#363 OCTOBER 28, 2005
CURSE, SCHMURSE
Back in #202, November 1, 1999, I went on record as a disbeliever in Curses -- the Bambino's, Rocky's, the Goat's, and even (and this was hardest) that of Victory Faust on McGraw's Giants. Maybe the Red Sox win has helped me win over a few folks in recent years to my point of view on this. My main points go roughly like this: first, any city with a major league team is blessed, not cursed (since '99, my city has lost its minor league team, so this is even more keenly felt); next, any city with ballparks like Wrigley and Fenway cannot whine -- they just can't. And they have World Championship flags to fly -- they are simply old flags, but most owners of Model T's are proud, and do not feel cursed at all.
That the White Sox franchise was cursed, I never bought, either. Someone told me Ozzie Guillen, their likeable manager this season, had the best explanation for the Sox pennant drought, just one visit to October since 1919 (till now) -- they had (bleeping awful) teams.
So as I congratulate Ozzie's Sox for sweeping to the top this Fall, I want to give them all full credit -- no assist to the ghosts of Shoeless Joe or any other cornfield occupant. Give credit where it is due -- so simple, so hard to do.
PURITY OF INTENTION
I have chided Rotisserie nuts over the years for "warping" their rooting ... for putting themselves in the position of having to cheer, at times, against their favorite teams, or for players who would otherwise be villains, in the pennant chases. So it was difficult for me to find myself sometimes cheering on the Sox this October, for the wrong reason.
I grew up a National League fan, so I rooted for the Sox in 1959 only because Ted Kluszewski, a popular Pittsburgh Pirate just a few months earlier, led the Sox in that Series. There have been a couple Yankee & AL teams I've liked, in recent years, and a few NL teams (the Braves, sometimes the Cards) I just couldn't cheer for. Scrap-iron Phil Garner and memories of 1979, the last Pirate appearance in the Series aside -- this Houston team just never grabbed me, even though I admired them for getting into the Series after such a dismal start. (The 1914 Miracle Braves came from 15 games under .500 and charged all the way to the title -- sweeping a pretty fair Connie Mack A's team at the end; I think Hugh Fullerton questioned whether that Series was played "on the square" -- along with several others, before that ugly 1919 thing.)
What bothered me this October was the fact that as the White Sox succeeded, from the waning days of the season (knocking out the Indians) thru the Playoffs, and finally in the WS -- I could not help but notice the mentions of 1919 that started appearing in the media. (That was one of the subjects last issue.) Not only that, but I started getting invited to be interviewed, for radio, TV, and newspapers. Obviously, the Sox' success this Fall was very, very good for my book. National publicity, and free.
I've read a bit about life in the monasteries, and I recalled novices going to their spiritual guides with the same dilemma. Father, I find myself doing the right thing, but for the wrong reason? Should I stop doing the right thing? The answer was always, "Of course not, you dolt!" (OK, not those words.) "You must simply purify your intention. Focus on the right reasons to do the good deed, and make those motives your own." This invariably was accomplished through prayer and fasting and maybe some good old self-deprivation; I suppose it wouldn't hurt to whip oneself a little, too, just to be safe.
I did none of the above, although sometimes it is pretty hard to distinguish rooting from prayer. But I survived, and my conscience is clear. I can go back to chiding the Roto-nuts.
I AM NOT A BLOGGER
This must sound a little like that crook, Nixon, claiming not to be something he really was. But in the flurry of last week, when I (and NOTES) was discovered by total strangers, I was occasionally called a Blogger. (Someone also called me "the Hub" for B-Sox research, and I liked that. No job title has ever fit me better than coordinator. To me, it's a title that sometimes looks "minor league" on a resume -- but it's really major.)
In my protesting, I came up with some of the reasons why I reject the label "Blogger." Here they are:
First, Notes is older than the internet, and I like to think I'm essentially doing what I started doing in March 1993. (OK, the internet was there, but I had no idea.) I still like to see editors read Notes, then ask if they can use something in their publications. Originally, Notes went ONLY to baseball editors. I give a number of them (especially the late Mike Schacht, of Fan Magazine) credit for improving the quality of my writings.
Next, and this has never been more true since I stepped onto the B-Sox Trail with issue #268 (see #361) -- Notes has become where I post my research. This is not at all unlike a scientist posting a theory or his findings in a journal, where his peers can challenge, contradict, correct, or duplicate his results. I know it's not exactly the same, but a lot of SABR members read Notes, and love to correct errors when they see them. This is no small favor. It's not a substitute for paying fact-checkers. But it's something I appreciate.
