I pulled these sources off google.
The Eight
The local media covered the scandal closely. The 1919 World Series resulted in the most famous scandal in baseball history. Eight players from the Chicago White Sox (later nicknamed the Black Sox) were accused of throwing the series against the Cincinnati Reds. Details of the scandal and the extent to which each man was involved have always been unclear. It was, however, front-page news across the country and, despite being acquitted of criminal charges, the players were banned from professional baseball for life. The eight men included the great "Shoeless" Joe Jackson; pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude "Lefty" Williams; infielders Buck Weaver, Arnold "Chick" Gandil, Fred McMullin, and Charles "Swede" Risberg; and outfielder Oscar "Happy" Felsch. The Black Sox Trial: An Account by Douglas Linder (c) 2010
 The 1919 Chicago White Sox
It
was almost unthinkable: players throwing
the World Series? Yet, that's what happened--or maybe didn't
happen--in the fall of 1919.
The players on the Charles
Comiskey's 1919 Chicago White Sox team were a fractious lot.
The club was divided into two "gangs" of players, each with practically
nothing to say to the other. Together they formed the best team in
baseball--perhaps one of the best
teams that ever played the game, yet they--like all ball players of the
time--were paid a fraction of
what
they were worth. Because of baseball's reserve
clause, any
player who refused to accept a contract was prohibited from playing
baseball
on any other professional team. The White Sox
owner paid two of his greatest stars, outfielder "Shoeless"
Joe Jackson and third baseman Buck
Weaver, only $6000 a year. Comiskey's decision to save
expenses by reducing the number of times uniforms were laundered gave
rise to the original meaning of "The Black Sox." Comiskey has
been labeled the
tyrant and tightwad whose penurious practices made his players
especially willing to sell their baseball souls for money, but in fact
he was probably no worse than most owners--in fact, Chicago had
the highest team payroll in 1919. In the era of
the reserve clause, gamblers could find players on lots of teams
looking for extra cash--and they did.
In 1963, Eliot Asinof published Eight
Men Out, a book about the Black Sox scandal which later became a
popular movie and has, more than any other work, shaped modern
understanding
of the most famous scandal in the history of sports. In Asinof's
telling of history, the bitterness Sox players felt about their
owner led members of
the team to enter into a conspiracy that would forever change the game
of baseball. Asinof suggested that Comisky's skinflint maneuvers
made key players ready to jump at the chance to make some quick
money. For example, Asinof wrote that Sox pitcher Eddie
Cicotte was intensely irritated when, in September of
1917,
as Cicotte approached a 30-win season that would win him a promised
$10,000
bonus, Comiskey had his star pitcher benched rather than be forced to
come
up with the extra cash. Whether the story about the denied bonus
or true is subject of dispute among baseball historians.
More recently, several writers have
questioned Asinof's explanation for the fix. Gene Carney, for
example, author
of Burying the Black Sox,
concluded that "the Sox who took the bribes were not getting even, they
were just trying to get some easy money." Whatever the reason, a
long and complicated story unfolded in the fall of 1919. One of
the key players in the scandal, gambler Abe Attell, later summarized
the fix as "cheaters cheating cheaters."
It's a story that arises at a time
when "the lines between gamblers and ballplayers had become
blurred." Some players were big bettors and some gamblers were
former big league players. Most teams, many historians believe,
had at least one player on the roster willing to help tip a game for a
little money. Baseball in 1919, according to Carney, "was in the
stranglehold of gamblers, and had been for some time."
 Arnold Rothstein
Asinof contends that the idea
of
fixing the Series sprang into the mind of a tough thirty-one-year-old
Sox
first baseman named Chick
Gandil. Whether or not the initial idea was his, or that of a
gambler, it is clear no player is more closely connected to the fix
than Gandil. In a 1956 Sports Illustrated interview, Gandil
frankly admitted, "I was a ringleader." Asinof placed the
beginning of the fix in Boston,
about
three weeks before the end of the 1919 season. Gandil asked an
acquaintance
and professional gambler named "Sport" Sullivan to stop by his hotel
room.
After a few minutes of small talk, Gandil told Sullivan, "I think we
can
put it [the Series] in the bag." He demanded $80,000 in cash for
himself and whatever other players he might recruit. (In 1956, Gandil
offered his own--somewhat different--account, crediting Sullivan and
not
himself for the idea. Gandil claims he initially told Sullivan a
fix involving seven or eight players was impossible. Sullivan replied,
"Don't be silly. It's been pulled before and it can be
again.")
Talk of a possible fix began among
a group that included outfielder Oscar
"Happy" Felsch, third baseman Buck Weaver, and Eddie Cicotte.
Gandil knew that Cicotte, Chicago's ace
pitcher, Cicotte, had money troubles,
having
bought a farm in Michigan that came with high mortgage payments.
Cicotte at first resisted Gandil's suggestion that he join in a fix of
the Series, but eventually his scruples gave way. Three days
before the Series began, he told Gandil,
"I'll do it for $10,000--before the Series begins."
In 1920, Cicotte explained his decision to join the fix to a grand
jury: "They wanted me to go crooked. I needed the
money. I had the wife and kids. I had bought the
farm." According to Cicotte's later confession, when he went back
to his room
later, "I found the money under my pillow; I had sold out 'Commy' and
the other boys."
With Cicotte and Felsch on board,
Gandil's
efforts
to recruit additional Sox players
took off. Shortstop "Swede"
Risberg and utility infielder Fred
McMullin said that they were in. Starting pitchers would be
critical
in any successful fix, so when the team was in New York, Gandil went
after--and soon convinced--Claude
"Lefty" Williams to join. To round out the fix, Gandil
approached the teams best hitter, Joe Jackson. (In his 1920
"confession," Jackson would testify that he was promised $20,000 for
his participation, but only got a quarter of that amount.)
