nineteenth-century clubs. All four were banned for life, and the Louisville Grays were disbanded before the start of the 1878 season. The Louisville Courier-Journal attributed the dissolution to "the rascality of last year's players and the general conviction that dishonest players on other clubs were more the rule than the exception . . ." Umpires were not immune to the emoluments of gamblers either. As a player for the Chicago White Stockings, Richard Higham's desultory attitude and outright ineptitude had aroused suspicion. As umpire, Higham handled many games involving the Detroit Wolverines at the outset of the 1882 season, and a number of observers--including Wolverine owner William Thompson--believed that many of the close calls went against Detroit. Thompson, who also happened to be mayor of Detroit, assigned a private detective to investigate Higham. The detective ultimately uncovered the scam: Higham placed bets by telegram with a well-known gambler on the very games he was scheduled to umpire, then made calls favoring the team he'd bet on. Baseball officials confronted Higham with the evidence and banished him from the game. It represented no midlife crisis for Higham, however--he promptly became a bookie based in Chicago. This expulsion marks the only documented case of dishonesty by an umpire in the history of major league baseball. The influence--or at least suspicion--of gambling did not subside after the Louisville Grays and Higham scandals. Contemporary commentators speak of "a little odor" hovering over the pennant races of 1891 and 1892, but no details ever emerged. Then, at the turn of the century, baseball took a two-decade running start toward the scandal that would forever blacken its name. The lassitude with which baseball viewed the gambling establishment by 1900 affected every part of the game. Players openly associated with gamblers; and, indeed, in some cases that was a politic thing to do, for those gamblers happened to be team owners. The original bankrollers of the New York Highlanders, Frank Farrell and William "Big Bill" Devery, typified the unhealthy cross-pollination of sports and gaming. Devery went unbowed by his reputation as New York's most corrupt police commissioner, and Farrell's notorious gambling habits placed him many chits above the middling pool seller. One of their favorite pals was the player known as "Prince Hal": Hal Chase, probably the most corrupt ballplayer ever. Chase began his career with the Highlanders in 1905 and was an extraordinarily gifted fielder at first base. He was also a well-known gambler who thought nothing of betting on his own team, and sometimes even against it. Many of his managers--including George Stallings of the Highlanders, Frank Chance of the Yankees (as the Highlanders came to be called), and Christy Mathewson in Cincinnati--suggested at one time or another that he threw games. It is typical of the laissez-faire days before the Black Sox scandal that when Stallings publicly complained about Chase, American League President Ban Johnson did not investigate the alleged game fixing, but rather dressed down Chase's manager for smearing the reputation of a big gate attraction. By 1918, when he was suspended by the Reds for gambling and attempting to bribe an opposing pitcher, Chase's appearance on the field was sometimes greeted with cynical cries of "What are the odds?" At least once, and probably on many occasions, Chase offered bribes to teammates and opposing players to give substandard performances. He concluded his malodorous career with the 1919 New York Giants; true to form, he was blacklisted from the game in February 1920. It later emerged that Chase and third baseman Heinie Zimmerman, who was indefinitely suspended by the Giants in September 1919, offered an $800 bribe to Giant pitcher Rube Benton to throw a game; bribes were also offered to Benny Kauff, Lee Magee, Fred Toney, and Jean Dubuc. Despite no public explanation, Giants manager John McGraw later suggested that Chase and Zimmerman's questionable play against Cincinnati helped the Reds win the pennant--lending, if true, a rarely noted but fitting symmetry to that year's corrupt World Series. Prince Hal's crowning achievement in this record of deceit was to bring gamblers and fixers together to throw the 1919 World Series. Hal Chase's machinations were merely the most obvious symptoms of pervasive corruption in the period 1900-1920, according to baseball historian David Quentin Voight. There was a reported attempt to bribe players in the first two World Series, in 1903 and 1905; in the former year, Boston catcher Lou Criger was offered a bribe to "lay down," while in the latter year, Philadelphia pitcher Rube Waddell did not play due to an injury, when he had allegedly received a $17,000 offer not to play. It was widely believed that gamblers tried to fix the 1908 season. In 1916, the New York Giants were rumored to have helped the Dodgers beat out the Phillies in the pennant race, and the 1918 World Series may have been tampered with as well. There was even the bizarre attempt, on the last day of the 1910 season, to bribe an official scorer, so that Cleveland's popular Nap Lajoie could beat out the detested Ty Cobb for the batting crown. The unsuccessful attempt--to change an error into a hit for Lajoie--resulted in dismissal for St. Louis Browns coach Harry Howell; St. Louis manager Jack O'Connor, too, got fired for ordering his third baseman to play so deep that Lajoie got seven bunt singles in the season-ending doubleheader. Yet these transgressions were more of degree than nature. Since at least the 1890s, it was commonplace for teams to reward opposition players with clothes, cigars, even money for a good performance against rivals; it no doubt took but a short step to rewarding bad performances as well. All the corruption came home to roost in 1919. Even before the very first pitch had been thrown in what became Cincinnati's "improbable" World Series victory over the Chicago White Sox, rumors swirled that the fix was on. It took a year for the rumors to come true. The initial reaction was to dismiss the allegations, including reports that gamblers had offered Cincinnati pitcher Hod Eller a $5,000 bribe which he turned down. But the 1920 season was a cauldron of renewed rumors of bribery and game fixing. No less than seven clubs--the Giants, Cubs, Yankees, Braves, Red Sox, Indians, and White Sox--were suspected of throwing games that season. Cub players Lee Magee and Claude Hendrix were blacklisted, Hendrix toward the end of the 1920 season for trying to fix a game with the Phillies. Finally, in September 1920, a Chicago grand jury convened to investigate charges about the 1919 World Series. Meanwhile, an article appeared on September 27, 1920, in the Philadelphia North American in which local gambler Bill Maharg went beyond innuendo and blew open the scandal. Maharg described how White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte volunteered to fix the Series; how Maharg and his partner, former major leaguer Billy Burns, promised to pay $100,000 to eight White Sox players; how the gamblers double-crossed the players by paying them only $10,000 at first; how the players double-crossed the gamblers by winning a game they were supposed to lose; and how Burns and Maharg got double-crossed by a rival fixer, New York gambler (and former boxing champion) Abe Attell, who also was bribing the players. The following day, Cicotte agreed to testify to the grand jury and named the names ever after branded the "Black Sox": pitchers Cicotte and Claude Williams, batting star Joe Jackson, infielders Buck Weaver (who had "guilty knowledge" of the fix but refused to take part in it), Swede Risberg, and Chick Gandil, outfielder Oscar "Happy" Felsch, and even a utility man, Fred McMullin. Not only did they throw the 1919 World Series to the Reds, but, in a disreputable postscript to their season of infamy, they dumped the 1920 pennant race to the Indians, too. In grand jury testimony, Gandil emerged as the ringleader, pocketing $35,000. Cicotte received $10,000; Jackson got $5,000 (he was earning about $6,000 a year from the tight-fisted White Sox owner Charles Comiskey). Arnold Rothstein, the notorious gangster, reputedly masterminded the fix, although his role was never legally proven and he was never charged with a crime. The scandal left no one untainted. Joe Jackson wrote a letter to Comiskey shortly after the calamitous Series, stating that the Series outcome was questionable and volunteering to meet with the owner to provide details, but Comiskey--said to be concerned about the effect of such revelations on attendance and profits, not to mention his equity in the franchise--never followed up on Jackson's offer. Following the mysterious disappearance of their confessions and other legal skullduggery, the "eight" Black Sox won acquittal during their June 1921 conspiracy trial; none of the big-fish gamblers and fixers went to trial. But the newly appointed baseball Commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, in an extraordinarily usurptive move aimed at restoring public confidence in the game, suspended all eight players for life. The sentence was particularly brutal for Weaver, who had not participated in the scam, and Jackson. "Shoeless Joe," in throwing the series, batted .375, and it was his apparently accurate throw to the plate in the tense fourth game, inexplicably cut off by pitcher Cicotte, which convinced cognoscenti in the stands beyond a doubt that the White Sox were deliberately tossing the games. In the roundelay of accusations that later emerged, Rube Benton charged that Hal Chase made $40,000 betting on the Reds; others charged that Benton knew of the fix and had made $3,200; and St. Louis infielder Joe Gedeon won $600 following a tip from Swede Risberg. Bill James, in his Historical Baseball Abstract, estimates that a total of thirty-eight major league ballplayers were implicated in scandals during the period 1917-1927, and that nineteen were formally banned or effectively blacklisted (James' list includes several players, however, who were suspended not for corruption, but for such offenses as contract jumping). In addition to the Chase and Black Sox scandals, James cites the allegations of Jimmy O'Connell, who claimed to have offered $500 to Philadelphia player Heinie Sand to fix a game in 1924; O'Connell and Giants coach Cozy Dolan were banned for life, but Frankie Frisch denied he'd known about the fix. Under Landis' stern tutelage, baseball took a far less tolerant view of gamblers, though tales of the corrupt teens continued to trickle out. In 1926, player-managers Ty Cobb of the Tigers and Tris Speaker of the Indians both resigned under a cloud; the public later learned that ex-pitcher Dutch Leonard alleged that they had conspired to fix the last game of the 1919 season so that Detroit could win third-place money and that Smoky Joe Wood allegedly placed bets for Cobb and Speaker. And in 1927, "Black Sox" Swede Risberg publicly charged that some fifty players had known of a four-game series in 1917 that the Tigers threw to the White Sox. Compared to the tormented twenties, the Depression and war years seemed peaceably upright. But never entirely so. In 1943, for example, Phillies owner William D. Cox received a swift and permanent suspension from Landis for betting on Philadelphia games. It would be perhaps naive to think that Landis' crowd-pleasing gestures totally eliminated gambling from the game, but they certainly sent a message to players and administrators alike that, if caught, the price would be steep. The antigambling fervor carried over into the commissionership of A.B. "Happy" Chandler, who in the spring of 1947 suspended Brooklyn manager Leo Durocher for one year for "conduct detrimental to baseball." Personality clashes and baseball politics apparently influenced Chandler's decision, but he had previously warned Durocher against associating with gamblers and other "unsavory" characters, including actor George Raft. Durocher, not heeding the warning, had actually been living in Raft's home the previous fall. