ON THE TRAIL AGAIN
After a spring break (unplanned, of course), this issue finds me back on the B-Sox trail again. The lead-off piece is a kind of overview, looking back at the distance I -- we -- have come. It was prompted by one of those disconcertingly simple questions: "Learn anything new?"
Then there's an odd and brief interview with the actor who first portrayed Shoeless Joe to American audiences (it's not D.B. Sweeney) ... an update on my sleuthing for the National Police Gazette's coverage of the Fix (it's still at large) ... a look at the unlikely alliance of Hugh Fullerton and Ban Johnson, a Commy loyalist and his worst enemy ... and finally, a look at a whole 'nother scandal that is probably not at all connected with the Fix of October 1919, even though headlines once asserted a link.
I was really hoping to announce in this issue that Eliot Asinof would be joining in on a panel this summer on the 1919 World Series -- but it looks like he will not make it. This is a disappointment, because -- having corresponded some with Asinof and then having spent a wonderful day with him last summer -- I know his unique contribution to our understanding of the B-Sox event. To use the trail image, Eliot Asinof blazed it -- we all follow in his footsteps to some degree. But his own interest has shifted to other things, and he says he really has little more to say about the subject -- "it's all in Eight Men Out" -- and I respect that. He's not as adamant as Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) was about rehashing the past (cf Field of Dreams), thank goodness. But he's really let the subject go.
And so I can announce only this: we will still have a terrific panel this summer. SABR 34 will be July 15-18 at the Cincinnati Westin ... the panel on the B-Sox is Friday, July 16, at 11 AM and will run 85 minutes. Besides myself, panelists will include Jim Sandoval (an expert on the 1919 Reds), Dan Ginsburg (a founding father of SABR and author of The Fix is In -- see Notes 277), Dan Nathan (author of Saying It's So -- see Notes 285 for a long review); and a player panelist to be named later. Alan Swartz, the editor of Baseball America and known to espn.com fans, will be our moderator.
There will also be a TON of B-Sox expertise in the building, and I'm really looking forward to a super weekend. Actually, I'm getting in Wednesday afternoon, and will try to squeeze in a visit or two to the Cincinnati library, which (like the new ballpark) looks like it's an easy walk from the Westin.
I don't know if I will have much more to say about this as SABR 34 -- the SABR National Convention -- gets closer. Probably I will. I know a number of Notes readers will be there -- well, to be honest, a number of Notes readers show up at every SABR National. But this panel will be something special, and I am really, really looking forward to it.
BASEBALL'S COLD CASE
Occasionally I run into friends whom I haven't seen in a while, and sometimes they ask me what I've been up to lately. If my wife in with me, we usually look at each other, then give the questioner a chance to retract, or ask a different question. Because if they have the slightest interest in baseball, I can go on forever about my research into the "Black Sox."
This happened recently, and the follow-up question intrigued me: "Have you found anything new?" My reply was "Lots," but the question was interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it reminded me that for most fans, the "Black Sox scandal" is a cold case, if not a closed one. I don't think the person who asked, expected an answer like "Lots." I don't think I would have expected that answer myself, a few years ago.
Another reason I liked the question was that it forced me to think about what I've learned over the past nineteen months, and how I might rank my "new" findings. It feels like I've been in an almost continuous process of discovery, with new knowledge coming if not weekly, then surely every month. Coming from books, articles, web sites, email, videos; from my trips to Milwaukee for the 1924 transcripts and Cornell for the Seymour Collection, and from countless excursions to Cooperstown's library. And to my local library -- the staff at the Utica Public Library have been terrific, and I've found librarians all over the country to be similarly cooperative and generous with their time and energy.
Without giving my book away, I would say that the greatest discovery I've made has been the cover-up of the Fix. How it happened, and how it came undone nearly a year later, are the meat and potatoes of my book. What is amazing is that this has never been the central subject of a book before!
What I've learned about the Fix itself seems important, but secondary. That the Fix was in, is certain. But when you look at the evidence about each of the "eight men out" and some of their teammates, things are less clear. Similarly, which games were "tossed" is not easy to determine. Personally, I think the evidence points to the Fix being off after Game Two, but I'm not convinced Lefty Williams was giving it his best shot in Game Five, or that he was trying to avoid being shot in Game Eight. I can argue Games One and Two, too. Sometimes I think my main contribution to our understanding of what happened during the Series is my finding about the cause of the poor attendance for Game Seven.
