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Dingy Gray Sox: Chicago Scouts Charged With Taking Kickbacks From Latin Players

By Eric Lipman

It's not exactly a "Say it ain't so" moment, but if you have a flair for the dramatic, you might call it a scandal. As reported by Courthouse News, the director of the farm system and two scouts for the Chicago White Sox have been indicted for lying to team management about the amounts some Latin American players, or the teams with which players were affiliated, were demanding to sign with the Sox. The scouts would get the funds from the big league team, turn them over to the player or foreign team, and then take their cut back. According to the indictment, the three employees ran this racket between 2003 and 2006, netting a total of over $400,000 between them. In the press release announcing the indictment, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (remember him?) said ... well, OK, he really didn't do anything other than summarize the allegations. I just felt like throwing his name in there. Did this scheme negatively affect the Sox by depriving them of higher caliber players they should have been signing? Mark Potash of the Chicago Sun-Times says no. I would tend to agree. The best player to hit Mexico in the past decade didn't...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on November 12, 2010 (boomark / email).