Match Fixing in Baseball: The Black Sox, Pete Rose and Prop-Bet Probes

Eddie Cicotte took the ball for the Chicago White Sox on 1 October 1919. His side were heavy favourites to beat the Cincinnati Reds in a best-of-nine World Series. With his second pitch of the Series, he hit the Reds' leadoff man, Morrie Rath, square in the back.

On the scorecard, that's a hit batter and nothing more. In the story baseball has told ever since, it was a message: reportedly the pre-arranged signal to the gamblers that the fix was on. Rumours had already pushed money onto Cincinnati, and the Reds' price shortened quickly on Game One. By 9 October 1919 the Reds were champions in eight games, and baseball had the scandal that still defines match fixing in baseball.

Fast forward more than a century and the pitch itself has become the bet. In November 2025, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn indicted two Cleveland Guardians pitchers over alleged in-game prop bets on the speed and outcome of individual pitches. Both pleaded not guilty and deny the charges.

This is the baseball chapter of our match fixing in sport series. Baseball's memory files four very different things under "fixing": throwing games for gamblers, betting on your own team, alleged rigging of pitch-level prop bets, and a theft to cover gambling debts. Only the first is proven match fixing. We keep them firmly apart, because the sport's history gets badly muddled when people don't.

One man, one pitch

Every pitch is its own bettable event. Ball or strike. Fastball or something slower. A particular number on the radar gun. One player decides it, and nobody else on the field has to be in on it. That's spot-fixing in its purest form, and it's the same weakness behind cricket's spot-fixing scandals.

Resentment and a lot of games

The 1919 fix grew in a sour clubhouse. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was widely resented for his miserliness, even though his club actually had the largest payroll in the game that year. The reserve clause left players with no bargaining power. Gamblers could find players on plenty of teams who fancied some extra cash, and a best-of-nine Series simply meant more games to lose.

Syndicate money

This was never only an American problem. In Japan the money came from the yakuza, who used legal flat-track motorcycle racing as a parallel fixing market. Taiwan's came from illegal gambling syndicates. South Korea's came from illegal prop bets on outcomes as small as a walk in the first inning. It is the same kind of money that football has been fighting for decades.

The pattern was set early. Between 1865 and 1920, 14 players were banned from American professional baseball, and 12 of them went for links to gambling or attempts to fix games.

From a Kentucky pennant race to a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, here's the record. Read the outcome column closely, because some of baseball's most famous "fixing" stories weren't fixing at all.

In August 1877 the Louisville Grays sat top of the National League. Then the wheels came off. They lost seven games and tied one against Boston and Hartford, and Boston took the pennant by seven games. The owner's son, John Haldeman, went public with his doubts about the team's conduct in the Courier-Journal.

Club president Charles Chase had received two anonymous telegrams. The second predicted that Louisville would throw the game against Hartford on 21 August. Louisville duly made a string of suspicious errors and lost 7-0. When Chase confronted his players on 26 October 1877, Jim Devlin and George Hall admitted throwing non-league games.

Devlin, Hall, Al Nichols and Bill Craver were all expelled for life by the National League in December 1877. Craver's is the uncomfortable one. He had refused to let the club open his telegrams, and baseball historians dispute that any real proof was ever brought against him. Devlin appealed for reinstatement every year, and every year league president William Hulbert said no.

"Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball."

Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, 3 August 1921

The fix

It started with first baseman Chick Gandil meeting a Boston bookmaker on 18 September 1919, with $80,000 on the table. The New York gambler Arnold Rothstein has long been suspected of backing the gamblers, but the evidence cuts both ways, and there's no conclusive sign that organised crime directed it.

Cicotte and fellow pitcher Lefty Williams were at the heart of it, and Williams lost three games, a World Series record. When the gamblers held back instalments, the players reportedly tried a double-cross and won Games 6 and 7. Threats against players and their families followed. In Game 8, Williams gave up three first-inning runs. Gandil took $35,000, and every other player bar one received $5,000 or more.

Exposure and trial

Rumours dogged the 1920 season. A grand jury was convened that September, and Cicotte confessed to it on 28 September 1920. Comiskey suspended the seven players still in the majors on the eve of the season's final series, and the White Sox finished two games behind Cleveland.

The trial opened in Chicago on 27 June 1921. By then the confessions of Cicotte and Shoeless Joe Jackson had vanished from the courthouse, only to turn up years later in the hands of Comiskey's lawyer. The jury deliberated for under three hours and acquitted every defendant on every charge in August 1921.

