15 Of The Most Controversial Sports Moments In History

The 1919 Chicago White Sox won the American League pennant and faced the National League champion Cincinnati Reds in the 1919 Cincinnati Reds in the World Series (which that year was a best-of-nine series rather than the standard best-of-seven). The White Sox team included stars like pitcher Eddie Cicotte, who led the league with 29 wins that season, and outfielder “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who still owns the fourth-highest career batting average (.356) in MLB history (he hit .351 in 1919).

Many of the White Sox players hated the team owner, Charles Comiskey, who was known for being cheap and failing to pay promised bonuses to his players. For example, Cicotte reportedly had a clause in his contract that he would get a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games in 1919. According to one legend, Comiskey, instead of risking the need  to pay his star pitcher the bonus, ordered White Sox manager Kid Gleason to hold Cicotte out of five scheduled starts at the end of the season (although some sources says this happened in 1917, not 1919).

Because players had few options or rights - there was no union, let alone free agency - some were either targeted or approached by gamblers with the idea of making some extra money by throwing games.

On September 21, several White Sox players - including Cicotte, but not Jackson - met in first baseman Chick Gandil's hotel room to discuss throwing the World Series. Rumors of a fix were so strong that although the White Sox were heavily favored, a bunch of bets came in on the Reds just before the first game. Several reporters covering the World Series also heard the rumors and kept a close eye on the contests.

Although the players attempted to go back on the fix, winning Games 6 and 7 after the gamblers reneged on promised payments, the White Sox lost the series in eight games (threats were reportedly made against some of the players and their families to ensure they'd lose).

In September 1920, a grand jury was convened to investigate rumors that the World Series was fixed. In October, the grand jury indicted eight White Sox players, including Cicotte; Jackson, who played well in the series but reportedly accepted $5,000; and Buck Weaver, who attended the September 21 meeting but didn't take any money and played well in the series. Among the charges leveled against the players was conspiracy to defraud. Before the trial, key evidence, including signed confessions from Cicotte and Jackson (who was illiterate), disappeared. The players recanted their confessions, but testimony from ex-MLB player-turned-gambler Bill Burns implicated the players in the fix.

The jury deliberated for three hours before acquitting the players of all charges on July 28. But Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a federal judge who had just been appointed the first commissioner of Major League Baseball, issued a different verdict for the implicated players, issuing this statement:

Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ballgame; no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame; no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.

The banned players were dubbed the “Black Sox." Both Weaver and Jackson appealed Landis's decision, but their appeals were repeatedly denied. Jackson, who assuredly would have been a Hall of Famer if not for the scandal, passed in 1951 at age 64. 

The “Black Sox” scandal has been recounted in multiple books, documentaries, the 1988 feature film Eight Men Out, and 1989's Field of Dreams.

Heading into the 1994 US Figure Skating National Championships in Detroit, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding were the Top 2 female skaters in the US, and both were among the favorites to win a medal at that year's Winter Olympics. Kerrigan was seen by many as an insider, a “golden girl" and the heir apparent to 1992 Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, while Harding was viewed by some as a rebellious outsider, albeit a very talented skater.

On January 6, 1994, Kerrigan was coming off the ice after her practice when a man hit her in the knee with a metal rod before fleeing. Kerrigan's tearful cries of “Why? Why? Why? Why me” became a familiar refrain as media covered the incident. Although she wasn't seriously injured, Kerrigan was forced to withdraw from the competition; Harding ended up winning the gold medal, securing her spot on the Olympic team. Kerrigan was also awarded a spot on the squad.

On January 11 the FBI began investigating rumors that Harding's bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt, and her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, had orchestrated the attack on Kerrigan. Eckhardt confessed his involvement the next day and implicated Gillooly along with Shane Stant - the man who actually attacked Kerrigan - and Stant's uncle, Derrick Smith. Although she knew all the men, Harding originally denied that she had any knowledge of the planned incident.

Gillooly surrendered on January 27. Four days later he testified against his ex-wife, implicating her in the scheme. Investigators went through  the couple's trash (despite being legally divorced, they had gotten back together) and discovered notes, written in Harding's handwriting, that detailed Kerrigan's practice schedule. Despite this evidence, Harding was still allowed to compete at the Winter Olympics.

In the end, neither American won the gold medal. Harding finished in eighth place after restarting her free program when the laces on one of her boots broke. Kerrigan won the silver medal, and 16-year-old Ukrainian skater Oksana Baiul unexpectedly won the gold. Kerrigan, who had received enormous sympathy after the incident, ended up harming her reputation when she was caught on tape complaining about Baiul's behavior. 

On March 16, Harding pled guilty to “conspiracy to hinder prosecution” and was sentenced to three years of probation and fined $160,000. Unlike the four men charged in the incident, she was able to avoid jail time. But on June 30, 1984, the US Figure Skating Association stripped Harding of her gold medal from the national championships and gave her a lifetime ban from competing in any sanctioned events. William Hybl, chairman of the panel hearing Harding's case, told the Washington Post:

By a preponderance of the evidence, the five members of the panel concluded that she had prior knowledge and was involved prior to the incident. This is based on civil standards, not criminal standards.

At least two television documentaries, along with the 2017 feature film I, Tonya, have been made about Harding's life and skating career. Kerrigan turned pro after the 1994 Winter Olympics and appeared mainly in ice shows. 

In the early 1990s, Monica Seles was the dominant female tennis player in the world. She won the first of her nine Grand Slam titles, the French Open, in 1990 when she was 16 years old, making her the youngest champion in the history of that tournament. She was ranked the No. 1 player in the world at the end of both 1991 and 1992.

Seles's biggest rival was Steffi Graf. On April 30, 1993, Seles was playing a match against Magdalena Maleeva in Hamburg, Germany, when a man ran onto the court and stabbed Seles in the back. The incident occurred during a break in the second set of the match in full view of the crowd. One eyewitness told reporters, “He held the knife with both hands as he stabbed her in the back.” 

Seles wrote about the incident in her 2009 autobiography Getting a Grip:

I remember sitting there, toweling off, and then I leaned forward to take a sip of water, our time was almost up and my mouth was dry. The cup had barely touched my lips when I felt a horrible pain in my back. My head whipped around towards where it hurt and I saw a man wearing a baseball cap, a sneer across his face. His arms were raised above his head and his hands were clutching a long knife. He started to lunge at me again. I didn't understand what was happening.

The 19-year-old Seles was rushed to the hospital with a half-inch gash in her upper back. Peter Wind, the tournament's doctor, told reporters that Seles “was very lucky. Neither the lungs nor the shoulder blades were affected. Monica is still suffering from shock and will stay overnight for observation.”

Because Seles was Serbian and had received menacing threats in the past in connection with conflict in the then-country of Yugoslavia, there was speculation the incident was politically motivated. But the Hamburg police quickly ruled that out.

The man who hurt Seles, Gunter Parche, was described as an obsessed fan of Graf's who was determined to help her regain the No. 1 ranking. In October 1993 he was convicted of attacking Seles. He received a two-year suspended sentence after an attempted murder charge was dismissed. The light sentence angered some in the tennis world. Tennis legend Martina Navratilova told ESPN she believed the sentence was "insane and so nationality driven. If someone had done that to Steffi [Graf, who is German] so Monica would win, they'd have thrown away the key.”

Seles did not return to competitive tennis for more than two years, at the 1995 Canadian Open, which she won. In 1996 she won the Australian Open, recording the last of her Grand Slam titles. She played her last competitive match in 2003, although she didn't officially retire until 2008. She was later voted into the Tennis Hall of Fame.