Major League Baseball announced on Tuesday that San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano has been given a lifetime ban for betting on baseball. He is the first active player to be banned for life in over a century, becoming the first player to earn that dishonor since former New York Giants outfielder Jimmy O’Connell in 1924.
Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader, agreed to a lifetime ban in 1989 after an investigation revealed that he placed bets on the Cincinnati Reds while managing the team.
In Marcano’s case, Major League Baseball found that he placed 387 baseball bets for more than $150,000 in October 2022 and then again from last July through November. All of the bets were placed through a legal sports book.
Marcano was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates at the time the bets, and placed several parlay bets on Pirates games. He was injured at the time of those bets and there was no evidence to suggest that game results were compromised.
Adding insult to the lifetime ban is that Marcano was awful at placing bets. He lost every parlay bet involving the Pirates, and won just 4.3% of his MLB-related bets.
He mostly bet on the outcomes of games and over/unders.
It is one thing to throw away your career by gambling. It is something else entirely to throw it away and still lose almost all of the bets.
Along with Marcano, four other players also received one-year suspensions for betting.
Oakland A’s pitcher Michael Kelly was given a one-year suspension for betting on games while in the minor leagues, while three other minor leaguers (Jay Groome, Andrew Saalfrank and Jose Rodriguez) also received one-year suspensions for betting on major league games while in the minors.
Marcano is the second professional athlete to get a lifetime ban from their sport in recent months for gambling.
Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was also given a lifetime ban from basketball for betting on NBA games.
The legalization of sports betting in North America — and the way it is relentlessly advertised during games — is only going to lead to more incidents like this, and it is worth asking if situations like Marcano and Porter are just a tip of the iceberg and a larger scandal might be looming in the coming years. Even if it is, the Pandora’s Box of sports gambling is wide open and there does not seem to be anything that is going to stuff the demons back inside of it.
