Yomiuri Giants pitcher admits to gambling on baseball games

“It’s extremely regrettable,” Kumazaki said. “I’ve ordered the Giants to carry out a thorough investigation as soon as possible.”

And seeing as how it's the Giants you as the commissioner are going to treat this issue with kid gloves.

Slam dunk.....4 players, institutional mismanagement, forfeit your first month of games, and donate the expected proceeds from the games to the Tohoku victims/refugees.

Ban the players for life!

At his press conference he alluded to the person who convinced him to gamble as being a very "scary-looking" person...no doubt this investigation will sweep all that under the rug, even though it was already exposed via the Kiyohara scandal.

Now it's apparent the Giants' association with the shadow world is institutionalized and extends to the highest rungs.

“It’s extremely regrettable,” Kumazaki said. “I’ve ordered the Giants to carry out a thorough investigation as soon as possible.”

well there's the problem right there. any team investigating themselves aren't really going to investigate themselves. you need an independent body to go in there to uncover all the dirt. and we all know that type of body does not exist in professional sports in japan, or in most countries.

Is there more to this story than is being told? Why is it that only four lower level guys are involved? Surely somebody much higher ... say players of super-star status ... must also be involved in such doings. When the gangsters get their mitts involved in such a deal they are hard to shake off. This reminds me of the yao-cho (fixed bout) situation in sumo. Only the lower-ranked sumoists who got caught in this scandal were kicked out of the sport ... and at least one of them expressed surprise that the higher-ranked guys got off scott-free. After all, who taught the lower-ranked guys to do yao-cho? It was reported that they were "tutored" in this action by their seniors. So ... likewise in baseball. Where did these lower-ranked players learn how to gamble on baseball? Fingers have been pointing at a restaurant owner ... and the underworld is definitely involved. What's the connection between the gangsters and the chain of action that takes gambling into baseball? In a TV show on Wednesday the word yao-cho was used concerning the gambling business in baseball. It was said by the participants in this show that games were not fixed ... but who knows? Those gangster fingers can find their way into almost anything.