A Black Stain

            94 years ago, when the roaring twenties were just around the corner, 8 men did the unthinkable. They purposely lost a World Series for money from gamblers.

           

Not very many people get the chance to play in the World Series, the highest stage in the world for baseball. And you would think that for the 8 men who committed this crime, they would have realized that it was wrong on so many levels. And in the sport crazy city of Chicago, the White Sox became known as the Black Sox.

But they had reason. Back in the 1910’s and 1920’s, MLB, stipulated that once a team “owned” you, you could only sign with that team, or not play at all. The Chicago White Sox owner of the time, Charles Comiskey, underpaid his players, making them disgruntled and looking for other cash options. So when first basemen Arnold Gandil brought the idea to 6 other members of the White Sox, they agreed. One man, Shoeless Joe Jackson first admitted to, but then retracted that he accepted $5,000 from the gamblers. But after Jackson passed away in 1951, all remaining players confessed he never had any involvement, not attending any meetings or purposely playing bad. Jackson hit .375 in the series, good for any player even now.

So, for the entire 1919 World Series, vs. the Cincinnati Reds, they would try to commit errors, strike out and for the pitchers, walk as many as possible without raising any eyebrows.

But eventually, rumours began to swirl, and a grand jury was convened to investigate. Though all players would be acquitted, the 8 men would all receive lifetime bans from baseball, forbidden to play in the majors fro the rest of their lives.

I think that what the players did was unacceptable and that a lifetime ban was appropriate. But what happened to Shoeless Joe Jackson was wrong. After saying he took the money (which was so that he could stand by his team), he and all the other players confessed that he had no involvement in the throwing in the series. He had no errors, 6 RBI’s, the only home run in the entire series and the aforementioned .375 average. No way could a player throw a game with those stats.

The 8 men are;

• Arnold “Chick” Gandil
• Eddie Cicotte
• Oscar “Happy” Felsch
• Fred McMullin
• Charles “Swede” Risberg
• George “Buck” Weaver
• Claude “Lefty” Williams
• “Shoeless” Joe Jackson