The Shadow of Baseball Gambling — Money and Antisocial Forces

Last time, we looked at the 2004 reorganization of the baseball world. It was a singular year in which the pain of one team disappearing and the hope of fans moving the game forward coexisted in the same season. Afterward, the game began to turn its face toward its regions and its fans. Yet along that path, a shadow that shook trust once again revealed itself. It was a problem in which money and a world that must stay hidden became intertwined — baseball gambling.

Gambling carries a special weight even among the many scandals in sports. That is because, when the object of the bet is the game itself, the very foundation that fans have believed in — that of a genuine contest — begins to waver. In this chapter, focusing on the most widely reported case of recent years, we will calmly examine why gambling is considered the greatest taboo of the game, staying within the bounds of the confirmed sanctions.

2015, When the Gambling Surfaced

In the autumn of 2015, involvement in baseball gambling surfaced within a certain team. According to reports, the trigger is said to have been people visiting a player to collect on a debt. Through the subsequent investigation by the team and the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball), it gradually became clear that several players had been involved in gambling.

According to the findings that were made public as a result of the investigation, the players involved are said to have taken part in betting on professional baseball games and some amateur games during the 2014 season and other periods. The amounts and frequency differed from player to player, and it was reported that the targets of the betting spanned several categories.

The game has a basic set of rules known as the ‘Baseball Agreement,’ and within it, players and officials are strictly forbidden from wagering money on their own games. Even without manipulating the outcome, the moment one dabbles in gambling it becomes a violation of the agreement — this strictness led to the severity of the sanctions that followed.

Contract Termination, and Indefinite Disqualification

Once the problem was confirmed, the response of the team and the NPB moved swiftly.

In November 2015, the team held an emergency press conference and indicated its intention to terminate the contracts of the players whose involvement had been confirmed. The NPB Commissioner then handed down a sanction of ‘indefinite disqualification’ against the players. This is an extremely heavy sanction, meaning removal from activity in the game until a set period has passed. The team, too, was fined for inadequate guidance and management.

The following year, in 2016, the involvement of one more player came to light after the initial investigation, and additional sanctions were imposed. Regarding this player, it is reported that the degree of involvement and other factors were taken into account, resulting in a one-year disqualification. As for the difference that emerged in the severity of the sanctions, there was much debate at the time over the criteria for the judgment, and views remain divided to this day.

The series of sanctions marked a heavy milestone even within NPB history. A disqualification of players on grounds of baseball gambling is said to have been the first since the ‘Black Mist scandal’ of the late 1960s, which we will touch on later, and many in the game were shaken that, after nearly half a century, the same kind of shadow once again fell over it.

Why Is Gambling the Greatest Taboo

Here, what we want to pause and consider is why gambling is treated so heavily. The bet itself is, in some cases, not a manipulation of the outcome. Even so, there are structural reasons why the game treats gambling as a taboo of the highest order.

First, there is the credibility of the games. If fans come to suspect that players are betting on games, no one can believe whether the play before their eyes is truly genuine. Sport holds together only on the premise that ‘the result is not decided in advance.’ If that premise collapses, its very value as a spectacle is lost.

Second, there is the problem of the world behind the gambling. Illegal gambling has long been said to be linked to forces that must stay hidden — so-called antisocial forces — as a source of their funds. If a player makes contact with such a world, the danger arises that debts or weaknesses will be exploited, and that they will eventually be coerced into manipulating games. Gambling and match-fixing can be connected as entrance and exit.

Even if manipulation of the games was not confirmed in the recent case, the reason the game moved at once to impose strict sanctions was none other than this memory of the ‘Black Mist scandal.’ Once trust is lost, how much time it takes to win it back — the game knew this through its own experience.

To Prevent Recurrence

After the case, the game advanced efforts toward preventing recurrence.

The NPB is said to have added a course on ‘harmful conduct’ to the training for players, including newcomers. There, it is reported, the mechanism by which one’s sense of money and ethics gradually becomes numb through association with habitual gamblers was explained, and players were told never to get involved in gambling at all and to report to their team if invited. At each team, too, courses to eliminate antisocial forces were held repeatedly.

These are not approaches that blame only the weakness of an individual’s will. By having the players themselves understand the structure of how gambling draws people in, the aim was to keep them from taking that first step — they were based on such a preventive way of thinking.

The shadow of baseball gambling teaches us, paradoxically, just how much the game stands upon trust. Being able to believe in the genuine contest on the field. That this thing we take for granted is by no means a given. The game relearned it, together with pain.

And the shadow the game needed to confront anew was not only the one surrounding money. The passion to seek victory turns, before one realizes it, into a form that wounds people — that problem lay deeply rooted in the professional world, and in the field of coaching that raises young players, too.