Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown
Observations From Outside the Lines |
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NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
Observations from Outside the Lines
By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)
#322
OLD BLACK SOX NEVER DIE
They fade away. And none more quietly than Chick Gandil. He was in a nursing home when he breathed his last on December 13, 1970, in Calistoga, CA. His wife Laurel had him buried without any fanfare, then she checked into the nursing home, too. She had helped convince Chick to stay out west after that messy October of 1919.
Comiskey made it easier. Chick was paid $4,000 in 1919. He asked for $6,000 -- not out of line. His teammates were all getting nice raises, because the fans returned in record numbers after the war-shortened season of 1918, and 1920 would see a return to baseball normalcy, the familiar 154-game season. The White Sox fans were going to be clicking the turnstiles, nearly doubling the receipts from 1919. Commy (or Grabiner) offered Chick $4,000 -- not a penny raise. Chick just said No. The Sox came back with $5,000. Chick wanted another thousand. The Sox broke off negotiations.
Comiskey spoke with Gandil immediately after the Series. We will never know if what was said at that time, cemented in place Gandil's determination to stay out west, or to hold out; and Comiskey's determination to make Gandil only offers that he knew he would refuse.
Risberg and Weaver held out, too, but they had multi-year contracts and finally gave in. Eddie Cicotte reported to camp, but didn't sign his $10,000 contract until May 3rd. Chick had gone on record in the past about standing firm, and this time he followed through. I have found no hard evidence that Chick made enough money on the Fix to retire; there were reports that he had made some by betting on the Reds.
* * * * *
It was weeks before the news of Chick Gandil's death was reported to the world outside Calistoga. In his obituary there, his life was summed up in one word: plumber. That's how his friends and neighbors knew him. It's how his wife Laurel wanted him to be remembered. But she could not erase the years of ballplaying from his past.
* * * * *
One of the curious documents on the B-Sox trail is a 1956 interview Chick gave to Mel Durslag. In it, he admitted being the ringleader. "Where a baseball player would run a mile these days to avoid a gambler, we mixed freely. Players often bet. After the games, they would sit in lobbies and bars with gamblers, gabbing away." He went on to describe how the fix was planned, even claiming to have met, in the process, Arnold Rothstein. But the rumors were too thick, he went on to say, so the whole Series was played on the level. The players did receive $10,000 in advance, which they gave to Eddie Cicotte to hold -- he put it under his pillow himself (and by some accounts, sewed it into his jacket later). Gandil said the Series was a genuine upset victory earned by the Reds, and he compared it to the 1954 Cleveland Indians team, which had won 111 games, being swept in the October classic by the New York Giants.
When Gandil's story was published, the Chicago Daily Tribune sought out Happy Felsch and Eddie Cicotte for their reactions, and they gave them in the September 14 issue. Both denied that Gandil told "the real story." Felsch denied getting any money or doing anything to throw a game. Cicotte said, "I took my medicine."
Comiskey's detective John Hunter, on his California road trip in the off-season of 1919-1920, said that he was told by Gandil in front of his new house: "'I presume people would think I bought this bungalow; and here is a car standing out in front. I presume,' he says, 'I tell everybody that there is a mortgage of $3500 against this house for fear they might think that I got some money as a result of throwing the World Series.'" (MT 1347) Gandil told Hunter he didn't receive any money. He repeated that to Durslag in 1956.
* * * * *
Thirteen years after the Durslag interview, and less than two years before he died, Gandil spoke at length with Dwight Chapin, resulting in a lengthy Sporting News piece with the headline, "Gandil: 'I'll Go to My grave With a Clear Conscience."
I have taken an awful beating in this thing. But it's all on record. My hits won two of the games against the Reds. If I'd have been trying to throw the Series, would I have tried to win those games? ... If I'd have been hooked up with the gamblers, they wouldn't have let me live after I got those base-hits.
