Total Baseball (1994 Edition)/Total_Baseball_1994_Edition_Creative_Multimedia_1994.iso/dp/0004/00046.txt

Text File | 1994-02-24 | 107KB | 1,494 lines

$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."