Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: And before we get to our episode, we have a
Speaker 1: fun announcement, which is that while we are in Chicago
Speaker 1: for our Chicago stop on our tour, we are going
Speaker 1: to do a fun thing with museum Hack, which I'm
Speaker 1: so excited. Yes, listeners to our show have have heard
Speaker 1: about museum Hack before. We are doing a scavenger hunt
Speaker 1: at the Art Institute of Chicago. It's going to be
Speaker 1: at two pm on the twenty six of October. There
Speaker 1: is more information about it on our website or on
Speaker 1: the museum Hack website. We've been kind of working on
Speaker 1: this behind the scenes after a while and just got
Speaker 1: to the point that we were ready to announce it.
Speaker 1: So if you are, especially if you're already in Chicago, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's going to be I think a fun time for
Speaker 1: us the day after our live show there. I am
Speaker 1: very excited because it is no secret that I love
Speaker 1: a museum and I love and I love the way
Speaker 1: that they get people to engage with art and history
Speaker 1: and I'm so enthused about this whole thing. I have
Speaker 1: the wiggles, yes, And so often on our tours we're
Speaker 1: in a place for so little time that we don't
Speaker 1: get to have some kind of stuff like that, So
Speaker 1: I'm glad we built that in with this one. So anyway,
Speaker 1: our website missed. In history dot Com, you'll find more
Speaker 1: information about that. And now we will get into the
Speaker 1: actual meat of today's episode, which also was coincidentally about Chicago.
Speaker 1: We have at least one more episode this year. We
Speaker 1: are right in the middle of the anniversary of the
Speaker 1: World Series, and that's the one that led to the
Speaker 1: Black Sox scandal, after some players from the Chicago White
Speaker 1: Sox they took a bribe to lose it on purpose.
Speaker 1: There are some players who confess to taking this money,
Speaker 1: but whether some are all of them really played their
Speaker 1: best after taking the money is hotly debated. Still, like
Speaker 1: you can go and read some articles that are still
Speaker 1: satistical analyzes of various people's like batting averages during the
Speaker 1: season and then what it was like during the World
Speaker 1: Series and what did that mean about whether they were
Speaker 1: really trying to lose or not. And we're not talking
Speaker 1: as much about that today, well, because that's one of
Speaker 1: those things that there are so many factors involved in
Speaker 1: how anyone in any profession, whether you're a professional piano
Speaker 1: player or a professional athlete or anything, how you perform
Speaker 1: on any given day is the result of a lot
Speaker 1: of different factors. So it's almost impossible to break down
Speaker 1: any sort of definitive yes, no answer, whether anyone like
Speaker 1: kind of shrugged it off yep. Which all that is
Speaker 1: also part of what happened when this all came to trial.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a lot of discussion about it. So
Speaker 1: the collective memory about this whole scandal is also really
Speaker 1: pretty different from how it all played out, especially if
Speaker 1: your familiarity with it is from stuff like watching Field
Speaker 1: of Dreams, Like, uh, some of it's given this really
Speaker 1: romanticized air sometime it also i think imagined because of
Speaker 1: this whole idea of baseball being a wholesome pastime, that
Speaker 1: it's imagined as happening as a more innocent time. But
Speaker 1: really this was happening alongside a lot of the other
Speaker 1: stuff we've talked about from nineteen nineteen, like Red Summer
Speaker 1: and the First Red Scare and the Palmer Raids and
Speaker 1: a lot of widespread labor disputes, including the Amalgamated Steel
Speaker 1: Strike of nineteen nineteen, which we haven't actually talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before. And there's also this imagined version
Speaker 1: that baseball was more innocent before this happened. But as
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, none of that is really
Speaker 1: the case at all. So first of all, we're gonna
Speaker 1: lay some groundwork and give you some context. It is
Speaker 1: a myth that baseball was the invention of one single person.
Speaker 1: Abner Doubleday, who was a major general in the Union
Speaker 1: Army during the Civil War, is often credited as having
Speaker 1: created the sport in Cooperstown, New York, in eighteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't in Cooperstown at that time. He was
Speaker 1: at West Point. He also never said that he invented baseball.
Speaker 1: Had a art from all that baseball existed before eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, when, according to the story, Abner double Day
Speaker 1: invented it. Variations of it developed in multiple United States
Speaker 1: cities in the eighteenth century. They were largely inspired by
Speaker 1: the English games of rounder and cricket. Uh there, I
Speaker 1: mean there are also other There are Native American ball
Speaker 1: games that involve balls and sticks in some way, but
Speaker 1: they have more in common with like lacrosse and basketball,
Speaker 1: and baseball really ties back to those English games more.
