(Radio Iowa) – Major League Baseball announced Monday that it has fired umpire Pat Hoberg, an Urbandale native, for violating the league’s gambling rules.
Information on the M-L-B website says an M-L-B investigation found no evidence that Hoberg placed bets on baseball or that he took any action to manipulate the outcomes of any games. But by sharing legal sports betting accounts with a professional poker player and friend who did place bets on baseball and by impeding the M-L-B investigation through the deletion of messages with the friend, Hoberg was ruled by M-L-B to have failed to uphold the integrity of the game.
The 38-year-old Hoberg first umpired Major League games in 2014 and became a full-time umpire in 2017. He umpired postseason games every year from 2018 to 2022 and was widely regarded as one of the game’s best ball-strike umpires.