Gandil said that wanted to sue for libel when he was scapegoated, "but my mother talked me out of it. She didn't want the publicity, so I went along with her." His wife Laurel just wanted to get away from the whole mess, which is why Chick never returned from California when the 1920 season started.
I guess that is why I have been made the goat because I was the only one who quit after the 1919 season. It was just that I wanted more money from Comiskey. Is that wrong? ... Comiskey was an awful guy. But you know, there was something you had to admire about him.
Chapin wrote that Gandil's "consuming ambition is still to have his name cleared somehow by baseball." He wrote Landis three times about clearing his name, but received no replies. Gandil seemed to regret not suing back in the 1920's: "But from now on, I'm gonna sue the hell out of all of them. I'm tired of taking it after all these years." He told Chapin that he had spoken to the famous lawyer Melvin Belli, "and he's interested in my case."
* * * * *
Today, Dwight Chapin, who did Chick Gandil's last public interview (as far as I know), writes sports for the San Francisco Chronicle. I recently asked him what he recalled of Chick Gandil.
I wish I could recall more about the 1969 interview with Chick Gandil, which was done for the Los Angeles Times when I was working there, and picked up by the Sporting News. But I'll fill you in with whatever I can.
I don't remember exactly how the interview was set up, or why it was done at that time, but I suspect it was because it was the 50th anniversary year of the 1919 Series. I recall having a bit of trouble finding his home, which was small and very modest, among the vineyards of Napa County. The thing that struck me most about the living room, where we talked, was how dark it was, even in the middle of the afternoon, when the interview took place.
I remember Gandil as very wary and hesitant to talk at first, suspicious,even, but once we got going, he spent most of the time defending himself and his actions around the Fix. I suspect -- and it's only a suspicion -- that he knew he didn't have a whole lot of time left, and was almost desperate to try to clear his name. He seemed credible, at least to a degree, butdefinitely self-serving.
I don't recall that he mentioned Durslag's interview (I don't believe I was even aware of it myself, at the time) or "Eight Men Out." And I don't know if he ever got together with Mel Belli. I'd guess he didn't, and, even if so, it's unlikely it went anywhere, because Belli's attentions back then were so scattered. But you might want to try to track down Belli's records.
I don't think Gandil told me anything about the Fix being called off. If he had, I'm sure I would have included that in my story. But I didn't tape any of the interview. That was just not common practice back in those days -- taping usually seemed to scare the people being interviewed, so we almost never did it unless there were possible legal ramifications about the story.
* * * * *
Chick Gandil had a pretty good World Series in 1919. He was playing hurt, too, and was commended by the press for a gutty performance. He drove in the winning runs in the first two Sox wins, His five RBI were one less than Jackson, one more than Collins. Like Collins, Gandil had seven hits in the eight games, in one less at bat. They both stole one base; Collins had two errors, Chick one.
Gandil was hospitalized in Lufkin, Texas, when the scandal broke. He reacted strongly, saying he'd come to Chicago and clear things up, as soon as he could. And he gave a number of interviews before the trial, protesting his innocence, but these never got much attention. After the 1956 Durslag piece, columnist Bob Addie wrote in the Washington Post that the story Gandil told Durslag contradicted an "affadavit (sic) signed by Gandil many years ago" that was published in the Chicago Tribune. If anyone has access to the Chi Trib, please look that up and report!
* * * * *
When Swede Risberg passed away on his 81st birthday, October 13, 1975, the last of the "eight men out" were gone. For 55 years their names were linked together, and still are today. Few people can name the five Watergate burglars. They were part of a scandal that toppled a Presidency. The "Black Sox" -- some of them -- made a deal with gamblers, something not that usual at the time -- a deal that perhaps fizzled before the Series was two games old. The cover-up of the Fix almost succeeded, because it was in the best financial interests of Baseball to hide it. But that was short-term. In the long run, gambling was strangling baseball, and sooner or later a clean-up would have been demanded. That putting "eight men out" cleansed baseball is, in David Q. Voigt's happy phrase, "the myth of baseball's single sin." In a sense, the "Black Sox" paid for the sins of many, not just their own, and they took that infamy with them to their graves.