What I've learned about the "gamblers" or fixers is also less than absolutely certain. What is striking is how complicated this side of the event seemed, when the grand jury was collecting evidence -- compared to how it went down in the 1921 trial. Whole syndicates disappeared. Actually, if you read the newspaper accounts from October 1920, you get the sense that a cover story is being written. Witnesses who are subpoenaed are not called. Some are out of town, out of the country. Abe Attell is blaring away one day, silenced the next. Sport Sullivan vanishes. Prosecutors stop talking about indicting the connections in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Des Moines. In a way, it's comical that when the smoke clears, it's Sleepy Bill Burns & Billy Maharg left to tell what they know of things. Them, and a gaggle of St Louis & Des Moines boys, but no one with an overview.
Another group I've learned a lot about is the reporters. I started out looking for Woodward & Bernstein. I thought I found the whistleblower in Hugh Fullerton, who does have a major role in the events -- but his whistle, in the end, fizzled. Baseball sold lots of newspapers in 1919, and the sport was part of the establishment. As near as I can tell, the only paper that tried to investigate the Fix was Collyer's Eye, which baseball did its best to ignore or crush. The fact that nobody has heard of the Eye shows how effective baseball and the mainstream press was. Of course, when the scandal "broke" (as they say), the press jumped in, smelling blood, and proceeded to sell more papers, while at the same time cementing in place the story that went down as history. "Eight players ... sold out for $100,000 ... tossed the Series ... banned for life." All you need to know.
Finally, among all the stuff I've learned, perhaps the most important is how the power plays and the politics of baseball, the industry, shaped the cover-up and led to its undoing.
I remember clearly, standing at the trailhead of this project, thinking that I could dig in, learn all about Hugh Fullerton, and move on. Then I got hooked on all kinds of questions. Bill Veeck, in Hustler's Handbook, gave a hint of how the context of the Series and its aftermath was bound up with the disintegration of the old National Commission, and the movement to find a new system for baseball. I thought Landis came later, just in time to ban the players, but no, the struggle for power had started even before the 1919 Series was played out.
And so I started learning about Ban Johnson. His friendship with Charles Comiskey was crucial to the foundation of the American League. Their feud was crucial to how the Fix was finally investigated and brought to light -- however dim that light was.
Today I have strong and mixed feelings about both Comiskey and Johnson. They have both gone down in baseball history as giants and heroes, rating Cooperstown bronze. And for their accomplishments, that is what they deserve; I'll say the same of Pete Rose. However, they were both responsible -- with others -- for the cover-up of the Fix. Nixon wound up being impeached for covering up; had he controlled the press, he would have survived with only a minor blemish, and instead of All the President's Men, Watergate would have gone down as Five Burglars Out.
At different times along the trail, I stepped back and noted that it is even an oversimplification to say "the cover-up" -- as if there was just one going on. There were more. Covering up the Fix was simply standard operating procedure. Gamblers had infested baseball and were strangling the sport. Once the "Big Fix" of the 1919 Series was revealed, all sorts of other fixes were in the news. That teams sloughed off late-season games or bet on games or bribed ("rewarded") other teams, was not even news, before the Big Fix.
Also covered safely up were the conditions that made players vulnerable to bribery. Fans believed that ballplayers were all well-paid, or at least paid fair wages. Comiskey's payroll was an embarrassment to baseball, but it was not that atypical. The awful truth is that players were "slaves" without any bargaining power at all; they could accept the contracts they were offered, or shuffle back to the coal mines, shipyards or farms. When Judge McDonald learned that Lefty Williams, 23-game winner for the 1919 Sox, made less than $3,000, he was appalled. The public got just a peek inside the business of baseball in the 1921 trial. The growing profits (the Sox officially took in just under a million dollars in 1920, and the business was just starting to boom) were submerged behind the headlines of the greedy, guilty players.
Lines blur, when the Big Fix is probed. The lines between ballplayers and gamblers, reporters and gamblers, team owners and gamblers ... gambling, it turns out, has always been the national pastime. Sports came and went, as did politicians and reporters and police chiefs and corner bookmakers. What? They indicted eight White Sox? Ten to one they get off. And life went on.
A little (now extinct) paper, the Williamsport (PA) Sunday Grit -- accessible via Paper of Record -- had this masthead: "The surest way to reach the Unknown is by multiplication of the Known." My research has surely added to (if not multiplied) what we know about the Fix, Etc. So I think I can safely claim to have at least reduced the Unknown. And that's something.
A saying of H. L. Mencken has come in handy, and I pass it along to others who step onto the B-Sox trail, knowing the risks. Here it is: "For every complex problem, there is a solution which is simple, neat, and wrong."
