Two Jakes: Ex-Yankee Prospect Shares Gambling Addiction Story

Any elite athlete — any person, really — will tell you that while winning may not be everything, it sure beats losing. 

But there is such a thing as too much, too soon. Jake Sanford knows that all too well.

A native of Nova Scotia, Canada, Sanford was on the road with his college team at Western Kentucky University when they stopped at a casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. Sanford decided to play a few slots and promptly won $3,000.

Fast forward to the pros. Sanford, an outfielder, was a third-round draft pick of the New York Yankees in 2019. No player from Nova Scotia had ever been selected higher in the Major League Baseball draft, and this was the Yankees to boot, with Aaron Judge literally welcoming to the organization. Sanford’s signing bonus was $597,000, and while he didn’t receive it all in one lump sum, he knew what he had to play with.

And play he did, although physical proximity to a casino was always a factor in how much he gambled. (Sanford said he’s never gambled online or on sports.)

When he was in low-A ball in Staten Island, he wouldn’t gamble, but once he got to instructional league and then high-A ball in Florida, he would frequent the Tampa Hard Rock, where his gambling became problematic.

Whenever he was bored and had a bit of time off, Sanford would head to a casino, playing card games for increasingly higher stakes and into the wee hours of the morning. He borrowed money from teammates, promising to pay them back with interest. Some of them became frustrated with how long it would take Sanford to pay them back and tried to squeeze a higher interest rate out of him.

Eventually, the Tampa coaching staff became aware of Sanford’s behavior and reported it to the Yankees’ front office. He subsequently sought help for his gambling addiction, made amends with teammates, and paid back all he could, but the Yankees released him anyway in 2021, saying he hadn’t shown enough improvement. 

What once seemed like a career destined for the big leagues was now back to square one.

‘One Last Time’

Speaking on a panel at the 2023 SBC Summit North America in New York, Meg Popovic, then the Toronto Maple Leafs’ director of player welfare and performance, said that what makes an athlete great “is an innate competitiveness that probably makes them borderline crazy.”

This heightened competitiveness also makes elite athletes particularly susceptible to gambling addiction.

“We’re competitive all the time,” Sanford told Sports Handle. “That’s just our mindset. If I lost, I’d use the famous last words of a gambler: one last time. I need to win today or I can’t go. My competitiveness kind of took control.”

After getting released by the Yankees, Sanford knew he needed to quit gambling cold turkey. With encouragement from his parents, he called 1-800-GAMBLER and got connected with the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling (which, coincidentally, is headquartered in Sanford). Sanford began participating regularly in group therapy sessions as well as one-on-ones, and he completely stopped gambling.

“Even to this day, I do a call or two a week,” he said. “It just keeps you on track, keeps me accountable. That’s really what I need right now.”

In 2022, Sanford returned to the diamond with the Ottawa Titans of the independent Frontier League, swatting 22 homers in 91 games. Now 26, he has bounced around a bit over the past couple of years but appears to have rediscovered his stroke with the Welland Jackfish of Ontario’s Intercounty Baseball League, hitting .382 in 28 games.

Furthermore, Sanford has not given up on his big-league aspirations.

“That’s still the dream and I’ve been working my whole life for it,” he said. “It took a little derailment, but I’ve just got to keep playing every day and get back there.”

A New Colleague Shows the Way

Sanford isn’t resting on his on-field laurels in his quest to get his baseball career back on track. He recently became a lived-experience facilitator with EPIC Global Solutions, where he’ll share his story with pro baseball players and student-athletes alike. (Popovic now works for EPIC as well.)

“As any sports player will tell you, there’s no better person to learn from than someone who has been there and done it themselves,” Teresa Fiore, EPIC’s vice president of partnerships, said in a press release. “So for us, Jake is the equivalent of an experienced coach sharing their knowledge with their team. What’s more, he is of similar age range to many of our audiences, so his story is especially relatable.” 

Sanford hopes his outreach with EPIC “will open some teams’ eyes and they’ll see I’m trying to get help.” As for the teammates he borrowed money from back when he gambled, Sanford said he’s paid “about 90 percent back and have payment plans with all the guys.”

He added that he is on good terms with most of his former teammates.

“Most of them say they wish they knew how deep it was,” he said. “That was my problem. It was hard to tell anybody because I didn’t know what to do.

“If you’re in a situation like me, try not to shelter yourself. Try to let somebody know. Don’t deal with it yourself, because it’s a lot to take on. Even if you have just that one person to talk to, it’s a lot easier to get through.”

At EPIC, Sanford will be colleagues with Jordan Spencer, another active athlete who’s attempting a return to the mountaintop after a gambling addiction knocked him off pro basketball’s peak in his native England. Last week brought word that Spencer had signed a contract to play for the top-tier Newcastle Eagles, providing Sanford with an in-house reminder that with humility, hard work, and accountability, anything’s possible.