FROM A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
I thank Rod Nelson for find this and sending it along. It is really hilarious, if you are familiar with the White Sox of 1919.
Timelines - This Day in Alternate History <= main page
http://www.othertimelines.com/viewtimeline.php?timelineID=773 <= 1919 American League
1919 WORLD SERIES FIXED? NOTHING NEW!
The idea of taking on seven or eight people in a plot scared me. I said to [Sport] Sullivan it wouldn't work. He answered, "Don't be silly. It's been pulled before and it can be again."
-- Chick Gandil as told to Mel Durslag
in Sports Illustrated September 17, 1956
Rumors of a World Series fix go back to 1905. Fix rumors flourished about the famous 1908 NL pennant race. There were reports of teams "lying down" to help friends or foil enemies. The attempt to rig the 1910 [American League] batting race was no secret.
-- Leonard Koppett
My chapter on "The Fixers" is introduced by these two quotes, and inserted into the second is the note that there is some evidence that the very first World Series game was the target of gamblers.
There is a reference to the very first modern October's Game (1903, Pittsburgh NL vs Boston AL) being tampered with in a Red Sox history published recently (I want to say Glenn Stout was co-author or co-editor).
But thanx to ProQuest, I found an article any SABRite can look up easily, which provides solid evidence. In the Washington Post, October 4, 1924, is a two-column piece, "Ban Johnson Digs Up Scandal of 1903 Series." It begins:
President Ban Johnson of the AL tonight made public a hitherto secret affidavit, revealing that crookedness was attempted in the first world's series ever played, when in 1903 Lou Criger, famous catcher with the Boston Red Sox, contesting with the Pirates, was offered $12,000 to throw games.
Why would a league president release this news -- which he had since February 1923 -- on the eve of the 1924 World Series? Because Johnson was Johnson. He boycotted the '24 Series because he believed the NY Giants of John McGraw should have been disqualified -- they had dismissed two players for "alleged bribery attempts" toward the end of the season. Johnson, never one to pass up a chance to tweak McGraw (remember Muggsy refused to let the Giants play October's Game in 1904), argued that 2nd-place Brooklyn deserved the limelight. Landis disagreed. The winner, by a knockout: Landis.
Anyway, what happened in February 1923 is that Lou Criger signed an affidavit, stating that he had been offered that big bribe by a "professional gambler, introduced to Criger two years earlier [in 1901] in the presence of John McGraw ... and Wilbur Robinson [Brooklyn's manager and pal of Muggsy]. Criger's health was rapidly failing, but before "going West to die," he wanted to go on record about 1903. Criger was still alive in 1924, and Ban doesn't say if he OK'd this release.
The gambler's name was Anderson and Criger first met him in Baltimore, at a "country bowling club" where he was with McGraw and Robbie. "He didn't see Anderson again until 1903, when he met him in Pittsburgh in the Monongahela hotel" just before the very first post-war (AL vs NL) World Series. Criger was called aside in the hotel lobby and offered twelve big ones to throw games so the Pirates would win. (I can't resist this: the first record of "Beat 'Em Bucks" -- if you were there in 1960, you get the pun.)
Anderson had convinced an oil man to bet $50,000 on Boston. And he singled out Criger because he thought the catcher was the only one who could "turn the trick." Criger just said no.
And he said -- in 1923 -- that the only people he ever told the story to were Cy Young, and Ban Johnson, when they were discussing the 1919 Series Fix.
This makes me wonder:
* If Criger was offered $12,000 in 1903, and the Sox were willing to fall down for $20,000 apiece -- was that cost-of-living increasing, or inflation, or a little of both?
* An oil man (Harry Sinclair) lost $90,000 to Rothstein in 1919, and I've found other oil men losing big to A.R. at his casino ... Sleepy Bill Burns, a fixer, was another oil man who lost big. Makes you wonder if the George Bushes H. & W. were the first to win anything. No wait, the oil guy must have won in 1903. Never mind.
