By SHAUN PAYNE

Single games had been thrown before and in 1877 the first betting scandal hit the national game. That year the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that the National League’s Louisville Grays had been involved in a fix in October of 1877. Later that year four Louisville players were banned from baseball.¹ Corruption continued into the 20^th Century, but owners ignored it because they felt it would ruin baseball as an industry.²

Rumors of fixing the 1919 World Series were swirling before the first game. The Chicago White Sox were heavily favored over the Cincinnati Reds, but the odds mysteriously began to shift away from Chicago prior to the first game.³ Arnold Rothstein, a prominent New York gambler known as “The Big Bankroll,” had agreed to finance the fix for $80,000 dollars. As he placed bets on the Reds to win, rumors of a fix circulated among other gamblers. The odds shifted from 8-5 favoring the White Sox to even money, as the “smart money” was going on the Reds.⁴ The New York Times covered the betting, but the media seemed to think the change in odds was because of Chicago’s ace pitcher Eddie Cicotte’s (pronounced see-cott) possible arm injury.

Syndicated sportswriter Hugh Fullerton covered the Series and picked the White Sox to beat the Reds:

Chicago’s White Sox dope to win the world’s series in five out of eight games. The extension of the series to nine games gives the Reds three victories and prolongs the struggle, which, in a four out of seven series, the White Sox probably would have won in four out of five—on the dope.⁵

But, Fullerton, before the first game, noticed the trends of gamblers in his hotel lobby. He sent word of the rumors to all the papers carrying his column and warned people to avoid betting on the series: “Advise All Not to Bet on This Series. Ugly Rumors Afloat.”⁶

Rumors continued throughout the World Series. After game one, which the White Sox lost 9-1, J.G. Taylor Spink, publisher of The Sporting News, often referred to as the Bible of baseball, informed American League president Ban Johnson of the rumors surrounding the series. Johnson seemed to deny these rumors. When White Sox owner Charles Comiskey expressed his concern about a fix, Johnson responded, “That is the yelp of a beaten cur.”⁷

Fullerton’s tone continued to suggest that the White Sox were not playing with honest intentions. He questioned the spirit of the Sox after game two, which they lost by a score of 4-2:

“…beyond the fact that the breaks favored the Reds, that the White Sox hardest drives were misaimed and misplaced, beyond the fact that [Cincinnati centerfielder Ed] Rousch made one of the greatest catches ever seen in a world series, there is the fact that the Reds showed more fight, more punch and more spirit than the White Sox did. It seemed to be spirit, enthusiasm and confidence against mechanical perfection, and it was the dash and moral of the Reds that made their victory over Williams possible…The White Sox showed little of the fighting spirit that made them champions in their own circuit. It seemed as if they held the Reds rather cheap and disdained to get excited over so small an affair as a world’s series, and although after they were beaten they attacked furiously in inning after inning, they delayed too long.”⁸

Fullerton continued to hint that the White Sox were not playing their best baseball in his report on game three, which the Sox won 3-0:

It is true that the old White Sox machine was not working as smoothly as it usually does. Whether it was carburetor or ignition trouble is hard to say, but she missed on several cylinders and the team won with three runs a game that should have been sewed up in the second round.⁹

Fullerton reported on the misfortunes of pitcher Eddie Cicotte, a man involved in the game-fixing, in game four, which the Sox lost 2-0: 

Fullerton first made mention of the suspicions of crookedness in his October 6 column, before game 5:

There is more ugly talk and more suspicion among the fans and among others in this series than there ever has been in any world’s series. The rumors of crookedness of fixed games and plots are thick. It is not necessary to dignify them by telling that they are, but the sad part is that such suspicion of baseball is so widespread.¹¹

Fullerton’s frustration became clear in his report on game 5, October 7, which the Reds won 5-0:

This game to me is the most remarkable because of the complete upsetting of all form in baseball. Felsch perhaps will not misjudge two fly balls in a season, and he misjudged an easy one yesterday. He also helped when Jackson misjudged Eller’s fly.¹²

Fullerton’s reports continued to have a cynical tone in his coverage of game six, October 8, 1919, which the White Sox won 5-4 in 10 innings:

Just which team deserved to win is hard to tell. It looked to me as if the national commission ought to have charged each with a defeat. The White Sox defense crumbled, broke and staggered around until it handed the Reds four runs, and the scriber and followers of the alleged pastime were quarreling over the lower berths.

