1919 Black Sox Scandal Remembered

In 1919, a sign reading “No Gambling Allowed” hung outside Comiskey Park. On the field, the Chicago White Sox rolled to the American League pennant.

This was still storybook baseball: no lights, no turf, no radio, no television. Gloves were tiny, bats were big and spitters were legal. Baseball meant a way out of farms and mill towns. The game was played hard, even dirty, symbolized by Ty Cobb’s sharpened spikes and the cunning of John McGraw.

Cobb, McGraw, Johnny Evers, Tris Speaker -- they’d do anything to win -- run, throw, fight, cheat. But the White Sox were different, they tried to lose. The team of Shoeless Joe Jackson, shineball master Ed Cicotte and slick first baseman Chick Gandil threw the World Series, took money from gamblers and rolled over.

“Say It Ain’t So Joe” said it all. It wasn’t possible. They were heroes -- like Pete Rose -- faces that graced cigarette cards and team photos, names squeezed into boxscores and handmade scoreboards. They would never listen to the likes of Sport Sullivan or Sleepy Bill Burns.

But they did, they really did. Eight Chicago players fixed the Fall Classic. Fastballs grooved down the middle. Easy flies muffed in center. Relays carelessly booted at short.

No one, save a few reporters and angry teammates, wanted to know. Owners looked the other way, league presidents shrugged.

But nearly two years later, a sobbing Cicotte named names, bitterly confessing he played crooked. Granite-faced Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned the pitcher and his seven teammates for life, and baseball was nearly damaged beyond repair.

Only last week, Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti recalled the scandal upon banning Rose for betting.

“Baseball almost died in 1921 because of gambling,” Giammati said. “There had not been such grave allegations since the time of Landis.”

The “Black Sox” scandal was merely the culmination of years of shady business, according to Eliot Asinof, author of “Eight Men Out,” a chronicle of the famous scandal made into a movie last year. Asinof insists the rigged series was no surprise to those who had followed the game closely.

“All the previous stuff had been swept under the rug. Gambling existed from the beginning. It’s part of the Wild West -- poker games, dice games. Baseball itself, like any other sporting event, lends itself to gambling.”

Sullivan, Burns and others haunted the teams’ hotels, openly flashing money, tempting underpaid players with large sums of cash.

Asinof remembered a conversation with center fielder Happy Felsch, one of the eight banned players, about a minor league game in Milwaukee.

“There was no grand stand in the outfield,” Asinof said, “and people would gather behind the outfield and stand and watch the game. Felsch was standing out there and one guy said to him, ‘You drop the next one or I’m going to shoot you.’ Felsch dropped the next one and kicked it all the way into the crowd.”

The White Sox were an ideal target. Good enough to guarantee high odds. Owned by Charles Comiskey, so cheap the players nearly walked out in the middle of the 1918 season. The double play combo, Collins and shortstop Swede Risberg, didn’t speak. Gandil hated Collins, catcher Ray Schalk and pitchers Dickie Kerr and Urban “Red” Faber, considering them self-righteous and conceited.

Three weeks before the Series, Gandil and Sullivan met in a Boston hotel room and worked out a deal: $80,000 up front for throwing the series, with details on rigging the odds and throwing the games to come later.

Gandil quickly lined up Cicotte and Lefty Williams, winners of 52 games between them; Risberg; Felsch; Jackson, one of baseball’s greatest hitters; Buck Weaver, the star third baseman; and utility man Fred McMullin.

They were the heart of the team, the difference between winning and losing. And, they could pull it off. Anything can happen in baseball, right? Mathewson, Cobb, Three Finger Brown, all had been disappointments at one time in the World Series, yet no one doubted they tried their best.

Opposing Chicago in the best-of-9 series would be the Cincinnati Reds, led by pitcher Dutch Reuther -- whose salary nearly doubled Cicotte’s -- and outfielder Edd Roush, a future Hall of Famer. Still, experts agreed, no contest.

Yet something was wrong. Bettors were pouring in money for the Reds. Shortly before the Series began, the New York Times reported:

“Until yesterday, it seemed as far as New York was concerned, the Reds could carry little except moral support. But late yesterday afternoon, the situation underwent a sudden and surprising change that was little short of startling.”

