No. 2024.05.31 · Modern Era
Hoberg Is Fired
Pat Hoberg, one of the league's most accurate ball-strike umpires, was fired for sharing legal betting accounts with a poker player who bet on baseball, and for deleting messages. Major League Baseball found no evidence he had bet on the game himself.
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Umpire Pat Hoberg makes an out call at home plate, August 26, 2014. Not related to the firing.
Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA / CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
The firing was effective May 31, 2024. Pat Hoberg had called a perfect plate game in the 2022 World Series and was, by the league's own tracking, among the most accurate ball-strike umpires working. He was dismissed for sharing legal sports-betting accounts with a professional poker player who bet on baseball, and for deleting messages that mattered to the investigation.
Major League Baseball said it found no evidence that Hoberg had bet on baseball or changed the outcome of a game. His appeal was denied on February 3, 2025. The finding and the firing are both part of the record. Accuracy behind the plate did not answer the question the league was asking, which was about the accounts and the deleted messages.
The entry is an umpire punished for the company of a bet, not for a call. The calls, including a perfect World Series plate, are why the punishment was news. They are not what he was fired for.
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