You may have heard of baseball, one of the most popular sports in the United States, but if you haven’t heard of it or you just don’t know what it is about, here is a quick introduction. Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players who have to run through a diamond-shaped field of four bases. The teams alternate positions as batters (offense), the ones who try to hit the ball and run, and fielders (defense), the ones who try to reach the other team so they don’t make a “run”. This goes by nine innings (an inning is complete when each team gets three players out) limited by outs (when a batter or runner is reached by the other team), the winning team is the one that makes more runs in the nine innings, but if there is a tie after the innings end, the teams keep playing until one of the teams wins.
Most Common Ways of Cheating
Now that we know what baseball is about, let’s talk about cheating, something that has existed since the beginning of the game. The most common ways of cheating are sign stealing, the batter knows what type of ball is coming before he bats; corking bats, put a cork in the bat to make the swing faster; doctoring balls, rubbing things to the ball so it’s more difficult for the batter to hit it; and using steroids to increase the muscle mass, if any of these things happen, there will be a suspension for the one who makes it.
Why are the cheaters not caught?
When someone cheats and it’s not caught, it can be because of two things. One, the opposing team doesn’t know what is happening, like the San Francisco Giants in the 1951 season, when they sign stole other teams. Or two, the other team knows what’s happening, but they can’t prove it, just like Gaylord Perry who doctored balls with spit and Vaseline for 20 years before he was suspended, and this didn’t even keep him away from being in the Hall of Fame.
The “Black Sox Scandal” in 1919
One of the biggest scandals of baseball’s history is the “Black Sox Scandal”, it was in the World Series of 1919, and it happened in the last game of the season between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds when eight members of the Chicago White Sox fixed the game, the court records show they received between $70,000 to $100,000 for losing the game five to three.
Houston Astros Wins the 2017 World Series
The most recent baseball scandal is the Houston Astros winning the 2017 World Series by sign-stealing, the MLB (Major League Baseball) has given a chance per game to replay a video of a designed play. So, there was a camera in the center field recording the catcher giving signs and that video got to a monitor installed next to the Astro’s dugout, and they will pass the signs to the hitter, or on some occasions, a staff member will relay via text message the signs. As you see, baseball is not too different from the other games in this case of cheating.