In his final report of the 1919 World Series, on October 10, 1919, after the Reds won game eight 10-5 to clinch a five-games-to-three victory, Fullerton made several shocking statements: 

There will be a great deal written and talked about this world’s series. There will be a lot of inside stuff that never will be printed, but the truth will remain that the team which was the hardest working, which fought hardest and which stuck together won. The team which excelled in mechanical skill, which had the ability, individually, to win, was beaten…

The Sox were missing on several [cylinders]. They played the game as a team only through one game and part of another and they deserved defeat.

It is not up to me to decide why they did such things. That all probably will come out in the wash. They were licked and licked good and proper, deserved it, and got it.

Yesterday’s game in all probability is the last that ever will be played in any world’s series. If the club owners and those who have the interests of the game at heart have listened during this series they will call off the annual inter-league contests…

Yesterday’s game also means the disruption of the Chicago White Sox as a ball club. There are seven men on the team who will not be there when the gong sounds next Spring and some of them will not be in either major league.¹³
 

The Cincinnati Reds went on to win the best-of-nine series in eight games, but the rumors of a fix did not go away after it ended. Fullerton, in the New York World, continued to hint that the series was fixed. He even called for owners to do away with the World Series in the future because of the tainted play suspected.¹⁴

Many baseball insiders, including many in the sports media, were in denial that a World Series could possibly be fixed. Christy Matthewson, a former player who analyzed the series for the New York Times, declared baseball was not crooked and the World Series could not have been fixed in the October 16, 1919 issue.¹⁵

Hugh Fullerton published his suspicions in the New York Evening World. His December 15, 1919 column did not explicitly state that the series was fixed, but denounced corruption in baseball. The New York paper only agreed to publish Fullerton’s work if he “toned down” his accusations. Chicago papers refused to publish Fullerton because they worried that baseball would take legal action if they did.¹⁶

Leading baseball publications ridiculed Fullerton. F.C. Lane’s Baseball Magazine and J. G. Taylor Spink’s The Sporting News called Fullerton a rumormonger.¹⁷Reach’s Baseball Guide, in 1919, said anyone who suggested that a fixed series was “a menace to the game.”¹⁸The Sporting News suggested that Jewish gamblers, attempting to ruin the national pastime, started the rumors of a fix.¹⁹

News of corruption dissipated for months. Then, on September 2, 1920 the Chicago Herald and Examiner reported that the August 31 Philadelphia Phillies-Chicago Cubs game had been fixed.²⁰ Cubs’ President William Veeck, Sr. received six telegrams and two phone calls before the game indicating gamblers tampered with the game. Veeck ordered Cubs’ manager Mitchell to bench the scheduled pitcher, Claude Hendrix because of the suspicions.²¹ A member of the chapter, Jim Crusenberry, published a letter on the front page of the Chicago Tribune sports section calling for an investigation of the August 31 Phillies-Cubs game and the 1919 World Series. The letter resulted in public outrage and demanded attention.²²

Bill Veeck called on the Chicago chapter of the Baseball Writer’s Association to assist in an investigation of the Cubs-Phillies game:

I want the baseball reporters of the Chicago dailies to meet and select from their member a committee of three to investigate the charges in connection with the most thorough investigation, including the engaging of detectives and such attorneys as the sporting writers’ committee determined on…

This scandal—whether true or untrue—is more than the mere bustness of the Chicago baseball club. 

Baseball belongs to the American people. For baseball to be unclean would not only be, in American life, a sporting calamity but a moral calamity.²³

Five days after the Herald and Examiner report of the fix, a grand jury of Cook County, Illinois convened to investigate the game. During the initial investigation the grand jury expanded the investigation to include the 1919 World Series.²⁴ Suspicion also fell on Cubs firstbaseman Fred Merkle, infielder Buck Herzog, and pitcher Paul Carter, involving the Cubs-Phillies fix. There was no conclusive proof uncovered against Hendrix and no evidence at all against Carter, Herzog or Merkle.²⁵