AND, Notes being on the internet has a value I've noted here a few times before. People find me, people I would likely never find on my own. Lately, grandchildren and other relatives of the ballplayers, reporters, and others I write about. This is extremely gratifying, especially when I am able to tell someone more about one of their ancestors than they ever knew before. If they give me something in return, fine, but that is gravy.
I confess that I was not always comfortable writing Notes in the first person, and I recall discussing that with editors early on. At one point I almost changed, to make Notes more like most of the many newsletters and magazines I received in exchange for Notes. Once I decided not to try to please everybody else, I was over the hump for good. Another one of those simple but hard things, methinx.
THE REST OF THE STORY - I
Last time, I mentioned a story in my local paper, announcing the find of a letter from the 1917 White Sox team and manager, to the National Commission. Signed the day the World Series ended (we need to test it to see if the stains are of stale champagne or a decent brand -- what ballplayer in 1917 would know the difference, anyway?) -- the letter requested full payment of $1,000, money that the NC was threatening to withhold; and the players seemed to have made some kind of pact, not to play in any more post-season exhibition games -- like the Series just over.
The most sinister spin that could be put on this document, was that these guys were ticked off, wanted their dough, and they sure better get it, or don't expect much from us the next time we get into post-season play. It was almost as if the honorable players in 1919 were the ones who kept their word, their promise not to really play in October anymore.
However, on further review (and this is why I like instant replay in baseball) -- it turned out to be nothing like that.
It seems that in 1917, there were rumors (swirling, we guess) that both the Sox and Giants were going to play more ball, after the Series ended. McGraw was supposed to be taking his men to Cuba. The rumors (later proved false) had Clean Eddie Collins leading the Sox to a Philly suburb to earn $10,000 to play a semi-pro team; but that was just the team's owner getting some free national publicity for his brewery. In any case, the heads of baseball were not amused, and said they were going to hold back $1,000 from the paycheck of each player -- of both teams. They would get their money back, plus interest, on January 1 -- as long as their exhibition game slate had been kept clean.
Both teams reacted swiftly with petitions. Pants Rowland, the Sox manager, and the Giants' captain Buck Herzog, took the letters to the NC -- ASAP. Basically, they were pledging, in writing, to make the World Series their final appearance.
Interestingly -- the Sox (including all the B-Sox but Chick Gandil) signed that letter before getting the news that Comiskey would not stand for it -- he'd pay them their $1,000 apiece out of the team share. What a guy, that Charley C! How could you do anything but play your best for him? (Was Commy just showing Ban Johnson up? Maybe, but their feud was not in high gear yet.)
Buck Herzog -- hearing nothing like that from the Giants -- went to the press and said he would be talking to a lawyer, if the NC went through with the salary grab. My hunch is that this threat of a lawsuit did the trick, as much as the letters. The National Commission changed its tune, and both teams got their full Series shares, on time. $3,669 for the winning Sox. (Short of the $5,000 Commy apparently said they'd get.)
Conclusion: No "Seeds of a Scandal" as the Utica Observer-Dispatch front-page headline suggested. If the full story sheds light on the motives for the Big Fix in 1919 -- it only makes it more puzzling. But not really -- a number of the players, Buck Weaver included, had feelings for Comiskey, it seems.
Commy was, after all, their savior. Huh? That's right. An excellent recent SABR meeting presentation by Mike Haupert of Wisconsin, on early baseball economics, demonstrated to and reminded me, of just how grateful the players typically were. As underpaid as they seem to us today -- they were making better wages than the Average American. Without working for a penny! They got to play ball -- something fun, enjoyable -- instead of earning cents a day in the mines or factories. Life in America was hard back then, wages (should I insert "pre-union"?) were awful; as the old Tennessee Ernie Ford song Sixteen Tons so eloquently put it -- you owed your soul to the Company Store.
So is it strange that the ballplayers did not routinely balk and strike and form their own leagues? (They did all that on occasion, but the system generally kept them out of revolt mode.) Not at all. They were earning enough to live on (and they worked in the off-season, remember, in real jobs) ... and some of them were heroes to boot -- all of them were heroes back home. So to bolt their teams was to toss away celebrity, as well as the wages.
I think I've written here about a "rule" one is tempted to make -- that the worse the situation they came from, the higher they rose in baseball. Don't send me back to the mines! This is not really a rule -- but look at how many guys in the Hall of Fame had fathers who worked in mines or under awful conditions. Mickey Mantle is maybe the most famous example.
WILL THE TRAIL TURN COLD?
I'm usually lousy at predictions. But I suspect that the interest in the 1919 World Series has peaked. Here in the shadows of Cooperstown, the phrase "past peak" means the colors of the autumn leaves are fading, growing duller by the day. (We had our first snow before the Series ended, and it removed a few leaves, too, not to mention power lines to the north.)