A meeting of White Sox
ballplayers--including those committed to going ahead and those just
ready to listen--took place on September 21, at Gandil's room at the
Ansonia
Hotel
in New York. It was a meeting that would eventually shatter the
careers
of eight ballplayers, although whether all eight were actually in
attendance is a matter of dispute. (Joe Jackson claimed not to have
made the meeting--and Jackson's claim was repeatedly supported by Lefty
Williams.) In his 1956 article in Sports Illustrated,
Gandil offers this account of
the September 21 meeting:
They all were interested and thought we should reconnoiter to see if the dough would really be put on the line. Weaver suggested we get paid in advance; then if things got too hot, we could double-cross the gambler, keep the cash and take the big end of the Series by beating the [Cincinnati] Reds. We agreed this was a hell of a brainy plan.
Gandil met with Sport Sullivan
the next
morning to tell him the fix was
on, provided that he could come up with $80,000 for the players before
the Series began. Sullivan indicated that he might be difficult
to
raise that much cash so quickly, but promised to meet with Gandil when
the team got back to Chicago for the final games of the regular
season.
Things started to get
complicated. According to Asinof, another gambler, "Sleepy"
Bill Burns (working with an associate Billy
Maharg), having heard talk of a possible fix, approached Cicotte
and
offered to top any offer Sullivan might make. Gandil, meeting
with
Cicotte and Burns, announced that they would work a fix with Burns and
Maharg for
an upfront $100,000. In a 1922 deposition, Maharg would confirm
this story, testifying that in the original $100,000 deal, $20,000 each
was to go to Gandil, Cicotte, Williams, Felsch, and Risberg--an
original group of "five men out." Burns and Maharg set off for
New York to meet with the most prominent
gambler-sportsman
in America, Arnold
"Big Bankroll" Rothstein.
In Asinof's account, Burns and
Maharg
approached Rothstein as he watched
horses at Jamaica Race Track. Rothstein told the two men that he
was busy, and that they should wait in the track restaurant, where he
might
get to them later. Instead, Rothstein dispatched his right-hand
man,
Abe Attell, to meet with Burns and Maharg and find out what they had in
mind. When Attell reported back that night about the plan to fix
the Series, Rothstein was skeptical. He didn't think it could
work.
Attell relayed the news to a disappointed Burns. Undeterred, Burns and
Maharg cornered Rothstein later that night in the lobby of the Astor
Hotel
in Times Square and pressed their plan to fix the Series.
Rothstein
told the two men, for "whatever my opinion is worth," to forget
it,
and Burns and Maharg did--for awhile.
Asinof's very detailed story of the
meeting with Rothstein is not confirmed by other sources and "A. R.'s"
role in the fix remains something of a mystery. Leo Katcher,
author of The Big Bankroll,
concluded that Rothstein declined the offer to participate in fixing
the Series, deeming the enterprise too risky--too many players and too
many people watching. Katcher's conclusion seems to have been shared by
American League President Ban Johnson who initially believed the fix's
trail led to Rothstein, but later--after Rothstein testified to a 1920
grand jury--deemed him innocent. On the other hand, historian
Harold Seymour contended that affidavits found in Rothstein's files
after his death showed "he paid out $80,000 for the World Series
fix." Regardless of whether or not he funded the fix, many
gamblers and players at the time believed that he was behind it.
A telegram, supposedly from Rothstein but actually fraudulently
prepared by lower-level gamblers, seemed to show A. R. backed the
fix. With Rothstein's influence and nearly unlimited financial
resources, players more willingly jumped on board--the gambler's
lawyers and connections seemed to ensure no one would be
punished. Rothstein may or may not have been a backer of the fix,
but he clearly knew about it and made a substantial amount of money
(estimates range up to $400,000) betting on Series games.
In Asinof's telling, Abe
Attell, or the "Little Champ" as ex-prize fighter was called, saw
an
opportunity to make some big bucks, and he decided to take it. Attell
and former ballplayer Hal Chase contacted Burns and told him that
Rothstein had
reconsidered
their proposition and had now agreed to put up the $100,000 to fund the
fix. Burns whirled into motion, calling Cicotte and wiring Maharg
to tell them the fix was on. Sport Sullivan, meanwhile,
continued
independently to pursue his own
fix plans. He also contacted Rothstein. Sullivan, unlike
Burns
and Maharg, was known and respected by Rothstein. When Sullivan
laid
out his plans for the fix, according to Asinof, Rothstein expressed an
interest in the
scheme
he had previously withheld. Rothstein saw the widespread talk of
a fix as a blessing, not a problem: "If nine guys go to bed with a
girl,
she'll have a tough time proving the tenth is the father!" He
decided
to sent a partner of his, Nat Evans, to Chicago with Sullivan to meet
with
the players.
In Asinof's account, on September
29, the day before the
Sox
were to leave for Cincinnati
to begin the Series, Sullivan and Evans (introduced as "Brown") met
with
the players. Evans listened to the players' demand for $80,000 in
advance, then told them he would talk to his "associates" and get back
to them. When Evans reported back, Rothstein agreed to give him
$40,000
to pass on to Sullivan, who would presumably distribute the cash to the
players. The other $40,000, Rothstein said, would be held in a
safe
in Chicago, to be paid to the players if the Series went as
planned. Rothstein then got busy, quickly laying bets on the Reds
to
win the Series. With forty $1,000 bills in his
pocket,
Sullivan decided to bet nearly
$30,000 on the Reds instead of giving it to the players as
planned.
They could get the money later, he thought.
Odds were dropping
quickly
on the once heavy underdog Reds team--the best Sullivan could do was
get
even money. Gandil, in his 1956 account of the story, said
Sullivan passed the remaining $10,000 to him, and that he put the
money under the pillow of the starting pitcher for game one of the
Series, Eddie Cicotte.
