Black Sox Scandal of 1919

Pete Rose.

Owner collusion.

Pittsburgh Drug Trials.

The entire Steroid Era.

Cardinals/Astros hacking.


In short, no.

The scandal was brilliantly depicted in the movie Eight Men Out which I highly recommend if anyone hasn't seen it.  It keeps you interested the whole way through, very entertaining.

Both the book and movie are quite entertaining. A good piece of fiction.

Well, semi-fiction. Give Elliot Asinof credit for putting the Black Sox in the national spotlight again. The 1919 WS was largely forgotten before Asinof wrote his book. But he made a lot of stuff up for good reading. Two examples:

1. Eddie Cicotte's "Bonus". Cicotte was approached by Chick Gandil to throw the Series and he refuses. He then goes to Charles Cominsky asking for his bonus. His contract had a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games. Cicotte won only 29 but was held out of some games. To which Cominsky replied "29 is not 30, Eddie, no bonus". After this, Cicotte informs Gandil that he's in on the fix. Nice story. Except for the fact that performance bonuses didn't exist in 1919.

2. The threat to Lefty Williams' wife. 8MO tell that before Game 8, an unknown man approaches Lefty Williams and tells him he will be setting behind his wife and he will shoot her if the Sox win. The first mention of this is Eight Men Out. Did it happen, possibly. The gamblers couldn't risk Game 9 and seeing it pitched by Clean Sox Dickie Kerr. But this story exists in no other source but 8MO.

There are others. Asinof claimed to have gotten lost of stuff from interviewing White Sox secretary Harry Grabiner. Asinof says he started researching 8MO in 1960 and Grabiner died in 1948. He makes up conversations from Comiskey, who never spoke of the Fix.

To answer the original question, yes, it was the biggest scandal in US sports. It wasn't isolated. Rumors swirl of the 1918 WS fix (nope) and 1914 WS fix (maybe). 1B Hal Chase routinely threw games, wasn't subtle about it and was never punished. 42 years earlier, the Louisville Grays threw the pennant race and two huge stars, Jim Deviln and  George Hall, were banned permanently. Baseball might have lost the faith of the fans (boxing came close) if the Black Sox hadn't been banned. And Babe Ruth made the game exciting.

I only wish we could know more about the 1918 World Series being thrown as it was almost certainly done. In fact in that decade, I bet more than 2 World Series were thrown. We do know lots of season games were.

Can't think of a bigger baseball one. You'd basically have to have a team bribe a home plate ref in a World Series game 7 to top it.

Given that spot betting is where a lot of the money is now, I doubt we'll see such blatant manipulation of results again. Why bother when you can pay a pitcher to hit the second hitter up in the top of the 3rd without anyone making a connection? I'll confess to not being up with what spots you can bet on in baseball so that could be a bad example.

Maybe I'm not understanding. Are you saying the 1919 White Sox didn't throw the World Series?

Not a problem. I don't think the '18 WS was fixed. There's nothing concrete about '14. I don't think the A's were bought, but I think it's possible that they phoned it in. The $100,000 Infield and the rest of the offense hit a whopping .172. Slightly fishy. The team knew the two big pitchers, Chief Albert Bender and Gettysburg Eddie Plank, were jumping to the Federal League. Home Run Baker wanted to retire to his farm and Eddie Collins knew he was on the suction block. I don't think they gave a damn.