Black Sox Scandal Totally Explained

Everything about The Black Sox Scandal totally explained

The Black Sox Scandal refers to a number of events that took place around and during the play of the 1919 World Series. The name "Black Sox" also refers to the Chicago White Sox team from that year. Eight members of the Chicago franchise were banned from baseball for throwing (intentionally losing) games, giving the victory to the Cincinnati Reds.
   The conspiracy was the brainchild of White Sox first baseman Arnold "Chick" Gandil, who had longstanding ties to petty underworld figures. He persuaded Joseph "Sport" Sullivan, a friend and professional gambler, that the fix could be pulled off. New York gangster Arnold Rothstein supplied the major connections needed. The money was supplied by Abe Attell, former featherweight boxing champion, who accepted the offer.
   Gandil enlisted several of his teammates, motivated by a dislike of penurious club owner Charles Comiskey, to implement the fix. All of them were members of a faction on the team that resented the better-educated players on the team, such as Eddie Collins, Ray Schalk and Red Faber. By most contemporary accounts, the two factions almost never spoke to each other on the field. Starting pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude "Lefty" Williams, outfielder Oscar "Happy" Felsch, and infielder Charles "Swede" Risberg were all involved. Buck Weaver was also asked to participate, but refused; he was later banned with the others for knowing of the fix but not reporting it. Utility infielder Fred McMullin wasn't initially approached, but got word of the fix and threatened to report the others unless he was in on the payoff. Outfielder "Shoeless" Joe Jackson was also mentioned as a participant, though his involvement is disputed.
   Stories of the "Black Sox" scandal have usually included Comiskey in its gallery of subsidiary villains, focusing in particular on his intentions regarding a clause in Cicotte's contract that would have paid Cicotte an additional $10,000 bonus for winning 30 games. According to Eliot Asinof's account of the events, Eight Men Out, Cicotte was "rested" for the season's final two weeks after reaching his 29th win, presumably to deny him the bonus. However, the record is perhaps more complex. Cicotte won his 29th game on September 19, had an ineffective start on September 24, and was pulled after a few innings in a tuneup on the season's final day, September 28 (the World Series beginning 3 days later). Reportedly, Cicotte agreed to the fix on the same day he won his 29th game, before he could have known of any efforts to deny him a chance to win his 30th.

The Series

Even before the Series started on October 1, there were rumors among gamblers that the series was fixed, and a sudden influx of money being bet on Cincinnati caused the odds against them to fall rapidly. These rumors also reached the press box where a number of correspondents, including Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago Herald and Examiner and ex-player and manager Christy Mathewson, resolved to compare notes on any plays and players that they felt were questionable. Despite the rampant rumors, gamblers continued to wager heavily against the White Sox. On the second pitch of the Series, Eddie Cicotte struck Cincinnati leadoff hitter Morrie Rath in the back, signaling the players' willingness to go through with the fix.
   The extent of Jackson's participation in the conspiracy remains controversial. Jackson maintained that he was innocent. He had a .375 batting average, claimed to have thrown out five baserunners, and handled thirty chances in the outfield with no errors during that series. However, he batted far worse in the five games that the White Sox lost, amassing a batting average of .268 in those games. He totaled three RBIs, from a home run and a double in game 8, when the Reds had a large lead and the series was all but over. Still, in that game a long foul ball was caught at the fence with runners on second and third, depriving Jackson of a chance to drive in the runners. The stats also show that in the other games the White Sox lost, only five of Jackson's at bats came with a man in scoring position, and he advanced the runners twice.
   Jackson, generally considered a strong defensive player, was unable to prevent a critical two-run triple to left during the series (in fact, during the series three triples were hit to left where Jackson was playing, despite the fact that most triples get hit to right or right-center). Jackson told sportswriter Westbrook Pegler that he'd "only poked at the ball" during many World Series at-bats. Most damningly, Jackson admitted under oath to accepting $5,000 from the gamblers. One play in particular has been subjected to much scrutiny. In the fifth inning of game 4, with a Cincinnati player on second, Jackson fielded a single hit to left field and threw home. The run scored and the White Sox lost the game 2-0. Chick Gandil, another leader of the fix, later admitted to yelling at Cicotte to intercept the throw. Cicotte, whose guilt is undisputed, made three errors in that fifth inning alone.
   Another argument, presented in the book Eight Men Out, is that because Jackson was illiterate, he'd little awareness of the seriousness of the plot, and thus he consented to it only when Risberg threatened him and his family.
   However, years later, all of the implicated players said that Jackson was never present at any of the meetings they'd with the gamblers. Lefty Williams, Jackson's roommate, later said that they only brought up Jackson in hopes of giving them more credibility with the gamblers.
   However, the majors were not so forgiving. The damage to the sport's reputation led the owners to appoint Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first Commissioner of Baseball. The day after the players were acquitted, Landis issued his own verdict:

Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and doesn't promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.

With this statement, all eight implicated White Sox were banned from Major League Baseball for life, as were two other players believed to be involved. With seven of their best players permanently sidelined in their prime, the White Sox crashed into seventh place in and wouldn't be a factor in a pennant race again until, five years after Comiskey's death. They wouldn't win another American League pennant until 1959 (a then-record forty-year gap) nor another World Series until 2005, prompting some to speculate about a Curse of the Black Sox. 2005 White Sox center fielder Aaron Rowand, in an interview for the official World Series film DVD, compared the 2004 Red Sox with the 2005 White Sox: "If they could break their 'curse', so could we."
After being banned, Risberg and several other members of the Black Sox tried to organize a three-state barnstorming tour. However, they were forced to scuttle those plans after Landis let it be known that anyone who played with or against them would be banned from baseball for life. They then announced plans to play a regular exhibition game every Sunday in Chicago, but the Chicago City Council threatened to cancel the license of any ballpark that hosted them.

Origin of "Black Sox"

Although many believe the Black Sox name to be related to the dark and corrupt nature of the conspiracy, the term "Black Sox" may already have existed before the fix. There is a story that the name "Black Sox" derived from parsimonious owner Charles Comiskey's refusal to pay for the players' uniforms to be laundered, instead insisting that the players themselves pay for the cleaning. As the story goes, the players refused and subsequent games saw the White Sox play in progressively filthier uniforms as dust, sweat and grime collected on the white, woolen uniforms until they took on a much darker shade.
On the other hand, Eliot Asinof in his book Eight Men Out makes no such connection, referring early on to filthy uniforms but referring to the term "Black Sox" only in connection with the scandal.

In popular culture

Eliot Asinof's book 8 Men Out is the best-known history of the scandal. Director John Sayles' film film based on Asinof's book is a dramatization of the scandal, focusing largely on Buck Weaver as the one banned player who didn't take any money. It stars John Cusack as Weaver, David Strathairn as Eddie Cicotte, D.B. Sweeney as Joe Jackson, and Sayles himself as then-sportswriter Ring Lardner---to whom Sayles bears a near-exact resemblance. W.P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe is the story of an Iowa farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield after hearing a mysterious voice; Shoeless Joe Jackson and other members of the Black Sox come to play on his field. The novel was adapted into the hit film Field of Dreams. Also, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, a minor character named Meyer Wolfsheim was said to have helped in the Black Sox scandal, though this is purely fictional. In explanatory notes accompanying the novel's 75th anniversary edition, editor Matthew Bruccoli describes the character as being directly based on Arnold Rothstein.
Also, in the film The Godfather Part II, the fictional gangster Hyman Roth alludes to the scandal when he says, "I've loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919."

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