(Other sources have the $10,000 being delivered after the Series
started.) Cicotte reportedly later sewed the money into the lining of
his jacket.
Frustrated and angry at getting
only
$10,000 from Sullivan, seven of
the players (only Joe Jackson was absent) met on the day before the
Series
opener at the Sinton Hotel in Cincinnati with Abe Attell. Attell
refused to pay the players any cash in advance, offering instead
$20,000
for each loss in the best-of-nine Series. The players complained,
but told the gamblers that they would throw the first two games with
Cicotte and Williams as
the
scheduled starting pitchers.
At least two syndicates and half a
dozen gamblers have been linked to the fix, but both numbers are
probably underestimates. There may have been five or six
syndicates and perhaps twenty or more gamblers involved. Some
sources have the players selling out in St. Louis, Detroit, Boston, and
Kansas City, as well as Chicago. Abe Attell told sports reporter
Joe Williams of the Cleveland News,
"They not only sold it, but they sold it wherever they could get a
buck...They peddled it around like a sack of popcorn." The true
extent of the 1919 Series fix will probably never be known.
 Photo from Game Two of the 1919 Series
October 1, 1919, Opening Day, was
sunny
and warm. The game was
a sell-out, with scalpers getting the unheard of price of $50 a
ticket.
At the Ansonia Hotel in New York, Arnold Rothstein strode into the
lobby
just before the scheduled opening pitch. For Rothstein and the
several
hundred other persons gathered in the lobby, a reporter would read
telegraphed
play-by-play accounts of the game as baseball figures would be moved
around
a large diamond-shaped chart on the wall. The gamblers had sent
word
that Eddie Cicotte was to either walk or hit the first Reds batter, as
a
sign that the fix was on. The first pitch to lead-off batter
Maurice
Rath was a called strike. Cicotte's wild second pitch hit Rath in
the
back. Arnold Rothstein walked out of the Ansonia into a New York
rain.
The game stood 1 to 1 with one out
in the
fourth when the Red's Pat
Duncan lined a hanging curve to right for a single. The next
batter,
Larry Kopf, hit an easy double play ball to Cicotte, but the Sox
pitcher
hesitated, then threw high to second. The runner at second was
out,
but no double play was possible. Greasy Neale and Ivy Wingo
followed
with singles, scoring the Reds' second run. Then the Reds'
pitcher,
Dutch Reuther, drove a triple to left, scoring two more. The
bottom
of the Cincinnati order was teeing off on the Sox's ace. The game
ended with the Reds winning 9 to 1 [game
stats link]. Meeting later that night with Charles Comiskey,
Sox manager Kid Gleason was asked whether he thought his team was
throwing
the Series. Gleason hesitated, then said he thought something was
wrong, but didn't know for certain.
The fourth inning turned out to be
determinative in Game Two as well.
Lefty Williams, renown for his control, walked three Cincinnati
batters,
all of whom scored. Final: Cincinnati 4, Chicago 2. Sox
catcher
Ray Schalk, furious, complained to Gleason after the came: "The
sonofabitch!
Williams kept crossing me. In that lousy fourth inning, he
crossed
me three times! He wouldn't throw a curve." After the game,
Sleepy Burns left $10,000 (of the $20,000 that they were promised) in
Gandil's room.
In Asinof's account, before Game
Three in Chicago, Burns
asked
Gandil what the players were
planning. Gandil lied. He told Burns they were going to
throw
the game, when in fact they hadn't yet decided what to do. Gandil
and the rest of players in on the fix were angry at so far receiving
only
a fraction of their promised money. He saw no reason to do Burns
any favors. Burns and Maharg, on Gandil's word, bet a bundle on
the
Reds to win Game Three. The Sox won the game, 3 to 0, with Gandil
driving in two of his team's runs.
Gandil told Sullivan that he needed
$20,000 before Game Four, or the
fix was over. Sullivan made the deadline--barely. Jackson
and Williams each received $5,000 pay-offs after the game, which was
won by the Reds, who
broke a scoreless tie in the fifth when pitcher Eddie Cicotte made two
fielding errors. According to Williams's 1920 confession, after
Game Four, the pitcher went to Gandil's room: "There were two
packages, two envelopes lying there, and he says, 'There is your
dough." Williams testified, "Gandil told me, 'There is five for
yourself, and five for Jackson, and the rest has been called for.'"
In the sixth inning of Game Five,
"Happy" Felsch
misplayed a fly ball, then
threw poorly to Risberg at second, who allowed the ball to get away
from
him. Before the inning was over, Felsch would misplay a second
ball
hit by Edd Roush, allowing three runs to score. Chicago
sportswriter
Hugh Fullerton, watching from the press box commented on the disaster:
"When Felsch misses a fly ball like Roush's--and the one before from
Eller--then,
well, what's the use?"
When gamblers failed to produce the
promised additional $20,000 after
the loss in game five, the Sox players decided they'd had enough.
It would be the old Sox again--the Sox that won the American League
pennant
going away. They took Game Six 5 to 4, then won again in
Game
Seven, 4 to 1. With a win in game eight, the best-of-nine Series
would be tied.
Asinof's Eight Men Out includes a dramatic,
but entirely fictional, report of what happened before the Game
Eight. Asinof admitted in 2003 that the story was made up--in
part,
he claimed, to identify when his account was being used without his
permission. In his book, Asinof claimed that Rothstein told
Sullivan in no
uncertain
terms that he did not want the
Series to go to nine games--and to make sure it doesn't. In the
book's account,
Sullivan contacted a Chicago thug known as "Harry F" who then paid a
visit to the starting Sox pitcher in game eight, Lefty
Williams, and threatened harm to him or his family if the game were not
thrown--in the first
inning. Asinof described Williams being greeted by a
cigar-smoking
man in a bowler hat when he and his wife were returning home from
dinner.
The man asked to have a word with Williams in private. He
did--and Williams got the message. There was no "Harry F."
