What to know: Major League Baseball announced yesterday that following a lengthy appeals process, the league has fired umpire Pat Hoberg for “sharing” legal sports betting accounts with a friend of his who bet on baseball. Hoberg also intentionally deleted messages key to the investigation into his conduct.
MLB said that Hoberg denied betting on baseball directly and/or indirectly, and commissioner Rob Manfred said there is no evidence that Hoberg bet on any games or manipulated the outcomes of any games. Hoberg used his friend’s account to bet on non-MLB events.
Personally, I think this is crazy. I mean, I get it. When there’s smoke there’s fire, and you don’t want the integrity of the game to be at stake. So, I get it. Professional sports organizations are kind of backed into a corner these days when it comes to this kind of stuff. However, I do think a lengthy suspension would’ve done the trick here. Perhaps, without pay.
This surely isn’t the first of this kind of stuff that will come out as sports betting becomes a more and more prominent piece of everyday sporting events, so leagues will have to begin to have some sort of process in play for this moving forward. Is the answer always going to be to fire?
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