I've used this title once before, for #126, which could also be called "The Joe DiMaggio Issue"; you could look it up, it's in the Notes archive. That issue also heralded Opening Day 1996, and as I recall, during that season I made other references to how any season is like a fishing expedition. Then, in #150, I looked back in The Old Man and the Season:
I am not a fisherman. I love to eat fish. I have a collection of fish stories. I can even recommend a great book to those who do fish: The River Why, by David James Duncan, better known to baseball fans for his super novel The Brothers K, which is really not a baseball book at all. I have friends and relatives who fish, but I don't join them. Maybe someday. I fished as a kid. And after all, as I get older, I also get younger. I'm not a grandparent, but I love that image of the pace of grandparents being perfectly suited to that of toddlers, trying out their legs. So maybe I'll fish again, when I'm younger still.
I was interested in catching one particular fish, but knew that was a foolish goal for any fisherman. So I was also ready to spend my day casting about for anything I could hook. As it turned out, the fish I was after nibbled, but got away -- I may land him yet, but this day was his. In case you are curious, I was following up on a line in Baseball: The Golden Age:
Harold and Dorothy Seymour did not manufacture facts. The Seymour Collection is more like an ocean than a lake, filled with facts -- gleaned from interviews, and from printed matter. They collected more facts than they used in their volumes of baseball history. But near as I can tell, they documented everything. But because they used footnotes only sparingly (their editors' call), to find most sources, you have to -- go fishing.
What I wanted to know was exactly where Fullerton revealed, much later than October 1919, that he was quoting Comiskey. When Fullerton was asked under oath on the witness stand in the 1924 Milwaukee trial about this, here's how it went:
The above snippets are from my hurried notes on the transcripts of the Milwaukee Trial and the MT #s refer to the transcript pages (there are nearly 1,700 pages in all).
Clearly, Fullerton was covering for Comiskey in 1924; his loyalty to Commy was genuine and strong. We know that Fullerton did not reveal until Comiskey and Ban Johnson had both died, that he had confronted them before Game One of the 1919 Series, to try to get them to stop the show until the "rumors" of the Fix could be investigated. (See Notes #321) In his amazing Sporting News memoir (10/17/35) he calls the baseball powers "whitewashing bastards" for letting the Fix happen.
Alas, all this fishing trip turned up on this point -- and I credit Neil Massa for finding it -- was a scribbled reference by one of the Seymours that Fullerton's revelation was made "later in Digest." That's what I call wiggling off the hook.
Baseball Digest? (Did Fullerton live long enough to write for that publication?) Literary Digest? Some other Digest? It's worth pursuing, because if he revealed that, what else might he have revealed? Fullerton, remember, wrote a series of articles on the 1919 Series for the Chicago Tribune in 1921-22 that were vetoed by Comiskey. When will those fish be caught?
Anyway, I came back to the shadows of Cooperstown from Cornell with my creel full of four pages of notes. Some will feed my book, giving it a little more flesh or color. Most will take me on more fishing trips. So it goes.
Fishermen are often very guarded about their favorite holes, and that is understandable. But when the water is teeming with fish, and the object is to pull in as many as you can and share them, it's a whole different, uh, ball game.
Here are just some of the items I've run into in the Chicago Tribune using ProQuest -- so far. If you're in SABR, you can look up any of these articles in a jiffy. If not, go fish -- in your library's microfilm!
1) 6/17/1917 -- "Fans in Boston Riot on Field as Sox Win, 7-2" ... also 6/18/17, "Riot at Sox Game Started by Gamblers of Boston." This is the Chicago version of the story Bill Nowlin found last month, which ended with Buck Weaver & Fred McMullin getting commended by Ban Johnson for their role in stifling gambling (literally) at the Fen. No luck yet finding Johnson's tribute.
2) 12/15/19 -- "Comiskey Refutes Series Charges Against White Sox." As Fullerton's bombshell is going off in NY, the Trib quotes Commy: "We have discovered nothing to date." This is a great article by I. E. Sanborn, who was in the know. "Although the details of the "scandal" are probably known to practically everyone who speaks baseball" -- Sanborn goes from there. He may have known as much as Fullerton, but was probably on a tighter leash from his editors.
3) 9/8/1920 -- "Jurors Cheer as Judge Orders Baseball Quiz." Eugene Murdock describes a meeting between Ban Johnson and Judge McDonald, in which Ban gives him the green light to call the grand jury. This article documents that the day after McD succeeded Judge Crowe, he told the sitting September grand jury (I gather they usually served a month) to go ahead and look at the Aug 31 Cubs-Phils game, and those nasty baseball pools -- which survive to today!
