Rickey Henderson has been convicted on 1,406 counts of embezzlement. The governing body of Major League Baseball has also convicted Lou Brock on 938 counts. Billy Hamilton didn’t fare too much better. After a lengthy trial, he was convicted on 914 counts. And Ty Cobb, the most notorious of all ballplayers, received the maximum sentence for 897 counts of embezzlement. Cobb wasn’t the only player to receive the maximum sentence, in fact, Rickey, Lou, and Billy all suffered the same fate. They have been given life sentences and are incarcerated in a maximum-security building in central New York state. This problem is, unfortunately, not restricted to these four ballplayers. Embezzlement is an issue in baseball that has been occurring since the early 1860s and continues to this very day. And that is why E Is for Embezzle.
E Is for Embezzle
To embezzle is to take something in a deceitful manner for one’s own use. During the early 20th century, until Babe Ruth and his big bat took the baseball world by storm, there was a huge embezzlement problem in the major leagues. When Ruth became a full-time hitter with the New York Yankees in 1920 and started blasting home runs at an alarming rate the need for stealing decreased because a new, honest form of run production had taken hold. But before Ruth, the need for base-stealing was an essential part of the game.
Following the 1920 season home runs increased and embezzlement, also known as base stealing, decreased. This trend continued until the 1970s and the advent of artificial turf. Artificial turf created an embezzlement-friendly environment. Thus the stolen base increased in popularity all the way through the 1980s. By the 1990s there was a drop in base stealing due to a less honest version of home run production and the disappearance of (thank god) artificial turf. Since the 90s, embezzlement in baseball has been on a steady decline. And those ballplayers who have committed hundreds, and in one case over a thousand, acts of embezzlement, well, they are still locked away at a little place in Cooperstown, New York.
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Players Mentioned:
Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock, Billy Hamilton, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth
