It is the ultimate penalty in baseball: the lifetime ban. Pete Rose is the most famous person to pay the penalty, but many players and owners have been barred over the years for all manner of malfeasance.
Most of the lifetime bans came in the early years of baseball. Numerous players in the 19th and early 20th century were barred for fixing games, usually in exchange for money.
There was an odder motivation in 1910, when manager Jack O’Connell and coach Harry Howell of the St. Louis Browns allowed Nap Lajoie to go 8 for 9 in a doubleheader against them so he would defeat Ty Cobb in the batting race. Their motivation may simply have been that they, like many in baseball, just did not like Cobb.
The ultimate game fixing scandal, of course, was the Black Sox of 1919, in which the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series, leading to the bans of eight players including an all-time great, Shoeless Joe Jackson. The oft-told tale was the subject of a 1988 movie, “Eight Men Out.”
Baseball was also interested in keeping salaries down, and several players were barred or threatened with bans for holding out for more money or trying to change teams. Reds pitcher Ray Fisher was barred by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1921 for somewhat murky reasons related to his leaving the game to coach at the University of Michigan. In 1980, when Fisher was 93, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn announced that his slate was considered clean.
Shufflin’ Phil Douglas was not so lucky. After a checkered pitching career marked by disagreements with his teams and hard drinking, he was barred in 1922 by Landis for writing a letter that seemed to say he would leave the New York Giants in exchange for an “inducement.” Though there have been campaigns to reinstate him, he remains on the banned list.
While most bans came for baseball-related chicanery, Benny Kauff, a Giants center fielder, was barred in 1920 for reselling a stolen car.
The bans have come less frequently in modern times, but they have included some big names, even legends Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. Gambling has always been a red flag for baseball commissioners, and when Mays in 1979 and Mantle in 1983 accepted jobs as greeters at Atlantic City casinos, Kuhn barred them for life.
Commissioner Peter Ueberroth reversed the bans in 1985, saying, “The world changes.” Kuhn stubbornly said, “I disagree with his decision, and I make no bones about it.”
In 1990, George Steinbrenner was barred after being accused of paying a gambler, Howard Spira, for supposedly damaging information about Dave Winfield, whom Steinbrenner had been feuding with. Steinbrenner claimed he was paying off Spira to keep the information quiet.
Commissioner Fay Vincent said Steinbrenner had exhibited “a pattern of behavior that borders on the bizarre.” The suspension was lifted by Commissioner Bud Selig in 1993.
Steinbrenner had previously been barred for more than a year in the 1970s after being convicted of a felony in connection with illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon. That led to the famous quotation by manager Billy Martin about Reggie Jackson and Steinbrenner: “One’s a born liar; the other’s convicted.”
Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott’s outspoken admiration for Hitler and propensity for racist, anti-Semitic and sexist remarks led to her suspension in the 1990s, first for a year, then permanently. Notably, she once claimed that “Hitler was good in the beginning, but he went too far.”
Alongside these game-fixers, car thieves and casino greeters sits Pete Rose. And he will apparently remain there for some time to come.