The verdict that didn't count

Landis had been installed as baseball's first Commissioner, with near-unlimited power, in the wake of the scandal. He banned all eight anyway: Gandil, Cicotte, Williams, Jackson, Happy Felsch, Swede Risberg, Fred McMullin and Buck Weaver. Weaver went to the meetings but took no money. He was banned for knowing about the fix and not reporting it. Jackson's role is still argued over. He confessed to the grand jury to taking $5,000, later recanted, and testified that he played to win.

For our money, Landis's ruling is the most important sentence in baseball's integrity history, because it made the sport's judgement independent of the courts. A jury could clear you and baseball could still finish you. Under Commissioner Rob Manfred's rule change of 13 May 2025, the eight are no longer ineligible and can be considered for the Hall of Fame.

The Dowd report and the deal

Pete Rose is MLB's all-time hits leader with 4,256, and he was managing the Reds when MLB retained the lawyer John Dowd on 4 April 1989. The Dowd report concluded that Rose bet on baseball and on the Reds, and documented alleged bets on 52 Reds games in 1987. It also stated that "no evidence was discovered that Rose bet against the Reds".

On 24 August 1989 Rose voluntarily accepted a permanent place on the ineligible list, accepting that "a factual reason existed" for it. MLB made no formal finding on the gambling allegations. Commissioner Bart Giamatti, who announced the ban, died eight days later.

Admission and reinstatement

Rose denied it for years. Then, in his 2004 autobiography My Prison Without Bars, he admitted betting on baseball and on the Reds while managing them, and said he never bet on his team to lose. Since 1991 the Hall of Fame has kept permanently ineligible people off the ballot.

Rose died on 30 September 2024. His family applied for reinstatement on 8 January 2025, and Manfred's rule change of 13 May 2025 ended his ban. He's now eligible for the Hall's Classic Baseball era committee, with the next vote expected in December 2027. Here's the line that matters: Rose broke baseball's most sacred betting rule, but no one has proven he fixed a game.

Ippei Mizuhara: theft, not fixing

The case that rattled MLB in 2024 involved its biggest star, but it wasn't a fix. The Los Angeles Dodgers fired Shohei Ohtani's interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, on 20 March 2024 after Ohtani's lawyers said Ohtani was the victim of "massive theft". At least $4.5 million had gone from Ohtani's account to a bookmaker's associates to cover Mizuhara's debts.

Mizuhara was charged with bank fraud on 11 April 2024 for impersonating Ohtani to his bank and stealing more than $16 million. He pleaded guilty to bank fraud and tax charges on 4 June 2024. On 6 February 2025 he was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison and ordered to pay Ohtani $17 million in restitution.

Japan's Black Mist, 1969-71

It began with an outsider speaking up. Carl Boles, a foreign player with the Nishitetsu Lions, told the Hochi Shimbun that team-mates were playing suspiciously. On 7 October 1969 the club found that pitcher Masayuki Nagayasu had taken bribes from a yakuza clan to throw games. Banned for life on 28 November 1969, he was the first player ever banned in Japanese baseball, and his recorded interview the following April implicated more team-mates.

In the end more than 15 players and coaches from nine clubs were implicated in game-fixing and sports betting, seven from Nishitetsu alone. Ten were banned for life, including star pitchers Kentaro Ogawa and Tsutomu Tanaka. Masaaki Ikenaga's life ban of 25 May 1970 was always contested by his family and club. He said he was uninvolved, and he was allowed back on 25 April 2005. Fans deserted the game, and the Nishitetsu Lions and Toei Flyers were both sold.

Taiwan's "Windshield Wiper" case

The CPBL had been here before. Its fifth fixing scandal, from 2009, was named after its alleged ringleader's nickname, and 35 players were charged in 2010. On 13 August 2014 the Taiwan High Court found that defendants had conspired with illegal gambling syndicates to fix league games from the 2006 season onwards.

Former Brother Elephants players Chen Chih-yuan and Tsai Fong-an and former La New Bears player Chang Chih-chia were found guilty, with jail terms cut to four to six months and commutable to fines. The league's deputy secretary-general said the sentences were too light to deter. Hard to argue with him.

South Korea's walks

In 2012, LG Twins pitchers Park Hyun-joon and Kim Sung-hyun were banned for life by the KBO and given suspended jail terms for taking bribes in exchange for giving up walks. In July 2016, Kia Tigers pitcher Yoo Chang-sik confessed to fixing a walk. He was the first to come forward under a KBO amnesty: confess past fixing by 12 August 2016 and avoid a lifetime ban.

Emmanuel Clase was Cleveland's closer, the relief pitcher who finishes tight games, and a three-time All-Star. Luis Ortiz was one of the Guardians' starters. MLB placed both on non-disciplinary paid leave in July 2025. On 9 November 2025 they were indicted in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York on charges including wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery and money laundering conspiracy.