Speaker 1: By the middle of the nineteenth century, baseball was known
Speaker 1: not as an adaptation of an English game, though, but
Speaker 1: as an innately American sport, and it had also become
Speaker 1: extremely popular. The New York Mercury described it as the
Speaker 1: national pastime on December five, eighteen fifty six. The idea
Speaker 1: that the sport had been double Day's creation was intentionally
Speaker 1: spread by a commission that was established to research baseball's
Speaker 1: origins in the early twentieth century. The commission gave Doubledaid
Speaker 1: the credit in nineteen oh a eight, and by that
Speaker 1: point he had been dead for fifteen years, so he
Speaker 1: was not around to set the record straight. Part of
Speaker 1: the commission's goal in propagating this myth was to reinforce
Speaker 1: this American origin story for the sport, because baseball had
Speaker 1: taken on a symbolic significance that had come to be
Speaker 1: imagined as uniquely embodying American values like loyalty, patriotism, hard work,
Speaker 1: team play, and sporting behavior, and also community spirit and
Speaker 1: civic pride. As cities and towns became home to their
Speaker 1: own baseball teams and developed rivalries with their neighbors. In
Speaker 1: our previous podcast on Walt Whitman, we talked about how
Speaker 1: Whitman tried to both reflect upon and shape the consciousness
Speaker 1: of the United States through his writing in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and this included baseball. Whitman's biographer Horace Traubel recalled a
Speaker 1: conversation they had in eighteen eighty nine in which Troubl
Speaker 1: called baseball quote the Hurrah game of the Republic, and
Speaker 1: Whitman replied, quote, that's beautiful, the Harague game. Well, it's
Speaker 1: our game. That's the chief fact in connection with it.
Speaker 1: America's game has the snap go fling of the American atmosphere,
Speaker 1: belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as
Speaker 1: significantly as our constitutions laws. Is just important in the
Speaker 1: sum total of our historic life. The idea of baseball
Speaker 1: was also connected to the assimilation of immigrants into what
Speaker 1: was regarded as mainstream white American life, and the words
Speaker 1: of sportswriter Hugh Fullerton quote, baseball, to my way of thinking,
Speaker 1: is the greatest single force working for americanization. No other
Speaker 1: game appeals so much to the foreign born. Nothing, not
Speaker 1: even the schools teaches the American spirit so quickly or
Speaker 1: inculcates the idea of sportsmanship or fair play as thoroughly.
Speaker 1: As is clear from a lot of episodes in our archive,
Speaker 1: the United States has never thoroughly lived up to these
Speaker 1: ideals that baseball was meant to embody and the same
Speaker 1: as true or baseball itself. There was really never an
Speaker 1: idyllic time when baseball was wholesome, clean, pure, and unencumbered
Speaker 1: by the same social issues that were affecting the rest
Speaker 1: of the nation. For example, racial segregation in baseball got
Speaker 1: it start in eighteen sixty seven, and Major League baseball
Speaker 1: was officially segregated twenty years later. Baseball struggled with labor
Speaker 1: rights issues as well. Today, major League baseball salaries ranged
Speaker 1: from five hundred fifty thousand dollars to thirty five million
Speaker 1: dollars a year. But at first baseball was a strictly
Speaker 1: amateur sport. Then that meant that only people who could
Speaker 1: afford not to work could afford to play baseball, although
Speaker 1: some people were paid in secret even though it was
Speaker 1: against the rules. Gradually, though baseball became a professional sport,
Speaker 1: the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first fully professional team
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty nine, and the National Association became the
Speaker 1: first professional baseball league two years later. Baseball became an
Speaker 1: industry that still presented itself as a national pastime instead
Speaker 1: of a business, sidestepping the idea that playing baseball for
Speaker 1: a living was work, and professional baseball did this pretty successfully.
Speaker 1: In nine two, after most of the events that we're
Speaker 1: talking about today, the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled
Speaker 1: that Major League Baseball did not violate the Sherman Antitrust
Speaker 1: Act because even though professional baseball involved teams traveling from
Speaker 1: state to state, which players were paid for their work
Speaker 1: and spectators were paying to watch, that this did not
Speaker 1: constitute interstate commerce. While playing professional baseball is work, baseball
Speaker 1: players didn't have a lot of rights or protections as workers.