But it made for a good story and added drama to the 1988 movie version
of Asinof's book. Threats were, however, made.
Both Cicotte and Jackson later described threats and their own fear of
being shot and, although Lefty Williams never told of any threats
against him or Lyria, his wife, Lyria did. In a 1920 interview,
Maharg also hinted that a threat to kill Williams's wife might indeed
have been made before Game Eight.
Threat or no threat, Williams
pitched poorly in Game Eight. He threw only fifteen pitches,
allowing four hits and three runs, before being
taken
out of the game with only one out. Cincinnati went on to win the
game and the Series, 10 to 5. For the Williams (who was
undoubtedly in on the fix), it was his third loss in three Series
starts. The pitcher with a reputation as a control artist had
thrown an average of a walk every other inning he played.
How Many Men "Out"?
 Buck Weaver
Of eight Series games, at least two
were
thrown, Games Two and Eight. Notably, however, if the Sox had won
Games Two and Eight, they--and not the Reds--would have been 1919 World
Series champs. There is also evidence that Game Four was thrown and a
failed attempt was made to throw Game Three. In general, people
who were looking for suspicious plays in the
Series found them, while others saw nothing that looked out of
line. Reds manager Pat Moran thought the Series was on the up and
up: "If they threw some of the games they must be consummate
actors,...for nothing in their playing gave me the impression they
weren't doing their best." Umpire Billy Evans expressed surprise
as well when news of the fix eventually broke; "We'll, I guess I'm just
a big dope, " Evans said, "That Series looked all right to me."
James Hamilton, official scorer for the Series, said he saw only one
suspicious play, a deflection by Cicotte of a throw to home in Game
Four. On the other hand, writer Hugh Fullerton and former
pitching star Christy Mathewson circled seven plays in their scorebook
that they agreed looked suspicious, in addition to having questions
about Sox pitching in a few of the games. (Fullerton had heard
buzz about a fix well before the first pitch of the Series was thrown,
and informed Comiskey about a possible fix before Game One.)
Of the
"Eight Men Out," four players clearly played to lose
in the thrown games, Gandil, Williams, Cicotte, and Risberg.
Risberg, by
all accounts a tough guy, served as internal enforcer of the fix,
threatening any player who might reveal the players' agreement with the
gamblers. A few historians have suggested that Cicotte, at least
after facing the first batter in Game One, gave
100%, but his own words seem to belie that conclusion: "I've played a
crooked game." Cicotte pitched
poorly
in Game One and hit the first batter, apparently to signal the fix was
on. In his 1920 grand jury testimony, Cicotte admitted that he
purposely put that first batter on base, but then had misgivings:
"After he passes, after he was on there, I don't know, I guess I tried
too hard. I didn't care, they could have taken my heart and soul;
that's the way I felt about it after I'd taken that money. I
guess everybody is not perfect." In Game Four, Cicotte made a
couple of glaring errors on the field. According to a September
28, 1920 account of his grand jury testimony, Cicotte said, "I
deliberately intercepted a throw from the outfield to the plate which
might have cut off a run. I muffed the ball on purpose." He
also admitted that on another play in Game Four, "I purposely made a
wild throw. All the runs scored against me were due to my own
deliberate errors." Happy should probably also be added to the
"players out"
list, as he went just six
for twenty-six
during the Series and committed several uncharacteristic miscues in the
centerfield. (On the other hand, he hit the ball hard and made a
couple of spectacular catches. In an interview in the Chicago Evening American, Felsch
admitted he was "in on the deal," but claimed he "had nothing to do
with the loss of the World Series.") Utility infielder Fred
McMullin,
Risberg's drinking buddy,
got one hit in just two Series at-bats, hardly the basis for a
conclusion that he contributed to the Series defeat. Jackson,
however, testified that McMullin, along with Risberg, were the two
principal "pay-off" men during the fix.
If--and it's a big "if"--any two
players have been
unfairly included in the "Eight Men Out" they are Shoeless Joe Jackson
and Buck Weaver.
For the
Series, Jackson had batted .375 (nearly twenty points better than his
career average of .356), scored five runs, got six RBI's, the only
homerun, and not committed a single error. "If he really did try
to lose games," a 2009 article in the Chicago Lawyer Magazine observed,
"he failed miserably." Nonetheless, questions have been raised
about Jackson's performance in the field. (Jackson himself later
admitted that he "could have tried harder." He also reportedly
said that the players in on the fix "did our best to kick [Game Three],
but little Dickie Kerr won the game by his pitching.") Not
debatable is that Jackson clearly did accept the
money of gamblers ($5000, after demanding $20,000, according to
Cicotte)
and having the batting star's name mentioned in
connection with the fix gave the scheme credibility. Jackson
admitted in his
1920 grand jury testimony to accepting the money. Most likely,
Jackson did not try to throw the Series. He did, however, commit
a serious error of judgment in accepting the
money of gamblers and, perhaps, in not more aggressively trying to
report the fix to Comiskey or Gleason.
Perhaps none of the
infamous Eight have more defenders than Buck Weaver. Weaver knew
of the fix, attended
at least three meetings in which the fix was discussed, watched Gandil
count out pay-off money from gamblers, and yet failed to
report the scheme to club officials. For this "guilty
knowledge," Buck might have got nothing but trouble. It's not
clear he ever received a
dime from the fix. (A report circulated, originating with
his mother-in-law, that a package containing a large amount of currency
was delivered to
his house by McMullin during the Series. The pay-off, it indeed
that's what the package was, may have been returned.) He arguably he
played the
best baseball he knew
how, batting .324
during the Series. A 1953 letter from Weaver to Baseball
Commissioner Ford Frick is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown. In the letter, Weaver claimed (implausibly) that he
"knew nothing"
about the fix and (more plausibly) "played a perfect Series."
