Rose’s Plight Needs Historical Perspective

Of all the year’s disheartening sights, baseball has been offering up the most constant one.

It is the running story of Pete Rose sweating it out. In the dugout, or on the field, or in transit, wherever the television cameras home in on him, the shots of Rose are a staple on the evening news, presenting baseball’s unhappiest face.

Will they believe his positive denials that he bet on ballgames? Or will their ruling be otherwise, and if so, bye-bye Pete Rose? To say that he looks and acts scared is accurate, given the game’s passion for protecting its good name. The baseball commissioner has had Rose’s case before him for months, with another month to come, and whatever the dictate, it won’t be a snap decision.

It is baseball’s biggest crisis in six decades, in terms of the game’s integrity. However, in baseball’s proud professions of its honesty, almost lost to memory is a betting scandal in 1926, a shocker that involved a baseball name bigger than that of Pete Rose.

It hit the nation’s front pages on Dec. 22 when the Associated Press had this report: “Two of the greatest players in history, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, were named today by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in an expose of a scandal that dated to 1919, the same year of the crooked World Series.

“Cobb and Speaker had their names linked with Dutch Leonard (Hub Leonard, not the later Emil of Washington Senators esteem) and Joe Wood in a conspiracy to bet on an alleged ‘fixed’ game, Detroit vs. Cleveland on Sept. 25, 1919.”

The charges were brought by Cobb’s former Detroit teammate, retired pitcher Leonard, who exhibited two letters to American League president Ban Johnson purporting to show that Cobb and Cleveland’s Speaker were involved in the betting plot, as well as himself and Cleveland outfielder Wood, the former Red Sox pitcher.

“We met under the grandstand in Navin Field (Detroit) on Sept. 24, 1919,” Leonard told the American League president, “and agreed that Detroit should win the next day’s game with Cleveland, thus clinching third place.”

He said the four planned to benefit from the outcome, “with Cobb putting up $2,000, myself $1,500 and Speaker and Wood $1,000 each.” Detroit won the game, 9-5--only to finish fourth, a half-game behind the New York Yankees--but the whole plan did not work out, Leonard said, because Cobb and Speaker failed to put up their share of the money. However, he said, he and Wood won money on the game.

Against Cobb’s protestations that he was not involved in the betting coup, Leonard produced for American League officials two seemingly incriminating letters, one written to him by Cobb, the other by Wood. Leonard, meanwhile, had retired to California.

Cobb’s letter to Leonard after the game in question: “Wood and myself were considerably disappointed in our business proposition as we had $2,000 to put into it and the other side quoted us $1,400, and when we finally secured that much money it was about 2 o’clock and they refused to deal with us . . . . Everything was open to Wood and he can tell you when we get together.”

Wood’s letter to Leonard:

“Enclosed please find check for $1,630. The only bet West could get down was $600 vs. $420. Cobb did not get up a cent. He told us that and I believed him. . . . We would have won $1,750 for the $2,500 if we could have placed it.”

Cobb did not disavow his letter to Leonard. In a hearing before Commissioner Landis, he admitted that in his reference to their “business proposition” he was “trying to veil the baseball betting angle.” However, he declared “I was guilty of only one thing. I fulfilled a promise to Leonard to find out from Joe Wood after the game how much money had been bet.”

Cobb said Wood’s reference to “West” was an allusion to Fred C. West, a stadium employee. He said Leonard had requested him to find a man they could trust to handle the betting money. In his testimony later, West denied that he bet the money on the game, saying it was wagered on a horse race.

Leonard’s charges were denied by Speaker and Wood as well as by Cobb. They ascribed them to Leonard’s feud with the Detroit team, which he claimed shortchanged him on his player contract.

Nevertheless, before the charges of the “fix” were made public shortly before Christmas 1926, Cobb and Speaker had abruptly resigned as player- managers of the Detroit and Cleveland teams, respectively. Both denied their resignations were related to any investigation, but the Associated Press reported: “Leonard’s story brought in its wake tacit admissions by baseball officials that impending revelations prompted Speaker’s unexpected retirement . . . and were also a factor in Cobb’s resignation from the Tigers.”

It was put more bluntly by AL president Johnson: “Both Cobb and Speaker saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to pull out,” and “I say Cobb and Speaker will never return to the American League in any capacity.”

Perhaps significantly, neither the Tigers nor Cleveland would demand compensation if Cobb or Speaker signed with another team, despite their impressive batting averages. Cobb was a .339 hitter that season and Speaker hit .304. Eventually Cobb signed with Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s and Speaker with the Senators for 1927.

After four weeks of investigation and hearings, Commissioner Landis, citing “unsufficient evidence,” found the accused players not guilty of fixing a game at any time. In that era, players betting on games was not viewed as unseemly or as a violation of any code. Wood, while denying that he had bet on the alleged fixed game, admitted he knew of players betting on other occasions. He said, “The whole Washington team once went broke betting on Walter Johnson to beat me when I was with the Red Sox.”

All of which is to say it was different then, and quite unlike baseball’s more modern mores, which find Pete Rose the target of game-betting charges and, tentatively in deep trouble, perhaps from the misfortune of being born rather late in baseball’s history.