MLB Umpire Fired For Shar­ing Sports Bet­ting Accounts With Friend Who Put Mon­ey On Base­ball

Major League Base­ball umpire Pat Hoberg was fired on Mon­day after the league said he shared sports bet­ting accounts with a friend who placed mon­ey on pro­fes­sion­al base­ball games.

Hoberg — who was wide­ly viewed as one of the best umpires in base­ball — was also accused of inten­tion­al­ly delet­ing mes­sages to his friend with whom he shared the legal gam­bling accounts. The umpire “adamant­ly denied bet­ting on base­ball direct­ly or indi­rect­ly,” accord­ing to the MLB, but Hoberg’s friend — a pro­fes­sion­al pok­er play­er — placed numer­ous bets on MLB games, includ­ing five games in which Hoberg was umpir­ing or had respon­si­bil­i­ty for replay reviews.

“An exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion revealed no evi­dence that Mr. Hoberg placed bets on base­ball direct­ly or that he or any­one else manip­u­lat­ed games in any way,” said MLB Com­mis­sion­er Rob Man­fred. “How­ev­er, his extreme­ly poor judg­ment in shar­ing bet­ting accounts with a pro­fes­sion­al pok­er play­er he had rea­son to believe bet on base­ball and who did, in fact, bet on base­ball from the shared accounts, com­bined with his dele­tion of mes­sages, cre­ates at min­i­mum the appear­ance of impro­pri­ety that war­rants impos­ing the most severe dis­ci­pline.”

Accord­ing to the MLB, Hoberg’s friend placed 141 base­ball bets between April 2, 2021, and Novem­ber 1, 2023, for a total of $214,000. The umpire’s friend won near­ly $35,000 in those bets, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press report­ed. In a state­ment, Hoberg said he takes “full respon­si­bil­i­ty for the errors in judg­ment that are out­lined in today’s state­ment [from the MLB].”

An analy­sis of Hoberg’s umpir­ing showed no evi­dence that his calls were influ­enced by his friend’s bets, nor did they reveal any con­nec­tion to a spe­cif­ic team, play­er, or umpire, accord­ing to ESPN. The pair met at a pok­er tour­na­ment in 2014, and they would reg­u­lar­ly trav­el togeth­er and watch sports on TV. Hoberg and his friend, who was not named, would use Telegram to keep track of each of their bets on the gam­bling accounts, and they would set­tle any debts when they saw each oth­er. Hoberg’s friend delet­ed the Telegram account after Hoberg was con­tact­ed by MLB inves­ti­ga­tors, a move Hoberg claimed was due to his embar­rass­ment over the amount of legal bets he had placed on non-base­ball events.

“Those errors will always be a source of shame and embar­rass­ment to me,” Hoberg added. The umpire said that he “nev­er and would nev­er bet on base­ball in any way, shape, or form” and that he has “nev­er pro­vid­ed, and would nev­er pro­vide, infor­ma­tion to any­one for the pur­pose of bet­ting on base­ball. Uphold­ing the integri­ty of the game has always been of the utmost impor­tance to me.”

Hoberg was praised for cor­rect­ly call­ing all 129 balls and strikes dur­ing Game 2 of the 2022 World Series. The 38-year-old was first relieved of his duties by the MLB last May, a few months after MLB began its inves­ti­ga­tion. A lengthy appeals process fol­lowed, lead­ing to the league’s deci­sion on Mon­day.