Speaker 1: For example, players often signed contracts with teams that covered
Speaker 1: a specific number of seasons, but a reserve clause meant
Speaker 1: that they were still tied to that team, sometimes in perpetuity,
Speaker 1: until they were formally released, even if they were not
Speaker 1: actively playing anymore. Often, contracts stipulated that players could be
Speaker 1: sold or traded to other teams without any say in
Speaker 1: the matter, and these contracts placed a lot of restrictions
Speaker 1: on players without giving them much job security. Many included
Speaker 1: attend a release clause, which allowed teams to terminate contracts
Speaker 1: with little notice and without cause. All these contractual stipulations
Speaker 1: meant that players didn't have a lot of negotiating power
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, and they also weren't paid
Speaker 1: well enough to support themselves after their time as a
Speaker 1: player was over. Baseball teams didn't have pensions or retirement plans,
Speaker 1: and a lot of players started playing ball professionally when
Speaker 1: they were young. They had little to know education or
Speaker 1: training and other work, so when age or injury or
Speaker 1: some other circumstance led to the end of their baseball career,
Speaker 1: they didn't have another way to support themselves, and they
Speaker 1: were thought of as being too old to not already
Speaker 1: have a way to earn a living. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: there are no more labor issues in baseball or any
Speaker 1: other professionals were, but some of these have improved somewhat
Speaker 1: since then. An assigned from these issues there was the
Speaker 1: gambling and corruption. The blacks Box weren't the first players
Speaker 1: to be banned from baseball either temporarily or permanently because
Speaker 1: of gambling. The National Association that we mentioned a few
Speaker 1: moments ago lasted for less than five years, in part
Speaker 1: because widespread gambling raised questions about the sports legitimacy. In
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it wasn't particularly
Speaker 1: frowned upon for players to bet on their own games,
Speaker 1: and it was also common for gamblers to pay players
Speaker 1: for tips like insider knowledge about who was recovering from
Speaker 1: an injury or which players were expected to take the
Speaker 1: field that day. Basically any little tidbit of information that
Speaker 1: might give one better an edge when making wagers. Some
Speaker 1: gamblers essentially had players on their payroll on an ongoing
Speaker 1: basis for this purpose, and long before the black Socks scandal,
Speaker 1: the influence of gambling on the sport went beyond paying
Speaker 1: for information and into bribing players to influence the outcome
Speaker 1: of the game. Paying players to throw a game goes
Speaker 1: back at least to eighteen sixty five, when a gambler
Speaker 1: paid a player for the New York Mutuals to make
Speaker 1: sure that their opponent won in the next day's game.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o five, Philadelphia Athletics pitcher Rube Woodell injured
Speaker 1: his shoulder and missed the end of the season, including
Speaker 1: the World Series. People raised some suspicions at the time
Speaker 1: about whether that injury was genuine or not, and then,
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal, allegations surface
Speaker 1: that he had been paid seventeen thousand dollars to fake
Speaker 1: an injury and sit out of the World Series. In
Speaker 1: ninety seven, former White Sox shortstop Charles Risberg, known as Swede,
Speaker 1: told the Chicago Tribune about a string of fixed games
Speaker 1: during the nineteen seventeen season. According to his account, the
Speaker 1: White Sox and the Detroit Tigers played two doubleheaders that September.
Speaker 1: The Socks won all four of them, purportedly because the
Speaker 1: Tigers had been paid to lose them. Risburg also said
Speaker 1: that in nineteen nineteen, the White Sox through three games
Speaker 1: against the Tigers as a sort of thank you. And
Speaker 1: these are just examples, so and several players from the
Speaker 1: Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the World
Speaker 1: Series in exchange for money. This wasn't a plot that
Speaker 1: just sprang out of nowhere. Sullying and otherwise pristine and
Speaker 1: above board sport basically this kind of behavior had been
Speaker 1: going on for so long, essentially unchallenged, that multiple players
Speaker 1: from the White Sox thought they could fix the World
Speaker 1: Series and get away with it. We will talk more
Speaker 1: about it after a sponsor break. The Black Sox scandal
Speaker 1: followed the end of World War One. The United States
Speaker 1: had entered the war in April of nineteen seventeen, and
Speaker 1: at first the sport of baseball continued on, with the
Speaker 1: White Sox winning the World Series that November. But by
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen things had changed. A lot of players had
Speaker 1: either volunteered to join the military or had been drafted.
Speaker 1: In July of that year, Secretary of War Newton D.
Speaker 1: Baker issued a work or Fight Order, which required men
Speaker 1: who were eligible for the draft to either join the
Speaker 1: military or work in an industry that was critical to
Speaker 1: the war, rather than in non essential vocations. Baseball wasn't
Speaker 1: specifically described as non essential, but it was definitely perceived
Speaker 1: that way, and baseball players who didn't enlist or go
Speaker 1: to work in a critical industry faced increasing criticism. Some
Speaker 1: who did go to work in a critical industry also
Speaker 1: spent more time playing for the company ball team than
Speaker 1: working Toward the war, effort. The major leagues considered suspending
Speaker 1: games altogether, but instead shortened the season and held the
Speaker 1: World Series at the start of September rather than later.
Speaker 1: In the fall, the Boston Red Sox defeated the Chicago
Speaker 1: Cubs four games to two. Germany surrendered in World War
Speaker 1: One on November eleven, en Although the Treaty of Versailles
Speaker 1: that formally ended the war wasn't signed until the following year,
Speaker 1: this meant that the war was over in time for
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineteen baseball season to at least in theory,
Speaker 1: get back to normal. Normal for the White Sox involved
Speaker 1: some tensions between players and management. Elliott Asanov's book Eight
Speaker 1: Men Out, which was published in nineteen sixty three, was
Speaker 1: the go to source about the Black Sox scandal for decades,
Speaker 1: and he made the claim that White Sox owner Charles
Speaker 1: Komiskey was vastly under paying his team and that this
Speaker 1: grudge led to several players willingness to participate in this scheme.