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn prided himself on an aggressive Landis-style stance against even the appearance of association with gamblers, and so in 1969 presented an ultimatum to four prominent baseball people, including Oakland owner Charles O. Finley and Atlanta Brave directors Bill Bartholomay, John Louis, and Del Coleman. All four had interests in the Parvin-Dohrmann Co., which owned and operated the Fremont, Stardust, and Aladdin casinos in Las Vegas. Faced with choosing baseball or gaming, Finley sold his stock, and all but Coleman resigned their directorships. Somewhat more controversial (and problematic) was Kuhn's insistence that players or coaches employed by baseball teams could not accept public relations work at casinos. Thus Mets batting instructor Willie Mays (in 1979) and Yankee spring training instructor Mickey Mantle (in 1983) were forced to give up their baseball jobs in order to serve as greeters at Atlantic City casinos. Shortly after Kuhn left office, incoming Commissioner Peter Ueberroth revoked the orders. Baseball's next great gambling scandal unwittingly reaffirmed the old Graig Nettles adage about going from Cy Young to Sayonara. Detroit pitcher Denny McLain made the trip in four years, winning the prestigious award outright in 1968 with a 31-6 record and sharing it again in 1969, only to bounce out of the majors by 1972. Around the beginning of 1970, word circulated that a Detroit grand jury had begun investigating McLain. Against a backdrop of personal financial difficulties, McLain's rumored involvement with gamblers prompted a meeting with Bowie Kuhn, at which the pitcher admitted investing $5,700 in a bookmaking operation at a bar he frequented in Flint, Michigan. The confession preceded by several days a Sports Illustrated article on February 17, 1970, which described McLain's involvement in the bookmaking operation. The article went on to suggest that when McLain failed to pay out $46,600 on a winning bet in 1967, organized crime enforcer Tony Giacalone allegedly stomped on the pitcher's foot, dislocating several toes and causing him to miss at least two September starts during Detroit's heated pennant race with Boston. The article further alleged that Detroit mobster Billy Giacalone, brother of Tony, bet heavily on Boston to win the pennant, and also against Detroit in their final game of the season, which McLain started and the Tigers lost; in all, McLain lost his last three decisions of the 1967 season. The bookie connection and the allegations earned an indefinite suspension from Kuhn, although the commissioner later stated there was no proof of McLain's having bet on baseball games. Unindicted but never clear of the clouds over his head, McLain returned to the Tigers in July. He received two more suspensions that season amid increasingly bizarre behavior: threatening a parking lot attendant, dumping a bucket of ice water on two sportswriters, and violating federal law by carrying a gun on a commercial airliner. McLain was traded to the Senators, and tried comebacks with Oakland and Atlanta before bouncing entirely out of baseball in 1972. In 1985, he was found guilty in a Florida trial and sentenced to twenty-three years in jail on charges of racketeering, loan sharking, extortion, and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. After serving nearly thirty months, McLain won his appeal and regained freedom. (Late in 1988, however, he pled guilty to several of the charges and once again faced a jail term.) In allegedly dabbling both in gambling and drugs, McLain bridged the gap between baseball's more traditional vices and the modern fascination with controlled substances. Even McLain's peccadilloes pale compared to those of Pete Rose. It is difficult to choose one aspect of the Rose scandal that is richer with outrage or pathos than another: that the greatest hitter the game has seen would be forced to peddle, reportedly because of gambling debts, the bat with which he broke Ty Cobb's seemingly unassailable hit record; that "Charlie Hustle," the quintessential gamer, was banned for life from the game; that the rough-hewn moptop who played with such boyish abandon would end up in jail with the most hardened of men. But all the career hits (4,256), all the career games (3,562), all twelve major league records provided no immunity when Peter Edward Rose was permanently banned from baseball on August 24, 1989. It represented baseball's darkest moment since the Black Sox scandal of 1919. No one knows when Rose's gambling problems got out of control; his legal problems with baseball began to surface in February 1989, when then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth called him to a meeting in New York--a meeting, it was soon reported, to discuss allegations of gambling. Press reports began to appear soon thereafter describing Rose's predilection for dog races and horse tracks, and then the commissioner's office confirmed that a special investigation was underway. In selecting John Dowd to head the probe, baseball entrusted its inquiry to a man who had successfully investigated a sitting FBI director (Clarence Kelley, ultimately dismissed for improprieties) and a sitting congressman (Rep. Daniel Flood, ultimately convicted of illegal campaign contributions). Dowd would not submit the results of his investigation until May 9, but in the course of its preparation, he interviewed and deposed more than half a dozen figures who professed knowledge of Rose's gambling activities. On March 21, Sports Illustrated published a well-documented investigative article reporting that Rose bet on baseball games--a violation of baseball rule 21(d), which states that any player who bets on a game "shall be declared ineligible for one year" and any player who bets on his own team "shall be declared permanently ineligible." These public allegations of improprieties mirrored the charges privately being assembled by Dowd. But on April 18, 1989, the new commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti, committed a legal blunder that provided Rose's lawyers with the maneuvering room that allowed them to keep the issue churning in court, and on the front pages, all summer. In a letter to a federal judge in charge of sentencing one of Dowd's sources, an Ohio bookmaker named Ron Peters, Giamatti wrote that Peters had been "candid, forthright and truthful . . ." That last word, "truthful," with its implication that Giamatti accepted the veracity of Peters' allegation before hearing Rose's side of the story, allowed Rose and his lawyers to claim that Giamatti had prejudged the case. Indeed, when Giamatti requested Rose to appear at a May 25 hearing, Rose's lawyers asked for a thirty-day postponement and laid the grounds for an epic lawsuit that would challenge the very authority of the commissioner's office to rule on his--and, by implication, any player's--fate. The battle thus joined, it overshadowed the season for the next four months. It was a classic battle pitting two considerable antagonists. Giamatti was erudite but tough, well spoken, as blue blood as the son of an immigrant could get, a Renaissance scholar conversant with the sense as well as the syntax of Machiavelli, a man with an almost poetic love of the game; Rose was the diehard, in-your-face burr-headed hustler, blue-collar and rough-edged, not terribly conversant with the kings' English, but willing to do anything to win. For all that, Rose's lawyers sought an early settlement in April, but discussions broke down and they filed suit against baseball on June 19, 1989, challenging Giamatti's ability to be fair and requesting a temporary restraining order barring the commissioner from holding his scheduled June 26 hearing with Rose. In granting the request on June 26, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Norbert A. Nadel ruled that Giamatti had prejudged the case. The stunning decision, widely criticized at the time, nonetheless raised the stakes considerably. Rose's suit, in effect, challenged the right of the baseball commissioner to adjudicate internal matters--threatened, in short, to chisel away at the bedrock on which the authority of baseball rests, and of which the sport, understandably, is most loathe to entertain the slightest erosion. The Nadel ruling triggered a furious round of legal thrusts and parries by both sides that lasted nearly two months. As is often the case, broad issues took a back seat to nuts-and-bolts skirmishes over jurisdiction. Organized baseball methodically won these skirmishes. Baseball's lawyers got Rose's suit against Giamatti assigned to a federal court, and U.S. District Court Judge John Holschuh scheduled a hearing for August 28 on Rose's request. Once the case moved to federal court, historically sympathetic to baseball's arguments of self-administration, Rose faced a difficult legal battle, at enormous cost, to pursue the issue, and it is believed that this contributed to his decision to reach a settlement. With the distraction of court arguments and rulings and reassignments, it was easy to forget that the Rose case was ultimately about gambling, not the authority of the commissioner. One day after his June 26 ruling, Judge Nadel was compelled to make public--against both his and baseball's wishes--the report compiled by John Dowd. This 225-page report, and seven supporting volumes of evidence, provided a comprehensive and devastating portrait of Rose the Gambler in the years 1985-87. The Dowd report revealed that Rose routinely bet not only on baseball games (typically $2,000 per game), but that he bet on Cincinnati games--a violation of baseball rules that would automatically draw a permanent