The Big Fix, "the Black Sox Scandal," the Great Cover-Up -- call it what you will -- is a cold case, but not a closed one. I have found lots of new information, new to this generation who learned most or all of what it knows from Eight Men Out. There are great stories that are worth dusting off and telling ... there is credit to be given, not just to Hugh Fullerton, but to the unsung Bert Collyer and Frank O. Klein. There is blame to be awarded, too. What is not at all surprising, in this seemingly never-ending story, is that there are no pure heroes, no pure villains -- just lots of lessons to be learned and relearned.
TOUGH TRIVIA
If you were reading Notes back in the Fall of 2002 (issues 274-276) you may have a shot at these questions.
(1) What was the first account of the "Black Sox scandal" seen by the American public with Eliot Asinof listed as "writer"?
If you guessed Eight Men Out, you are wrong, B-Sox-breath. The correct answer is the episode of Witness which aired on CBS-TV in January 1961.
(2) So, was Biff McGuire, the actor who played Shoeless Joe on the Witness stand in '61, the first to utter words from an Eliot Asinof B-Sox script?
No, Scandalbrain. That was probably D.B. Sweeney in the film version of 8MO.
And I know this because ...? Well, because Biff McGuire is alive and well, and still adding to an impressive resume of parts played on Broadway, on TV and in the movies. You can look it up, on the internet. But I know it because I got a phone call from Biff the other day -- I'd been trying to contact him for well over a year. And I thank Steve Steinberg for making it happen.
Biff's memories of the Witness program were naturally fuzzy. He recalled some of the controversy surrounding the show, but not much. (He recalled being contacted by Sports Illustrated after the thing aired, and I'll see if I can find out what he said then.)
What was most interesting to learn, was that Biff said that the actors in Witness used no script. This was live TV, too! He recalled being given material to read to prepare for his role -- and he still had what he was given: Warren Brown's history from the 1952 Putnam series, The Chicago White Sox. Biff wound up playing Shoeless as "caught up in things ... ashamed of what he did ... and very underpaid." Biff also recalled that his portrayal of Jackson won him the sympathy of the people working on the production: "Everyone on the crew was on my side."
For those who have followed Eliot Asinof, you know there is no mention of the Witness episode in his Bleeding Between the Lines, Asinof's account of how his brief research assignment for David Susskind led to his authoring 8MO (and the legal battle that ensued). Eliot has always seemed to me to have distanced himself from Witness, and when I told him what Biff told me -- no script -- he seemed pleased to hear that.
NOOKS AND CRANNIES
The last few issues of Notes may have given the impression that I have stepped off the B-Sox trail; but it appears that it is in my blood now, I'll never really ever let it go.
I am determined to find out how the National Police Gazette covered the events of 1920-21, for example. I know, the Gazette was on a downswing, and its credibility probably not much higher than today's tabloids. Yet I cannot help but think that the NPG will have material that no one else would print, stories churned up from the Gazette's sources in the New York underworld -- where Rothstein, Attell, and Nate Evans lived. I've learned that the NPG is on the ProQuest menu -- but only through 1905. I think the same is true about its availability on microfilm. We'll see.
Got another one of those e-mails recently -- this time it was a relative of Monte Tennes, the Chicago gambler who turns up in the B-Sox tale as the guy who heard about the Fix -- in August! The significance of the August origin -- and there are a number of corroborating sources -- is that there were people who were thinking "FIX" before it was known just which teams would be in the Series. Remember the testimony that the fixers had players on every team. And remember that 1919 was probably not the first World Series to be fixed. Anyway, so far I haven't learned anything about Monte Tennes from his cyber-kin. Tennes was, I'm pretty sure, one of those people subpoenaed by the 1920 grand jury, but never called -- like Bert Collyer, Frank O. Klein, Ray Schalk -- folks who had stuff, perhaps, that someone wanted to keep off the record.
COLLEGE BOYS
This really falls under "Nooks & Crannies," but I'll give it a headline all its own anyway. As you know if you've been following me on the B-Sox trail, I have wound up finding out more than I ever thought there was to know about Hugh Fullerton and Ban Johnson.
Hugh Fullerton was the fellow whose whistle was muted when he tried blowing it on the Fix, as early as the morning before Game One. He tried during the Series, in his coverage of the games, and then in his piece that appeared when the thing was over, he said that seven Sox players would not be back the next season -- he was that sure that Comiskey would turn them out.