Speaker 1: But really, the White Sox payroll at the start of
Speaker 1: the season was a little over eighty eight thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which was more than ten thousand dollars higher than their
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen World Series opponent, the Cincinnati Reds. Some of
Speaker 1: the White Sox players were the highest paid in the
Speaker 1: league for their positions. What the White Sox did have
Speaker 1: was huge pay disparities, with some of its best players
Speaker 1: making the smallest amounts of money. Eddie Collins, who played
Speaker 1: second base, was paid fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars a year,
Speaker 1: but the average salary of the players who were implicated
Speaker 1: in this conspiracy to throw the World Series were paid
Speaker 1: more than ten thousand dollars less than the so Money
Speaker 1: and grievances with Komiskey were surely a factor in all this,
Speaker 1: but it was a lot more complicated than basically the
Speaker 1: players being so low paid that they had no choice
Speaker 1: other than to take this bribe. Some depictions of the
Speaker 1: Black Sox scandal also make it seem as though the
Speaker 1: players were hapless rubes drawn in by conniving gangsters, but
Speaker 1: really it was the players who first proposed this scheme.
Speaker 1: Arnold Gandel known as Chick, who played first base, and
Speaker 1: picture Eddie Sikat were the instigators of this plot. They
Speaker 1: reached out to gamblers, including Joseph Sullivan known as Sport.
Speaker 1: In September of nineteen nineteen. Then Gandel and Scott recruited
Speaker 1: other players to help them with the fix. At the time,
Speaker 1: a White Sox victory was thought of as pretty much
Speaker 1: a sure thing. The Cincinnati Reds were champions in their league,
Speaker 1: but the White Sox were considered to be the far
Speaker 1: superior team. Odds of a White Sox win were set
Speaker 1: at five to one, so people who bet that they
Speaker 1: would lose had the potential for a huge payout. As
Speaker 1: a surprising number of bets rolled in against the White Sox,
Speaker 1: some of them surprisingly large, Rumors started to spread that
Speaker 1: something fishy was going on. Syndicated sportswriter Hugh Fullerton wired
Speaker 1: a note to all the papers that were printing his
Speaker 1: work which read, quote advisal not to bet on this series.
Speaker 1: Ugly rumors afloat Early in Game one, Eddie Succott was
Speaker 1: pitching for the White Sox and he hit Red's player
Speaker 1: Mari Wrath, and that was reportedly a signal to betters
Speaker 1: that White Sox players were going to throw the game.
Speaker 1: As agreed. The White Sox did lose that game with
Speaker 1: a score of one to nine. Insiders were immediately suspicious.
Speaker 1: Some of them had heard rumors of a fix in
Speaker 1: the works before the game had even started. White Sox
Speaker 1: manager William kidd Gleason thought the team just had not
Speaker 1: been playing the way he'd seen them play all season,
Speaker 1: and that concerned him. He went to Komiskey about it,
Speaker 1: and Comiskey went to American League president Van Johnson, but
Speaker 1: at that point nothing came of their concerns. The White
Speaker 1: Sox lost game too as well, but then they won
Speaker 1: Game three, and that game Dicky Kerr was pitching, and
Speaker 1: he was not in on this conspiracy to throw the series.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that the conspiring players just were not
Speaker 1: able to perform badly enough to offset his pitching. But
Speaker 1: it's also possible that they were trying to send a
Speaker 1: message to the gamblers because after Games one and two,
Speaker 1: they had not received their promise payouts for throwing the games,
Speaker 1: and they wanted their money. The World Series continued on
Speaker 1: from there, with the Reds winning games four and five,
Speaker 1: and then the White Sox winning games six and seven.
Speaker 1: Then the Reds won the series with Game eight, winning
Speaker 1: five games to the White Soxes three. I was doing
Speaker 1: the thing where my husband and I were in the
Speaker 1: car and I was recapping everything that I had written
Speaker 1: for this episode, and normally, uh, it would end in
Speaker 1: game seven. So I kept naming more games that had
Speaker 1: been one or loss than he was, like, how many
Speaker 1: games were there? It's gonna be the best of nine.
Speaker 1: This fishions about the White Sox performance had continued all
Speaker 1: through the World Series. Kmiskey, g Lisa, and others tied
Speaker 1: to the White Sox management tried to investigate. Afterward, Comiskey
Speaker 1: went to maclay Hoyne, who was the state's attorney for
Speaker 1: Cook County, Illinois, and as Hoyne related it, Comiskey told
Speaker 1: him that he thought some of his players had jobbed him.
Speaker 1: In his word, Comiskey asked for help in figuring that out.
Speaker 1: It was clear that something had happened, and eventually Gamblers
Speaker 1: confirmed to Comiskey that the series had been rigged, but
Speaker 1: he and others in the team's management thought it would
Speaker 1: be in their best interests to keep things quiet. They
Speaker 1: even signed new contracts with players who had been part
Speaker 1: of the scheme, with those players getting raises as part
Speaker 1: of the deal. Others, though, were not so interested in
Speaker 1: covering up the fix of the World Series. Sports journalists
Speaker 1: saw the same suspicious disparities and how the White Sox
Speaker 1: had been playing during the World Series versus how they
Speaker 1: had been playing during the regular season. Hugh full Lerton,
Speaker 1: in particular, had a notebook full of suspicious plays that
Speaker 1: he had kept track of during the games. Fullerton published
Speaker 1: an article in The New York World on December twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, titled Big League Baseball being run for gamblers,
Speaker 1: with ballplayers in on the deal. The next day, Callier's
Speaker 1: I published an article by Frank O. Klein stating that
Speaker 1: White Sox catcher Ray Schalk had named several teammates who
Speaker 1: would not be part of the nineteen twenty season, implying
Speaker 1: that it was because they had thrown the World Series.
