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Black Sox Scandal

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Ilmago, Jul 16, 2010.

  1. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Correct.

    The other ironic thing about Comiskey was that he was a leader of the Players' Brotherhood in the 19th century and with Johnson, was one of the leaders in the early AL. He was against the reserve clause, until, naturally, he became an owner. In other words, he was a flip-flopper.
     
  2. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    Yeah, I knew that the bonus story with Eddie or some version of it had happened earlier, but I guess I didn't make myself clear meaning the year of the fix.
     
  3. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    The Sox were framed!
     
  4. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    There's some evidence that Joe Jackson slacked off in the field in the 1919 series (again Bill James had a good analysis of it in the original Historical Abstract) -- several triples were hit to his field during the series, almost as many as had been hit there all year, as well as a few doubles.

    That's a way you could tank a game without it showing up in the boxscore -- somebody hits a drive to the gap, you take off on a 3/4 speed jog, take your sweet time catching up to it, by the time you get it back in, Bobby Banjohitter is on third base. Unless you actually pick up and fumble the ball or throw to the wrong base, no error on the play.

    And of course, Jackson was playing alongside Felsch in CF, who by all accounts was certainly in on the fix.

    Numerous accounts of the fix say Jackson was particularly reluctant to look bad at bat, so if he was tanking, defense would be the place I would guess he'd do it.
     
  5. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    I've always heard, but could be mistaken, that only certain games were fixed, and Jackson hit poorly in those games.
     
  6. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    It's still a matter of dispute as to which games were actually fixed; the consensus seems to be Games 1 and 2 were, Game 3 was supposed to be but Dickie Kerr won it anyway for the Sox, then 4 and 5 were, but about that time the players started getting sick of not getting paid by the gamblers, so they turned around and tried to win in Games 6 and 7, although several accounts say some players were dumping and others going all-out to win in those games.

    There is general agreement (and "Eight Men Out" was apparently accurate in this regard) that the gamblers (Rothstein among others) started getting nervous after the Sox pulled within 4-3, and sent down word to the fixers they needed to get it over with in Game 8.
     
  7. Buckeye12

    Buckeye12 Member

    Jackson couldn't have hit too poorly, he led everyone in batting average in that series.
    Kerr wasn't in on the fix, and was masterful.
    According to Eight Men Out, Lefty Williams had his wife threatened with murder if he didn't tank Game 8. He threw 13 pitches, and it was enough.
     
  8. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    Reading a book right now called the Original Curse -- Did the Cubs throw the 1918 World Series to Babe Ruths Red Sox and incite the Black Sox scandal; by Sean Deveney. And according to this book, the reason the 1919 scandal was uncovered was because of an investigation into the Cubs throwing regular season games during the 1920 season. He then goes on, I believe, without saying for sure one way or another that the fix was also in on the 1918 series as well -- I am only just over a third of the way through right now. So far he is presenting circumstantial evidence to support this theory and connect the dots, and that it was this series more than anything that has the Cubs especially and the Red Sox deserving of their wretched history. Quite interesting actually. The book also has me thinking that Deveney is a pissed off White Sox fan.

    Also apparently Grover Cleveland Alexander and his catcher Bill Killefer -- who the Cubs had purchased before that season -- were dirty going back to their days in Philadelphia and is cited as a reason why they were willing to sell them to the Cubs while they publically cried poor. Alexander of course only pitched a few games for the Cubs that season before getting drafted into the war, but it was an interesting tidbit none the less. At least news to me anyhow.

    Good book so far actually, even if it is quite depressing for a Cubs fan like myself.
     
  9. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member

    Jackson hit when it didn't matter . . . capped by his home run, struck
    long after the horse was out of the barn in Game 8. Original sources
    have questioned his fielding, throwing judgment and baserunning in the
    Series, to varying degrees.
     
  10. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member


    There are so many umpires today who are so incompetent at balls/strikes,
    you might think they had cronies playing over/unders.
     
  11. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Interesting thing in Eight Men Out (the book). The Black Sox scandal first broke when a grand jury investigation began into a Cubs/Phillies game that had featured a large number of gamblers betting on the Phillies, who were in last place at the time (Cubs ended the year fifth).

    Cubs president Bill Veeck (the dad of the zany one), received a telegram alerting him to the possiblity of a fix, and the telegram claimed pitcher Claude Hendrix was going to throw the game. Veeck told manager Fred Mitchell, who started Alexander instead. Still, the Phillies won.

    And Hendrix never pitched another game again, either in the majors or the minors.
     
  12. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member


    Anybody even remotely interested in the Black Sox scandal should find Veeck's second book, "The Hustler's Handbook," which has an extensive chapter, "Harry's Diary -- 1919," the personal notebook of Harry Grabiner, who was then Comiskey's personal secretary (a position roughly equivalent to GM in today's structure), which reveals, among other things (many of which are noted above by Baron among others):

    -- Comiskey was well aware something was going on during the series

    -- Comiskey attempted to maneuver the process of selecting the Commissioner in order to give control of MLB to himself, 2 other AL owners, and the NL owners, which would have left baseball with one 11-team league. The remaining 5 AL owners were loyal to Ban Johnson (thus the nickname "the Loyal Five").

    -- Ban Johnson also knew there was something wrong with the 1919 series while it was being played, but he could not go public with his knowledge because the Comiskey camp had evidence Johnson had known about many many other fixes (including, it is hinted, the long-rumored game-dumping agreeement between Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker). Johnson bided his time throughout the summer of 1920 until the rumors of the fixed series gave him the chance to move, he leaked much of the background info to the Chicago papers, they splattered front page stories on the Cubs fix all over the papers, and with game-fixing back in the headlines the Black Sox story finally broke.

    The telegram mentioned above sent to William Veeck Sr., was almost certainly sent by Johnson or somebody working under him. It shows how different things were back then -- that a scandal rocking the nation's biggest spectator sport could be kicked off by an anonymous telegram to a club owner.

    The Cubs scandal broke in late August, the Black Sox story spilled out over the next several weeks. With a couple weeks left in the season, with the Sox only a game or so out, the players were finally suspended and Cleveland pulled away to the pennant.
     
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