4) 10/27/1920 -- "'Story of Fixing' Told Comiskey in 1919, Charge." Harry Redmon gave his story to the GJ late (convened 9/7, they shifted focus to the 1919 WS after the 9/19 Loomis letter, and never let go; they did take a break to enjoy the 1920 WS). Here, Redmon recalls sitting in Austrian's office with Joe Gedeon soon after the 1919 WS to tell the team about the Fix. "We refused to accept any part of the $10,000 reward" ... Gedeon also quoted about when he first realized that what was going down was "unethical"! The ProQuest version, probably from microfilm, is in poor condition and partly unreadable. Would love to see original article.
5) 12/19/1920 -- "Lefty Williams Plans to Fight Scandal Charge" -- claims to have "Ace in Hole" but apparently the rest of the cards he held were too weak to win.
6) 8/3/1920 -- "Jury Frees Baseball Men" (large, bold headline). Great description of "love feast" that followed verdict in B-Sox trial ... also gives time line: Arguments ended at about 3 PM, but the jury didn't get the case till 8 PM (lots of legal wranging over what the jury would be decided); jury took 2:47 to deliberate ... reached verdict 10:40 PM, verdict not read in court till evetuone could be rounded up (probably watching Law & Order on TV ... no, wait) ... verdict read in court 11:22 PM. So the post-trial celebration of players & jurists was more a party than a late dinner. "I'm through with organized ball" says Jackson (this is before Landis' verdict is known), and he talked about a store in Chicago, playing ball in OK, coaching for a university in Japan (!) and "I've also had an offer to go before the footlights." Where was Saturday Night Live when we needed it?
7) 1/5/1927 -- "Cannon Asserts Scandal Charges Were Hushed Up" -- lawyer says he took the 1917 scandal to Landis & Commy in 1922, hads testimony from Happy, Buck, Swede & Shoeless, but they chose "not to take advantage" ... Cannon phones in this interview from near Mexican border!
8) 2/8/1924 -- "Bygone Scoops Told Again in Sox Case" -- Irving Vaughan reports from the Milwaukee trial after Fullerton's testimony.
9) 3/30/1931 -- "Ban Johnson's Obstinacy Made Baseball National" -- Johnson "managed to subsidize influential members of the press to fight the battles of the AL in print." Westbrook Pegler.
10) 11/5/1931 -- "Players' Infidelity in 1919 Bitter Blow to Comiskey" -- Irving Vaughn's 10th article in his series on the life of COMISKEY. This is one of several places where Vaughan notes that Gleason confronted the Sox early on, "daring the guilty ones to step forward."
FISHING CONTEST
Share your ProQuest catches with others ... no prizes (yet) but any good sportsman gets their kicks from landing the trophy, right? I'll be glad to pass along worthy catches in future issues of Notes.
OK, A FEW MORE
The ten articles noted above are not news for some of you. So here are some that might be. Again, all from the Chicago Tribune.
1) 11/4/31 -- "How Monte, Bill and the Dugans Figured in Life of Comiskey's Wisconsin Lodge". This is #9 in the Vaughan series (see 10 above) and is all about the Woodland Bards. Nice photo of Monte the Antelope -- named, I believe, after the gambler Monte Tennes, who is known to have tipped off Commy about the Fix -- but I'm pretty sure Monte was far from the first.
2) 12/26/26 -- "The Sporting Goods" column by Westbrook Pegler. Pegler is a fascinating guy, and say what you want about his politics, he had a knack for original phrases. In this column, about "Say it ain't true, Joe," Pegler quips "I have always considered the possibility that this kid was misquoted or that he was a boy with leanings toward the law and was merely advising Jackson to plead not guilty."
3) 9/24/20 -- "Plan Probe of Cohan-Tennes Losses on Sox". George M. & Monte (not the Antelope) reportedly dropped $30,000 and $80,000 respectively. Big losers made great grand jury witnesses!!! This is a super article.
4) 9/25/20 -- "Inside Story of Plot to Buy World's Series". Days before Maharg makes the headlines that triggers Cicotte's "spilling the beans," the grand jury knows all about Abe Attell. But Hal Chase is the ringleader! The Trib has the price of the Fix at $100,000 -- before Maharg. Must reading for those who wonder if Maharg was just reading the papers, and figuring out how he could get that $10,000 reward from Commy. Hmmm.