The B-Sox Trail that was crowded just last issue will be left to those who seem to live there lately, as if in the Hotel California: we can check out anytime we please, but we can never leave. Not really. In the blood.
But even as the networks and the affiliates, the newspaper guys and the talk show hosts, wrapped up their stories and headed for the trailheads where they go on -- real news was breaking.
To appreciate the significance, you have to remember first how hard it was to track down Collyer's Eye. (See #358, for a good summary of Bert Collyer's publications role in the B-Sox story; its pretty much the presentation I gave at SABR 35 in Toronto last August.)
Collyer's Eye was in the news for suggesting in 1923 that baseball might still not be squeaky clean, 100% free of the stranglehold of gambling. Then I found an obscure reference in a Lee Allen history of the AL. In NOTES #308 (Sept '03) I wrote:
COLLYER'S EYE -- ever heard of it? The sporting (gambling) magazine published in Chicago by Bert E. Collyer, apparently ran an article immediately or soon after the 1919 World Series -- the article contained the names of the players later indicted. No other newspaper or magazine dared such an expose, for fear of libel, and for lack of hard evidence. That didn't stop Bert. Unfortunately, the Eye was disreputable, and their expose went unnoticed. Today, it seems virtually impossible to look it up. And believe me, I've asked librarians and researchers all over the country to try. So I'm tossing it out here -- anyone know how I might get a look at that issue from October 1919? I probably cannot afford to buy it -- I just want to read it! There must be some Chicago collector out there whose grandfather bought the first three issues and started a set. To the attics!
It took three more months of sleuthing by those on the trail before an actual issue of the Eye was discovered, in January 2004. Those interested can read all about that find in #320; that issue has a good summary of what was in the Eye as they investigated the Big Fix, but only from the issues of the Eye that came out right after the scandal broke, in 1920.
Since then -- for about 22 months -- I have given up chasing the 1919 issues, because the library which had Collyer's Eye -- the one library on the PLANET, it seemed -- said they had only 1920 forward.
But last Monday, the day I posted #362 -- October 24, 2005 -- an e-mail from James Cornelius of that library of the University of Illinois in Urbana, informed me -- well, read on:
The scandal was first carried in Collyer's Eye on Saturday, October 18, 1919, and ran for many weeks after that.... Those issues are all present, up through March 27, 1920 [emphasis mine] (i.e. vols 4 and 5).... You or anyone else may read them, though photocopying will not be possible, given the condition and size.
So why am I sitting here in the shadows of Cooperstown, and not in an Urbana library? Good question! Well, I still have a F/T job, work which is actually as enjoyable as playing ball, on most days. Someday I will retire and research/write F/T, but I'm not there yet. So, I know I'll get there -- I just don't know when.
Of all the puzzle pieces in the B-Sox mystery, only one find would be more exciting, I think. That would be the discovery of the missing Fullerton articles from 1922, the ones Commy & Co. vetoed out of the Trib. Four or five dealing with the 1919 WS. In any one of them, he could corroborate Joe Jackson's claim that he told Commy about the Fix before Game One, with Hughie present.
But finding the 1919 Collyer's Eyes is right up there.
Telling the story of the cover-up means demonstrating what was known and when and by whom. If there's a paper in Chicago that is printing the names of players and gamblers and talking about meetings they held to rig the results of WS games, then it is pretty hard to swallow, when Commy or Ban Johnson claimed that there were only nameless rumors, with no substance.
As Bob Hoie has observed -- we should guess that Collyer's Eye published their best stuff after the scandal broke in 1920, the headlines they used and a little bit from Frank O. Klein's investigative reports, published in the Eye starting 10/18/19. But I am an optimist, and I'm looking for more. For example, the word cover-up was not in vogue in 1919, but Klein just might have written about it, in other words.
We'll also have that elusive Ray Schalk interview, where he is quoted saying seven of his teammates will not return. He echoed what Fullerton wrote in his post-Series post-mortem, Oct 10. Fullerton later revealed he was quoting Comiskey. I think it is highly likely that Schalk was present, with Fullerton, when Commy made that statement, perhaps a bit under the influence -- hey, he couldn't seem to remember saying it, so how can we expect him to actually do it? (He instead signed seven, giving raises.)
Let's hope Frank O. Klein had a travel budget, and made a trip to Savannah, to gab with the Shoeless One. Or to sunny California, to chat with Chick. Or to Detroit, to see how Farmer Eddie was doing down on the farm with the missus and the kiddies.
THESE THINGS HAPPEN
I gave more interviews than I can remember in the past week or two, and I'll just thank everyone here who did them, or recommended me. They were fun. I have a couple more on deck, too, and I guess I should expect another batch when the book's out.