In addition to the fix, there was a
second, arguably just as significant, scandal: the cover-up.
Asinof noted that "the cover-up was far better organized than the fix
itself." It involved owners, managers, players, and (with just a
couple of notable exceptions) the press. A lot of people had an
interest in preserving the public's faith in America's pasttime.
 Assistant State's Attorney Hartley Replogle with Joe Jackson
Charles Comiskey tried to
discourage talk
of a fix, brought on by his
team's dismal performance in the Series, by issuing a statement to the
press. Comiskey told reporters,
"I believe my boys fought the battle of the recent World Series on the level, as they have always done. And I would be the first to want information to the contrary--if there be any. I would give $20,000 to anyone unearthing information to that effect." Meanwhile, Comiskey hired a private detective to investigate the finances of seven of the eight men who were part of the original conspiracy. (Weaver was the player not under suspicion.)
A bombshell was thrown into the
winter
baseball meetings on December
15, 1919, when Hugh Fullerton, a Chicago sportswriter, published in New
York World a story headlined IS BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL BEING RUN
FOR
GAMBLERS, WITH BALLPLAYERS IN THE DEAL? Fullerton angrily
demanded
that baseball confront its gambling problem. He suggested that
Kenesaw
Mountain Landis, a federal judge, be appointed to head a special
investigation
into gambling's influence on the national pastime.
Talk of a possible fix in the 1919
Series
continued through the winter
months into the 1920 season. In July, Sox manager Kid Gleason ran
into Abe Attell at a New York bar. The Little Champ confirmed
Gleason's
suspicions about the fix. "You know, Kid, I hated to do that to
you,"
Attell told Gleason, "but I thought I was going to make a bundle, and I
needed it." Attell revealed that Arnold Rothstein was the big
money
man behind the fix. Gleason went to the press with the story, but
was unable to convince anyone--because of fear of libel suits--to print
it.
Exposure of the Series fix finally
came
from an unexpected source--just
as the Sox were in a close fight for the 1920 American League
pennant.
Reports on another fix, this one involving a Cubs-Phillies game on
August
31, led to the convening of the Grand Jury of Cook County.
Assistant
State Attorney Hartley Replogle sent out dozens of subpoenas to
baseball
personalities. One of those called to testify was New York Giants
pitcher Rube Benton. Benton told the grand jury that he saw a
telegram
sent in late September to a Giants teammate from Sleepy Burns, stating
that the Sox would lose the 1919 Series. He also revealed that he
later learned that Gandil, Felsch, Williams, and Cicotte were among
those
in on the fix.
A couple of days later, the
Philadelphia North
American
ran an interview with gambler Billy Maharg, providing the public for
the
first time with many of the shocking details of the scandal. Cicotte
regretted
his participation in the fix. He seemed to Gleason and others to
have been stewing over something all summer. Perhaps because of
the Maharg interview or perhaps because he knew that he had already
been implicated in the fix by Henrietta Kelly
(manager of the rooming house where he and other players stayed),
Cicotte decided to
talk.
"I don't know why I did it,"
Cicotte told
the grand jury. "I must
have been crazy. Risberg, Gandil, and McMullin were at me for a week
before
the Series began. They wanted me to go crooked. I don't
know.
I needed the money. I had the wife and the kids. The wife
and
the kids don't know about this. I don't know what they'll
think."
Tears came to Cicotte's eyes as he continued talking. "I've lived
a thousand years in the last twelve months. I would have not done
that thing for a million dollars. Now I've lost everything, job,
reputation, everything. My friends all bet on the Sox. I
knew,
but I couldn't tell them."
Within hours, the other Sox players
learned that Cicotte had talked.
Who would be next? It was Joe Jackson that turned up in the
chambers of presiding judge, Charles
McDonald.
Two hours after he began testifying, Jackson walked out of the jury
room,
telling two bailiffs, "I got a big load off my chest!" [link
to Jackson confession] On the way out of the courthouse,
according to a story that ran in the Chicago Herald & Examiner, a
youngster said to Jackson, "It ain't so, Joe, is it?"--to which Jackson
replied, "Yes, kid, I'm afraid it is." (Jackson later denied that
such an exchange ever occurred: "The only one who spoke was a guy who
yelled at his friend, 'I told you he wore shoes.'") Gandil,
Risberg, and McMullin were not happy with developments, and let Jackson
know that. According to Jackson, the other players told him
before his testimony, "You poor simp, go ahead and squawk. We'll
all say you're a liar." Jackson said he asked for protection from
the bailiffs when he left the jury room because "now Risberg threatens
to bump me off...I'm not going to get far from my protectors until this
blows over."
That same day, in his office at
Comiskey
park, Charles Comiskey dictated
a telegram that would be sent to eight of his players and then made
public:
YOU AND EACH OF YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED OF YOUR INDEFINITE SUSPENSION
AS
A MEMBER OF THE CHICAGO AMERICAN LEAGUE BASEBALL CLUB. With those
words, the hopes of Sox fans for the 1920 championship came to an
end.
The final games in St. Louis would still be played--Harry Grabner,
White Sox secretary, told the press,
"We'll
play out the schedule if we have to get Chinamen to replace the
suspended
players"--but the results were predictable.
Defense attorney William
Fallon knew that to protect his clients, which included Abe Attell
and other gamblers, he would have to keep Attell
and Sport Sullivan away from the Chicago Grand Jury. The two
gamblers
were called to Rothstein's apartment, where Fallon announced that
Sullivan
would go to Mexico and Attell to Canada. Vacation with pay,
Fallon
said, as Rothstein pulled out his wallet.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, more details
about
the fix were coming out. Lefty
Williams became the third White Sox player to tell his
story to the Grand Jury, testifying for more than three
hours. Then Oscar Felsch told his version of
events
in an interview that ran in the Chicago
American. "Well, the
beans
are spilled and I think I'm through with baseball," Felsch said.
