Cheating In Baseball

Although everyone should be given a second chance, professional athletes should be banned from sports if they are caught cheating. Cheating ruins the integrity of the game, destroys the image of the players, and it is unfair to other athletes.

The cheating done by the Chicago White Sox in the 1919 World Series was one of the most infamous cases in sports history. The heavily favored White Sox gambled away the series to the Chicago Cubs, which became known as the Black Sox Scandal. “Baseball in 1919 was in the stranglehold of gamblers and had been for sometime” (“An Account . . .”). A lot of players gambled away games for money, and most got away with it, but the White Sox case was a different story. “The courts never actually found the eight White Sox players guilty” (“Top 15 . . .”). With this being said, the MLB still banned the eight players from professional baseball for life. “The owner, Charles Comiskey, covered up his knowledge of the fix, and got away with it” (“I’m Planning . . .”). The fact of the matter is that some athletes get away with cheating and others do not. In addition, many baseball players and track athletes in the 90’s were caught using performance enhancing drugs. Most of the players were off the hook, while some were sentenced to prison, or given banishments. No matter what, though,

Cheating is the worst thing you can do in professional sports, and like the Black Sox, everyone who cheats should be banned. Gambling today is not near as bad as it was in the 20’s, but other forms of cheating have began to take over sports like performance enhancing drugs. Many athletes have learned from the Black Sox and do not cheat. Some players, though, still attempt to get away with cheating like the Black Sox tried, but it always finds a way to catch back up with