On September 24 Giants’ pitcher Rube Benton came into the picture. He testified before the grand jury that Buck Herzog offered him $800 to throw a game. He also testified that teammate Hal Chase tipped him off that the 1919 World Series had been fixed, that Chase won $40,000 betting on the Series, and implicated four White Sox players: firstbaseman Chick Gandil, outfielder Happy Felsch, pitcher Lefty Williams and pitcher Eddie Cicotte. The New York Times made this front-page news.²⁶

During the grand jury investigation, on September 27, 1920, in the Philadelphia North American, sportswriter Jimmy Isaminger interviewed Bill Maharg, a gambler involved in the 1919 World Series fix. Maharg told of he and Bill Burns’ involvement in the fix and Abe Attell’s role in organizing the fix. Papers around the country picked up the story of these three gamblers and the Black Sox Scandal was uncovered.²⁷

On September 28 bigger news broke in the scandal. White Sox outfielder Joe Jackson and pitcher Eddie Cicotte admitted their involvement in conspiring with gamblers to throw the World Series. Cicotte said that Chick Gandil had originated the plot. Also, the eight White Sox implicated during the grand jury hearings were indicted for fraud: left fielder Joe Jackson, third baseman Buck Weaver, pitcher Eddie Cicotte, pitcher Lefty Williams, shortstop Swede Risberg, center fielder Happy Felsch, first baseman Chick Gandil and infielder Fred McMullin. This got front-page national coverage. After these confessions, White Sox player Oscar Felsch admitted he receieved $5,000 from gamblers in an interview with reporter Harry Reutlinger of the Chicago American.²⁸

The Chicago Herald and Examiner reported the reaction of a young fan to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson’s confession on the front page, September 29, 1920:

As Jackson stepped out of the building, one little urchin in the crowd grabbed him by his coat sleeve.

“It ain’t true is it, Joe?” he said.

“Yes, kid. I’m afraid it is,” Jackson replied.

“Well, I’d never have thought it,” the boy exclaimed.²⁹

The Black Sox Scandal began to disappear until the trial began in July of 1921 in Chicago. The Chicago Evening Post made the admissions of Eddie Cicotte and Joe Jackson’s confessions into the evidence of the case their lead story on July 23.³⁰ Peter D. Vroon covered the case for the Post in detail: 

The confessions of “Eddie” Cicotte, “Joe” Jackson and Claude Williams relative to the alleged conspiracy to “throw” the world series of 1919, are admissible as evidence and they were related to the jury.

Because of the scandal, baseball dissolved the three-man National Commission that ran the game in favor of a single baseball commissioner. They chose federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis over such candidates as former president Taft, General John J. Pershing, and General Leonard Wood.³¹

Landis was a self-promoter that took himself very seriously. He once sentenced a seventy-five-year-old bank robber to fifteen years in jail and tried to extradite the Kaiser for declaring free speech expendable during wartime.³²

The Black Sox were acquitted and celebrated with the jury after the case.³³ But baseball’s commissioner Judge Landis banned the eight “Black Sox” from professional baseball anyway:

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

Just keep in mind that regardless of the verdict of juries, baseball is entirely competent to protect itself against the crooks, both inside and outside the game…

Until these confessions can be explained away not one of these men can play on the White Sox.³⁴

Peter Vroon reported that the players may attempt to be reinstated, but also included Judge Landis’ comments that until the confessions can be explained away, the men would remain ineligible. Vroon reported: 

It is possible that some or all of the players will attempt by legal means to be reinstated, and some delicate legal problems are involved if some action is taken.³⁵

Of the eight White Sox banned, the most talented and well known was left fielder “Shoeless Joe” Jackson. In 1919 he finished fourth in the league with a .351 batting average and was among the league leaders in runs batted in, hits, slugging percentage, and total bases.³⁶ Jackson spent the rest of his life playing on semi-pro and outlaw league teams and opened a liquor store in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. He continued to maintain his innocence until his death in 1951.³⁷

White Sox third baseman Buck Weaver dedicated his life to returning to Major League Baseball. He continued to make appeals to Judge Landis, which were denied every time. He died in 1956.³⁸

Fred McMullin went to work in the office of the U.S. marshal in Los Angeles after the scandal. He disappeared from the public eye and died in 1952.³⁹

Lefty Williams continued to play baseball and operated a pool hall after the trail. He went on to the West Coast where he operated a garden nursery until his death in 1959.⁴⁰