Speaker 1: The players he named were pitchers Claude Lefty Williams and
Speaker 1: Eddie Saccott, first baseman Chick Gandle, infielder Fred McMullen, shortstop
Speaker 1: Charles Swede Risburg, and outfielders Oscar Happy Felsh and Joe
Speaker 1: Jackson That's also known as Shoeless Joe. You might think
Speaker 1: these allegations would have immediately ended the players careers, but
Speaker 1: they did not. Most returned to the field during the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties season. With many of those same players named
Speaker 1: Inklins articles allegedly can tinuing to fix games. This was
Speaker 1: to the immense frustration of their teammates who were not
Speaker 1: in on this fix, who made comments to the press
Speaker 1: about how the dirty players weren't trying or were actively
Speaker 1: working against the players who were actually trying to win.
Speaker 1: In August of nineteen twenty, the White Sox were first
Speaker 1: in the league and seemed poised to win the pennant,
Speaker 1: but suddenly lost seven games in a row. Three were
Speaker 1: against the Boston Red Sox, which before that point was
Speaker 1: in fifth place. And while it is totally possible for
Speaker 1: a great team to suddenly hit a losing streak, multiple
Speaker 1: players who weren't implicated in the nineteen nineteen fix were
Speaker 1: convinced that their teammates were once again throwing games. After
Speaker 1: one of the Boston games, pictured, Dickie Kerr had a
Speaker 1: heated encounter with Buck Weaver and Swede Risburg, telling them quote,
Speaker 1: if you told me you wanted to lose this game,
Speaker 1: I could have done it a lot easier. But eventually,
Speaker 1: even though there had been no consequences before this point,
Speaker 1: the nine World Series fix did lead eight members of
Speaker 1: the Chicago White Sox to be banned from Major League
Speaker 1: Baseball for life. We will talk more about that. After
Speaker 1: a sponsor break in September of a grand jury investigation
Speaker 1: in Cook County, Illinois was looking into allegations of a
Speaker 1: potentially fixed game between the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies,
Speaker 1: which had been played the month before. American League President
Speaker 1: Ban Johnson encouraged Presiding Judge Charles A. McDonald to include
Speaker 1: the allegations of a fix in the World Series to
Speaker 1: this investigation, and soon that was the grand jury's primary focus.
Speaker 1: Grand Jury proceedings are generally kept secret in the United States,
Speaker 1: but in this case they were not. Newspapers carried reports
Speaker 1: detailing exactly what was going on, some of which included
Speaker 1: word for word testimony, and his words spread that baseball
Speaker 1: players were confessing to having taken a bribe to throw
Speaker 1: the World Series. The general public felt deeply betrayed. There
Speaker 1: was the possibly apocryphal exchange with Joe Jackson outside the
Speaker 1: courthouse when someone described as a newsboy, a reporter, or
Speaker 1: a random child, depending on the version of the story
Speaker 1: you hear, plaintively said quotes say it ain't so Joe.
Speaker 1: A few years later, f Scott Fitzgerald included a fictionalized
Speaker 1: version of Arnold Rothstein, who was believed to have financed
Speaker 1: this whole scheme in The Great Gatsby. In Gatsby's words,
Speaker 1: he had played with the faith of fifty million people.
Speaker 1: On September ninety eight, players were indicted for conspiring to
Speaker 1: defraud the public and injure the business of Charles Chemiskey
Speaker 1: and the American League. They were the same players who
Speaker 1: had been named in Collier's I back in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: along with the addition of George Weaver known as Buck,
Speaker 1: who played third base. Weaver maintained his innocence for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life, saying he had not taken any
Speaker 1: money and had played his best during the series. Sacha Williams, Jackson,
Speaker 1: and Felsh all admitted to the grand jury that they
Speaker 1: had taken the bribe. Jackson's testimony included that he had
Speaker 1: been promised twenty thousand dollars but had only gotten five thousand.
Speaker 1: The four confessing players also implicated the others in their testimony,
Speaker 1: but they didn't admit to actually throwing the game once
Speaker 1: the bribe had been taken. Lefty Williams also named several
Speaker 1: gamblers who were involved, some of whom were also indicted.
Speaker 1: But then the nine election disrupted these proceedings, with Republicans
Speaker 1: asking Democrats in Illinois and much of the rest of
Speaker 1: the country. The new prosecutors taking over at the County
Speaker 1: States Attorney's Office, found that the case that they were
Speaker 1: inheriting from the previous administration needed a lot of work.
