Black Sox' Series fix still shames America

File photo by Richard Rasmussen of The Sentinel-Record
File photo by Richard Rasmussen of The Sentinel-Record

This World Series marks the golden anniversary of a Fall Classic to treasure and the centennial of one that shamed the sport almost beyond redemption.

If anything, the Miracle Mets of 1969 appear sun-kissed champions in history's afterglow instead of underdogs gone wild as perceived then. It no longer seems surprising that a pitching staff with Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan shut down fearsome sluggers such as Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Boog Powell. Anything can happen in a short series, of which we are constantly reminded late in each baseball season.

A common mistake then was comparing the '69 Mets to their forebears, the 120-game losers of 1962. The Mets, managed by former Brooklyn Dodgers star Gil Hodges, won in five games against 109-game winners from Baltimore, perhaps the American League's best team of the decade.

The 1919 Chicago White Sox, like the '69 Orioles against the Mets, were heavy favorites against the Cincinnati Reds. Regrettably, the only players anyone recalls from that series are the ones baseball's first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banished for life for conspiring to fix the Fall Classic.

Most notable, and about whom people still get weepy, is Shoeless Joe Jackson, the uneducated White Sox slugger/co-conspirator. Bleeding hearts have cried for years that Jackson didn't know any better and, tremendous hitter that he was, belongs in baseball's Hall of Fame. I find that argument -- and "Field of Dreams," the 1989 Kevin Costner movie in which Ray Liotta played Jackson -- particularly nauseating.

A better movie is John Sayles' 1988 adaptation of Eliot Asinof's book "Eight Men Out," brilliantly depicting the skullduggery that went on before, during and after the 1919 Series. At a time the sport's players were little more than indentured servants, baseball treason was nothing new. This, if not the first such overture, was the most blatant example of an attempt to arrange a dishonest outcome to baseball's showcase event.

The Black Sox Scandal has made its way into literary history. Miami mobster Hyman Roth is watching a Notre Dame-USC football game when paid a visit by business partner Michael Corleone in "The Godfather Part II." Roth, played by Lee Strasberg, tells Corleone (Al Pacino) that in retirement, college football is one of his favorite sports.

"Baseball, too," he says. "I've liked baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series."

Rothstein, nicknamed "the Brain," is considered the driving force behind the 1919 Series fix. A splendid biography by David Pietrusza details that the New York mobster knew as early as August, when playing the horses upstate at Saratoga, that the Fall Classic was going to be fixed, months before anyone knew which teams would be playing.

The wily Rothstein, also nicknamed "The Big Bankroll," presumably was smart enough to make an honest living but chose not to. A.R. dabbled in phony stocks and with horses and boxers before hitting upon the scheme that causes his name to live in infamy.

The 1919 White Sox, owned by the miserly Charles Comiskey, were susceptible to offers to give less than best effort in the Fall Classic. Something smelled about the 1919 Series before the first pitch with people suspected as confederates of Rothstein making large bets on the underdog Reds.

Eddie Cicotte, a 29-game winner for the 1919 White Sox, promptly plunked Cincinnati's leadoff batter in Game 1 in the back -- telegraphing to the fixers that he was on board. Legend has it that under Comiskey's orders, Cicotte was benched for five games in late season lest he collect a $10,000 bonus for winning 30 games. Played by actor David Strathairn in "Eight Men Out," Cicotte won one of the three games he pitched against the Reds but pitched ineffectively and lost the other two.

Lefty Williams, who like Cicotte and Jackson were among the "eight men out," lost the deciding eighth game. In Sayles' movie, Williams and his family members are threatened by gamblers if he does not go along with the fixers, whose plot was unraveling. Doesn't history tell us that "thieves fall out"?

Sayles plays sportswriter Ring Lardner, who like others in his profession were dropping loud hints that the favored White Sox were going in the tank. Sayles' character is pictured walking through a train car while humming a then-popular tune recast with lyrics about "forever blowing ball games."

It took until the following October for a grand jury to implicate eight players and five gamblers. The case went to trial in June 1921 in Chicago but derailed when signed confessions of Cicotte and Jackson disappeared from the Cook County courthouse. Those two players subsequently recanted their confessions; despite testimony that members of the White Sox had intentionally fixed the 1919 World Series (with the aid of Rothstein and others), the jury deliberated for less than three hours before returning verdicts of not guilty on all charges for all of the accused players.

Although changing a name or two, F. Scott Fitzgerald alludes to the Black Sox Scandal in "The Great Gatsby," a classic American novel about lost idealism. Jay Gatsby, the title character, has lunch one day in New York with close friend Nick Carraway and one Meyer Wolfsheim, the latter clearly based on Rothstein.

After Wolfsheim leaves the table, Gatsby explains, "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919."

Says Carraway to himself: "It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people -- with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."

A curious Carraway asks, "How did he happen to do that?"

"He just saw the opportunity."

"Why isn't he in jail?"

"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man."

The Brain behind the 1919 World Series fix was gunned down fatally during a poker game in 1928. There is no Arnold Rothstein Trophy to perpetuate his memory, although his name routinely comes up around World Series time.

Sports on 10/24/2019

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