expulsion from the game. In the first three months of the 1987 season alone, for example, gambling records indicated that Rose bet on the Reds to win fifty-two times, winning twenty-nine times (there was no evidence that Rose bet against his own team). He typically used intermediaries named Thomas Gioiosa or Paul Janszen, both convicted felons and both destined to join the names Abe Attell and Bill Maharg in the tainted pantheon of baseball low-lifes; these gambling gofers would then place Rose's bets either with Ohio bookie Ron Peters or an unnamed bookmaker in Staten Island, N.Y. Baseball investigators obtained dated betting slips in Rose's handwriting--and, according to an FBI analysis cited in the New York Times, with Rose's fingerprints--to document his gambling activities. Rose's gambling habits were certainly out of control by 1985. Gambling debts in fall 1985 forced Rose to borrow $47,000 from Michael Fry, who authorities allege was involved in a cocaine ring operating between Florida and southwest Ohio; Rose reportedly came under investigation for involvement in the drug ring, though no charges were ever filed. Among the nine individuals making allegations against Rose, however, his principal accusers--Gioiosa, Peters, Janszen, and Fry--all faced legal difficulties and had reason to seek the leniency of the courts. Their testimony was never challenged by Rose's representatives in a hearing. Through it all, Rose--firm of jaw, defiant as ever--steadfastly denied he had ever bet on baseball. But behind the scenes, with damaging evidence and legal costs mounting, Rose's lawyers once again approached the commissioner's office in mid-July with a proposed settlement. The sticking point was Rose's refusal to admit he bet on baseball games. Only after Rose's lawsuit was headed for federal court did a settlement get ironed out. On August 24, 1989, a grim and infamous Thursday in baseball history, A. Bartlett Giamatti announced "the sad end of a sorry episode" by declaring Pete Rose "permanently ineligible" for employment in baseball--the most prolific hitter in the game, banned for life. As part of the settlement, the language of the agreement did not explicitly accuse Rose of betting on baseball games, only of "conduct not to be in the best interests of Baseball." In exchange for that legalistic blurring of culpability, Rose agreed to drop all litigation against Giamatti, acknowledged that the commissioner had acted in good faith and had sole and exclusive authority to decide the issue. Rose neither denied nor admitted he bet on baseball (not since Spiro Agnew had nolo contendere boasted such a celebrated practitioner). Then Giamatti went and undid all the legal tiptoeing, in reply to a question at the ensuing press conference, by saying yes, his personal opinion was that Rose bet on baseball, Reds games included. Rose, stung, felt he'd been betrayed. Under the rules of baseball, Rose was eligible to apply for reinstatement after one year. "The burden to show a redirected, reconfigured, or rehabilitated life," Giamatti told reporters, "is entirely Pete Rose's." Three months later, Rose publicly admitted he had a gambling problem. The settlement was widely viewed as a complete capitulation by Rose. But not everyone viewed Rose's lawsuit as frivolous. In the view of Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray, for example, "Baseball commissioner Giamatti just wanted to get the matter out of the courts. Baseball fears the courts the way safecrackers do." Was a deal struck? Giamatti emphatically denied it at the time. At least three newspapers--the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Dayton Daily News--quoted sources on the eve of the August 24 announcement saying that Rose agreed to a settlement only when the commissioner agreed that the expulsion would not be permanent. In the unlikely event that a deal was struck, Giamatti may well have taken the secret with him to the grave, for he died of a heart attack little more than a week after the decision was rendered. Will Pete Rose make it back into baseball's graces? Precedent suggests not. Of the fourteen people previously booted out of the game, none has ever won reinstatement. Circumstances suggest not. One of the negotiators who represented baseball and worked on the Rose settlement reportedly took the position that Rose shouldn't even be allowed to apply for reinstatement for seven years; that negotiator was Francis (Fay) Vincent, who succeeded Giamatti as commissioner. In April 1990 Rose pled guilty in federal court to two counts of filing false income tax returns, dating back to 1985 and 1987, and in July he received a sentence of five months in jail and fines of $50,000. On August 8, 1990, shortly after noon, Rose began serving his five month sentence for tax evasion in the minimum-security federally run Southern Illinois Prison Camp in Marion, Illinois, where he wore jersey number 01832061 and worked as a welder in the prison machine shop. Following his release on January 7, 1991, Rose returned to Cincinnati and served an additional three months in the Talbert House halfway house, performing 1,000 hours of community service as part of his sentence. He continued to appear at autograph and card shows, although he needed to obtain permission from his parole officer to leave Cincinnati. He was eligible to apply for reinstatement one year after Giamatti's expulsion, but through October 1993 had declined to do so. While still serving his sentence, Rose's hopes of eventually making his way into the Hall of Fame suffered a serious setback. The board of directors of the Hall of Fame, in an attempt to preempt the baseball writers from even considering Rose's induction, voted 12-0 in February 1991 to amend the institution's by-laws so that anyone deemed ineligible to work in baseball would be similarly ineligible for the Hall of Fame. According to some press reports, then-commissioner Vincent was behind the recommended rule change, although Vincent rejected that suggestion. Museum officials insisted that the rule change was unrelated to Rose's situation, although the Hall had existed peaceably for fifty-five seasons without the clarification. "I don't remember his name being specifically mentioned," Hall of Fame president Edward Stack told the press. Stack also clarified the policy of continuing to display Rose memorabilia in the National Baseball Museum. "Rose's bats are all right," he said, "but Rose isn't." Rose has consistently referred to baseball's judgment as a "suspension," and he remarked at the time of the August 24 settlement that "to think that I'll be out of baseball for a very short time hurts." This seeming belief in the ban's temporary nature may simply reflect the same fierce denial that fueled Rose in his battle against the game. Whatever the decision, the hurt it causes Pete Rose can be inferred from a remark Charlie Hustle made earlier in his career. "I'd go through hell in a gasoline suit," he said, "to play baseball." Nor can it be said that Rose's penalty served as a deterrent to would-be gamblers. In 1991 Philadelphia outfielder Lenny Dykstra, embarking on a troubled season that would include a near-fatal car wreck (see alcohol use), received a year's probation from the commissioner for gambling activities. Dykstra's losing touch came to public attention in March of 1991, when he testified at the federal trial of Herbert Kelso, a man accused of running a betting parlor in Indianola, Mississippi. Dykstra revealed that he had dropped at least $78,000 in gambling losses to Kelso between 1988 and 1990. In August of 1991, the New York Times reported that one National League umpire and one American League umpire had been been placed on one-year probation, dating from December 1990, for gambling. The paper quoted sources saying the two umpires, whose identities have never been revealed, placed "relatively small bets" on non-baseball sporting events; their telephone numbers turned up when federal investigators tapped a bookie's phone. Alcohol and Controlled Substances John Barleycorn's name has never been entered into a major league scorecard, but alcohol has undoubtedly affected the outcome of games and certainly determined the length of careers. Two anecdotes a century apart suggest just how endemic drink--and drunks--have been to the game. When the Philadelphia Athletics won the pennant in 1871 (and in those days, it was a real pennant), the flag flew not from a stadium flagpole, nor did someone hoist it up in the clubhouse. No, it was promptly hung in a Philadelphia saloon. In 1974, after both Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle won election to the Hall of Fame, restauranteur Toots Shor remarked, "It shows what you can accomplish if you stay up all night drinking whiskey all the time." In the 1970s and 1980s, drug use by the players became pervasive, leading to baseball's worst scandal since the days of the Black Sox. Nineteenth-century ballplayers were inordinately fond of what they called "German tea," and "lushers" were common on every team. In 1880, in a dispute as political as it was moral, the Cincinnati ball club was expelled from the National League for selling liquor at the stadium (as well as for playing on Sunday). Shortly before his death in 1882, National League president William A. Hulbert issued lifetime suspensions to the "ten chronic lushers" in the league. "Drinking, late hours, and wenching were more common in the early decades of professionalism than they are now," historian Harold Seymour wrote in 1963, "or at least more regularly publicized in the newspapers." Drinking by ballplayers had become so bad that it had attracted the notice and interest of temperance groups, as well as self-ordained protectors of the game's image. Thus in the 1880s, The Sporting News attacked such popular gate attractions as Mike "King" Kelly, Jim McCormick, Pete Browning, and Curt Welch for their notorious drinking. The most flagrant violator was probably Welch. An outfielder for St. Louis, Welch could be seen out in the field sneaking sips of beer, which he hid behind the billboards of Sportsman's Park. This may in part explain why he was known for his circus catches. In 1886, Chicago White Stockings owner A.G. Spalding went on the warpath against his boozing players. He dangled $350 bonuses in front of two of his stars, Kelly and McCormick, if they would curtail their heavy drinking. They did not. Prior to their departure for spring training that year, the White Stockings even gathered en masse in Spalding's sporting goods store in Chicago to take public vows of temperance, with Chicago manager Adrian "Cap" Anson administering the oaths. Spalding then packed them off to the thermal waters of Hot Springs, Arkansas; the express purpose, according to one writer, was "to boil out the alcoholic microbes." Lushing being a league-wide problem, many teams added Hot Springs to their February