Sports' Embarrassing Moments TOM VERDUCCI: Baseball Owners, cheaters, gamblers disgrace game TIM LAYDEN: College Football Sport risks humiliation with every season MICHAEL FARBER: Hockey Hockey so full of humiliation, it's hard to stop at 10 JOHN ROLFE: Pro Football Game's worst moment didn't involve players JON WERTHEIM: Tennis Tennis fathers provide multiple moments MARK ZESKE: NASCAR Martin scores two mentions on NASCAR's list BRIAN CAZENEUVE: Olympics North America has provided 10 Olympic follies JACK MCCALLUM: Pro Basketball Violence, cover-ups, drugs cloud the NBA MARK BECHTEL: Soccer Soccer's worst moment is also the most recent SETH DAVIS: College Basketball Ten isn't enough for all hoops' moments GARY VAN SICKLE: Golf Van de Velde's meltdown lives forever

6. The 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials

Where to begin? How about the Pirate Parrot wearing a wire for the FBI as ballplayers trafficked in cocaine sales in the clubhouses and bathrooms of Three Rivers Stadium? Players smuggling cocaine in their gloves through airport security? The Phillies' caterer busted for drug dealing? Tim Raines always sliding headfirst so as not to disrupt the cocaine stashed in his back pocket? Players naming names on the witness stand? Keith Hernandez testifying that cocaine was "the devil on this earth"? John Milner testifying that Willie Mays supplied an amphetamine mixture known as "red juice"?

Time magazine called it the worst blow to the game's esteem since the Black Sox scandal. And how did the players react? By steadfastly refusing any and all attempts by the commissioner's office to institute random drug testing.

7. Pete Rose betting on baseball

It took 17 years' worth of lies for Rose to admit what any reasonable person had concluded long ago: that, yes, he had bet on baseball while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. His crimes were embarrassing enough for baseball; special investigator John Dowd said in his report that Rose bet on Reds games 52 times in 1987 alone, for instance. But Rose's unseemly constant denials of the truth for almost two decades and the portrayal of himself as a wronged victim further disgraced the game.

Rose might have avoided such career suicide and preserved the spot he earned in the Hall of Fame as a player simply by being honest when he first was called into the office of commissioner Peter Ueberroth in February 1989 and asked about his gambling habits. All he needed to do then was fess up and baseball would have happily covered for him, sending him off with a quiet slap on the wrist. But Rose did what came naturally to him: He lied. And then, just weeks later, Sports Illustrated blew the story wide open. From that moment on Rose was, in baseball terms, a dead man walking.

8. The 1972 strike

... and the 1973 and '76 lockouts, the 1980, '81 and '85 strikes, the 1990 lockout and the 1994-95 strike (see above). The owners had it coming, with the feudal system they had enjoyed over the players for years. But the 12-day strike in 1972 birthed not only the arbitration system (the owners did not conceive at the time how much of an impact it would have on salaries) but also a poisonous quarter-century of labor unrest that held back the growth of the game and turned off fans. Not by coincidence has the game reached unprecedented popularity today while enjoying a run of 11 straight years of labor peace.

9. Wayne Huizenga and the 1998 Marlins

Huizenga was the Florida Marlins owner who dismantled his 1997 world championship team before the champagne had dried on the clubhouse carpet. The team was poised to contend for at least several more seasons and possibly generate the kind of momentum, as had happened in Seattle, to raise enough community enthusiasm to get a publicly financed retractable-roof ballpark. Huizenga never gave the team or community a chance.

He cut the payroll from $53 million to $13 million, sinking the team to 108 losses in 1998 and placing the franchise on a slippery slope toward relocation. Oh, and by the way, Huizenga sold the team after that '98 season. Not by coincidence, the sale came just as the standard five-year player amortization allowance had expired for him, losing a significant tax benefit.

10. Connie Mack and the 1915 Philadelphia A's

Before there was Huizenga, there was Mack, who blew up a team that had won three world championships and one pennant in the previous five seasons. Bothered by competition from the upstart Federal League, Mack sold, traded or released most of his star players. The A's dropped from 99 wins to 43, the worst one-year decline in history, to begin a seven-year stretch in which they finished last every season. Attendance fell by more than half, leaving Mack with fewer than 2,000 paid customers per game. His 1916 team, which lost 117 times, might still stand as the worst club in AL history.

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