5) 9/27/20 -- "Sox Suspected By Comiskey During Series." Crusinberry at the typewriter, has Commy "admitting" he knew about the Fix early on. This article has Heydler's story in detail. Tennes denies telling Weeghman about the Fix in August 1919 at Saratoga (Rothstein's place). Also here, the note that no White Sox players will be called to the grand jury till the pennant race is decided. Cicotte volunteers the next day.
6) 9/5/20 -- "Start Quiz to Save Baseball from Gamblers". Lots of details about the "fixed" game on 8/31/20, Cubs vs Phils, that got the grand jury convened -- including the phony telegrams rec'd by Veeck. The more you learn about the 8/31 game, the more the "fix" charges seem bogus -- but they set things in motion.
PEANUTS AND CRACKER JACK
Here is an assortment of minnows and blue gills caught in my net while I was trawling the Seymour Collection:
1) A Seymourian comment on an article in the Chicago Tribune 9/29/20 describing the celebration by the "Square Sox" after Cicotte's confession that the Fix was indeed In ("No one will know what we put up with" ... Eddie Collins: "We felt we had to keep silent"), says much in two words: "guilty knowledge."
2) Apparently the report of the Cook County grand jury was printed in the NY Times Index in November 1920. Not sure I've seen that (yet). Anyone?
3) A Sporting News note from 5/15/19 suggests that Eddie Cicotte may have been superstitious about pitching Openers, as he was shelled on O-Day 1918. I haven't checked this out.
4) Leonard G. Edwardson, a Chicago correspondent for the NY Sun and Herald, was sued for suggesting that Judge McDonald was pushing the B-Sox case in order to boost his credentials for the job as the new Commish of baseball. (See Chicago Tribune 2-4-21)
5) The Seymours had access to the Garry Herrmann papers and utilized them well in their books. The Seymour notes is as close as we can get to those papers today. Example of finds there: Letter from Ban Johnson to Herrmann on 7/28/21 notes that the American League is paying the expenses for the B-Sox trial. Another letter, BJ to Garry, 7/6/21, coaches Herrmann on what to say when he is on the witness stand: that he instructed players on both teams, and Garry would show that the Sox WERE under contract to their team during the entire Series.
6) Seymourian riddle: Grantland Rice "Was It On the Level?" -- what is this? A book or article?
7) Comiskey tried to make political hay in 1920 about Ban Johnson's ties to Cleveland ... suggested Johnson timed the grand jury to wreck the Sox and give the pennant to the team in which he had a financial interest. The NY Times 9/5/19 has the news of Johnson's ties to Cleveland ($58,500 stock) being revealed when Johnson was sued in the Carl Mays case, and grilled for two hours on the witness stand. Damn Yankees.
8) I've noted before that pitcher Jimmy Ring kept $50 given to him by Hal Chase, even though he refused to throw a game, and reported the bribe. A Seymour note on this says Ring "didn't dare refuse" Chase's money.
9) In a letter to Donald Gropman, 11/4/75, Harold Seymour comments on that remark in Golden Age where Joe Jackson told Seymour to "Go talk to Mr Edward T. Collins."
I never followed this suggestion, but it led me to think at the time, and when I got into the research on the subject many years later his remark reinforced my impression that the so-called honest players -- Ray Schalk, for one -- knew what was going on. In fact, it's hard to see how they could not have known.
10) A letter from Toporcer (a friend of H.Seymour) to Corbett 2/13/51 contains the note that Maxwell Hamilton debunked Say it ain't so "two or three years ago for a magazine" -- anyone seen this? In a related note, Charles Einstein in Covereing the World Series notes on page 37 that "Say it ain't so" was INVENTED by a sportswriter.
11) Seymour refers to a memoir by Eddie Collins in 1934, "From Player to Pilot." Anyone run across this? I believe Collins wrote a memoir in The Sporting News much later, in which he skims over the B-Sox episode.
12) Detroit Free Press, 3/15/21 (the trial was on deck): Jackson and Williams did not make any admission of "game-throwing" to the grand jury, and said the fixers were unknown to them.
13) NY Times 10/1/19: scalpers got up to $140/ticket for Game One. A comment in the Times the next day: "Cicotte pitched for the Reds."
