He’s a Rose by Another Name

So Pete Rose admits he is a liar and feels that justifies his being reinstated by Major League Baseball. Maybe it’s a good thing Fred McMullin died in 1952.

It would have been too much to have his heart broken twice.

McMullin, a reserve infielder with the Chicago White Sox, was one of the eight players barred from baseball in the Black Sox scandal of 1920 after being accused of throwing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

Although McMullin wasn’t indicted and the other seven were acquitted of criminal charges, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, newly appointed commissioner of baseball, banned them all from professional baseball for life.

For several years, in the 1930s, McMullin was a familiar figure at semipro baseball diamonds around Los Angeles. He would show up, glove in hand, hours before scheduled Sunday games and take infield and batting practice. He always wore a uniform with no designations on it.

Old-time scouts, such as Lefty Phillips and Rosey Gilhausen, would shake their heads after watching his smooth play and sharp batting stroke and know he was an untouchable.

“Fred is as disenfranchised as the black players,” Phillips told Loren Ury, manager of the Pasadena Merchants. “He could help a lot of big league teams right now, but there’s nothing we can do.”

“He’s even more disenfranchised than the black boys,” Ury said. “At least they can play semipro ball with us. Fred can’t even do that.”

Even though it would be more than a decade before Jackie Robinson was signed to a professional contract, ending baseball’s color barrier, there were black semipro teams playing every week and occasionally there were black players on community team rosters.

Once the game was about to start, McMullin would disappear into the clubhouse, change into street clothes and return to the bleachers.

Landis decreed that not only could he not play professional baseball again, he could not play on the same field with professionals, and in those days many big leaguers picked up extra change by playing once a week during the off-season.

“Regardless of the verdict of the juries,” Landis wrote, “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 never play professional baseball again.”

Then-teenager Stan Gray, who later played second base alongside Robinson at Pasadena Junior College before a career in the Pacific Coast League, befriended his fellow infielder.

“Fred was awfully quiet, and when I’d ask him about the White Sox thing, he would sort of shake his head and say he didn’t do a thing,” Gray recalled a few years ago. “I could tell he never got over it. I really felt sorry for him.”

McMullin worked as a deputy marshal in the U.S. Marshals’ office in Los Angeles after being banned from baseball.

Few knew that his role with the Black Sox was so minimal that he did not go on trial with his seven teammates. Nevertheless, just being associated with “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Claude “Lefty” Williams, Buck Weaver, Arnold “Chick” Gandil, Charles “Swede” Risberg and Oscar Felsch was enough for Landis.

His transgression was allegedly that he overheard first baseman Gandil talking with shortstop Risberg about the possible deal with gamblers and was in the room when it was being talked about.

Some of the Chicago players apparently were so unhappy with their fate -- because of the reserve clause they could not play anywhere else unless they were traded -- that they felt justified in selling out the White Sox.

Cicotte, for instance, once had a promise from owner Charles Comiskey for a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games. Once Cicotte reached 29, Comiskey told his manager not to pitch him, to “rest him for the World Series.” When Cicotte asked for the bonus, Comiskey refused to pay, pointing out that he had won only 29.

The team had been the most successful in baseball in 1919, and its payroll was said to be the lowest in the major leagues. Jackson was one of the game’s best players but was getting paid only $6,000 a year when ordinary players on other teams were getting $10,000.

The time was ripe for a fix, but McMullin was certainly not a likely candidate.

For one, it was unlikely he would play a major role in the Series. He had appeared in only 60 games in 1919, batting .294 with no home runs and 19 runs batted in. In the series, he pinch-hit twice and got one hit.

McMullin was only 28 when he was banned.

“If Mac was available, he could have caught on with a lot of teams,” said Jimmy Dykes during a spring training break years later when he was the White Sox manager and the team trained at Brookside Park in Pasadena, where McMullin often appeared on Sundays. “He’s one of those guys who could play two or three positions and could give a team a good bat in the pinch.”

Dykes had played against McMullin while a second baseman for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1919 and 1920.

Before his five years with the White Sox, McMullin played minor league ball with the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League.

More than 32 years after playing his last professional baseball game on Sept. 27, 1920, he died in Los Angeles on Nov. 21, 1952.

Pete Rose was 11 at the time.

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The McMullin File

Born Frederick William McMullin on Oct. 13, 1891, in Scammon, Kan.

* Debuted in the major leagues with Detroit, playing one game in 1914, then served as a backup infielder for the White Sox from 1916 to 1920, primarily at third base.

* Batted .256 in 304 games in the majors, with a career high of .294 in 60 games in 1919. Hit one home run, in 1918.

* Started all six games at third base for the White Sox in their 1917 World Series victory over the New York Giants, but batted only .125. Had one hit in two at-bats in the 1919 World Series.

* Died Nov. 21, 1952, in Los Angeles. Interred in Inglewood Park Cemetery.

* Was portrayed by actor Perry Lang in the 1988 film adaptation of Eliot Asinof’s “Eight Men Out.”