In the past year, there have been two major scandals in two major sports. Everyone remembers Michael Vick's dog-fighting scandal, and the recently resolved Tim Donaghy gambling scandal, but baseball and hockey have stayed out of the negative spotlight, at least in the last year or so.
Well, it is time to check baseball off for its major scandal.
The Michael Vick investigation began when his cousin, Davon Boddie, had a brush with the law. Boddie was living in a house owned by Vick at the time. While conducting a drug investigation, police raided the house.
Instead of finding the drugs that they were looking for, they found over 60 dogs killed or injured. This was the unofficial ground breaking in the Michael Vick scandal.
Tim Donaghy's illegal betting was first revealed by the New York Post in a column by Murray Weiss. The column said that the FBI was investigating Donaghy in a possible gambling ring.
Meet baseball's big scandal. It was reported in March that White Sox Director of Scouting, David Wilder, was caught by United States Customs attempting to smuggle $40,000 cash into Miami. Since then, Wilder has been cooperating with FBI and MLB officials and has been fired by the White Sox.
Before I elaborate on recent reports, I feel that it is necessary to say that this is all alleged information, and that the FBI and MLB are currently conducting investigations.
So what is the scandal?
All we have is a man bringing $40,000 to the U.S. from the Dominican. Fortunately for investigators, Wilder has sung like a canary.
Allegedly, scouts have been over evaluating players in Latin America and signing them to inflated signing bonuses. The scouts then force the players to give a cut of their bonuses to them. It may sound as if the scouts are stealing from players, but really they are stealing from the team.
In the past, blame has been placed on street agents for taking large fees for getting the players signed. Apparently, street agents are not charging the large fees to the players, but the scouts are.
Thanks to reports by T.J. Quinn and Mark Fainaru-Wada, we have learned about the New York Yankees' participation in this scandal. All the reports say about the Yankees is that many prospects have been forced to give large portions of their signing bonuses to scouts and officials.
Last week, the Red Sox's Dominican Scouting Supervisor, Pablo Lantigua, was fired after being confronted by MLB investigators that were seeking answers on his involvement in the skimming of signing bonuses.
ESPN has reported that as many as 20 people could be implicated in this scandal. These men are from numerous MLB clubs.
In the case of the Yankees, the accusations are over a month old, but have surfaced because of a letter that allegedly lists the names of prospects involved. The letter also includes the numbers involved in the skimming of the prospects' bonuses.
One player that is allegedly involved is OF Kelvin DeLeon. DeLeon is only 17-years old and signed a deal that included a $1.1M signing bonus in July of 2007. He is a big-name prospect in the Yankees' system and may be over evaluated.
Yankees GM Brian Cashman has not commented on the potential that the Yankees have been signing players that aren't as good as their bonuses suggest.
This is only the beginning of a long, rocky road. More evidence on this financial scandal will present itself in the coming months. This scandal could be the biggest thing since the steroid era.
In a perfect world, these reports are false and there has been no wrongdoing. Sadly, I get the feeling that dozens of officials and scouts could be facing prison time.
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