itineraries. Many outstanding players have achieved notoriety with their drinking escapades. Chicago manager Anson got into a drunken fistfight in a saloon and was arrested on one occasion; Rube Waddell, the turn-of-the-century lefthander, often disappeared after long benders. The most tragic victim of drinking may well have been Ed Delahanty. Suspended by the Washington Senators for disciplinary problems in Detroit in July of 1903, Big Ed headed back east by train, got drunk and abusive on board, and had to be put off in Canada, just north of the Niagara River. He started to walk across the railroad bridge that led to the U.S., got into a tussle with the night watchman, and tumbled into the Niagara River; eight days later, his body washed up below Niagara Falls, some eleven miles downstream from the bridge. In the era of prohibition, Babe Ruth was a walking advertisement for the ease with which alcohol could be obtained. That fine Yankee tradition was upheld by Mantle and Ford, aided and abetted by their drinking partner Billy Martin. But alcoholism unquestionably shortened the career of Cub outfielder Hack Wilson, and drinking problems came to be associated with such players as Paul Waner, Jimmie Foxx, Don Newcombe, Ryne Duren, and Dennis Martinez, to mention but a few. For many decades, during which sportswriting shared more with hagiography than journalism, incidents of alcohol abuse never reached the public. It could be argued that only upon the publication of Ball Four by Jim Bouton in 1970 did the hangover earn its rightful spot in the locker room. While baseball clubs naturally condemned alcohol and drug use, teams continued to sell beer in the stands, of course. This hypocritical policy reached a sodden apotheosis on June 4, 1974, in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, when the Indians sponsored a 10 beer night. Increasingly rowdy as the game progressed, drunken Cleveland fans spilled out onto the field and pelted the visiting Texas Rangers with firecrackers. By the bottom of the ninth inning of a 5-5 game, dozens of fans streamed onto the field, threatened Texas players, and ignited a riot requiring police action to quell. Cleveland lost the game on a forfeit. Alcohol abuse continued to be a problem into the 1980s. In 1980, Dodger Bob Welch publicly acknowledged a drinking problem that occasioned a five-week stay in The Meadows, which would become a popular substance-abuse treatment center. That same year, Kansas City catcher Darrell Porter checked in for drug and alcohol counseling. Among major leaguers who recently faced charges of driving under the influence of alcohol were Braves players Brian Hunter and Keith Mitchell and Angels relief pitcher Bryan Harvey; in addition, Indians outfielder Albert Belle spent ten weeks in an alcohol rehabilitation program during the summer of 1990. Without a doubt, however, Philadelphia outfielder Lenny "Nails" Dykstra gave the loudest seminar on the risks of driving while intoxicated. Early in the morning of May 6, 1991, while he and teammate Darren Daulton were returning from a bachelor party for Phillies player John Kruk, Dykstra lost control of his brand new Mercedes sports car. The car slammed sideways into two trees, and Dykstra suffered fractures of the right collarbone, right cheekbone, and three ribs, also puncturing a lung; Daulton broke a bone below his left eye. Police charged Dykstra with driving under the influence, reckless driving, and driving at an unsafe speed. "Nails" served as a negative role model on two counts: his blood-alcohol level, according to police, measured eight beers an hour for a man his size, and he neglected (as did Daulton) to wear a seat belt. Phillies team physician Phillip Marone said, "If they don't go to church, they better start because they're very lucky." Baseball players reflected general social trends with their increasing experimentation with drugs during the 1960s and 1970s, although a lot of disposable income and free time contributed to crash courses in recreational pharmacology. Access to drugs was easy. Many players routinely used "greenies," amphetamine-barbiturate combos, that allegedly gave them a lift before games. In some cases, the pills were distributed by club physicians, and the problem had become sufficiently widespread that in 1971 Commissioner Bowie Kuhn instituted baseball's first Drug Education and Prevention Program. Its effectiveness was questionable: in 1980, the team physician for the Phillies' Reading farm team was arrested for illegally writing prescriptions for amphetamines. The charges were later dismissed, but the doctor, Patrick A. Mazza, testified that he prescribed the pep pills at the request of seven Philadelphia players. Baseball formally entered the era of mind-altering drugs on August 25, 1980, when Texas pitcher Ferguson Jenkins was arrested at the Toronto airport for possession of two ounces of marijuana, two grams of hashish, and four grams of cocaine; he was later found guilty of cocaine possession. Unofficially, baseball had tipped its hand during the previous decade. Pitcher Bill Lee, then of Montreal, had openly admitted use of marijuana. More startlingly, Pittsburgh pitcher Dock Ellis, reportedly suffering a hangover on a day he didn't expect to pitch, flung a no-hitter (with eight walks) against the San Diego Padres on June 12, 1970. Ellis later denied that he was working on a hangover; he was working, rather, on a tab of LSD. By the 1980s, the list of baseball's drug abusers began to read like a crime wave in a "good neighborhood." July 1982--San Diego infielder Alan Wiggins was arrested for cocaine possession. November 1982--Dodger relief pitcher Steve Howe began the first of three treatment regimens for drug abuse, which culminated with his suspension for the entire 1984 season. October 1983--four Kansas City Royal players (Willie Aikens, Vida Blue, Jerry Martin, and Willie Wilson) pled guilty to charges of attempting to possess cocaine and later served time in prison. January 1984--Atlanta pitcher Pascual Perez was arrested in the Dominican Republic with half of a gram of cocaine; found guilty, he paid about $400 in fines. May 1984--Anthony J. Peters, a former ice cream salesman in Milwaukee, received twenty-two years in jail for selling cocaine; at least ten players on the Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago White Sox, and Cleveland Indians were customers, and players Dick Davis, Paul Molitor, and Claudell Washington all reportedly admitted cocaine use during interviews with federal agents. In 1985 San Francisco outfielder Chili Davis publicly admitted using cocaine in 1983, but stopped when the Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly questioned him about it. These incidents were symptomatic of the widespread drug use that became a matter of record in the celebrated drug trials of 1985. In the spring of that year, a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh heard testimony from eleven active major league players, resulting in a May 31, 1985, indictment of seven drug dealers who associated with players from December 1979 to January 1985. The dealers had access to the clubhouse and team flights of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and in one of the more bizarre twists on baseball's already bizarre modern-day marketing, FBI agents wired the Pittsburgh mascot, the Pirate Parrot, to obtain evidence used in the indictments. During the trials in September, seven active or former players testified under grants of immunity: Dale Berra (Yankees), Enos Cabell (L.A. Dodgers), Keith Hernandez (Mets), Jeff Leonard (S.F. Giants), John Milner (ex-Pirate), Dave Parker (Reds), and Lonnie Smith (Cardinals). All confessed to extensive drug use, and several implicated peers during their testimony. Milner, for example, indicated that former Pittsburgh teammates Parker, Berra, Lee Lacy, and Rod Scurry used cocaine during the 1981 and 1982 seasons. Parker and Berra testified that Pirate stars Bill Madlock and Willie Stargell distributed amphetamines to team players (a charge denied by the two, who were never prosecuted); Parker also said he had arranged sales of cocaine to Dusty Baker, Steve Howe, and Derrel Thomas of the Dodgers as well as Cabell and J.R. Richard of the Astros. Smith and Hernandez implicated their former Cardinal teammate Joaquin Andujar. In gripping testimony, Hernandez described cocaine as "the devil on this earth" and shocked observers by estimating that by 1980 40 percent of all major league baseball players used cocaine. Not a single player went on trial, however. Pittsburgh juries separately convicted part-time caterer Curtis Strong of Philadelphia and Robert McCue of drug-trafficking charges. Free-lance photographer Dale Shiffman of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia salesman Shelby Greer pled guilty and received sentences of twelve years, and three other Pittsburgh men entered guilty pleas. (In a tragic footnote to the Pittsburgh drug trials, the former Pirate Scurry died November 5, 1992 in Reno, Nevada at age thirty-six, a week after falling into a coma while scuffling with police officers. The police had responded to calls from neighbors and found Scurry outside his home, reportedly complaining that snakes were crawling through the house and biting him.) In a 1985 interview with the New York Times, Montreal President John McHale flatly stated that cocaine use by eight of his players cost the Expos the National League Eastern Division race in 1982. Drug use was so widespread and casual, according to Lonnie Smith, that opposing players sometimes exchanged information on drug availability when they met at midfield during pregame warmup sprints. The extent of the involvement became pathetically clear when Montreal outfielder Tim Raines, the National League's leading base stealer, admitted that he often slid headfirst into second base during a steal so as to protect the gram bottle of cocaine he kept in his back pocket. And still the roll call continued. Two former Cy Young winners, LaMarr Hoyt of San Diego and Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets, became involved in drug use. Gooden underwent treatment for cocaine and missed the first six weeks of the 1987 season. Hoyt served time for drug trafficking following his release by the Padres in 1987. Dale Berra, Yogi's son and one of the "Pittsburgh Seven," faced renewed difficulties when he was arrested at his New Jersey home for possession of cocaine with intent to sell in April 1990. Drug use interrupted the careers of several prominent players in the early 1990s, but in a tragic intrusion of real life into the game of boys, drug abuse was apparently linked to baseball's first victim of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Former San Diego infielder Alan Wiggins, a star on the Padres team that went to the World Series in 1984, died on January 6, 1991 of an AIDS-related