Ivy League Cubs

By: Jacob Zanolla

It was announced on Friday evening that umpire Pat Hoberg has broken Major League Baseball’s gambling policy, which is why he hasn’t appeared in any games this year. This was incredibly shocking, yet not necessarily surprising at the same time. Hoberg is mainly known around baseball fandom for calling a perfect game in the 2022 World Series, missing no ball or strike calls behind home plate. Umpires are often blamed for blowing calls that affect games, which can often be the case. Fans are constantly tweeting (X’ing?) about the need for robot umpires, and I’m starting to agree with them. Missed calls are constantly messing up games, with the replay in New York not being much better when it comes to challenges made by the managers. With this new shocking story, a lot of questions are now brought up about the legitimacy of these umpires. 

This is now the third gambling scandal that we’ve heard of this year alone, fourth depending on how you’re counting it. First we had Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, get caught stealing loads of money to gamble. He didn’t make any profit, lost arguably one of the best jobs in the world, betrayed his best friend, and faces up to 33 years in prison. Not fun or smart in any way shape or form. This was the biggest of these recent gambling stories, and I assume will be for quite a while.

Next we learned about David Fletcher gambling when he was with the Angels, which would have been during the same time frame that Ohtani was with them. Due to Fletcher being somewhat obsolete and not a star, this story didn’t make waves across the baseball media landscape. 

Tucupita Marcano is the latest player gambling story, banned from MLB for life along with a few other players. Still to this point we don’t have a massive name in trouble, so it seems like more of the lower tier will be the ones getting caught with this. Mizuhara could be classified as upper class, depending on how you look at it. To this point no one has been successful and made a lot of money from gambling, which is kind of ironic given the fact that their jobs have all been lost and lives changed forever. Marcano spent $150,000 on baseball bets, and won essentially nothing off of those bets. His main problem appeared to be that he chose to bet on the Pirates (while on the Injured List), which is never a smart thing. 

Now we come to Hoberg. Ken Rosenthal broke the news on Friday evening, with Jeff Passan, Robert Murray, and Bob Nightengale confirming the report soon after. In my opinion, this is bigger than Mizuhara getting caught gambling. There aren’t words to quantify how bad it is for baseball compared to Mizuhara’s scandal, but the effect on baseball will be felt for a long time now. There isn’t enough information to know when he made bets, what he placed those bets on, and how expensive the bets were. Either way, this is a top name in the umpire world that broke an explicitly stated rule. 

Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drelich provided a quote from Major League Baseball regarding the incident (via The Athletic): 

“While MLB’s investigation did not find any evidence that games worked by Mr. Hoberg were compromised or manipulated in any way, MLB determined that discipline was warranted,” the league said. “Mr. Hoberg has chosen to appeal that determination. Therefore, we cannot comment further until the appeal process is concluded.”

There’s a lot to be answered, and we may not find everything out. I’m still trying to process the fact an umpire was caught gambling, but like I said before it isn’t necessarily surprising.

As I mentioned earlier, the fact that an umpire kind of controls the game of baseball means this is a big problem. The game is supposed to be about the players. However, there is constant discussion about how bad the officiating is. Angel Hernandez just “retired,” but he knew how to make the game about him. That’s all he seemed to care about. I could easily say the same about Joe West. To find out that the officials are gambling, and have stakes in the games they are in charge of, makes me worry about the integrity of the sport itself. 

For now, Hoberg is the only umpire that we know for sure has gambled. Is there ever just one though? I’m sure it sounds cliché, but whenever insects are found in a house, there never seems to be just one. It’s a group, every time. These types of problems often come in bunches. I’m not saying that every umpire is gambling, because I highly doubt that’s the case. We don’t know if other umpires knew about Hoberg, but I have to assume they did. Did others join him, or did he place bets for other officials? Did he try to influence them after placing bets on games his co-workers were working at? We don’t know any of those details yet, but I think it’s reasonable to have that worry. The nature of his betting is currently unknown. Hoberg is appealing the suspension, and denies ever betting on baseball. 

Does Major League Baseball deserve this? 

In a way, yes, I believe they do. No matter what game you go to, there is gambling everywhere. Wrigley Field has a sports book connected to the first base side, which looks pretty dumb on the outside of the stadium. Other stadiums have sports books as well. When watching Cubs games on Marquee Sports Network, there is always a parlay of the game where they encourage viewers to place a bet on FanDuel. As I’m typing this while watching a Cubs game, there are betting odds across the bottom of the screen on Fox Sports. According to sportico.com, Major League Baseball is earning $1Billion per year because of gambling advertisements. I get why they want to use them, it makes them a ton of money. However, it’s not good in the long run for the sport. The more they show ads, the more fans are going to use that product. This is slowly turning into players and staff as well, meaning they need to nip this in the bud before it’s too late. While they may not be in charge of sports gambling rules across sports, they can limit their effect on this growing epidemic of gambling. 

While it’s not the same, I started thinking about the steroid era and how that is now against the rules. I wasn’t alive during this time, but I know that it helped save baseball, mainly with the viewership of McGwire and Sosa. However, the sport lost some of its integrity when a lot of its stars got exposed for cheating. With all of these gambling scandals, baseball will make a lot of money. In return, there is a chance that the integrity could once again be lost if this continues. 

If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, help is available. Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

Photo Credit: USA Today