Happy Felsch continued to play baseball, then became a crane operator, ran a tavern and a grocery store in Milwaukee. He was the most willing to talk about the scandal and was the principle source in Eliot Asinof’s book Eight Men Out. He died in 1964.⁴¹

Eddie Cicotte returned to his hometown of Detroit after the scandal. He worked as a paymaster for the Ford Motor Company then raised strawberries until his death in 1969.⁴²

Chick Gandil continued to play ball after the scandal then became a plumber. He continued to maintain that he and his teammates did not go through with the plot to throw the series. He died in 1970.⁴³

Swede Risburg, after the scandal, played ball, operated a dairy farm, then moved to northern California. In 1927 he claimed that the Detroit Tigers threw games to the White Sox in 1917. He died in 1975, the last surviving member of the Black Sox.⁴⁴

Shaun Payne writes a column entitled "The Payneful Side of Baseball" on the web site, www.purebaseball.com

¹ Burt Solomon, The Baseball Timeline, New York: Avon Books, 1997, p. 23.

² Daniel E. Ginsburg, The Fix Is In: A History of Baseball Gambling and Game Fixing Scandals. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 1995, p. 100.

³ Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward, Baseball: An Illustrated History, New York: Knopf, 1994, p. 135.

⁴ Ginsburg, p. 117.

⁵ Hugh S. Fullerton, “Fullerton Says Sox Dope to Win 5 Out of 8 Games,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, October 1, 1919, p. 8.

⁶Ibid.

⁷ Solomon, p.231.

⁸ Fullerton, “Failure of Sox to Hit in Pinches Caused Defeat,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, October 3, 1919, p. 12.

⁹ Fullerton, “Dope Proves True on Kerr and Fisher, Says Fullerton,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, October 4, 1919, p. 12

¹⁰ Fullerton, “Cicotte Beats Himself By Trying Too Hard, Says Fullerton,” Chicago Herald and Excaminer, October, 5, 1919, p. 3.

¹¹ Fullerton, “White Sox Dope to Win This One,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, October 6, 1919, p. 11.

¹² Fullerton, “No Dope, Less Hope Is Way Hugh Puts It,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, October 7, 1919, p. 10.

¹³ Fullerton, “Fullerton Says Seven Members of the White Sox Will Be Missing Next Spring,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, October 10, 1919, p. 9.

¹⁴ Burns, p. 141.

¹⁵ “Baseball is Not Crooked in Spite of Big Bets on Games, Declares Christy Matthewson,” New York Times, October 16, 1919, p. 14.

¹⁶ Ginsburg, p. 131.

¹⁷ Ginsburg, p. 132.

¹⁸ Burns, p. 141.

¹⁹ Burns, p. 142.

²⁰ Solomon, p. 238.

²¹ Ginsburg, p. 133.

²² Ginsburg, pp. 133-134.

²³ “Warned of Fixed Game, Says Veeck; Demands Inquiry,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, October 5, 1920, pp. 1-2.

²⁴ Solomon, p. 238.

²⁵ Ginsburg, p. 134.

²⁶ “Benton Tells of Bribe Offer to Lose Game,” New York Times, September 24, 1920, p. 1-2.

²⁷ Ginsburg, p. 136.

²⁸ Ginsburg, p. 139.

²⁹ “Eight White Sox Indicted,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, September 29, 1920, p. 1.

³⁰ Peter D. Vroon, “Cicotte and Jackson’s Confessions Admitted,” Chicago Evening Post, July 23, 1919, pp. 1-2.

³¹ Burns, p. 143.

³² Burns, p. 144.

³³ “Chicago ‘Black Sox’ Acquitted,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 1921, pp. 1-2.

³⁴ Vroon, “Landis Bars Acquitted Sox From League Ball”, Chicago Evening Post, August 3, 1921.

³⁵Ibid.
 
 
 

³⁶ Ginsburg, p. 105.

³⁷ Ginsburg, p. 159.

³⁸ Ginsburg, p. 160.

³⁹ Ginsburg, p. 160.

⁴⁰ Ginsburg, p. 160.

⁴¹ Ginsburg, p. 160-161.

⁴² Ginsburg, p. 161.

⁴³Ibid.

⁴⁴Ibid.