20 Sports Fixing Scandals That Shattered Fans’ Trust In The Game

Chicago White Sox first baseman Chick Gandil, unhappy with his salary under team owner Charles Comiskey, approached seven of his teammates about losing the 1919 World Series in exchange for $100,000. The money was promised by a gambling syndicate. Cincinnati won the series, benefiting from bad performances by starting pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams. A jury in Chicago found all eight men not guilty. However, baseball’s newly appointed commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, barred all eight men from professional baseball for the rest of their lives, including Joe Jackson. The outfielder had accepted $5,000 from the syndicate but didn’t have a bad series at the plate.

Primo Carnera, an Italian heavyweight, went undefeated for most of his career thanks in part to mob managers such as Owney Madden and Frankie Carbo, who had him fix several early bouts against overmatched fighters. In 1933, he beat champion Jack Sharkey with a light uppercut that the fans dubbed the “phantom punch.” Sharkey maintained until the day he died that he never took a dive. He went on to lose the belt to Max Baer the following year, and his mob-assisted climb eventually came to light.

In 1951, a major college basketball gambling scandal came to light when Manhattan prosecutor Frank Hogan investigated a scheme involving bookmaker Salvatore Sollazzo. Sollazzo had paid 35 college basketball players, current and former, at institutions including CCNY, LIU, NYU, and Kentucky to shave points. Point shaving meant keeping a team’s winning margin below the betting spread even though the favored team usually still won the game. The scheme affected dozens of games over a number of seasons. Convictions followed, players got lifetime NBA bans, and top teams were no longer invited to play at Madison Square Garden.

In order for Torino FC to win the 1927 Italian championship, they had to beat their rivals Juventus. A Torino official named Dr. Guido Nani had promised a bribe to Juventus defender Luigi Allemandi to allow Torino to win. He paid most of it in advance. Torino won, but Nani refused to pay the rest because Allemandi had played well anyway. A journalist overheard the two arguing and reported the matter to Italy’s football federation. They stripped Torino of the title and banned Allemandi from the sport for life, although he was later pardoned. Nobody has ever been awarded the championship since.

Five years after refusing to let the mob manage his career, middleweight contender Jake LaMotta, eventually known as “The Raging Bull,” agreed in 1947 to lose to light heavyweight Billy Fox at Madison Square Garden, paying $20,000 to Frank Carbo’s syndicate for a guaranteed title shot. He faked an injury and barely defended himself before the referee stopped the fight. In 1960, LaMotta admitted under oath before a Senate committee that he had made the payoff.

In May 1844, at Epsom Downs, a horse called Running Rein won the Epsom Derby, Britain’s most prestigious race for 3-year-olds. Nobleman Lord George Bentinck disputed the results. A court trial later revealed that the horse’s owner, Abraham Goodman, who had raced under the name Levi, had substituted the 4-year-old Maccabeus in place of Running Rein. Maccabeus, the horse that had run as Running Rein, was disqualified, and runner-up Orlando was awarded the prize, while Goodman escaped from England before his prosecution could take place.

The day before the 1946 NFL Championship Game, mob bookmaker Alvin Paris approached New York Giants quarterback Frank Filchock and fullback Merle Hapes with a bribe: $2,500 to help Chicago win by more than 10 points. Both Filchock and Hapes rejected the money but failed to report the incident. Commissioner Bert Bell suspended Hapes before kickoff and suspended Filchock after the game, not over his six interceptions in the Giants’ loss, but because he, too, had failed to report the bribe offer. Neither player was proven to have taken part in fixing the game.

Manchester City needed a win over Aston Villa to claim their first league title in 1905. Welsh winger Billy Meredith tried to bribe Villa captain Alex Leake to throw the match during City’s loss, which cost them the title, and when Leake reported it, the Football Association suspended Meredith. Enraged that City wouldn’t pay him during the suspension, he then blew the whistle on the club for secretly paying players well above the league’s salary cap. A league audit then banned manager Tom Maley for life and suspended more than a dozen other players. Meredith went on to play for Manchester United and eventually won the title with them.

In 1934, trainer Charlie Prince used his own champion horse, Erbie, as a ring-in, racing a faster horse than expected under the name of a slower one to collect at high odds. He dyed the white blaze on Erbie’s face and raced him as Redlock. After one race, a suspicious turf journalist inspected “Redlock” and noticed something odd. Prince was convicted of fraud and given a lifetime ban from Australian racing.

During World War I, Manchester United were fighting relegation when they faced Liverpool at Old Trafford in 1915. Fearful of being ruined when the game was suspended for the war, the players from both teams had met in various pubs prior to the match and agreed to play a 2-0 United win, a scoreline many bettors would back. Liverpool offered little resistance, and a missed penalty led their supporters to shout abuse. The subsequent investigation led to seven players getting lifetime bans, including Sandy Turnbull, though most of those bans were later lifted after they did wartime service. Turnbull died in battle before he ever played again.

