Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series

Eliot Asinof - Eight Men Out

The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series

Eliot Asinof

1963

To Gahan and Marty

"As Jackson departed from the Grand Jury room, a small boy clutched at his sleeve and tagged along, after him.

"'Say it ain't so, Joe,' he pleaded. 'Say it ain't so.'"

—Chicago
Herald and Examiner
, September 30, 1920

"The most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America!" These headlines proclaiming the 1919

fix of the World Series startled millions of readers and focused the attention of the entire country on one of the most incredible episodes ever to be enacted in the public eye. Now, after painstaking research, Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of this fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the series to Cincinnati.

Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here are the anguished, guilty pitchers, Eddie Cicotte and "Lefty"

Williams; the bewildered, fixed left fielder, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson; and the victimized third baseman,

"Buck" Weaver. There are also deft portrayals of Charles Comiskey and Ban Johnson, as well as of deeply shocked newspapermen like Ring Lardner. The graphic picture of the American underworld which managed the fix lends eerie fascination to the book.

The narrative powerfully evokes the atmosphere of a war-exhausted nation turning with relief and pride to the Series, and builds to the final tragic shattering of the guilty players' lives. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this compelling American drama will appeal to all interested spectators of the U.S.

scene.

Eliot Asinof
played three years of minor-league baseball in the Philadelphia Phillies farm system. His career as a ballplayer was cut short by the war in 1941, most of which he spent in the Aleutian Islands with the 11th Air Force. Mr. Asinof has published short stories, articles, and has written numerous television and radio scripts. He is the author of
Man on Spikes,
a novel about baseball, which received enthusiastic critical acclaim.

The 1919 World Series sellout and its dramatic aftermath has long remained in the public eye. The Black Sox Scandal, as it came to be called, was reported in its day on the front pages of every major newspaper in the country, then revived in a score of magazine articles and described in histories of modern baseball. But the accounts, at the time and since, have inevitably been fragmentary. No one delved into the scandal's causes and morality, exploded its myths and distortions. The complete story, shrouded in complexity and silence, remained untold. Apparently, the real truth was lying hidden beneath the weight of all the reports and speculations.

The question was, how to uncover it?

Obviously, there were too many diverse ingredients to be uncovered from any one source. No one person could possibly know all the factors. Many of the participants never met each other nor even knew of each other's existence. Top-level gamblers who controlled the action remained hidden from the small-time gamblers who operated on their own. The actions of the eight ballplayers remained unknown to the fixers. And, as revealed in their confessions, much of what each of the players did was a mystery even to their co-conspirators.

My problem, then, was one of weaving together a multitude of obscure, seemingly unrelated threads. A dozen leading newspapers around the country gave a daily, play-by-play account of the series. Columns by noted writers like Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago
Herald and Examiner
and the New York
Evening
World
, Dan Daniel of the New York
Sun
, James Isaminger of the Philadelphia
North American
, Jim Cruisenberry and Irving Vaughn of the Chicago
Tribune
, Warren Brown of the Chicago
American
, and the syndicated Damon Runyan and Ring Lardner all contributed important leads and invaluable insights.

The coverage in baseball's national weekly,
The Sporting News
, published in St. Louis by Taylor Spink, was extensive after the scandal broke. The monthly
Baseball Magazine
was persistently rich with interviews and stories about leading baseball personalities.

As the years went by since that fateful world series, references to its leading participants inescapably kept the scandal in the news. Each of these reports added something to the whole picture. A word here, an action there. For example: Attorney Raymond J. Cannon precipitates an angry flurry in a 1924

Milwaukee courtroom while trying to recoup Shoeless Joe Jackson's unpaid back salary, and suddenly uncovers a vital secret of the 1919 mystery. Arnold Rothstein is murdered in 1928 and the FBI discovers in his files a number of pertinent references to his involvement. John Lardner, son of Ring who reported the series, writes an article in 1938 exposing a previously unreported detail that immediately places another in proper focus. Rothstein's partner, Nat Evans, dies in 1959 permitting Abe Attell, another ex-Rothstein associate, to reveal his participation in the fix. A Chicago Judge, Hugo Friend, who presided at the 1921 Black Sox trial, reveals a hitherto unexposed legal point and throws a fresh light on the devious political machinations surrounding the trial.

Little by little, in this fashion, the story gets pieced together. Hanging over all this research, however, were two severely limiting factors: first, the official documents relating to the scandal had disappeared; and second, most of the participants had died without talking, while those who survive continue to maintain silence.