Speaker 1: The previous prosecutors had been relying on the players who
Speaker 1: had confessed to turn state's evidence, so they had not
Speaker 1: really built much of a case beyond that. But by
Speaker 1: this point those players had secured legal representation, and they
Speaker 1: clearly had no intention of testifying against their teammates. As
Speaker 1: this was happening, former federal judge Kennasa Mountain Landis was
Speaker 1: appointed as the first Commissioner of Baseball. He took office
Speaker 1: on December twelfth, y replacing the three man National Commission
Speaker 1: that had governed Major League Baseball previously. He was appointed to,
Speaker 1: in the words of National League President John Hadler quote,
Speaker 1: rule with an iron hand. Prosecutors hoped to delay the
Speaker 1: trial to allow them some more time to build a
Speaker 1: better case than the one that they had inherited, but
Speaker 1: in February of one. Judge William E. Denver, denied a
Speaker 1: motion to postpone and set a very speedy trial date instead.
Speaker 1: The state's attorney's office didn't feel like the case was
Speaker 1: winnable in the time that they had to pull it
Speaker 1: all together, so State's Attorney Robert E. Krow dropped all
Speaker 1: the charges. But then they paneled a new grand jury,
Speaker 1: which reindicted all the original defendants plus five more gamblers.
Speaker 1: The prosecution had an interesting challenge ahead of it in
Speaker 1: Illinois at the time. If two parties planned to commit
Speaker 1: an unlawful act that was enough to support a charge
Speaker 1: of conspiracy, it did not matter whether they had actually
Speaker 1: carried out their plan, and the unlawful act itself was
Speaker 1: a different charge. So if two people conspired to kidnap someone,
Speaker 1: for example, they could still be charged with conspiracy regardless
Speaker 1: of whether they actually did it. If they did, the
Speaker 1: kidnapping itself would be considered a separate crime. So that
Speaker 1: aspect of Illinois law was helpful to the prosecution, because,
Speaker 1: like we talked about at the top of the show,
Speaker 1: it's really difficult to prove that eight players really lost
Speaker 1: some baseball games on purpose. The ones who had confessed
Speaker 1: had confessed only to taking the bribe, not to throwing
Speaker 1: the games. And you can come up with all kinds
Speaker 1: of reasons to explain somebody's poor performance in a baseball game.
Speaker 1: But the situation was still complicated because a conspiracy is
Speaker 1: a plan to commit an unlawful act, and at the time,
Speaker 1: there wasn't anything unlawful about losing a baseball game on purpose.
Speaker 1: That's why the indictments were framed as a matter of
Speaker 1: fraud and injury to the business of the team's owner
Speaker 1: and the league. But even this was on kind of
Speaker 1: shaky legal ground. There was another game fixing case in
Speaker 1: California that had been thrown out of court when prosecutors
Speaker 1: tried to make a similar argument. These were not the
Speaker 1: only challenges that the prosecutors were facing. Hearsay evidence was
Speaker 1: admissible before the grand jury, but not in a criminal trial,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the testimony given before the grand
Speaker 1: jury was hearsay. Also, most of the people involved who
Speaker 1: weren't ball players didn't live in Illinois, and some of
Speaker 1: them just didn't bother to show up for court. Of
Speaker 1: the indicted gamblers, the only ones to stand trial were
Speaker 1: Carl Zorke, David Zelzer and Ben and lou Levy. I
Speaker 1: read various amusing accounts of when you have someone who
Speaker 1: is a criminal who lived somewhere else and you want
Speaker 1: them to come to court in another state. They had
Speaker 1: some challenges trying to make that happen. In the end,
Speaker 1: the prosecutors star witness was Bill Burns, also known as
Speaker 1: Sleepy Bill, who was a former Major league pitcher who
Speaker 1: had gone into the oil business. He and Billy Maharg
Speaker 1: had served as go betweens between the players and the
Speaker 1: gangsters who were financing this whole scheme. The most famous
Speaker 1: of these financiers was Arnold Rothstein, who he mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: but he was not indicted or tried in connection to
Speaker 1: this plot. A lot of people think he was like
Speaker 1: the major source of money for all this not a
Speaker 1: thing that was conclusively proven. The trial started in June
Speaker 1: of before a jury of white men who all said
Speaker 1: they were not baseball fans, and in the end, after
Speaker 1: deliberating for less than three hours and taking one vote,
Speaker 1: they found all the defendants not guilty on all counts.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of accounts that say that this
Speaker 1: was because all of the evidence was stolen ahead of
Speaker 1: the trial, so that there was nothing to go on,
Speaker 1: and the original transcriptions of the grand jury testimony were stolen,
Speaker 1: but these were transcriptions that had been made from shorthand
Speaker 1: notes that were kept during the proceedings. Those no still existed,
Speaker 1: so they were just retranscribed for the trial. Nobody seemed
Speaker 1: to have any doubt about whether the second round of
Speaker 1: transcriptions was accurate or valid. The defense did not raise
Speaker 1: any questions about whether they were as part of their defense.
Speaker 1: The prosecution was shocked at this outcome, and so were
Speaker 1: a lot of other people. There's been a lot of
Speaker 1: speculation into why the jury reached the verdict that they did.