The most memorable will probably turn out to be that I gave Stefan Fatsis, a Wall Street Journal staff reporter (you may know him from his great book on Scrabble, Word Freak, from NPR, and from TV appearances -- I did). Stefan and I exchanged numerous e-mails and over a dozen phone conversations (15? 20?). The result was an article that was not deemed WSJ (the paper) worthy, but it found a nice home on the internet, at the WSJ site. Maybe it will show up here later, or in the Yahoo group B-Sox web site library.
Stefan seemed especially fascinating with one of the finds I made over the last three years, one I've written about at length, what I call the 1935 Fullerton memoir. The Sporting News article will be reproduced as a page in my book for all to read, from beginning to end. It is a remarkable document.
The story behind the discovery of the Fullerton memoir is in #321. Warren Corbett gave me the tip; we were both going through The Sporting News using the digital search capability of Paper of Record. He was researching minor league gambling, I was on the B-Sox trail. I like to think I'd have found the HSF memoir on my own, eventually, but the fact is that Warren told me to look at that issue.
The discovery ought to be credited as well to the inventors of the technology that made it possible for us, and others, to sit in our homes and scan decades of printed pages, looking for names, that might be clues. (Anyone who has used Paper of Record knows its strengths and weaknesses. Most of the stuff you find in the haystack is hay; but if there's a needle in there, POR can save a hell of a lot of time.)
And I was reminded, talking with Stefan -- over and over -- about the Fullerton memoir, that one reason this amazing piece was not found by Asinof or any of the Jackson/Weaver biographers, or by most historians is a simple one: no one looks for great stuff about 1919, in a 1935 newspaper. But -- these things happen. Sometimes it takes a while for the censor to fall asleep. Or in this case, for those Fullerton might embarrass -- to die.
Stefan, I might have added -- The Sporting News carried great finds in back-to-back issues. A week after the Fullerton memoir, another reporter, Tom Swope, writing under the same innocent-looking headline ("I Recall"), gave what I believe is the real explanation for the very low attendance in Game Seven of the 1919 Series. You won't find his explanation elsewhere, which bothers me on one hand (no corroboration); but on the other hand, I think it is apparent why the reason was -- covered up.
A few longtime readers of Notes observed to me, after reading Stefan's WSJ article, that he seemed to be summarizing my book. Well, he did rely a lot on what I gave him (including, from the publisher, a review copy of Burying the Black Sox). I was grateful for the exposure and the link he provided to Notes and (therefore) to the book and the Yahoo group.
And I enjoyed his company on the trail. I have a hunch he'll be back, one of these days.
EPILOGUE
[Someone suggested, when the Sox made the post-season this month, that SURELY I would write an epilogue for my book. So I did. I'm not certain it will be used, but here it is.]
EPILOGUE
The Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 1917. When the Fix of October 1919 came to light, with but three games left in the 1920 season, the suspension of the suspected players ruined the team's shot at a third pennant in four years. The club that might have continued for some time as a dynasty, was shattered.
It would be forty years before the White Sox won their next American League pennant. And forty-six more seasons before they would once again reign as champions of baseball, in 2005.
This author does not happen to believe in curses.
But he vividly recalls the joy of a pennant that is won after decades of drought, from his hometown Pittsburgh's triumph in 1960. And then from Boston's exhilarating achievement in 2004.
Curses and jinxes may haunt baseball. But the fact is that baseball is a sport with a long memory. Its seasons are connected, and its fans travel back in forth in time using those seasons like steps in a ladder.
So naturally, as the White Sox of 2005 inched closer to the grand prize that every season offers, the seasons of their past came to mind. Would this be another 1920 or 1955 or 1963, a season of coming close? Once they clinched a spot in the post-season playoffs, the question became can they make it to the Series? And once there, will they go all the way, like the 1906 Hitless Wonders, or the 1917 Sox? Or will they disappoint their fans, like the Go-Go Sox of 1959, or like --
The 1919 Series may not have been the only one influenced by gamblers "fixing" players, but it is the only one that has gone down in baseball history that way. The Big Fix embarrassed baseball, to say the least, and certainly damaged its "clean" image among American sports. But the so-called "Black Sox" -- the eight players who were expelled from the game after the Fix -- were not the only ones suspected of "tossing" games, or of having "guilty knowledge" of the strangling influence of gamblers. That baseball committed "a single sin" is indeed a myth.
The White Sox triumph in 2005 will not "bury the Black Sox" -- they will only rest in peace when their story is finally told. They can no longer speak for themselves. But taking the journey back to 1919, using baseball's magic ladder, can, to borrow a phrase from W. P. Kinsella, ease their pain. It is never too late to understand, to forgive, and then to never forget the lessons their story holds.