Ban Johnson really was a bulldog. After the grand jury, he was really disappointed only 8 ballplayers were on their way out. He claimed (in The Sporting News, 11/11/20) that if the GJ had just indicted one more St Louis gambler, they would have had twenty more ballplayers' names! (He sort of pledged to ferret them out himself.)
WHAT DID HE CALL THEM?
Last issue (#321), in a piece called "You Can Say That Again," I reported on a memoir by Hugh Fullerton that appeared, innocently enough, in The Sporting News of October 17, 1935. It's something I don't think I've seen mentioned in any of the books or articles on the B-Sox. Yet it is convincing proof that the Powers that Were in baseball knew about the Fix before Game One but refused to halt the Series to investigate.
Hugh Fullerton, who (Collyer's Eye aside) was the closest thing to a whistleblower this event has, was himself convinced that something needed to be done, the morning before Game One. He was bombarded with the news of the Fix from one gambler friend after another. (Interestingly, when you read about the gamblers back then, there is a distinction made between "honest gamblers" and the pros who try to tilt the odds in their favor.) Fullerton flew to Comiskey the morning of Game One -- but Commy already heard about it. Fullerton next went to Ban Johnson -- he already heard, too, but scoffed and said Commy was just squealing in his complaints that Johnson was doing nothing about it.
Then Fullerton goes to Pirates' owner Barney Dreyfuss, who liked to gamble himself. When the Pirates arrived in Boston to play the very first World Series in 1903, the Pittsburg Post headline read "Pittsburg Money Scares Boston," and the sub-head stated "President Dreyfuss and Party from Smoky City With a $30,000 Roll Quickly Hammer Beantown Betting Odds Down to Even Money." Ah, the good old days. Anyway, according to Fullerton, Dreyfuss became enraged (maybe he had money down on the Sox). At that point Fullerton said he lost his temper as he saw the crooks getting away with their scheme, and he called "the entire baseball set-up ... a bunch of whitewashing bastards."
Whoa! This is The Sporting News -- a rather tame, "gee, whiz, ain't baseball great" sort of family G-rated paper. How did this slip past the censor?
Most of this was in last issue. This wasn't: I got curious to see if the word "bastards" had ever appeared in TSN before. Thanx to Paper of Record, doing a search takes only seconds. Well, it appears that 10/17/1935 was the debut of the word in TSN, which was first published in 1886, 49 years earlier. A search forward told me that the word did not appear again for another 40 years! That was in a book review, which quoted Ty Cobb saying something not so nice about his fellow players, in 1975.
And now you know -- the REST of the story.
A LITTLE MORE FULLERTON
Later in 1935, Fullerton wrote a series of articles for The Sporting News in which he selected all-time all star teams from each city. So his all-time Chicago team, for example, would consist of former and current Cubs and White Sox.
In wrestling with his all-time Chicago picks, he ran up against the question about including the B-Sox. "One problem which disturbed me," he wrote in the November 14, 1935 TSN, "was how to handle the Black Sox of 1919 -- whether to throw them all out or to disregard their misdeeds and consider them only as ball players." Thus, we see how a writer who started covering baseball in 1889 might handle the Pete Rose issue.
Fullerton decided to consider the B-Sox. Shoeless Joe Jackson was his choice as the all-time Chicago LF, and Buck Weaver his selection for all-time Chi 3B. In case you are wondering about the others he picked: Frank Chance over Cap anson at 1B; Johnny Evers (with whom Fullerton co-authored a book, but I'm sure that didn't sway Hughie) at 2B; and Ed (Ned) Williamson at SS (even though he played more 3B than SS). Joe Tinker and Swede Risberg made his short list, but Ned was a dazzling fielder and his record of 27 HRs in a single season stood till Ruth hit 29 in 1919.