pneumonia, according to the Los Angeles Times and other press reports. In addition to his arrest for cocaine possession in 1982, Wiggins suffered a drug-related relapse in 1985 and reportedly failed a drug test while with the Orioles, leading to his indefinite suspension from baseball on August 31, 1987. Only thirty-two years old, the fleet and gifted athlete had wasted away to only seventy-five pounds at the time of death. Two notable drug casualties were Atlanta's Otis Nixon, enjoying his best season in the majors at the time of his suspension, and Yankee relief pitcher Steve Howe. Nixon, who had pled guilty to a reduced charge related to drug possession in 1987 while in Cleveland's minor league system, was leading the majors in stolen bases when he reportedly tested positive for cocaine on September 7, 1991. Following a second positive test, commissioner Vincent suspended Nixon for sixty days. Nixon, who had passed more than 250 drug tests since the 1987 incident, later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a pharmacist friend had suggested imbibing a concoction of herbal tea and vinegar to mask his drug use. After enjoying a remarkable comeback season in 1991 and having signed a contract that could pay him up to $2.5 million for the 1992 season, Howe, the southpaw stopper, simply couldn't slam the door on his own addiction. He was arrested on December 19, 1991 in Kalispell, Montana, near his offseason home, when he attempted to buy a gram of cocaine from an underground drug agent for $100. Howe pled innocent to two federal charges, one of attempt to buy and the other of possession of two grams of cocaine, but after considerable legal maneuverings he pled guilty to one misdemeanor count of possession in June 1992. Vincent promptly banned the six-time offender for life, but by 1993 he was back in a Yankee uniform. Speaking of Otis Nixon's problems with a reporter, Howe once remarked, "It's an addiction, it's something you can't control. Your rationality is gone. You don't think of anything else. If you haven't done it, you can't understand. You just can't." The ever-vigilant New Jersey authorities also busted White Sox outfielder Dan Pasqua in October 1991, for receiving a shipment of marijuana in the mail at his Dumont, New Jersey home. Several other players tested positive for drug use, including Montreal catcher Gilberto Reyes (his sixty-day suspension in 1992 was overturned by an arbitrator following a grievance proceeding), Yankee pitcher Pasqual Perez (who received a one-year suspension in March of 1992), and Giant outfielder Rick Leach (suspended for sixty days in August 1991 and then released by the team the following spring). Brawlers, Perverts, Felons and Fellow Travelers From the origins of baseball until well into the 1890s, baseball players were regarded mainly as roughnecks, quick to anger, quicker to fight. Fans were rowdy, and brawls between players and the public were not unusual (a doozy occurred in Louisville in 1896, when the bellicose Cleveland Spiders, protesting the umpire's decision to call the game, sparked a riot that required police intervention--and landed all the Spiders in jail). In 1904, during a spring training exhibition game in Mobile, Alabama, the New York Giants became so enraged by the calls of a hometown umpire that they finally attacked the man and beat him unconscious. John McGraw hustled his team out of town, even as warrants were being sworn for the players' arrest. Sometimes the violence has been more serious. In 1883, former National League pitcher Terry Larkin shot his wife Catherine after she complained about his drinking. In the game's goriest story, Marty Bergen, became baseball's first ax murderer in January of 1900, when he killed his wife and two children in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, before committing suicide. In 1917, in a crime with racial overtones, Milwaukee (of the American Association) manager Danny Shay shot and killed a black waiter in an Indianapolis hotel during an argument over the amount of sugar in a sugar bowl; Shay was later acquitted. Debt, the impending end of his career, and an unfortunate pitch that he couldn't take back apparently pushed former Angels relief pitcher Donnie Moore, thirty-five, over the brink in July 1989. Moore shot his wife of sixteen years, Tonya, three times with a pistol during an argument at their suburban Anaheim home, then shot himself in the head in front of his three children and died instantly (his wife survived). Beset with financial difficulties and marital problems, Moore never recovered from surrendering a two-out, two-strike home run to Dave Henderson in the 1986 American League Championship Series, which allowed Boston to tie a game they later won in extra innings. Moore blamed himself too harshly, though, because the Red Sox had to win two more games (which they did) to go on to the World Series. "I think insanity set in," David Pinter, Moore's agent, later told the press. "He could not live with himself after Henderson hit the home run. He kept blaming himself." In perhaps the most celebrated shooting in baseball history, a "disturbed" nineteen-year-old woman, said to be a "fan," shot Phillie first baseman Eddie Waitkus in a Chicago hotel on June 15, 1949. Waitkus missed the rest of the 1949 season and had to undergo four operations, but he returned to play six more seasons--and to serve as a model for a similar incident in Bernard Malamud's baseball novel, The Natural. Cesar Cedeno of the Houston Astros was implicated in a more lethal incident. On December 11, 1973, the twenty-two-year-old outfielder was charged with voluntary manslaughter in the Dominican Republic when the body of a nineteen-year-old woman, shot to death, was found in his motel room. The charges were later changed--without much explanation--to involuntary manslaughter; Cedeno paid a small fine (about $100) and court costs. There have been no shootings between teammates, but not for lack of paranoia: Ty Cobb got along so poorly with his Detroit teammates during his early years that he retired to his railroad berth at night with a loaded pistol. Possibly the closest thing to an on-the-field homicide occurred in 1965, when San Francisco Giant pitcher Juan Marichal assaulted Los Angeles Dodger catcher John Roseboro with a bat. The Mets' Darryl Strawberry enlivened the 1990 off-season when, in January, blood tests proved definitively he was the father in a paternity suit brought by a St. Louis woman. Two days later he was arrested by police in Encino, California, for threatening his wife Lisa with a loaded semiautomatic pistol. According to police, Strawberry slapped his wife during an argument (he had previously broken her nose in a tiff during the 1986 World Series); when she responded by striking him several times with a fire poker, he reached into a closet and produced the gun. Strawberry originally faced charges of assault with a deadly weapon, but the charges were later dropped. Within a week of the incident, the Mets slugger checked into New York's Smithers Clinic for alcohol rehabilitation. Milwaukee relief pitcher Julio Machado faced more serious charges--"unintentional" murder--in his native Venezuela following a December 1991 shooting incident in which a woman died. Following an altercation over a late-night car accident, Machado told authorities he felt he was in physical danger, according to press reports, and fired his 9 mm. pistol into a car, killing the woman seated in the car's passenger seat. The use of the baseball itself as an assault weapon, meanwhile, enjoyed a brief vogue during the 1991 campaign. Cincinnati pitcher Rob Dibble received a four-game suspension for hurling a ball into the stands at Riverfront Stadium on April 28, 1991; the ball struck a female spectator in the arm. The gifted and troubled Albert Belle of Cleveland, in May 1991, fired a high hard one at a heckler in the stands from a distance of fifteen feet, causing a chest bruise and incurring a week-long suspension (later shortened to six days). In the old days, it was not uncommon for players to duke it out with their managers. One of the most savage beatings was administered in 1929 by White Sox player Art "Whattaman" Shires, a notorious drunkard and self-styled boxer. Shires cornered Chicago manager Lena Blackburne and the team's traveling secretary in a hotel room and thrashed both; it took four men, including two hotel detectives, to drag Shires off. He beat up his manager three times in one year. More recently, in 1977, Texas infielder Lenny Randle landed several punches on the face of manager Frank Lucchesi, shattering his cheekbone and requiring plastic surgery. The Rangers suspended Randle, fined him $10,000 and then released him; in court, Randle plea-bargained a felony charge down to simple battery and paid a $1,000 fine, along with medical expenses. Umpires have not escaped controversy. In September 1988, National League umpire Dave Pallone--one of the original "scab" umpires hired during the 1979 season--took a leave of absence after news reports incorrectly linked him to an investigation of sex crimes against teenage boys in Saratoga Springs, New York. Pallone, who later admitted he was homosexual, was never charged with any crime, but headlines like "Ump Tied to Sex Ring" (New York Daily News) helped turn the leave into a permanent resignation. National League ump Bob Engel, meanwhile, resigned from baseball in July 1990 after pleading no contest to a shoplifting charge. The previous April he had been arrested for stealing less than $200 worth of merchandise from a convenience store in Bakersfield, California. The merchandise? Baseball cards. Although still only a minor leaguer as a menace to society, outfielder Jose Canseco continued to show signs of graduating to major league mayhem. In February 1991 Canseco was flagged by the Florida Highway Patrol for doing 104 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone of Miami (this in addition to four previous moving violations in 1988-1989, as well as an arrest in San Francisco for carrying a concealed weapon). In a dramatic duel of nouveau riche vehicles early on the morning of February 13, 1992, Canseco chased after his estranged wife, Esther in his Porsche, sideswiped her BMW twice, and ran her off the road. Alarmed motorists notified police and Canseco was charged with aggravated assault; the charge was later dropped when he agreed to undergo psychological counseling. In the twentieth century, three figures stand out for their combativeness as well as their ability to arouse controversy over the long haul: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Billy Martin. Ty Cobb is generally considered the meanest player ever to don spikes. Cobb had to leave his first major league spring training camp, in 1906, to attend the trial of his mother, Amanda Cobb, who was acquitted of voluntary manslaughter charges in the death