Of course, he didn't, and so Fullerton tried again, writing a bombshell article that appeared in the New York Evening World on December 15, 1919. This is just a terrific bit of journalism, looking back, because Fullerton outlined exactly how MLB should proceed if it was serious in investigating the Rumors of October. Here's an excerpt from my book:
He suggested that Judge Landis interrogate gamblers named Zork, Levi (two brothers), Eddie of Boston, Tim of Des Moines, Abe Attell, Bill Burns, Pesch, and Redmon. Then, question Monte Tennes of Chicago, and Arnold Rothstein. Then, Comiskey's detectives, manager Kid Gleason, writers Jimmy Crusinberry and Ed Wray of St Louis, as well as Fullerton himself; and finally, ballplayers Ray Schalk and Eddie Collins. Years later, Fullerton said that even if Landis had just met with Bill Burns, "all of the facts" would have come out, months before the 1920 season started, instead of in its final days.
Looking back, Fullerton had named many of the key figures who, called before a grand jury in September 1920, helped break open the Fix. Bill Burns became the star witness for the prosecution in the 1921 trial. For the record, while Comiskey's detectives ignored Fullerton's plan, Comiskey's arch-rival, Ban Johnson, followed it up, and fed key witnesses to the grand jury. Johnson's motives may not have been purely to clean up baseball, however; he was also interested in wrecking the White Sox franchise.
Two days later, Fullerton again declared that "a complete investigation" was necessary. [He] asked Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis [who was not yet the game's Commissioner] if he would assume "the responsibility of conducting an investigation if the powers of baseball are willing to submit the entire matter to him and assist him in bringing witnesses before him." (Cottrell)
Fullerton, who was extremely loyal to Charles Comiskey, became after the 1919 Series an unwitting ally of Commy's bitter nemesis, Ban Johnson. If Fullerton's 1935 Sporting News memoir is to be trusted -- and I think it is credible -- both Commy and Ban knew enough about the Fix to call a halt and investigate the rumors before Game One started, and if they had their doubts, then surely the horrendous 9-1 Cicotte loss in the opener erased most of them. In any case, to really understand the cover-up and the undoing of the cover-up, following each movement of Hugh Fullerton and Ban Johnson is not a bad way to proceed.
And that is why I found myself calling on the Ohio colleges where Hugh and Ban received part of their education. I found the libraries of both schools really helpful and interested in my search for anything in their holdings that might shed more light on my research. OSU (my thanx to Tamar Chute) sent me a packet of Fullerton material. Marietta College's Dawes Memorial Library (my thanx to Rebecca Poe) has a nice collection of Ban Johnson material in their Special Collections, including a nice photo of Ban posing in cap and gown on the day he received his honorary degree in 1925.
Both Hugh and Ban visited their alma maters from time to time and the campus papers recorded the events. Ban Johnson contributed $25,000 to Marietta and got a Field House named after himself.
I may have more to report about the college days of Hugh and Ban -- we are talking here about the 1890s and 1880s respectively -- in a future Notes. For now, I only want to report a "find" of sorts.
Back in #313 (November 1, 2003), I wrote:
And, I thank Cliff Kachline of Cooperstown for letting me borrow his collection of articles by Earl Obenshain, that ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 3, 1928 - Jan 7, 1929. This is a third series on Ban Johnson -- I've reviewed the 1929 St Louis Post-Dispatch and Chicago Tribune series here before.
Obenshain was just starting to get interesting, when the series was stopped -- presumably by a letter from Charles Comiskey (it was in the Plain Dealer January 13, 1929) and probably a threat of a lawsuit. If anyone can find the series by Obenshain in another newspaper, please let me know. Maybe some other press ran more than the PD's seven?
As it turns out, the Marietta Times ran all ten installments, and most of them were in Ban Johnson's file at Dawes. The Marietta Times is still alive and well, I am happy to report, and their sports editor has offered to track down the one installment I'm missing -- on the B-Sox event. More on this next time, I hope; and yes, Cliff is delighted to have his collection completed, too.
"THE SAME MEN WHO BRIBED THE CHAMPION WHITE SOX TEAM"
In Fall of 1940, a scandal broke, but this time it was not in pre-Capone Chicago or even in the country of baseball -- it was in sunny southern California. But in the Washington Post of November 2, 1940, this headline appeared on page 20: Race 'Fixers' Linked with Sox Scandal.