Hughie picked Johnny Kling and Billy Sullivan over Ray Schalk, and outfielders Bill Lange and Frank "Wildfire" or "Firefly" Schulte over Happy Felsch. Eddie Cicotte was a finalist, but Hughie's final four pitchers were Ed Walsh, Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, Ed Reulbach, and Nick Altrock.
I was hoping that Fullerton might comment more on why he selected Jackson (who played more games for Cleveland) and Weaver. "I happen to know both played clean ball in October 1919, but were linked to the conspiracy only because the crooked players told the gamblers they were in on it." But Hugh Fullerton does not say that, and he said he considered Cicotte and Felsch and Risberg on their merits and eliminated them only because he found better players, before and after. Ah well.
NUGGETS
Thanx to ProQuest and Paper of Record, my on deck circle of possible material, both for my book and for Notes, runneth over. For example, I have no place handy for this observation by Arthur Daley, whose "Sports of the Times" column in the New York Times often strayed onto the path of the B-Sox: "The skeleton in baseball's closet holds an unholy fascination for anyone who peeks inside." He wrote that 2/17/53.
It's an interesting column for another reason. Daley had the flu, and was cooped up with Warren Brown's history of the White Sox. Thinking that eight players played eight games to lose, he is puzzled by how the games had a "crazy quilt pattern." He sums up: "It's rather obvious from this recountal that the Black Sox were main contributors to whatever success Chicago achieved." He concedes that maybe a double-cross was on when Cicotte won on his third try. But you can see his eyebrows raise when he notes how Jackson and Weaver and Gandil get hits or knock in runs.
SHIRLEY IT AIN'T SO
Shirely Povich's Washinton Post columns often strayed onto the B-Sox trail, too, and I recently found one from April 11, 1941. Povich was with the Senators, traveling north from spring training. On April 10, they stopped in Greenville, N.C., to play an exhibition with the Detroit Tigers. Shirley wound up talking during the game with Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was in attendance with his doctor, two weeks after a heart attack.
Jackson brought up 1919 before Povich could. "Well, Sonny, I'm as innocent as you are. I had no part in that fix in 1919." Jackson was not down on baseball, but he was disappointed that Landis had not kept his word after the players were acquitted. "He said if the courts declared me not guilty, he'd stand by me."
"The evidence in court showed that Buck Weaver and I were innocent. Even the fellows who were in on the fix testified that we had no part in it." Then Jackson pointed to his Series record.
Povich: "One of the shoddy tricks against him, he says, was the story about his 'confession' of guilt.... 'There was never any confession by me. That was trumped up by the court lawyers. They couldn't produce it in court."
It's an interview worth looking up, two pages long. (Easy if you are in SABR & have ProQuest.) Povich does not perpetuate the stereotype of Jackson as the ignorant bumpkin -- he's a success in business. But at this point in his life, Povich picks up that Jackson is sad, almost gloomy that his name will never be cleared. Fresh off a heart attack, he knows his time is short, and in 1941, Landis was still the gatekeeper.
NEXT TIME
Well, I have no idea what next time will bring. Since last time, I have obtained a copy of Eddie Cicotte's contract card (the Natl BB Library inherited a ton of them last summer and they are being sorted out), but I'm not jumping to any conclusion just yet. No bonus listed, but that might be normal for the cards. Stand by for an update.
Also since last time I've been put in touch with Edd Roush's granddaughter, who might be able to shed more light on "Jimmy Wigmore" -- Roush's Deep Throat who roomed next to Cicotte for the first games in Cincinnati.
Speaking of Cincinnati, I may have an update on this summer's National SABR Convention, in the Queen City July 15-18. I'm pulling together a panel on the 1919 Series (what else?), and it will be great to see many Notes readers, new and old, there. This will be a great panel discussion, trust me. Rooms at the Westin Cincinnati (the Sinton was booked) are $99 a night, and the new ballpark is within walking distance.
THANX again to all for your feedback on Notes, and especially for your help in tracking down new material from the on-line newspapers. Almost every day, I learn something new; and I hope I can say that for a long time, even after I step off the B-Sox trail -- whenever that might be.