Also 1944, 1969, and 1994; recalling a black eye for baseball (actually, two)
This story was written for and appears in MLB’s World Series Media Guide.
In the bottom of the first inning of Game 1, at Cincinnati, light-hitting second sacker Morrie Rath took the first pitch for a strike. The next pitch hit him square in the back, a prearranged signal to gamblers that The Fix was in.
White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte, a 29-game winner known for impeccable control of his array of sinking pitches — he had hit only two batters in 306 innings in the regular season — had found, at his insistence, $10,000 in crisp bills under the pillow at his hotel room that morning. His fellow Black Sox were on board with the plan, too, though not all were paid up front. They held no grudge against the club or its owner, Charles Comiskey; they simply saw an opportunity to maximize their opportunity with little risk of being found out. Some members of the crosstown Cubs, they believed, had exceeded their full-season salaries in return for “laying down” against the Boston Red Sox in the prior year’s World Series. .
Besides Cicotte, the Chicago pitching staff boasted Lefty Williams and Dick Kerr (Red Faber was hurt); in the field they offered star second baseman Eddie Collins and outfielder Joe Jackson, with Ty Cobb the game’s most feared hitter, plus catcher Ray Schalk who, like Collins, is in the Hall of Fame. Jackson would have been, too, if only …
How could the Reds compete? Their pitchers were youngsters Dutch Ruether and Hod Eller, plus veteran Slim Sallee; in the field they boasted two first-rate players, Heinie Groh and Edd Roush, and a fading star in Jake Daubert, just acquired from Brooklyn, at first base.
Cicotte’s first-inning plunking of Rath wrinkled the noses of men in the pressbox as well as Chisox manager Kid Gleason. Rumors had swirled around the country for days of involvement in the outcome by the “sporting set.” Yet the White Sox, clear favorites in the betting lines only days before, had rapidly sunk to underdog status by the day of the game.
Cicotte and his Pale Hose, world champions in 1917, lost the opener by a score of 9–1. The second game at Redland Field went against them, too, with suspicious plays in the field dooming them to defeat, especially in the fourth inning, when Cincinnati scored three of its four runs off Williams.
Games 1 and 2 had certainly been “tossed,” scholars today agree — but at whose behest? Former featherweight boxing champion Abe Attell, now a “fancy man” and gambler, also served as bodyguard for Arnold Rothstein, the Big Brain behind a range of nefarious activities. Attell and others had asked to back the scheme but he had declined — cleverly, so as later to provide deniability — while preferring to let others supply the backing for the fix. Attell faked a telegram from “A.R.” to convince the players that funding of the scheme was assured.
This space is too constrained to tell the story of how eight men on the team betrayed the public trust, and ultimately were banned from baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, but earlier this month I covered the subject in depth here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/opinion/black-sox-scandal-1919.html. That op-ed essay provides links to film footage and the best current knowledge, largely from members of the Society for American Baseball Research (https://sabr.org/eight-myths-out). For this edition of the World Series Media Guide, let me skirt the dizzying machinations of the gamblers and the players who conspired with them and stick to the game as it was on display in the 1919 World Series.
The eight men Landis would rule “out” were shortstop Swede Risberg, first baseman Chick Gandil, third baseman Buck Weaver, center fielder Hap Felsch, infielder Fred McMullin, plus Cicotte, Williams, and Jackson. They may have been double crossed by the gamblers after Game 2 when promised payments were not forthcoming. They may then have double-crossed the double-crossers and played to win behind Dick Kerr, who tossed a shutout in Game 3, the first played in Chicago. Game 4 of this nine-game Series (expanded to take advantage of fans’ renewed enthusiasm after war-shortened seasons in 1918 and 1919) went to the Reds as Cicotte pitched well but received no batting support.
The Black Sox probably if not certainly played subsequent games on the level, yet in Game 5 their club was shut out once again, bringing the Reds within one victory of the required five. An extra-inning victory by Kerr at Cincinnati in Game 6 breathed life into the fading hopes of the Chicago faithful. And when Cicotte followed with a 4–1 win in Game 7, enabling a return to Comiskey Park, manager Gleason thought there was no way his club could lose, despite being down four games to three.