"I got $5000. I could have got just about that much by being on
the
level if the Sox had won the Series. And now I'm out of
baseball--the
only profession I know anything about, and a lot of gamblers have
gotten
rich. The joke seems to be on us."
Fallon decided to adopt a bold
strategy
for his client. With Sullivan
and Attell out of the country, he would bring Arnold Rothstein to
Chicago
to testify before the Grand Jury. (Fallon had a second reason for
heading west: he understood that Comiskey hated the investigation, and
believed that a meeting with the Sox owner might be mutually
beneficial.)
Rothstein told the jury that he came to Chicago because he was "sick
and
tired" of all of the talk about his involvement in the fix. "I've
come here to vindicate myself....The whole thing started when Attell
and
some other cheap gamblers decided to frame the Series and make a
killing.
The world knows I was asked in on the deal and my friends know how I
turned
it down flat. I don't doubt that Attell used my name to put it
over."
Fallon's strategy worked. After his testimony, Cook County Attorney
Maclay Hoyne declared, "I don't think Rothstein was involved in it."
On October 22, 1920, the Grand Jury
handed down its indictments, naming
the eight Chicago players and five gamblers, including Bill Burns,
Sport
Sullivan, and Abe Attell. Rothstein was not indicted. The
indictments
included nine counts of conspiracy to defraud various individuals and
institutions.
Shortly after the indictments came
down,
as the old staff of the Office
of State's Attorney was ready to be replaced by the newly elected
Robert
Crowe (the same man who prosecuted the Leopold and Loeb case), some
important
papers walked out of the office. George Kenney, State Attorney
Hoyne's personal secretary, probably for money offered by Attell's
local counsel, had lifted the confessions and
waivers of immunity of Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams.
Fallon begin to gather, for the
players,
some of the best and most expensive
defense attorneys in Illinois. Clearly, the impoverished Sox players
weren't
going to be footing the legal bills--so who was paying for them?
Comiskey?
Rothstein? No one who knew talked. An acquittal would benefit
Comiskey, who held out hope that his suspended players could be
reinstated--possibly after serving brief suspensions.
Pushing most strongly for
convictions was American League President Ban Johnson, who--to his
credit--was determined to clean up the sport. Johnson became
frustrated with the lack of support his investigation received from
Comiskey: "We have been working on this case for three solid months and
we have not had an iota of cooperation from the Chicago club," Johnson
complained.
The defendants were arraigned on
February
14, 1921. All the ballplayers
were present, but none of the gamblers. Defense lawyers presented
Judge William Dever with a petition for a bill of particulars, a
statement
that would specify the charges against their clients with more
specificity
than the indictments contained.
A month later, George Gorman, for
the State, then
announced
the shocking news that the players' confessions had been stolen.
A new set of charges was presented to a Grand Jury, who issued a
superceding indictment, adding five new gamblers, on March 26.
The Trial
 Gambler "Sleepy Bill" Burns testifies at the 1921 trial
On June 27, 1921, the case of State
of
Illinois vs Eddie Cicotte et
al opened in the Chicago courtroom of Judge Hugo Friend.
The
players
faced charges of (1) conspiring to defraud the public, (2) conspiring
to
defraud Sox pitcher Ray Schalk, (3) conspiring to commit a confidence
game,
(4) conspiring to injure the business of the American League, and (5)
conspiring
to injure the business of Charles Comiskey. With the confessions
still missing, George Gorman knew he faced a difficult fight. He
did, however, have one key witness who could tie the players to the
fix:
Sleepy Burns. American League President Ban Johnson, with the
help
of Billy Maharg, had found Burns fishing in the Rio Grande in the small
Texas border town of Del Rio. Promised immunity from prosecution, Burns
reluctantly agreed to testify.
By July 5, with the defense's
motion to
quash the indictments having
been rejected, jury selection began. Before a final jury of
twelve
was seated, over 600 prospective jurors were questioned about their
support
of the White Sox, their betting habits, and their views of
baseball. On potential juror, William Kiefer, was excused because
he was a Cubs fan, and presumbably bore ill will against the team's
cross-town rival.
On July 18, George Gorman delivered
the
prosecution's opening statement.
Gorman described the 1919 Series fix as a chaotic chess game between
gamblers and players: "The gamblers and ball players started
double-crossing each other untile neither side knew what the other
intended to do." When he began to quote from a copy of Cicotte's
confession, defense
attorney
Michael Ahearn (later called "Al Capone's favorite lawyer") objected,
saying "You won't get to first base with those
confessions!" Gorman countered, "We'll hit a home run with them!"
"You may get a long hit," Ahearn acknowledged, "but you'll be thrown
out
at the plate." Ahearn proved to be the better predictor.
Judge
Friend did indeed call any mention of the confessions out of bounds.
The first witness for the
prosecution was
Charles Comiskey, who provided a history of his career in baseball,
from his days as a player beginning in Milwaukee in 1876, to his
current position as president of the White Sox organization. On
cross-examination, defense attorneys tried to show that Comiskey had
made
more money in 1920 than any previous year, thus undercutting the
State's
theory that Comiskey had been financially injured by the alleged
conspiracy.
Judge Friend cut off this line of questioning, causing Ben Short to
complain,
"This man is getting richer all the time and my clients are charged
with
conspiracy to injure his business."
