The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [4]
Not only are there people that believe that leagues want certain teams to lose, there are people who believe that powerful people in sports conspire to protect teams’ or players’ hidden vulnerabilities. Just as the nation’s press protected President Kennedy (by looking the other way and not reporting or investigating his infidelities) the press has similarly protected sports stars of the past, including the immensely popular Babe Ruth. Ruth, it was reported, missed half of the 1925 season because of a bellyache. When players were drunk, or lewd, or contracted sexually-transmitted diseases, the media colluded and covered up those stories.
The conspiracy theories that I have chosen for this book—my personal subjective choices, by the way—have more historical significance than a few extra bucks that a ratings point or two could mean. This is a book about factually important or historically significant conspiracy theories—not about which players might have been gay.
Are we supposed to believe that every baseball team prior to 1947 made an individual decision not to sign a black player? That there wasn’t a single maverick owner willing to risk alienating his fan-base or southern players—despite the potential reward of winning championships and creating whole new revenue streams? Did the NBA have a quota system in the 1950s and early 1960s that limited the number of black players per team? It sure seems that way, although nothing of the sort was ever talked about or written down at the time.
Not all of the secretive stuff was done by conspiring owners, however. Some of the conspiracies were perpetrated by players against their owners. Sometimes gamblers conspired with athletes to fix games—even championship games. Sometimes boxers lost fights on purpose. And sometimes the owners and players conspired together. In the case of amphetamines, owners looked the other way for over four decades as “speed” was ingested in baseball clubhouses. It wasn’t until very recently that baseball instituted a policy against amphetamines.
Did baseball executives conspire with the players to look the other way as a certain percentage of the players artificially bulked up? When Jason Giambi signed a free-agent contract to join the Yankees following the 2001 season, lawyers writing up the contract specifically took out any references to the word “steroids.“ Of course, that was before baseball had any steroid policy, and the Yanks felt they were protected by even broader contractual language. Giambi’s contract reportedly banned the slugger from using “illegal drugs” and from “chemical use and dependency.” Of course, in any negotiation, lawyers dicker over words. But it is funny in retrospect that the ballclub may have signed him despite suspecting (at least) he had taken steroids.
So, sometimes the conspiracy is to stick one’s head in the sand, while other times either real or moral crimes are committed. And sometimes, it just looks like a conspiracy. Sometimes, players and executives and owners and the media are just naive.
All of these conspiracy theories are just that—theories. When strange circumstances are observed, skeptics look for answers. They look for motives. They look for suspects. They look for evidence.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, especially me. Here are my top 30 conspiracy theories in sports history.
*Editor’s note: Conspiracy theories #26-30 were written by Mark Weinstein.