of Ty's father; she had shot him in 1905, believing him to be a prowler. Cobb seemed to carry a chip on his shoulder throughout his career. Thin-skinned, bigoted, a nasty street fighter, Cobb forever blemished his reputation in 1912 when he dove into the stands in New York to silence a heckler, kicking and spiking the man. The spectator turned out to be a man with no hands. Cobb's response was "I don't care if he has no feet"; American League president Ban Johnson's response was to suspend Cobb for ten days. (His Tiger teammates, in sympathy with Cobb, launched a strike that lasted one game.) During his career, Cobb engaged in drawn-out, knock-down fights with umpires, teammates, opposing players, fans, even a hotel watchman (the latter resulted in an indictment in Cleveland in 1909 for felonious assault). A racist with a broad palette, Cobb tarred all races with his brush: he liked to refer to Honus Wagner as "Kraut-head" and once refused to room with Babe Ruth, believing Ruth's dark complexion suggested black ancestry. Ruth, on the other hand, enjoyed the reputation of a good-hearted, if adolescently rambunctious, personality; although he often indulged in scandalous behavior, he never amounted to a scandal. A man of immense and uncontrollable appetites, Ruth set new standards for eating, drinking, and whoring off the field just as he set long-ball standards on it. Particularly in the early days of his career, Ruth had little control of his temper. In 1917, as a Boston pitcher, he attacked umpire Brick Owens, and once went into the stands with a bat to chase a heckler; in the 1922 season alone, he was suspended five times, usually for swearing at umpires. He drank whiskey and ginger ale for breakfast, spent countless hours and dollars at the racetrack, partied past curfews in any time zone, frequented illegal breweries, and never wanted for liquor during Prohibition. A legendary philanderer, Ruth once bragged that he had slept with every girl in a St. Louis whorehouse, and even when his first wife Helen accompanied him on road trips, teammates facilitated Ruth's infidelities by making their rooms available for the Babe's liaisons. For all his energetic rutting, Ruth apparently contracted venereal disease more than once. A $50,000 paternity suit filed against Ruth by a Long Island woman accelerated the demise of his marriage, which was also undermined by Ruth's open affair with Claire Merritt Hodgson (she later became his second wife). Ruth's behavior struck many as reckless and often infantile, but it was rarely malicious and often perversely innocent, which is why he never lost the admiration and love of the public. That strange brew of raging hormones and American innocence is perfectly summed up by an incident during a barnstorming trip to the Orient in the 1930s: brought to a geisha house, Ruth mistook it for a bordello and promptly started to undress. Innocence seems lamentably absent from the adventures of infielder Billy Martin, who gave new, darker meaning to the word "scrappy." He was involved in at least five major fights on the field. He beat up one of his own pitchers, Dave Boswell, while managing the Twins in 1969 (Boswell required twenty stitches in the face); had punched out reporters (Nevada State Journal writer Ray Hagar in 1978) and a marshmallow sales man (Joseph Cooper in 1979); got into a vicious fight with another member of his pitching staff while managing the Yankees (Ed Whitson in 1985); and brawled in a Texas strip joint (1988). He earned his reputation as "King of the Sucker Punch" in 1960 when, playing for the Reds, he sucker-punched Cub pitcher Jim Brewer after an inside pitch, shattering Brewer's cheekbone and landing him in the hospital for two weeks. No crass gesture was too small or juvenile to be excluded from the Martin oeuvre: for his 1972 baseball card, as manager of the Detroit Tigers, Martin reverted to the classic junior high school prank of extending his middle finger in an unmistakably vulgar gesture while leaning on a bat. The Billy Martin story came, inevitably, to a tragic end on an ice-slick country road near his home outside Binghamton, New York. On Christmas Day 1989, Martin's pickup truck skidded off the road and tumbled down an embankment; Martin died of massive internal injuries. William Reedy, a Detroit saloon owner and long-time Martin drinking companion, was charged with driving while intoxicated. Press reports indicated that the two men had been drinking for several hours, and Martin, too, was apparently drunk at the time of his death. Martin's widow Jill filed a lawsuit in July 1990, charging that Reedy's reckless driving caused Martin's death. In September of that year a jury in upstate New York found William Reedy guilty of driving the car with a blood-alcohol content above the legal limit. Reedy was cleared of the lesser charge of driving with impaired ability because, according to an Associated Press account, the jury "thought that Reedy was not impaired because of his high tolerance level for alcohol . . ." Although often suspected of prevarication, Martin spoke the absolute truth when he once referred to his boss as a "convicted felon." Indeed, Yankee principal owner George Steinbrenner had the dubious distinction of dragging baseball down into the Watergate scandal. In 1974, a federal grand jury in Cleveland indicted Steinbrenner on fourteen felony counts for illegal corporate contributions (by his American Shipbuilding Company) to the reelection campaign of Richard Nixon as well as for obstruction of justice. Represented by famed criminal attorney Edward Bennett Williams, Steinbrenner struck a deal with Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski and pled guilty to a single felony charge. Some observers considered Steinbrenner's light sentence (a $15,000 fine; no jail term) puzzling, since the Yankee owner admitted in court to such grave offenses as causing his employees to lie to the FBI and give false testimony to a federal grand jury. Williams literally saved Steinbrenner's baseball career; Commissioner Kuhn later admitted he would have expelled Steinbrenner for life had he received a jail sentence. Instead, Kuhn suspended Steinbrenner for two years, later reduced to one season. To the bewilderment of lawyers who prosecuted the case, Ronald Reagan pardoned Steinbrenner in 1989. Steinbrenner, incidentally, was not the first owner to commit a felonious offense. In 1953, St. Louis owner Fred Saigh was forced to divest his control of the Cardinals when he began a fifteen-month sentence for tax evasion; that paved the way for Saigh's sale of the team to Anheuser-Busch. Steinbrenner again ran afoul of the baseball establishment in 1990, when commissioner Fay Vincent ordered him to resign as General Partner of the Yankees and, in effect, banned him from any active management of the club's baseball affairs. The decision culminated Steinbrenner's most tumultuous year in baseball. There was the usual nonfelonious bullying and double-talk; the usual revolving-door style of management (at that point, nineteen managerial changes in eighteen seasons); the usual odor of suspicious hijinx, as in the probe of former team official Syd Thrift for "scouting improprieties" (an investigation, it turns out, triggered by Steinbrenner himself and which yielded naught); and the usual good sportsmanship historically associated with the Yankees, as in allegations that Steinbrenner's famous "baseball people" spent part of their evenings sneaking into the visitors' locker room at Yankee Stadium, at the boss' orders, to search for corked bats (et tu, George Brett?). In July baseball fined Steinbrenner $25,000 and ordered him to pay the Angels $200,000 for tampering with Dave Winfield following his trade to California. His shipbuilding company faced mounting losses. And to add insult to the usual injury, a poll conducted in summer 1990 by the New York Times revealed that Met fans outnumbered Yankee fans in New York by three to one, and that only one in ten Yankee fans gave Steinbrenner a "favorable" rating. A cloud of considerably darker and more ominous nature dogged Steinbrenner beginning in spring 1990. On March 18, 1990, the New York Daily News reported that Steinbrenner had paid $40,000 to an admitted small-time gambler named Howard Spira, allegedly in exchange for damaging information about Dave Winfield. Claiming Steinbrenner had reneged on the promise of a job, Spira demanded an additional $110,000, at which point Steinbrenner filed a complaint of extortion; Spira was later indicted by a federal grand jury in Tampa. Just another day at the office in the Bronx. According to press accounts, Spira first contacted Steinbrenner on December 17, 1986, with an offer to provide negative information about Winfield, with whom Steinbrenner had feuded for nearly a decade. Winfield, it will be recalled, locked horns with the Yankee owner over the latter's contributions to the outfielder's nonprofit Winfield Foundation, and relations further deteriorated when Winfield vetoed several trades. The prevailing theory was that Steinbrenner sought negative information about Winfield as a bargaining chip to get the player to accept a trade. Whatever the merit of the charges and countercharges, they got a full airing in the national press. The New York Times published excerpts from taped telephone conversations in which Steinbrenner told Spira, "I'm anxious to hear what you want to tell me, what you have to say . . ." Spira reportedly dished the following dirt: He claimed that Winfield and his agent, the late Al Frohman, concocted phony death threats against Winfield during the 1981 World Series to distract attention from the player's poor on-field performance, that Winfield Foundation funds were misused and misappropriated, and that Winfield had once held a gun to Spira's head and threatened to kill him if he didn't pay back a loan of $15,000. Whatever the substance of these allegations (denied by Winfield), there was nothing casual about the contacts between Spira and Yankee representatives. Spira conversed primarily with Philip McNiff, a former FBI agent who served as a vice president at Steinbrenner's American Shipbuilding Company in Tampa. Records show that Spira called McNiff at least 426 times between December 1986 and December 1989. According to the New York Times, McNiff sent Spira a card on his thirtieth birthday with the inscription, "Howie, may all your dreams come true." Spira, to the contrary, became Steinbrenner's worst nightmare. The Yankee owner acknowledged paying Spira $40,000 as the first press reports came out, but said he did it "out of the goodness of my heart." Even George conceded the inherent implausibility of that explanation, for he soon changed his story and said the payoff was to prevent Spira from disclosing embarrassing information about former Yankee employees. Steinbrenner changed his story once again while pleading his case