Speaker 1: After all, four of the players had confessed to taking
Speaker 1: the bribe, and Bill Burns and Billy Mahag had made
Speaker 1: confessions on the gamblers side. Those confessions were read at
Speaker 1: the trial. However, because hearsay evidence wasn't admissible, the transcripts
Speaker 1: had to be edited to remove references to things that
Speaker 1: other people had said. Those names were all replaced with Mr. Blank,
Speaker 1: and this rendered the transcribe testimony both confusing and frankly boring.
Speaker 1: The case against the players also rested on the idea
Speaker 1: that their actions in the world series had harmed the
Speaker 1: business Charles Komiskey and of their league, but White Sox
Speaker 1: club secretary Harry Gravener testified that the team's revenues had
Speaker 1: actually gone up in nine. It's possible that the mostly
Speaker 1: blue collar jury sympathized with the mostly blue collar players.
Speaker 1: Joe Jackson, for example, didn't know how to read or write,
Speaker 1: and he started working in a textile mill in his
Speaker 1: early teens. There's also been some speculation that this was
Speaker 1: a case of jury nullification, which is basically when a
Speaker 1: jury returns a not guilty verdict in spite of believing
Speaker 1: the defendant to be guilty because they believed that the
Speaker 1: law was unjust or immoral, or otherwise to send some
Speaker 1: kind of moral or emotional message about the case. But also,
Speaker 1: in the words of one anonymous juror, quote, we thought
Speaker 1: the state presented a weak case. It was dependent on
Speaker 1: Bill Burns, and Burns did not make a favorable impression
Speaker 1: on us, but Major League Baseball and the White Sox
Speaker 1: specifically didn't really care that they had been found not guilty.
Speaker 1: Comiskey suspended seven of the players in definitely after the
Speaker 1: verdicts were read. Eddie Saccad had already been suspended over
Speaker 1: a paid dispute, and then Kenna saw Mountain. Landis banned
Speaker 1: all eight men from Major League Baseball for life, and
Speaker 1: his words quote, regardless of the verdict of juries, no
Speaker 1: player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains, proposes,
Speaker 1: or promises to throw a game, No player that sits
Speaker 1: in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers
Speaker 1: where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed,
Speaker 1: and does not promptly tell his club about it, will
Speaker 1: ever play professional baseball. This last bit that Tracy just
Speaker 1: read was his reason for denying Buck Weaver's repeated requests
Speaker 1: to be reinstated. Although we've maintained that he had taken
Speaker 1: no money and had played fairly, he had known about
Speaker 1: the fix, and he hadn't spoken up. Landis's lifetime ban
Speaker 1: of the players circled back around to that idea of
Speaker 1: baseball that as something that was uniquely important to American culture,
Speaker 1: and Landis's words quote, Baseball is some thing more than
Speaker 1: a game. To an American boy. It is his training
Speaker 1: field for life. Work. Destroy his faith in its squareness
Speaker 1: and honesty, and you have destroyed something more. You have
Speaker 1: planted suspicion of all things in his heart, which to
Speaker 1: me means this was as much about protecting the sport
Speaker 1: of baseball as it was to protecting men's feelings. The
Speaker 1: same sentiment was echoed in other writing, as well as
Speaker 1: printed in the St. Louis Globe Democrat quote, if Judge
Speaker 1: Landis can keep the game of baseball on a high
Speaker 1: plane of sports ethics, he will do far more for
Speaker 1: the boys of America than he has ever done or
Speaker 1: can ever do on the federal bench. Nor could he
Speaker 1: do more for the country as a whole, because the
Speaker 1: standard of integrity of the boy becomes also his standard
Speaker 1: as a citizen. Meanwhile, much of the news coverage of
Speaker 1: the scandal and the trial and its aftermath tried to
Speaker 1: place the blame on this for outsiders, specifically Jewish people
Speaker 1: in immigrants. This once again reinforced the idea that baseball was,
Speaker 1: in quotation marks pure, or at least it would have
Speaker 1: been if not for this outsider influence. After their lifetime
Speaker 1: banned from the sport, several of the eight players tried
Speaker 1: to clear their names or filed civil suits, many of
Speaker 1: them claiming that they were owed back pay under the
Speaker 1: terms of their contracts with the White Sox. This included
Speaker 1: Joe Jackson, whose case came to trial in Milwaukee in
Speaker 1: During the trial, he repeatedly denied that he had given
Speaker 1: the grand jury testimony that he was on record as
Speaker 1: having given. In spite of that, I mean just saying
Speaker 1: over and over, I didn't say that in front of
Speaker 1: the grand jury, even though it's right there in the transcript.
