Japan’s oldest professional baseball, the Yomiuri Giants, has been ordered to pay ¥5 million in fines after another of its players was found to have bet on baseball.
The player, pitcher Kyosuke Takagi, has been suspended for one year, the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) announced on Tuesday, according to Kyodo News.
The 26-year-old left-handed reliever, who has pitched in 139 games in the past four seasons for the Giants, came clean early this month about betting on baseball in 2014. He is the fourth Giants player to have been involved in baseball gambling, but authorities said there was no evidence that the four players were involved in match fixing or betting on games in which they played.
The three other players, Satoshi Fukuda, Shoki Kasahara and Ryuya Matsumoto, were banned for life from playing baseball. Takagi, on the other hand, received a lighter sentence “due to the brief period of his involvement after cutting off ties with Kasahara,” according to the report.