But Lefty Williams lost again, this time blowing up in the first inning before he could retire the side. The Reds scored four on their way to a 10–5 victory and the title of world champions.
“The Reds beat the greatest ball team that ever went into a World Series,” Gleason said. “But it wasn’t the real White Sox. They played baseball for me only a couple or three of the eight days.”
Edd Roush of the Reds reflected in his later years, in his interview with Larry Ritter for The Glory of Their Times: “Sure, the 1919 White Sox were good. But the 1919 Cincinnati Reds were better. I’ll believe that ’til my dying day.”
It took nearly a year before the coup was confirmed. In September 1920 Jackson and Cicotte confessed to a grand jury, and so did Williams and Felsch. Rothstein, professedly shocked that he had been accused, testified that he had lost money with his bets and had no knowledge of the scheme carried out in his name.
Jackson went on to tell investigators various tales, reneging on prior testimony. He feared retaliation from his indicted teammate Risberg. “The Swede’s a hard guy,” he said. At a trial of the eight in August 1921, jurors acquitted them all, as well as some lower-level gamblers who had taken part; while there was little doubt of what had taken place, the jurors could not be convinced that White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, or anyone else, could prove they had suffered harm: gate receipts were way up in 1920.
Owners, fearful for the game’s reputation, hired Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as commissioner in late 1920. Landis’s first act, after the Black Sox were acquitted on August 2, 1921, was to ban them for life. He made it stick, too. The Judge, as Jackson and the others found out, was also a hard guy.
75 years ago:
The Subway Series came to be a baseball classic, describing the many confrontations between the Yankees in the Bronx and their counterparts in Manhattan and Brooklyn. But the first October matchup between Gotham rivals came in 1921 and 1922, when the Yanks and Giants shared the Polo Grounds; no need for a subway. That situation describes the World Series of 1944, the only one in which the St. Louis Browns ever played. (The first same-city World Series was Chicago in 1906, but in separate ballparks.)
The Browns lost to the Cardinals, with whom they shared Sportsman’s Park, in six closely contested games. The loss of talent to the war effort in that year was less harsh for the Cardinals than in 1945: they retained Stan Musial, Marty Marion, Whitey Kurowski, and Walker Cooper. The Browns, meanwhile were an aging, slap-hitting bunch who somehow nipped the Tigers for the pennant, led by a fine crew of starting pitchers, notably Jack Kramer and Nelson Potter.
50 Years Ago:
The greatest upset victor in World Series history? Let’s see: 1906 Hitless Wonder White Sox? The Miracle Boston Braves of 1914? The ragtag Cincinnati Reds of 1990? It may well have been the New York Mets, who defeated the Baltimore Orioles, successors to the St. Louis Browns, in four straight games after losing the opener.
The Orioles were a juggernaut, winning 109 games and then sweeping the Twins in their three-game divisional Series, the American League’s first. All-Stars and future Hall of Famers were sprinkled through their lineup like confetti: Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, Dave McNally.
The Mets also swept their NLDS rivals, the Atlanta Braves, but there the comparison ends. Born as an expansion franchise in 1962 — when they lost 120 games — they finished last or next to last in each of their campaigns prior to this one. But in 1969, under new manager Gil Hodges, a platooning nine highlighted by everyday players Cleon Jones. Tommie Agee, and Bud Harrelson coalesced with brilliant young pitching — Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, Nolan Ryan — to bring home the pennant with a whirlwind rush past the Chicago Cubs.
In the Series some unexpected home-run heroics by Donn Clendenon and Al Weis capped a season that seems no less amazing 50 years later than it did then.
25 Years Ago:
The temptation here was to have left the section utterly blank, as a dispute between labor and management (some call it a lockout, others a strike) brought a spectacular regular season to a close on August 12, 1994. Not only did the sides fail to settle their differences in time to play the Series, but the unsavory fight stretched into April of 1995.
World Series Centennial Review: 1919 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.