Deputy D.A. William E. Simpson of L.A. basked in his fifteen minutes of national fame by announcing that the "master minds" of the syndicate behind the "fixing" of horse races, were connected with the 1919 B-Sox bribery. In fact, they were "the same men" -- and a "subpena [sic] was issued for [a man] declared by Simpson to have been an associate of the group which bribed the White Sox in 1919." This link gave the Hollywood scandal a "national scope" -- in fact, there might be fixing of horse races going on all over the country!
However, it turns out that this was the last mention of the B-Sox connection. What is striking to me as I read about this left coast, twenty-years-after scandal, is how similarly it played out in the press.
First, shocking headlines. Lawmen and prosecutors jockeying (no pun intended) for column inches (today's sound bites). As bits and pieces of the investigaton are revealed, a grand jury springs into action. For a time, it looks like heads will fall and some kind of national reform movement is needed. Gradually, names come out. The problem could he huge -- millions of crooked dollars changing hands, seven -- no, make that "nearly twenty" jockeys have been offered bribes. Hundreds of races have been fixed over several years, it seems, and the cancer has spread to at least four different tracks (did I say national? I meant "more than just one"). My goodness, we have at least three rings of gamblers involved!
Then -- just like with the B-Sox -- it goes to trial. Five people are indicted -- no, not five rings, just five people. In dozens of stories, their names are never quite clear:
1) William J. Einstoss -- Little Mooney ... or Willie, or Jack.
2) Bernard Einstoss -- AKA Barney or Big Mooney.
3) I. W. Kivel, AKA Jack "Doc" Kebo (or Keboe or Kebow).
4) Benny Chapman -- a local (L.A.) gambler, like Kivel.
5) Saul (Sol) "Sonny" Greenberg, a track man.
There is a sixth man, who is the "Sleepy Bill Burns" of this case, a fellow who turns into the star witness for the prosecution. That's James Joseph Murphy (not the J.J. who is a judge); no, wait, that's an alias for Irving Sangbusch. Looked for a minute that the token Irishman had appeared (like Sport Sullivan?)
But in fact, all of these folks were Jewish -- and as near as I can tell right now, that was the only link to the B-Sox fixers. Unless maybe one of them carried a photo of Arnold Rothstein in his wallet (I'm kidding there!) Most B-Sox sources go lightly on the anti-Semitism that the 1919 Fix stirred up -- Dan Nathan's book might address it best. But it happened, and I think it was still around when this 1940 "fix" scandal broke.
In any event, the trial got underway in February 1941 and really opened in March. After weeks, it was over. Now this was a trial where, it was alleged, the take was up to $180,000 on just one horse race, and there were possibly hundreds fixed -- the jockeys paid off to finish where they were told. The verdicts: one defendant (Big Mooney) found guilty -- of four counts of contributing to the delinquency of minors, the younger jockeys! Little Mooney & Greenberg were acquitted, and the jury was split 6-6 on Kivel & Chapman. Fines of $1,000 were assessed -- chump change if you pull in 180 times that much in one race.
Why? Well, after the B-Sox scandal, baseball made some new rules, and laws were passed all over to make bribing players a crime. But that was for baseball. In 1940, there was still nothing illegal about giving a little monetary gift to your favorite jockeys. (The jockeys got a wide range of bribes, from just a few hundred bucks, to over $20,000, I believe.) Jerry Giesler, the chair of the Horse Racing Commission, who had blown the whistle loudly in the first place, now called for laws that would clean up not just racing, but protect football, boxing and wrestling, too. (One columnist quipped that outlawing fixing would be the end of wrestling -- it was well-rehearsed back then, too. No one guessed that the WWF & other versions would succeed as pure entertainment.)
What about the jockeys? Were there eight (short) men out? Apparently not. I know at least two jockeys were reinstated, because their testimony helped the prosecution. (I think that the ballplayers who went to the 1920 grand jury might have had hopes of such a fate. They were told "We want the gamblers -- help us nail them.") Of course, the jockeys probably had their own lawyers, who were on their side; the Sox had Alfred Austrian. "Here guys, let's sign away our immunity first!"
There were follow-up trials in '41, too. A deputy sheriff who protected Hollywood bookmaking operations was suspended and later tried -- don't think that happened much in Chicago!
Comparisons may be odious (Unamuno), but they can be fun -- and instructive. In all the accounts I read, this 1940 scandal never rated a name, like Jockeygate. Did the track people just have better P.R. guys? I'm still curious about that connection to the B-Sox that Simpson announced -- was there a link? Did Landis, baseball's Commish, step in to break the link as soon as he heard about it? Or was it just a little anti-Semitism showing itself, while Hitler was in his heyday just a continent away?