Major League Baseball’s stunning gambling suspensions handed down this month to five players—including a lifetime ban for San Diego Padres prospect Tucupita Marcano—are the product of an unwieldy system that dates back to the seminal MLB gambling scandal with the 1919 Black Sox.
Two pieces of text form the backbone of baseball’s gambling policy: Rule 21(d) of MLB’s own rules and bylaws, and Attachment 61 of the Basic Agreement negotiated between the owners and the MLB Players Association.
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MLB Rule 21(d) has long guided the code of ethics regarding gambling, and it’s behind the lifetime suspensions of uniformed baseball personnel from Shoeless Jackson to Pete Rose. Like Marcano, both were banished from the game for breaking a sacrosanct rule against gambling on games in which their own teams were playing.
Attachment 61 of the current Basic Agreement is meant to expand on that rule, a spokesman for the union said.
Whether this all needs to be updated in the next collective bargaining because of MLB’s now-cozy relationship with legal gambling outlets and casinos remains to be seen. The current Basic Agreement expires after the 2026 World Series, and negotiations will certainly begin sometime during that season.
It will come as no surprise if baseball’s gambling policy is re-examined in labor talks. When Jackson and seven of his Chicago White Sox teammates were banished in 1920 for throwing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, and when Rose was banned in 1989 for betting on his own games as Reds manager, there was a bright line between betting on baseball and participation in the sport. The recent rapid evolution of legalized gambling in the U.S. appears to have blurred that line, at least in the minds of some players.
Who was banned from MLB for gambling?
Four of the other five recent players—Jay Groom, also in the Padres’ organization; Michael Kelly of the Oakland Athletics; Jose Rodriguez of the Philadelphia Phillies; and Andrew Saalfrank of the Arizona Diamondbacks—were all suspended for a year under Rule 21(d)(1), because they “bet any sum [legally] whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has no duty to perform.”
Thus, they bet on baseball, but not on their own games. That’s an automatic one-year suspension.
Marcano, as a member of the Pirates organization before joining the Padres, violated Rule 21(d)(2): “Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who…