in a private meeting with commissioner Fay Vincent--the transcript of which was leaked almost immediately and appeared first in The National. This time Steinbrenner claimed he paid Spira because he feared for the safety of his family and himself; dragging more names into the widening scandal, Steinbrenner also said Spira threatened to go public with information about Lou Piniella's gambling habits (an understandably touchy topic in Cincinnati, where Piniella replaced an admitted gambler as manager) and misappropriation of funds by two other Yankee employees. Vincent attached no merit to either charge. Vincent had already enlisted John Dowd, head of the Rose investigation, to check out the Spira affair. Steinbrenner hired two high-powered criminal lawyers to represent his side of the story, and for the second time in two summers, it appeared that baseball was headed for a confrontation in court. But after an eleven-hour meeting with Steinbrenner on July 30, 1990, Vincent met with the press to announce his severe decision. Citing Steinbrenner's bad judgment, questioning his "candor and contrition," and expressing puzzlement over "a pattern of behavior that borders on the bizarre," Vincent said Steinbrenner's actions had not been in the best interests of baseball and ordered him to reduce his ownership in the Yankees to less than 50 percent by August 20, 1991. In booting Steinbrenner out of baseball, Vincent faulted Steinbrenner for paying a gambler money in "a furtive fashion" and for initiating an investigation of a player with the help of Spira without notifying the commissioner, he dismissed Steinbrenner's claims of extortion as "not credible," and he charged Steinbrenner with an attempt to cover up the Spira payment. As to the accusation that he had been unfair, Vincent wrote in the ruling, "In my view, Mr. Steinbrenner's dilemma is not with the procedures I have utilized, but with his inability to rewrite history." Ronald Reagan acceded to this revisionism; Vincent did not. According to the guidelines established by Vincent, Steinbrenner could no longer participate in baseball decisions involving the Yankees and would even have to obtain permission in writing from the Commissioner in order to attend games. Vincent did not rule out the possibility that Steinbrenner's son Hank might assume day-to-day management of the team; however, the Commissioner's assertion that severe restrictions would apply seemed, short of wiretaps and full-time surveillance, virtually impossible to enforce. Within twenty-four hours, Steinbrenner--who pronounced himself "very happy" with Vincent's ruling--tabbed his son to take over the club as general partner. As if Vincent's decision was not enough of a bombshell, the Commissioner later revealed that he had planned only to suspend Steinbrenner for two years; it was Steinbrenner who pushed for a second decision that amounted to a permanent ban. "From where I sit," Vincent later said, "the second proposal [penalty] was stronger. I don't understand why he took it." When word of Vincent's decision reached Yankee Stadium on the night of July 30, fans cheered the news with a ninety-second standing ovation. "Christmas in July" is how one fan characterized the end of Steinbrenner's reign of terror in New York baseball. Steinbrenner earned a measure of satisfaction the following spring. On May 8, 1991, following a four-week trial in Manhattan during which Steinbrenner fought back tears while testifying and Spira stuck out his tongue at photographers, a federal jury found the thirty-two-year-old Bronx gambler guilty of eight charges, including five attempts to extort money from the Yankee owner. The charges involved the additional $110,000 Spira sought; they did not address the $40,000 payment that led to Steinbrenner's ouster from baseball. In December, Spira was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison, to be followed by three years of probation and 200 hours of community service. Among Spira's last words before being led off to jail: "I sure hope George Steinbrenner never gets the team back." George did, but not without the usual slam-dance of litigation that could have been choreographed by the Marx Brothers. Steinbrenner's agreement with Vincent explicitly prevented the Boss from suing the Commissioner. But it didn't say anything about Steinbrenner's partners, and so, with the marionette's strings clearly showing, two minority owners of the Yankees, Daniel McCarthy and Harold Bowman, filed suit against the Commissioner in August, arguing that Steinbrenner's exile could harm the franchise and thus the partners' financial stake. The following month, minority partner Leonard Kleinman filed a $22 million suit against Vincent, claiming the Commissioner blocked his ascent to Managing Partner because of his involvement in the Spira affair. In this case, the strings were particularly visible; Kleinman's suit, it turned out, was financed by Steinbrenner. When Vincent made it adamantly clear that there would be no discussion of reinstatement for Steinbrenner until the lawsuits were dropped, George called off his attack dogs. Problem was, one of the dogs refused to heel. To Steinbrenner's reported displeasure, and to the amusement of just about all other observers, Kleinman doggedly refused to drop his suit. The Yankees partners even fired Kleinman, the team's Chief Operating Officer, in February 1992, when he continued to refuse to drop his suit. Finally, following long and contentious negotiations, Vincent agreed in July 1992 to reinstate Steinbrenner, whose repatriation to the Bronx occurred on March 1, 1993. One of Steinbrenner's old nemeses made news during this period as well. Former commissioner Bowie Kuhn, that balding paragon of probity, received a bad haircut in the press in early 1990 when, as a New York Times headline had it, "Bowie Kuhn Is Said to Be in Hiding." Bowie's bad luck began the previous year, when his law firm Myerson & Kuhn overbilled a client and was ordered to pay back $1 million. By December 1989, the law firm had filed for bankruptcy protection, but one of the creditors, Marine Midland Bank, sued Kuhn to recover $3.1 million in loans. In court papers, the bank charged that Kuhn had sold his New Jersey home and fled to Florida, where state laws exempt residences from being seized in bankruptcy proceedings. Kuhn told the Florida Times-Union that he and his wife Luisa had simply moved to Florida for a change of pace. No Sex, Please; We're Heroes As baseball became popular, so too did public interest in its practitioners extend beyond the field to the home, and sometimes right on through the bedroom door. Within the bounds of Victorian society, one of baseball's earliest sex "scandals" involved the hard-fighting Walter "Arlie" Latham, third baseman of the St. Louis Browns. Around 1885, his second wife filed for divorce on the grounds of assault, desertion, infidelity, and perversion. Sports pages in the 1880s also carried accounts of Sam Crane, infielder for the Metropolitans and later a prominent sportswriter, who was arrested for running off with $1,500 belonging to a Scranton fruit dealer named Travenfelter--and with his wife Hattie. Edwin "Ned" Bligh was among the earliest of players named in a paternity suit; Bligh just missed more serious charges, since his accuser was seventeen-year-old Zella Coleman. By the end of the century, domestic problems--such as the divorces of popular players like John Montgomery Ward, Amos Rusie, and Tony Mullane--became fodder for reporters. Probably the most tragic scandal involved minor league pitcher Edgar McNabb, who made it to the majors for one season with Baltimore in 1893. McNabb had been carrying on an affair with actress Louise Kellogg, wife of Seattle businessman R.E. Rockwell. The idyll came to an end on February 28, 1894, in a room at the Hotel Eiffel in Pittsburgh. For reasons that remain a mystery to this day, McNabb shot Kellogg twice (paralyzing her but not killing her), then turned the gun on himself and showed better control. In another romance-related suicide, Red Sox manager Chick Stahl took his life in 1907 after facing pressure from a woman who'd become pregnant by him. On the whole, though, twentieth century sex scandals in baseball have been more elliptical than explicit. Apart from Ruth's legendary wenching, there was little to arouse prurient interest, except perhaps the vicarious experience of Joe DiMaggio's marriage to Marilyn Monroe or perhaps Bo Belinsky's dalliance with Mamie Van Doren. In 1988, Dave Winfield's bout with Ruth Roper, mother-in-law of Mike Tyson, brought VD into the courts. But in terms of vague but suggestive explanations, nothing beats the adventure of Brooklyn pitcher Van Lingle Mungo during spring training in 1941 in Havana. Authors Gene Karst and Martin J. Jones, Jr., note that the Dodger player had to be hustled hastily back to the mainland after he "became involved with a former bullfighter and his girlfriend." No further explanations offered. Amidst the usual paternity suits (Darryl Strawberry, Pascual Perez), wife beatings, and even the rare case of mother beating (Jim Presley of Atlanta), Margo Adams provided an unusually juicy sex scandal in June 1988 when she filed a $6 million palimony suit against Boston third baseman Wade Boggs. The perennial AL All-Star and batting champ admitted he'd had a four-year affair with the California woman. When Adams' lawyer sought to depose nine other players, tensions rose on the Red Sox, including reports of an ugly confrontation between Boggs and teammate Dwight Evans. Boggs won the suit, Adams landed a pictorial in Penthouse, and none of the pictures Boggs allegedly took showing Red Sox teammates in compromising positions--so they wouldn't talk about his affair with Adams, it was said--ever saw the light of day. Everything you need to know about the baseball ethic in this arena of activity, however, can be inferred from a remark Boggs made at the end of the controversy: One-night stands are acceptable, he said, but two-year affairs are not. Boggs' mantle passed the following season to former Dodger and Padre first baseman Steve Garvey. Baseball's former "Mr. Clean" managed to impregnate two women while pursuing and marrying a third, occasioning the appearance of two young children in the world and bumper stickers in Southern California that read: "Steve Garvey is not my Padre." Garvey's woes were complicated by a nasty child-custody suit with ex-wife Cyndi and his postbaseball career suffered a further setback in 1990, when he was fired by a San Diego radio station because of poor ratings for his talk show. Back in the junior circuit, so to speak, Yankee outfielder Luis Polonia spent October 1989 in a Milwaukee jail, serving a sixty-day sentence (later reduced to thirty days) for having had sexual intercourse with a minor when the Yankees visited the Brewers in August. Polonia claimed he was set up by the