Game 1 was at Cincinnati. The tipoff: If Cicotte hits leadoff batter Morrie Rath, the fix is on. His first pitch -- fastball, strike one. Schalk didn’t like it, too high. He fired the ball back to the mound, glared at the pitcher, and signaled curve.

Cicotte aimed right between Rath’s shoulder blades, threw hard and hit his target -- the only signal the pitcher would obey all day. By the fourth inning Cicotte was gone, down 6-1. Schalk was livid -- screaming, pleading with the pitcher to show his best stuff. The Reds won 9-1.

Williams blew Game 2, and Gandil helped, twice deliberately failing to move up runners in scoring position. The fourth inning was crucial. Williams, a master of control, walked three and floated a hanging curve to Larry Kopf for a triple. Final: Reds 4, White Sox 2. Schalk was convinced the Sox were throwing it. Gandil and Manager Kid Gleason nearly came to blows.

Back in Chicago for Game 3, Dickie Kerr blanked the Reds and Gandil drove in two of the White Sox’ three runs. The gamblers shrugged, Cicotte and Williams were next.

Game 4 was scoreless through four innings. Then, it happened again. Cicotte committed two errors, and senselessly cut off Jackson’s perfect throw from left, allowing Pat Duncan to score. The Reds won 2-0. On his scoresheet, a reporter drew a large circle around the fifth inning.

Hours after receiving an envelope with $5,000 in cash, Williams took the mound for Game 5. With the score tied at zero in the sixth, Cincinnati pitcher Hod Eller lofted a fly to left center. Jackson and Felsch let it drop, Risberg booted the relay and Eller pulled into third. The Reds scored four times and went on to win 5-0.

Just one more loss to go, but then Sullivan failed to deliver promised money to Gandil, leaving the first baseman and Risberg waiting in a Cincinnati hotel room.

Suspecting a double-cross, the White Sox took action. Jackson, Felsch, Weaver and Gandil all come up with clutch hits. Kerr hung on after early trouble and Chicago won 5-4 in 10 innings. An angry Cicotte shut down the Reds in Game 7, scattering seven hits before a paid attendance of just 13,293, less than half Cincinnati’s normal capacity. The White Sox won 4-1.

The evening before Game 8, a man approached Williams in a Chicago hotel. The message: Don’t make it past the first. The left-hander, greeted by White Sox fans with a standing ovation, lasted 15 pitches. With one out, Jake Daubert singled, Heinie Groh singled, Roush doubled and Duncan singled. Williams, a curveball specialist, threw nothing but fastballs as Schalk shook with rage. It was all over.

What followed were rumors, denials, accusations and dismissals. The White Sox continued to throw games in 1920, with McMullin acting as point man. Reporters’ pleas for action were shot down by Garry Herrmann, chairman of the ruling National Commission and also Cincinnati’s owner.

After sharing headlines with Babe Ruth all summer, the story broke wide open. On Sept. 27, 1920, the Philadelphia North American reported that Games 1, 2 and 8 had been thrown and named Burns and Abe Attell as fixers. Cicotte and Jackson confessed to an Illinois grand jury. Comiskey, his team locked in a tight pennant race with Cleveland, reluctantly suspended the eight players. Panicky owners begged Landis, a federal judge in the District of Illinois, to accept the new position of commissioner.

“They were really terrified,” Asinof said. “This scandal was erupting and everybody knew it was true, not only the World Series but who knows how many games.

“They picked the strongest possible man. He had the style, the personality. He was tough as nails.”

In the summer of 1921, hours after an Illinois jury cleared the players of criminal charges, Landis announced they were gone for good.

” . . . Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ballgame, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame, no player that sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball!”

It was back to farms, gas stations and pool halls. Felsch returned to Milwaukee and raised a family. Gandil became a plumber in California. Risberg held jobs all over the country. Jackson and Weaver, who each played flawlessly in the Series, forever swore their innocence.

Kerr won 21 games in 1920 and 19 in 1921. The next winter he feuded with Comiskey over salary and instead played semipro. Landis suspended him; some of his opponents were former teammates.