The following day saw Sleepy
Burns, dressed in a green checkered suit with a lavender shirt and
bow tie, take the stand. He spoke, as described in a newspaper account
of the day, "in a low, even tone, which scarcely carried past the jury
and repeatedly wiped his forehead with his handkerchief." Under
questioning from prosecutor Gorman,
Burns (who had been promised immunity in return for his testimony for
the prosecution) identified Eddie Cicotte as the instigator of the fix
and the man with whom he had met at the
Hotel
Ansonia in September of 1919. When Gorman asked about his
conversation
with Cicotte on September 16 or 17, however, the defense objected and
their objection was
sustained
by Judge Friendly. Burns described meetings in New York with
Cicotte, Gandil and Maharg during which a possible fix was
discussed. He testified that he and Maharg "went to see Arnold
Rothstein at a race track" to discuss possible financing. Later,
Burns told jurors, he and other gamblers held a meeting, two days
before the start of the Series, with seven of the Sox players during
which the promise to pay the players $20,000 for each thrown game was
made:
Q. [What players were there at the
meeting at the Hotel Sinton]?
A. There was Gandil, McMullin, Williams, Felsch, Cicotte, and Buck Weaver. Q. What about Jackson? A. I didn't see him there. Q. Did you have any conversation with them? A. I told them I had a $100,000 to handle the throwing of the World Series. I also told them that I had the names of the men who were going to finance it. Q. Who were the financiers? A. They were Arnold Rothstein, Attell, and Bennett. Q. Did the players make any statements concerning the order of the games to be thrown? A. Gandil and Cicotte said the first two games should be thrown. They said,however, that it didn't matter to them. They would throw them in any order desired, it was a made-to-order Series. Q. What else was said? A. Gandil and Cicotte said they'd throw the first and second games. Cicotte said he'd throw the first game if had to throw the ball over the fence [at Cincinnati's park...] Q. Who left the room first? A. Attell and Bennett [alias of gambler David Zelcer of Des Moines, a defendant in the case]. I asked the players what I was to get. Gandil said that I would get a player's part....After the first game, I met Attell...and then we met Maharg. Attell said he bet all the money and couldn't pay the players until the bets were collected. I told the ballplayers and told Williams that Attell wanted to see them. Williams, Gandil, and I went to see Attell at a place on Walnut Street about a block and a half from the Sinton Hotel. That was about 8:30 p.m. Attell asked Williams if he would throw the game the next day and Williams said he would. I met Attell the next day and he showed me a telegram from New York [signed "A.R." and suggesting that Rothstein would back the fix]....I went to the ball players then--all except Jackson were present--and told them a telegram had been received and that twenty grand--$20,000--had been sent. I told them before the game [Game Two]. Gandil said they were being double-crossed. Gandil said the telegram was a fake. I said if it was, I wasn't in on it....
For three days, Burns remained on
the
stand, recounting the many trials
and tribulations of the fix. On cross-examination, defense
attorneys
tried unsuccessfully to shake Burns' assertion that it was the players,
and not him, that came up with the idea of throwing the Series.
Although he was forced to admit that some of his dates of meetings were
wrong, many in the press thought that the
prosecution's star witness turned in a superb performance. (Members of
the jury might have been less impressed, based on the comments of a
juror in a post-trial interview with an AP reporter.) A Kansas City Times story from July
21, 1921 reported, "At the end of his twelfth hour on the stand, the
witness appeared exhausted. His body was limp in the witness
chair, his eyes were half closed, but his head was held back and his
answers still came clearly and defiantly despite a cataract of
innuendoes, disparaging remarks about his mentality and character and
other bitter verbal shots heaped on by his questioners." "If that
man's story is not proven false, we may as well consider our case
lost," said one of the defense attorneys to a reporter.
The next witness for the
prosecution was John O. Seys, secretary of the Chicago Cubs. Seys
testified that he met Attell at the Sinton Hotel the day before the
Series opener and that Attell said he was betting on Cincinnati.
"Attell was taking all the White Sox money he could get," Seys told
jurors. Meeting with Attell again before Game Three, Seys
testified that the gambler told him "he wasn't going to bet on
Cincinnati that day because it looked like Dick Kerr, the Sox pitcher,
would win."
The big battle of the trial was
over the
issue of how to handle the
missing confessions and immunity waivers. Judge Friend ruled
that
no evidence of the confessions could be introduced unless the State
could
prove that they were made voluntarily and without duress. Former
State's
Attorney Hartley Replogle testified that the statements were made
voluntarily
and
without any offer of reward. Cicotte testified that Replogle had
promised him that in return for his statement "I would be taken care
of,"
which he assumed meant not prosecuted. Asked whether he was told
that the statement he was about to make could be used against him,
Cicotte
said, "I don't remember." Prosecutor Gorman offered a different
story, arguing Cicotte "was panic stricken and ran to the grand jury to
confess." In his cross-examination of the pitcher, Gorman asked,
"didn't you read about the ball scandal in the paper and tell
everything of your own free will?" Cicotte replied, "No, they
promised me freedom." "Didn't you cry bitterly?", Gorman
asked. "I may have had tears in my eyes," Cicotte answered.
Joe Jackson took the stand to offer a
similar
story. Jackson said that he was told that "after confessing I
could
go anywhere--all the way to the Portuguese Islands." Asked
whether
he read the document he signed before offering his statement, Jackson
replied:
"No. They'd given me their promise. I'd've signed my death
warrant if they asked me to." After listening to this testimony,
Judge Friend ruled that the confessions could be part of the State's
case--but only to prove the guilt of the players giving the statements.
Judge Charles A. MacDonald
testified as to meetings he had with Cicotte and Jackson before their
grand jury testimony. Cicotte told him, he said, that after
hitting the first batter in Game One "he played on the square."
Cicotte told the judge he used his $10,000 pay-off to take care of a
mortgage on a Michigan farm and buy stock. Jackson told the judge
he was first approached in New York about participating in the fix, and
made clear that it would take at least $20,000 for him to join.
The initial offer, Jackson said to the judge, was so low "a common
laborer wouldn't do a job like that for that price." MacDonald
said that Jackson was concerned that his grand jury testimony be kept
secret because he "was afraid Swede Risberg was going to bump him off,
to use Jackson's words." On July 27, the confessions of Cicotte,
Williams, and Jackson were read in court. According to a
newspaper report of the trial, "The actual transcript of the
confessions varied little from the frequently published reports of
them." In Cicotte's confession, he expressed misgivings about his
participation: "I would gladly have given back the $10,000 they
paid me with interest." Jackson denied making
any intentional fielding errors, but told the judge that he "might have
tried
harder."