fifteen-year-old girl; the judge remained unconvinced, imposing fines and contributions totaling $11,500. The incident may have encouraged the Yankees to trade Polonia in 1990, but probably didn't influence Polonia's bizarre assessment of the transaction. "They only had one thing on their mind," Polonia charged, "and I don't know what it is." The combustible mix of sex-related criminal allegations and the easily inflamed New York tabloid press created high-octane fireworks in the spring of 1992. No players were charged with any crime, but the police investigation, ultimately made public, exposed to public scrutiny the laissez-faire sexual adventures of modern-day lockerroom Romeos. Against the background of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy in the fall of 1991, baseball too witnessed a "he said, she said" drama with racial overtones, in which the alleged transgression involved not sexual harassment but the far more serious charge of rape. The case came to light in March 1992, when three unidentified New York Mets were reported to be under investigation for sexual assault in St. Lucie, Florida, where the Mets hold their spring training camp. Over the ensuing weeks, it emerged that an unidentified thirty-one-year-old New York woman, trained as an architect, had filed a complaint alleging that the three players--pitcher Dwight Gooden and outfielders Daryl Boston and Vince Coleman--had sexually assaulted her on the evening of March 30, 1991. Details of the woman's allegations became public when police released the 456-page file of the investigation. Among many lurid and startling details, the file revealed that the woman had been, at the time of the alleged incident, a companion of Met pitcher David Cone. Hounded by reporters throughout spring training, Met players responded to the scandal by refusing to talk to members of the press. After police declined to pursue charges, several team members insisted that the name of the woman complainant be revealed. Said shortstop Kevin Elster: "I can't think of a reason why not." But hardly a sex scandal in any field quite measures up to a wife-swapping scheme that became public in March 1973. New York Yankee pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich pulled off one of the most daring trades in baseball history: they exchanged wives and children. In a straight-up deal, Peterson received Susanne Kekich, her two young daughters, and the Kekich family dog, in exchange for Marilyn "Chip" Peterson, her two young sons, and the Peterson family pet. If, as is often said, you cannot judge the value of a trade until five years have passed, it must be stated that neither side came out ahead on this one. Marilyn Peterson left Kekich and both pitchers were out of baseball by 1980. Schott Herself in the Foot Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott found herself embroiled in controversy in late 1992 and early 1993 in the wake of purported remarks regarding: ex-Reds Eric Davis and Dave Parker ("million dollar niggers"); blacks in general ("I'd rather have a trained monkey working for me than a nigger"); and Jews ("money-grubbing Jews") and the keeping of a swastika armband in her home. Schott's problems began in November 1992 with charges from former Reds Controller Tim Sabo that she discriminated against blacks. She denied any wrongdoing. "I know in my heart I am not a racist or a bigot," said Schott, who dug herself into a deeper hole in a New York Times interview in which she jokingly used the term "nigger" and contended that Adolf Hitler was initially good for Germany. On February 3, 1993 Schott was suspended from certain prerogatives of ownership until November 1, 1993. She was banned from making day-to-day baseball decisions for the Reds; stepping inside the front office or onto the field; or sitting in the owner's box. Additionally, she was fined $25,000 and ordered to attend a multicultural training program. Schott was, however, allowed to vote at owners' meetings and to make major financial policy decisions for the club. Just prior to the imbroglio she had hired black Hispanic Tony Perez as Reds manager and, as the controversy grew, implemented a series of conciliatory gestures to minority concerns. Interestingly enough, the Cincinnati chapters of the NAACP, the Urban League and the Black Male Coalition all argued against her suspension. Oddly, in her absence, Perez was given one of the quickest hooks on record. Said the Rev. Jesse Jackson: "In a kind of irony--given these recent gestures-- ... she might currently have a better objective racial record than most of the other twenty-seven major league teams who have stood in judgement of her." Not with a Whimper but a Bang (Off the Field in 1993) The most scandalous and controversial event of the 1993 season involved embattled Mets outfielder Vince Coleman. Coleman was already under fire for a series of incidents since joining New York as an $11.95 million free agent in December 1990--the aforementioned rape charge involving him, Dwight Gooden, and Daryl Boston; a September 1992 shoving match with ill-fated manager Jeff Torborg; and a mysterious swatting of Gooden in the clubhouse with a golf club in April 1993. Following a July 24, 1993 game at Dodger Stadium, Coleman was sitting with fellow New York outfielder Bobby Bonilla in Dodger Eric Davis' jeep. While still in the Stadium parking lot he tossed a lighted explosive device similar to an M-100 (the equivalent of a quarter-stick of dynamite) from the vehicle into a crowd of a hundred persons. Injured were 2-year-old Amanda Santos, who suffered an eye injury and minor facial burns; 33-year-old Cindy Mayhew, who charged that the explosion aggravated an existing inner-ear problem; and 13-year-old Marshall Savoy, who allegedly suffered shin lacerations. Said one witness: "I heard the explosion and saw a cloud of smoke. And then I saw a woman holding a baby running into the security office. The lady was freaking out. She was saying, 'My baby, my baby.'" Amanda Santos' parents' attorney commented: "Psychologically, she hasn't been herself. She's jittery around strangers, she's had trouble sleeping during the night. She's real shy and reclusive, and from what her parents told me, that's not the norm for her." Davis and Bonilla laughed as the trio drove away but as the repercussions of the incident grew into felony charges and civil lawsuits, they turned more apologetic. So did Coleman. Said his attorney Robert Shapiro: "He did not intend to injure anybody with the firecracker. He had used them with his own kids in his backyard. He had used them with them with his own 3- and 5-year-old sons." On July 29, 1993 Coleman (free on $5,000 bail) and his family went public in a brief but controversial press conference. Although Coleman confessed his actions were "very inappropriate," he was widely criticized for "hiding" behind his family and for never using the words "I'm sorry" in his terse public declaration. On August 26, 1993 Mets President Fred Wilpon himself faced the media on the matter. After a rather tame prepared statement, he responded to the first question thrown his way, by blurting: "In my opinion, it will be in Vince Coleman's best interests, and in the New York Mets' best interests, that he does not wear a Mets uniform again--and he will not!" For a portion of the season Coleman took an unpaid leave, losing $11,111.11 per day in salary. Coleman pled innocent on October 22 to possession of an unlawful explosive device, a felony charge which carried with it a minimum sentence of probation and a maximum of three years in prison. If Coleman were found guilty of a felony, it was widely thought the Mets would no longer be responsible for his 1994 salary of $3 million. At issue was the prosecution's initial reluctance to plea bargain the case down to a misdemeanor, to which Coleman's counsel indicated he would plead guilty. "It is clearly our position that Vince Coleman did not intend to hurt anyone, did not intend to destroy any property but takes responsibility fully ..." said attorney Shapiro. Ultimately Coleman did take the rap, and was sentenced to probation and 200 hours of community service. Also complicating life on the Mets in 1993 was the "Saberhagen Bleach Incident." On July 27, 1993 an unknown Met sprayed bleach on two reporters in the Mets clubhouse. Saberhagen, who had thrown a firecracker at scribes on July 7, was a prime suspect, but denied the charges. His denials were relayed to the media by manager Dallas Green, a fellow who clearly had enough problems. Finally, on August 7, 1993, Saberhagen admitted his guilt: "I never intended to harm anyone, any perception that the bleach was sprayed intentionally at reporters in an effort to hinder the performance of their function or for other reasons is simply mistaken. "I am sorry for the accident and the failure to come forward, both of which have obviously hurt the club's relations with the media." Green was incensed: "He failed to take responsibility for a childish and dangerous act. Now he's being asked to pay for it." As punishment, the oft-injured Saberhagen was to donate one day's pay ($15,384.62) to a charity to be chosen by the New York chapter of the BBWAA. In Los Angeles, ex-Met Darryl Strawberry, suffering from an ailing back all year, faced problems which attracted far less attention than Coleman's but which were potentially as serious. In August the Dodger outfielder was charged with striking a homeless hitchhiker in a motel room Strawberry had rented for a homeless couple. On September 4, 1993 he was arrested on suspicion of spousal abuse after his 26-year old live-in girl friend Charisse Simons was treated at a Glendale hospital emergency room for a one-inch cut over her right eye. Strawberry was booked and released on $20,000 bail. By late September, however, Simons was backing away from pressing charges--a welcome move for Strawberry on several fronts as the Dodgers had strongly hinted they would dump Strawberry and his multi-million dollar contract if he were convicted. If that were not enough, also facing Strawberry was an IRS investigation regarding income generated from 1986 through 1991 from the autographing of memorabilia. "I have nothing to hide," said Strawberry in June, "I was just one of a lot of guys they are looking at. I'm sure there are a lot of players who haven't declared the money they earned, but I did." Also in La-La Land, the Schottless Reds found themselves as extras in the saga of the "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss. Tabloid TV's "A Current Affair" revealed that actor Charlie Sheen (a big Reds fan), threw parties in 1990 and 1992 for the team, and that a woman claiming to be yet another Hollywood madam provided girls for the party. An unnamed Red commented regarding the 1992 shindig: "Two women were topless. But hookers? I didn't think any of them were hookers. It was just a party--a great party."