Games 1 and 2 had certainly been “tossed,” scholars today agree — but at whose behest? Former featherweight boxing champion Abe Attell, now a “fancy man” and gambler, also served as bodyguard for Arnold Rothstein, the Big Brain behind a range of nefarious activities. Attell and others had asked to back the scheme but he had declined — cleverly, so as later to provide deniability — while preferring to let others supply the backing for the fix. Attell faked a telegram from “A.R.” to convince the players that funding of the scheme was assured.

This space is too constrained to tell the story of how eight men on the team betrayed the public trust, and ultimately were banned from baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, but earlier this month I covered the subject in depth here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/opinion/black-sox-scandal-1919.html. That op-ed essay provides links to film footage and the best current knowledge, largely from members of the Society for American Baseball Research (https://sabr.org/eight-myths-out). For this edition of the World Series Media Guide, let me skirt the dizzying machinations of the gamblers and the players who conspired with them and stick to the game as it was on display in the 1919 World Series.

Dick Kerr won Games 3 and 6

The eight men Landis would rule “out” were shortstop Swede Risberg, first baseman Chick Gandil, third baseman Buck Weaver, center fielder Hap Felsch, infielder Fred McMullin, plus Cicotte, Williams, and Jackson. They may have been double crossed by the gamblers after Game 2 when promised payments were not forthcoming. They may then have double-crossed the double-crossers and played to win behind Dick Kerr, who tossed a shutout in Game 3, the first played in Chicago. Game 4 of this nine-game Series (expanded to take advantage of fans’ renewed enthusiasm after war-shortened seasons in 1918 and 1919) went to the Reds as Cicotte pitched well but received no batting support.

The Black Sox probably if not certainly played subsequent games on the level, yet in Game 5 their club was shut out once again, bringing the Reds within one victory of the required five. An extra-inning victory by Kerr at Cincinnati in Game 6 breathed life into the fading hopes of the Chicago faithful. And when Cicotte followed with a 4–1 win in Game 7, enabling a return to Comiskey Park, manager Gleason thought there was no way his club could lose, despite being down four games to three.

But Lefty Williams lost again, this time blowing up in the first inning before he could retire the side. The Reds scored four on their way to a 10–5 victory and the title of world champions.

Kid Gleason, the Sox manager in 1919, had been a big-league pitcher in 1888; he was a baseball lifer

“The Reds beat the greatest ball team that ever went into a World Series,” Gleason said. “But it wasn’t the real White Sox. They played baseball for me only a couple or three of the eight days.”

Edd Roush of the Reds reflected in his later years, in his interview with Larry Ritter for The Glory of Their Times: “Sure, the 1919 White Sox were good. But the 1919 Cincinnati Reds were better. I’ll believe that ’til my dying day.”

It took nearly a year before the coup was confirmed. In September 1920 Jackson and Cicotte confessed to a grand jury, and so did Williams and Felsch. Rothstein, professedly shocked that he had been accused, testified that he had lost money with his bets and had no knowledge of the scheme carried out in his name.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Jackson went on to tell investigators various tales, reneging on prior testimony. He feared retaliation from his indicted teammate Risberg. “The Swede’s a hard guy,” he said. At a trial of the eight in August 1921, jurors acquitted them all, as well as some lower-level gamblers who had taken part; while there was little doubt of what had taken place, the jurors could not be convinced that White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, or anyone else, could prove they had suffered harm: gate receipts were way up in 1920.

Owners, fearful for the game’s reputation, hired Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as commissioner in late 1920. Landis’s first act, after the Black Sox were acquitted on August 2, 1921, was to ban them for life. He made it stick, too. The Judge, as Jackson and the others found out, was also a hard guy.

75 years ago:

The Subway Series came to be a baseball classic, describing the many confrontations between the Yankees in the Bronx and their counterparts in Manhattan and Brooklyn. But the first October matchup between Gotham rivals came in 1921 and 1922, when the Yanks and Giants shared the Polo Grounds; no need for a subway. That situation describes the World Series of 1944, the only one in which the St. Louis Browns ever played. (The first same-city World Series was Chicago in 1906, but in separate ballparks.)