1919 White Sox Scandal

The most notorious gambling scandal in baseball history has to be the 1919 World Series. Where eight players on the Chicago White Sox including their best hitter "Shoeless" Joe Jackson threw the games and allowed the Reds to win the series.This action by the players screwed up betting for all those who chose the highly favored White Sox. They were not happy with their owner Charles Comisky who underpaid and mistreated them so they decided to express that on the field. Those players were paid by gamblers who would use the Sox's losing strategy to bet on the Reds. There is never such thing as a guaranteed bet, but if the outcome is fixed then it is a surefire money maker. The Sox's star pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams lost all their games with Cicotte earning $10,000 and Williams earning $5,000 (close to double his salary). The gamblers and the members of the teams got their money but the price was heavy. All players involved were banned for life from the sport. Joe Jackson is controversial in this because he played his best he batted .375 in the series but he took the money therefore was banned from baseball, and thus still to this day he is not in the Hall of Fame because of the incident.