Speaker 1: The jury found in his favor. They awarded him more
Speaker 1: than sixteen thousand dollars, and the foreman later explained that
Speaker 1: this was because White Sox management had known about the
Speaker 1: fixing scheme when it signed to the contract with him,
Speaker 1: therefore it had no grounds to back out of the
Speaker 1: deal over it. Later the judge, though, was outraged at
Speaker 1: this rule ing and vacated the settlement and charged Jackson
Speaker 1: with perjury. Of the civil suits that were filed, Jackson's
Speaker 1: was the only one that went to trial. In addition
Speaker 1: to the eight Black Socks, over the next few years,
Speaker 1: Kenna saw Mountain Landis banned another ten players for life
Speaker 1: because of their involvement in gambling. He also banned William D. Cox,
Speaker 1: president of the Philadelphia Phillies then in Landis proposed the
Speaker 1: addition of rules prohibiting gambling to the formal rule book
Speaker 1: of Major League Baseball. Today, this rule twenty one is
Speaker 1: required to be posted in every clubhouse. It prohibits various
Speaker 1: types of misconduct, including gambling. Under this rule, players, umpires,
Speaker 1: club and league officials, and other employees are ineligible for
Speaker 1: one year if they bet on a baseball game that
Speaker 1: they don't have a duty to perform in. If they
Speaker 1: bet on a game that they do have a duty
Speaker 1: to perform in, they are ineligible for life. These and
Speaker 1: other efforts did not restore baseball to a pristine heyday,
Speaker 1: because that had never really existed. But Landis's efforts reinforce
Speaker 1: the idea that there had been, and ultimately they made
Speaker 1: the sport more respectable, at least for a time. One
Speaker 1: of the articles that I read as I was working
Speaker 1: on this was from ESPN, and the author talked about
Speaker 1: how the editor had said, I want you to write
Speaker 1: um an article that's about like the major moments in
Speaker 1: baseball gambling scandals, and the writer was like, well, there's
Speaker 1: kind of a problem with that. It's basically two broad periods.
Speaker 1: There's the first broad period, which is just a cesspool
Speaker 1: of greed and corruption and then decades passed and it's
Speaker 1: Pete Rose and like that's all you have to go
Speaker 1: on there. Anyway, We've had various folks asked us to
Speaker 1: talk about this over the years, Um, and it is
Speaker 1: just a wacky story to me. I have so many
Speaker 1: favorite moments, including shoelace Joe Jackson being angry that he
Speaker 1: did not get his whole bribe. Yeah, Minus, like I
Speaker 1: never said that, because you did. It's right there, they
Speaker 1: transcribed it. What you got next? Ms Tracy Well, Um,
Speaker 1: I was out on vacation for a while and I'm
Speaker 1: still sort of catching up with the email inbox. So
Speaker 1: in lieu of listener mail today, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about something we have not talked about for a while,
Speaker 1: which is that we have a T shirt store for
Speaker 1: our show, and a lot of the stuff that we
Speaker 1: have in the store are things that people said they
Speaker 1: wished we had T shirts of, but in some cases
Speaker 1: we've never told anyone we actually have that T shirt now.
Speaker 1: So you can find a link to the store from
Speaker 1: our website, or you can go directly to t public
Speaker 1: dot com. Slash stuff you missed in history class. That's
Speaker 1: all one word all spelled out. Some of the shirts
Speaker 1: that people have said they wished that we had that
Speaker 1: we do have now. One of them is a shirt
Speaker 1: for everybody who has listened to every episode of the
Speaker 1: show ever, and that one says I have a pH
Speaker 1: d in s Y MHC, which I find delightful. After
Speaker 1: our History of Doughnuts episode, somebody said that we they
Speaker 1: wanted a shirt about how um we read a thing
Speaker 1: that was about curlers being outlaw cakes. So we have
Speaker 1: a Crawler T shirt that says Outlaw Caches on it.
Speaker 1: We also have the much requested Lunar Beaver's shirt, which
Speaker 1: looks like it's patterned after a band's tour shirt. Um.
Speaker 1: And then going going all the way back to uh
Speaker 1: to when we did the Virginia Acar episode, we have
Speaker 1: a look at the Baby's shirt. Those are just examples,
Speaker 1: and then you can also get these things on stickers
Speaker 1: and mugs, et cetera. Uh. We so rarely mentioned that
Speaker 1: we have a store, but we do. We do. Since
Speaker 1: I've I still I came back to work and I
Speaker 1: was like, I've got so much that I need to
Speaker 1: catch up on, and I just kept looking at the
Speaker 1: listener mail inboxes like Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: to the listener mail, UM, but take a minute talk
Speaker 1: about our store. Oh, we do love getting listener mail.
Speaker 1: We love to hear from folks. UM. If you are
Speaker 1: about to write and tell us about somebody's RBIs from
Speaker 1: this UM sporting scandal, I probably read that article. We
Speaker 1: just did not spend as much time focused on that
Speaker 1: in this episode. But if you want to write to
Speaker 1: us about this or any other podcast where history podcasts
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. And then we're all
Speaker 1: over social media at missed in History and that's where
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook and Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter. And
Speaker 1: you can find our website at missed in History dot
Speaker 1: com and it currently has a link up in the
Speaker 1: menu to our store. So you can also subscribe to
Speaker 1: our show on Apple podcasts, the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: and anywhere else that you get podcasts. Stuff you Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio's
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