14) W.A. Phelan in The Sporting News 12/25/19: There is a story "going the rounds" in Chicago that Schalk beat up one of the Sox pitchers after the last game of the 1919 Series. And Eddie Collins went to "his winter employer" and complained about his suspicions.
15) I've finally found enough corroboration to believe that Ivy Olson and Johnny Rawlings were in the Guilty Knowledge Club, betting and winning ($2,000) on the crooked Series. I have to check this again, but I think Rawlings played high school baseball with Swede Risberg. Somewhere in the Seymour notes is the tidbit that Rawlings only bet on sure things.
16) FINALLY: I have mentioned here a few times over the last year or so the names Eugene Packard and Eugene Paulette. My personal theory is that Harry Grabiner had the two confused when he jotted in his diary, beside Packard's name, "1918 Series fixer" (Veeck's Hustler's Handbook, p 254). Seymour's notes have Paulette and Packard as "side kicks" on the St Louis Browns 1917-18. They were both traded away in 1919. My own very lite research suggests Packard was not crooked, and Paulette may have been -- he was banned from baseball by Landis for accepting gifts from gamblers, but that is not the same as being guilty. I wonder if they sold "Banned by Landis" bumper stickers in the 20's?
FISH STORIES
I like tall tales, and I enjoyed the film Big Fish, even though it had nothing to do with baseball. I've written some tall tales (about baseball) myself. So I was primed to enjoy Gift of the Bambino, by Jerry Amernic, out this past spring from St Martin's Press.
All I knew about it was that it took off with Babe Ruth's first home run, swatted on his way up to the majors. The book is not so much a baseball book as a portrait of a family, with the strongest theme being the relationship between a young boy and his grandfather.
I can't put my finger on just why I never really got hooked on this one. It is well-written, and the characters well-drawn. But it just never grabbed me; I kept hoping it would, but it never did. Maybe this is one of those books where you have to be in a certain mood. The first time I read Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, I plodded along, but when I picked up the same book a few years later, I breezed through it. Maybe it didn't help that while I was moving through Gift of the Bambino, I was also soaring through The DaVinci Code and Brown's earlier Angels and Demons, two fabulously compelling novels that weave together history and mystery -- pageturners, where each short chapter just whets your appetite for the next one.
This didn't bother me during Gift, but when I closed the cover after I finished it, I found myself disturbed that Babe Ruth was portrayed (once again) as something bigger than life. "Called shots and cured tots" is how I summed up the Ruthian mythology in my poem on the Bambino. Amernic shows Ruth's human side, too. And America's love affair with this baseball hero is no myth. I don't know. It's just hard to get into worshipping ballplayers after spending so much time in October 1919.
SPEAKING OF THAT NEW FISHING HOLE
A recent SABR bulletin informs us that when we go fishing via ProQuest in the Chicago Tribune, we might not hook what we think is in there. Which explains why I could not find, for example, the Trib's reaction to Gandil's 1956 interview. Eventually, we'll be able to look up everything that was in the Tribune from 1849-1984. But for now, only 1890-1919 is complete. About 85% of 1920-1939 is accessible, and 20% of 1940-46. The next additions will be the early years, I think.
EXTRA INNINGS
This issue has been delayed some by one of those annoying speed bumps that life deals out occasionally, an unexpected stay in a hospital. This could cause a separation anxiety (being cut off from my computers, e-mail and the internet) but I survived. I went in feeling fine and came out the same way, but in better repair, after angioplasty/stent procedure. Not to make light of this, but angio is nothing at all compared to bypass surgery, which I required in 1992. Longtime readers of Notes may recall that I try to schedule my annual stress tests on or near Opening Day each spring, and this time around, I did better than ever. So I was very surprised and puzzled when navigating the hilly Cornell campus on foot, that the climbs were tiring me -- so soon after mastering level four on that treadmill. A catherization showed that one of the three '92 grafts is blocked, but the problem appears to be more with the minor arteries that feed into the major ones. So that's where the repairs will be made (I'll return for more July 2).
After bypass, I remember writing that it felt like a whole new ballgame, and not just extra innings. That surgery was really a very positive experience for me, and since then I have tried to assure others pondering that decision that it is worth doing, if that is what is recommended.
Of course, none of us ever really know what inning of life we are in. At 58, I like to think I'm in the middle innings, but that's wishful thinking. It's nice to know my heart is undamaged and strong, even though the plumbing is not perfect. Apparently my early warning system is working fine, too. Anyway, I'm back, and so is Notes.