In Colma, Calif., on October 16, 1909, heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and middleweight champ Stanley Ketchel agreed behind closed doors to take their bout all 12 rounds to make a better motion picture, with Johnson to be declared the winner by decision. Then, when they got to round 12, Ketchel reneged on their agreement and hit Johnson with a full-power shot, knocking him down. But just as he was standing back up, Johnson came across with one punch that dropped Ketchel out like a light. Johnson retained the title. Their brutal finish is now legendary.

The American jockey James “Tod” Sloan is remembered for the aerodynamic “monkey crouch” riding style he developed in the 1890s, which gave horses greater speed. Sloan moved to Britain, where he rode for some of the wealthiest owners, even the future King Edward VII. But officials grew suspicious that Sloan was manipulating his riding tactics to favor the heavy bets he placed on his own mounts, and Britain’s Jockey Club decided not to renew his license for 1901. American officials honored the ban, and Sloan retired at the age of 26. He never stood trial.

In August 1877, the Louisville Grays were in first place in baseball’s National League. A series of inexplicable losses, however, sent the pennant to Boston. Someone anonymously tipped off team official Charles Chase. When Chase checked the players’ telegraph records, pitcher Jim Devlin, outfielder George Hall, and infielder Al Nichols confessed. They had been paid by New York bookies after their paychecks started falling behind. Shortstop Bill Craver declined to give up his record. League president William Hulbert expelled the four players for life. None was ever allowed back.

In 1865, the amateur New York Mutuals played the Brooklyn Eckfords at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. Mutuals catcher William Wansley took a bribe from a gambler to throw the game, passing along part of it to Thomas Devyr and Ed Duffy, his fellow teammates. The Mutuals fell apart in the middle innings and lost the game by a large margin. Mutuals president John Wildey investigated and received written confessions. He banned all three players. All three were quietly reinstated within a few years.

The Canton Bulldogs and Massillon Tigers met twice in November 1906 to decide the champion of one of Ohio’s early pro football leagues. The teams split the two-game series. A Massillon newspaper editor named E.J. Stewart alleged that Canton’s player-coach Charles “Blondy” Wallace had colluded with some gamblers and a former Massillon player to intentionally split the series to force a third game and more revenue. Wallace denied it and sued for libel, but the case was settled out of court, and Wallace was never convicted. Even without a conviction, the accusations were enough to bankrupt both clubs before there even was an NFL.

In July 1817, William Lambert, who is generally regarded as England’s finest all-rounder, played for an England team against Nottingham at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. Bookies offered him a huge sum of money to throw the game. He took their cash and ensured that England lost. The Marylebone Cricket Club, which is English cricket’s governing body, carried out an inquiry, convicted him, and banned him for life from playing at Lord’s. He would never be allowed back, and his career was over.

In 1910, Detroit’s Ty Cobb narrowly edged out Cleveland’s Nap Lajoie in the race for the title of major-league batting champion, which a Detroit auto manufacturer named Hugh Chalmers had offered as a new automobile. Cobb sat out the final games to protect his average, so St. Louis manager Jack O’Connor, who despised Cobb, ordered his rookie third baseman to play deep, letting Lajoie bunt several easy singles. After an investigation by AL president Ban Johnson, Cobb was declared the winner by the slimmest of margins, and O’Connor was promptly dismissed from his job. Chalmers then gave cars to both players.

Hal Chase was a first baseman who spent over a decade with multiple major league clubs, throwing games, placing bets against the team he played for, and trying to get his teammates to do the same. In 1918, Cincinnati Reds manager Christy Mathewson suspended him for wagering against his team. When traded to the New York Giants, Chase and his new teammate Lee Magee continued to make bribery offers. During a league hearing in 1919, Chase was found not guilty because there were no witnesses. The owners still blacklisted him behind closed doors, and when Kenesaw Mountain Landis took office as commissioner, he officially banned Chase from the game for life.

When the New York Giants were locked in a close 1924 pennant race, a 23-year-old outfielder named Jimmy O’Connell gave Heinie Sand, a shortstop on the Philadelphia team, $500 to “go easy” on the Giants. Sand turned him down and informed his manager. When questioned by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, O’Connell confessed that he had made the offer and said that Giants coach Cozy Dolan was also involved. Both men were summarily banned for life. O’Connell also mentioned three other Giants stars, but Landis exonerated them because there wasn’t enough evidence.

All-Americans Alex Groza and Ralph Beard, plus teammate Dale Barnstable, told prosecutors that they had accepted bribes from gamblers to shave points in a 1949 tournament game at Madison Square Garden. Coach Adolph Rupp had once said gamblers would never be able to buy off his men. The conference suspended the University of Kentucky, and the NCAA urged its member schools to shun the Wildcats. That led the Wildcats to cancel their whole season, which was the first program-wide suspension in college basketball.

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