He Maintained Fix Was Never in for ’19 Series

Over the decades since baseball’s infamous “Black Sox” scandal of 1919, Chick Gandil has been portrayed as the Chicago White Sox player who created it.

Eight members of the White Sox were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Although they were acquitted in a trial, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned them for life.

All lived quietly afterward, with most avoiding reporters to the end of their lives.

In 1956, Gandil, who died 29 years ago today, finally told his story, in a Sports Illustrated article with Los Angeles columnist Melvin Durslag.

In it, Gandil freely acknowledged being the first player contacted by gamblers and bringing together seven other players who initially agreed to rig the Series, for $20,000 each.

“I have often been described as one of the ringleaders of the Black Sox scandal,” he told Durslag. “It’s true. I was.”

Gandil then went on to say the Series was not rigged, that so many rumors circulated about the possibility of a fix, the players backed out, that underdog Cincinnati won the nine-game series on the up and up.

“I offer no defense for the thing we conspired to do,” he told Durslag.

“It was inexcusable. But I maintain our actual losing was pure baseball fortune.”

He maintained he never received any of the promised money, “and I don’t know who did.”

The players endured a 15-day trial in 1921. None of the players testified. The key element in the case was the disappearance--unexplained to this day--of all grand jury testimony.

“Without our testimony, the state had no case,” Gandil wrote.

Also on this date: In 1960, the new Los Angeles Angels made Bill Rigney their first manager. . . . In 1991, Ken Keltner, whose play at third base helped end Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941, died at 75. . . . In 1971, Bobby Hull got the 1,000th point of his NHL career. . . . In 1965, Gale Sayers scored six touchdowns to lead the Chicago Bears to a 61-20 victory over San Francisco. . . . In 1942, UCLA scored its first football win over USC, 14-7. . . . In 1977, NBA commissioner Larry O’Brien fined the Lakers’ Kermit Washington $10,000 and added a 60-day suspension for punching Houston’s Rudy Tomjanovich three days earlier.