From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Contents 1 Fallout 1.1 The banned players 2 Origin of "Black Sox" 3 In popular culture 4 See also 5 Citations 6 Sources

The rumors dogged the club throughout the 1920 season, as the White Sox battled the Cleveland Indians for the AL pennant that year, and stories of corruption touched players on other clubs as well. At last, in September 1920, a grand jury was convened to investigate.

During the investigation two players, Eddie Cicotte and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, confessed. On the eve of their final season series, the White Sox were in a virtual tie for first place with the Cleveland Indians. The Sox would need to win all 3 and then hope for Cleveland to stumble, as the Indians had more games in hand. Despite the season being on the line, White Sox owner Charles Comiskey suspended the seven White Sox still in the majors (Arnold "Chick" Gandil had left the team and was playing semi-pro ball). The White Sox lost 2 of 3 in their final series against the St. Louis Browns, and those two losses made the difference, as they finished in second place, two games behind Cleveland.

Prior to the trial, key evidence went missing from the Cook County Courthouse, including the signed confessions of Cicotte and Jackson, who subsequently recanted their confessions, as discussed on p.257 of Eight Men Out. The players were acquitted. Some years later, the missing confessions reappeared in the possession of Comiskey's lawyer. (Eight Men Out, p.289-291)

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 does not 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. The White Sox would not win another league championship 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."

• Eddie Cicotte, pitcher.
• Oscar "Happy" Felsch, center fielder.
• Arnold "Chick" Gandil, first baseman. The leader of the players who were in on the fix. He did not play in the majors in 1920, playing semi-pro ball instead. In 1956, he expressed remorse for the fix, but claimed that he and his colleagues abandoned it and kept the money after rumors spread that the fix was in.
• "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. The star outfielder, one of the best hitters in the game, confessed to accepting money from the gamblers. He later recanted his confession and protested his innocence to no effect until his death in 1951. He was the first of the eight to die.
• Fred McMullin, utility infielder. McMullin would not have been included in the fix had he not overheard player conversations. He threatened to tell all if not included.
• Charles "Swede" Risberg, shortstop. Risberg was Gandil's assistant. He lived on until 1975, the last survivor of the eight.
• George "Buck" Weaver, third baseman. Weaver attended the initial meetings, and while he did not go in on the fix, he knew about it. Landis banished him on this basis, stating "Men associating with crooks and gamblers could expect no leniency." On January 13, 1922 Buck unsuccessfully applied for reinstatement. Like Jackson, Weaver continued to profess his innocence to successive Baseball Commissioners to no effect. He died in 1956.
• Claude "Lefty" Williams, pitcher. 0-3 with a 6.63 ERA for the series. Only one other pitcher in the entire history of baseball - George Frazier of the 1981 New York Yankees - has ever lost three games in one World Series. Frazier, presumably, was not trying to lose them.

Also banned was Joe Gedeon, second baseman for the St. Louis Browns. Gedeon knew Risberg, had heard of the fix from him, and placed bets. He informed Comiskey of the fix after the Series in an effort to gain a reward. He was banned for life by Landis along with the eight White Sox.^[1]

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.^[2][3] 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.

Eliot Asinof's book, Eight Men Out, is the best-known history of the scandal. Director John Sayles' film Eight Men Out, based on Asinof's book, is a dramatization of the scandal, focusing largely on Buck Weaver as the one banned player who did not 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 J. 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."

• 1919 World Series
• Major League Baseball scandals
• Hugh Fullerton

• Chicago Historical Society: Black Sox
• Famous American Trials: The Black Sox Trial
• Asinof, Eliot. Eight Men Out. New York: Henry Holt. 1963. ISBN 0-8050-6537-7.
• Ginsburg, Daniel E. The Fix Is In: A History of Baseball Gambling and Game Fixing Scandals. McFarland and Co., 1995. 317 pages. ISBN 0-7864-1920-2.
• Pietrusza, David Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003. ISBN 0-7867-1250-3