With Emmanuel Clase out of the country and seemingly unlikely to return, we may never know what motivated him to participate in an alleged scheme to sell off over 100 individual pitches to gamblers, nor what enticed alleged coconspirator Luis L. Ortiz to join him. If found guilty, they will not only forfeit their freedom, but a minimum of $20 million and approximately $390,000, respectively, plus all their potential future earnings in baseball—this in return for payoffs and/or winnings that did not come anywhere near approaching those amounts. Assuming the gamblers didn’t have as-yet unrevealed leverage over the two pitchers, this is as inexplicable an act of self-destruction as the game has ever seen.
Even Ed Delahanty had the excuse of being severely inebriated when he walked off that bridge over the Niagara River.
That young men do spectacularly stupid things is not news (at 35, Delahanty was not so young, but the alcohol made up the difference) and so many of baseball’s betting scandals have involved a predatory seducer exploiting a youthful lack of judgment. The most blatant example of this came 101 years ago via the New York Giants, a club whose ownership and manager were somewhere between “on friendly terms” and “deeply enmeshed” with Arnold Rothstein, and yet never caught anywhere near as much hell as they deserved.
The Giants entered play on September 27, 1924, leading the National League pennant race by 1.5 games over the Brooklyn Robins (obligatory: we call them the “Dodgers”) with both of the clubs having two games left to play. Brooklyn would host a bad Boston Braves team at Ebbets Field, while the Giants welcomed an almost equally miserable Phillies team to the Polo Grounds. At least one Giant, coach Albert “Cozy” Dolan, seems to have been nervous about his team’s ability to sew up the pennant, because he asked one of the players, a 23-year-old outfielder named Jimmy O’Connell, to deliver a message to one of the Phillies: be gentle and we’ll thank you.
According to O’Connell, prior to the first game he sidled up to Phillies shortstop Heinie Sand, a friend from the minors, and asked, “How do you feel about the game?”
“We don’t feel,” Sand replied. “We’re just finishing the season and don’t care who wins.”
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