As for the missing documents, their disappearance is an intriguing story in itself, the main details of which are covered in this book. Three of the eight ballplayers signed confessions, but they were stolen from the Illinois State's Attorney's office before the trial. The last reference to their whereabouts dates back to 1924. Somewhat the same story applies to the voluminous testimony of the turbulent 1920

Grand Jury investigations of gambling in baseball. No one with whom I came in contact had ever seen the transcripts nor had they any idea where they might be found. Fortunately, most of the important testimony, including the confessions, was leaked to the battery of hungry reporters who crowded the hallways outside the Grand Jury room. As for the records of the 1921 trial, with the cooperation of John Stamas, Assistant Illinois State's Attorney in 1960, a thorough search of the basement archives in the Criminal Courts Building was made. It revealed only a despairing recollection from an aging clerk that

"someone else was hunting for them a dozen or so years ago," but they were not to be found, then or now. Once again, this leaves newspaper accounts as the principal source. Since the news of the trial dominated front pages throughout the country, the coverage was adequate.

The silence of the participants presented another formidable obstacle. I covered several thousand miles tracing down a number of surviving members of that great 1919 Chicago ball club. They were aging men, most of them living quietly in retirement. During lengthy meetings with them and members of their families, I found them willing, even eager, to recount the pleasures and frustrations of their baseball careers. But they immediately turned away at the first suggestions of talk about the 1919 world series.

This was generally true not only of the Black Sox, but also of their innocent teammates. Their recollections of the series were guarded, as if the shame of the scandal was to be shared by them all.

On top of this there was a residue of fear. The tradition of silence sprang from a deeply imbedded awareness of the vindictive power of the 1920's gambling-gangster world with which they had all come in contact. I was told by more than one ballplayer that it was safer to keep one's mouth shut about this whole affair.

For all the reticence, however, there are usually leaks with so many people involved. The uncovering of the scandal was as dramatic an experience as this writer has ever had. A persistent siege on the stronghold of secrecy inevitably reveals an opening. In time, there were many. Many of the sources spoke in complete privacy and choose to remain anonymous. Many dialogues and incidents recounted in the book are the result of invaluable reminiscenses of these men.

Wherever possible, it seemed appropriate to reconstruct the story of the Black Sox in the jargon of the participants. Based on all that has been written about the players and on the additional information I have gathered, I have sought to recapture the turmoil of their experience. Many of the incidents reported in the book inevitably represent a composite of sources. Newspaper accounts of the games and confessions indicated, for instance, how the players actually threw the Series. The book, then, stands as a reconstruction of the Black Sox scandal drawn from a rich variety of sources and from research into all the scattered written material concerning it.

I am indebted to many for their assistance. For those passages relating to the history of baseball, I relied on the excellent works of Robert Smith and Dr. Harold Seymour. In Cooperstown, N.Y., baseball's historian, Lee Allen, generously offered his knowledge and the documents of the Hall of Fame's excellent library. In Chicago, the staff of the Historical Society Library was more than cooperative. The New York Public Library and its newspaper annex were invaluable sources.

My appreciation also goes to Mervin Block of the Chicago
American
, and Bill Surface, formerly associated with the Chicago
Tribune
. I am especially grateful to the noted Chicagoan, James T. Farrell, who supplied a fund of names, events, and dates from his amazing memory. Many of these names led to others. Much of his data opened doors to previously unexplored areas. Above all, he encouraged me to pursue a central theme that gave the work its real reason for being: the story of the 1919 World Series scandal must be centered around the lives of those eight men. Why did they do it? What were the pressures of the baseball world, of America in 1919 itself, that would turn decent, normal, talented men to engage in such a betrayal?

—E.A.

"Who is he anyhow, an actor?"

"No."

"A dentist?"

"…No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919."

"Fixed the World Series?" I repeated.

The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely
happened
, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people—with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.

"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.

"He just saw the opportunity."

"Why isn't he in jail?"

"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man."

F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby

"Arnold Rothstein is a man who waits in doorways…a mouse, waiting in the doorway for his cheese."

William J. Fallon

On the morning of October 1, 1919, the sun rose in a clear blue sky over the city of Cincinnati. The temperature would climb to a sultry 83° by midafternoon. It was almost too good to be true, for the forecast had been ominous. From early morning, the sidewalks were jammed. A brightly clad band marched through the streets playing "There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight." Stores were open but business came to a standstill. There was only one thing on everybody's lips: The World Series.

Cincinnati had never been host to a World Series before. Nor did its citizens dream, at the start of the season, that the Reds would do much better than last year's weak third in the National League. Somehow the Reds had worked a miracle, which is exactly what the fans called their triumph. For winning the pennant, Manager Pat Moran was known as the "Miracle Man."

"Cincinnati is nuts with baseball!" wrote syndicated columnist Bugs Baer. "They ought to call this town Cincin
nutty
!"

The first two games of the Series were to be played here and every seat had long since been sold. Ticket scalpers were getting the phenomenal price of $50 a pair. Every hotel room was taken; visitors found themselves jammed three and four to a room, thankful to have a bed. In private homes, families crowded into one room and hung hastily made signs Rooms For Rent on their front doors. City officials, recognizing the extraordinary conditions, announced that the public parks would be available to those who could not secure accommodations. Visitors slept on wooden benches, officially assured that added police patrols would protect them from thieves.