Prosecutors allege that the pitchers agreed in advance with co-conspirators to throw specific types and speeds of pitches, in return for several thousand dollars in payoffs. On the prosecution's case, that helped two gamblers from the Dominican Republic win at least $460,000 on more than 100 in-game prop bets and parlays. A superseding indictment unsealed on 13 February 2026 added allegations of coded messages and charged a third person as a middleman. Prosecutors say Clase began passing on pitch information in 2023, and that Ortiz joined in June 2025.

Those are allegations in a charging document, not findings. Both men pleaded not guilty in November 2025, and again to the superseding indictment on 18 February 2026 before Judge Kiyo Matsumoto. Ortiz's lawyers have argued that he is accused over only two pitches across 12 days, and that if anyone passed on his pitching plans, it happened without his knowledge. Both men deny the charges, and their joint trial, alongside co-defendant Robinson Vasquez Germosen, was set to open in Brooklyn on 2 November 2026.

Whatever the jury decides, the case has already changed the market. MLB said it contacted federal law enforcement when it began investigating unusual betting activity, and in November 2025 its authorised US sportsbooks moved to cap bets on individual pitches and keep them out of parlays. The same prop-bet pressure runs through point shaving and fixing in basketball.

"A deceased individual cannot compromise the integrity of the game."

Rob Manfred, MLB Commissioner, 13 May 2025

Baseball's great weapon is one person with the final word. After 1919 the owners gave the Commissioner plenary power to rule on anyone's fitness for the game, whatever a court decides, and Landis set the precedent by banning the acquitted Black Sox. Bans are for life, and since Manfred's change of 13 May 2025, a ban ends at death.

Rule 21(d) is brutally simple: "Any player, umpire, or club, or league official, or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible." It doesn't care whether you backed your own side or opposed it. You bet, you're gone.

Tucupita Marcano

That's why MLB banned Pirates infielder Tucupita Marcano for life on 4 June 2024 and suspended four other players for a year each. MLB said Marcano began betting on Pirates games during the 2023 season while injured. It was a gambling-rules breach, not match fixing, and baseball punishes it every bit as hard.

Who blows the whistle

The tip-offs have come from all over: anonymous telegrams in Louisville, a foreign player talking to a Japanese newspaper, a KBO amnesty. In the modern game it's the betting data, and MLB's look at unusual betting activity took it straight to federal law enforcement. Our guide to how betting integrity units catch fixers explains how those alerts get raised.

Look at where the trouble has landed. The proven fixes in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea came where syndicate money met players open to an offer. The modern American case is about the smallest market there is: one pitch, decided by one player.

The red flags follow from that. Heavy, one-sided money on a tiny market should make you think twice. So should a market that hinges on a single player's single action, or prices moving with no news to explain them. That's exactly the territory where an insider has the edge over you, and it is why even a guide to finding value in player and team prop markets has to start with how thin those markets are.

For a UK punter, most MLB betting happens in the big markets: the moneyline, the run line and total runs, as covered in our MLB betting guide. Those are decided by two full teams over nine innings, which makes them far harder for one person to steer than a pitch-by-pitch prop. If a market is ever suspended or a bet voided over integrity concerns, settlement comes down to your bookmaker's rules, so know them before you need them.

Our view is simple. Stick to UK-licensed bookmakers and the main markets on major-league games. The rules are clearer, the monitoring is serious, and you're far less likely to end up on the wrong side of somebody else's inside knowledge.

Baseball has the toughest betting rule in sport, and it was written in anger after 1919. Its history mixes real fixes, proven and punished, from Louisville to the Black Mist, with a crowd of cases that get called fixing and weren't. We think the sport's biggest modern threat isn't a thrown World Series. It's the single pitch.

• Baseball's verdict doesn't wait for a jury's. The Black Sox were acquitted in August 1921 and still banned for life by the Commissioner.
• Betting on your team isn't fixing. Rose and Marcano broke Rule 21; neither was found to have thrown a game.
• Mizuhara's case was theft. Ohtani was the victim, and the restitution order says so.
• Syndicate money finds the gaps. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea all paid for it.
• The micro-market is the weak spot. One pitch, one player, one bet is where an insider has the edge.
• Main markets and licensed books protect you. A moneyline on two full teams is a far safer place to be than a pitch-speed prop.

Related guides

• Match fixing in sport: how it's done and every sport hit
• How betting integrity units catch fixers
• Point shaving and fixing in basketball
• Spot-fixing and match fixing in cricket
• Match fixing in football: the biggest scandals
• 2026 MLB betting guide: strategies, ABS system and tips

18+. Please gamble responsibly. For free, confidential support visit BeGambleAware.org. If a baseball market ever looks wrong to you, tell your bookmaker.