Billy Maharg was the state's final
witness. The gambler confirmed Burns's story about an intial
meeting in New York involving Cicotte and Gandil. Maharg
testified that Attell told him that Rothstein had agreed to finance the
fix in return for his having once saved Rothstein's life. He also
said that the first payment of $10,000 to Burns came when Attell pulled
the money "from a great pile of bills under his mattress," money that
Rothstein had apparently sent by wire.
The defense presented a variety of
alibi, character, and White Sox players and team officials as
witnesses. Sox manager Kid Gleason testified that the indicted
Sox players were practicing at the Cincinnati ballpark at the time
Burns
alleged he was meeting with them in a hotel room. A series of Sox
players not involved in the fix were called and asked whether they
thought
the indicted players played the Series to the best of their
ability. The prosecution shouted its objections to each of these
questions.
The judge sustained the objections, as calling for opinions. Comiskey's
chief financial officer, Harry Grabiner, was called to show that the
Sox gate receipts
in
1920 were well above those in 1919, when the players allegedly
defrauded
Comiskey of his property. The jury seemed intensely interested in
the financial testimony, which undermined the prosecution's contention
that the White Sox was damaged by the players' actions.
On July 29, Edward
Prindeville summed up the case first for the prosecution. He
told the jury that "Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, and Claude Williams
sold
out the American public for a paltry $20,000. This game,
gentleman,
has been the subject of a crime. The public, the club owners,
even
the small boys on the sandlots have been swindled." Prindeville said,
"They have taken our national sport, our national pleasure, and tried
to turn it into a con game." The prosecutor was particularly
scathing in his attack on Cicotte: "Cicotte, the American League's
greatest pitcher, hurling with a heavy heart--by his own
confession--and a pocket made heavy by $10,000 in graft, was beaten 9
to 1. No wonder he lost. The pocket loaded with filth for
which he sold his soul and his friends was too much. It
overbalanced him and he lost." Prindeville asked the
jury to return a "verdict of guilty with five years in the penitentiary
and a fine of $2000 for each defendant." Gorman followed
Prindeville.
He asked the jury to remember the fans:
Thousands of men throughout the chilly hours of the night, crouched in line waiting for the opening of the first World Series game. All morning they waited, eating a sandwich perhaps, never daring to leave their places for a moment. There they waited to see the great Cicotte pitch a ballgame. Gentleman, they went to see a ballgame. But all they saw was a con game!"
Ben Short, for the defense, told
the
jury that "there may have been an
agreement entered into by the defendants to take the gamblers' money,
but
it has not been shown that the players had any intention of defrauding
the public or bringing the game into ill repute. They believed that any
arrangement they may have made was a secret one and would, therefore,
reflect
no discredit on the national pastime of injure the business of their
employer
as it would never be detected." Anther defense attorney, Morgan
Frumberg,
said the real guilty party, Arnold Rothstein, was not in the
courtroom.
"Why was he not indicted?....Why were these underpaid ballplayers,
these
penny-ante gamblers who may have bet a few nickels on the World Series
brought here to be the goats in this case?"
Although evidence suggests that the
jury was already leaning toward acquittal, the outcome of the trial may
have
been
sealed when Judge Friend charged
the jury. He told them that to return a guilty verdict they must
find the players conspired "to defraud the public and others, and not
merely
throw ballgames." (The New York Times editorialized that
the
judge's instruction was like saying the "state must prove the defendant
intended to murder his victim, not merely cut his head off.")
The jury deliberated less than
three
hours. When the Chief Clerk read
the jury's first verdict, finding Claude Williams not guilty, a huge
roar
went up in the courtroom. As the string of not guilty verdicts
continued,
the cheers increased. Soon hats and confetti were flying in the
air
and players and spectators pounding the backs of jurors in
approval.
Several jurors lifted players to their shoulders and paraded them
around
the courtroom.
Joe Jackson told reporters, "The
jury could not have returned a fairer verdict, but I don't want to go
back to organized baseball--I'm through with it." Buck Weaver
said, "I had nothing to do with this so-called conspiracy; I believe
that I should get my old position back. I cannot express my
contempt for Bill Burns." Claude Williams asked, "How could the
verdict have been anything else?" Gandil also claimed "never have
any doubt about the verdict" and blamed the whole trial ordeal on
"those two liars, Bill Burns and Billy Maharg." Eddie Cicotte,
while shaking hands with jurors, had little to say about the trial
outcome: "Talk, you say? I talked once in this building, never
again."
 Defendants and lawyers with jury after the trial acquittal
The players joy was
short-lived.
The day after the jury's verdict,
the new Commissioner of Baseball, Judge
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, released a statement to the press:
"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."Landis was true to his word. Despite the best efforts of some of the players, especially Buck Weaver, to gain reinstatement, none of the Eight Men Out would ever again put on a major league uniform. What happened in 1919 still has relevance to a debate today: Should Shoeless Joe Jackson, the man with the third highest lifetime batting average in baseball (behind only Cobb and Hornsby) be admitted to the Hall of Fame? His actions in 1919 dishonored the game, but he wasn't a ringleader in the fix and came to regret his role. Over the years, many fans and former players, including the great Ted Williams, have argued for Jackson's enshrinement at Cooperstown. Williams said: Joe shouldn't have accepted the money...and he realized his error. He tried to give the money back. He tried to tell Comiskey...about the fix. But they wouldn't listen. Comiskey covered it up as much as Jackson did--maybe more. And there's Charles Albert Comiskey down the aisle from me at Cooperstown--and Shoeless Joe still waits outside.  |
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