On October 1, 1919, all eyes were on the mound when Chicago White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte threw a pitch during Game 1 of the World Series. It would be the most consequential pitch of Cicotte’s life. The ball hit Cincinnati Reds leadoff hitter Morrie Rath squarely in the back. Though the spectators didn’t know it at the time, the pitch was a signal to the gambling world: the fix was in.
All the Ingredients of a Greek Tragedy
The 1919 World Series was the stage for one of the most notorious sports scandals of all time. Later known as the “Black Sox,” eight players from the South Side team threw the World Series in exchange for payoffs from a gambling ring. The result was what is sometimes called “baseball’s original sin” – a betrayal of their fans as well as their teammates, the so-called “Clean Sox” players who were not involved.
“Cheating to win a game is one thing,” Northwestern University professor Bill Savage told Chicago Stories. “Cheating to lose is betraying the essence of what a game is supposed to be. And the Black Sox Scandal had in it all of the ingredients of Greek tragedy” – including towering figures such as White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and racketeer Arnold Rothstein, the hubris of players, and the downfall of a great, such as “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.
Though it was the first time such a scandal blew up so spectacularly, the Black Sox Scandal was certainly not the first time baseball had been infiltrated by gamblers.
“As long as there has been baseball, there has been betting on baseball, and that goes back even before the professional game existed,” Jacob Pomrenke, editor of Eight Myths Out and writer for the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), told Chicago Stories. “Our first example of a fixed baseball game happened in 1865, the final year of the Civil War. The first big gambling scandal happened in 1877 with the Louisville Grays of the National League.”
But despite the as-yet-uncovered darker side of America’s favorite pastime, the sport was still considered by many to be “the purest form of athletic competition,” Chicago historian Rich Lindberg told Chicago Stories.
“In the public’s mind, baseball was a sacred sport. It was free of scandal, of disgrace. It didn’t have the same taint as horse racing, [boxing], and other sports at the time…Baseball was a pastoral game. It was played in the country by little boys with green pastures and blue skies overhead.”– Rich Lindberg, historian
The scandal is one that continues to fascinate baseball fans more than a century later.
“The Black Sox Scandal has it all: corruption, betrayal, injustice, redemption,” Pomrenke said. “[It] has all of these universal, human elements that make the story compelling and very dramatic.”
The Point of No Return
The 1919 Chicago White Sox had all the makings of a championship team. They were dominant heading into the World Series that fall, having clinched the American League pennant. But behind the scenes, things were not exactly harmonious. The atmosphere in the clubhouse had grown toxic, with two cliques that did not get along off the field. One group was led by the team’s captain, Eddie Collins, and was made up of more educated, polished men. “Eddie Collins had a reputation for being very arrogant, very confident. His nickname was ‘Cocky’ in that era, and he earned it,” Pomrenke said.
The other clique – made up of such players as shortstop Swede Risberg, center fielder Happy Felsch, and first baseman Chick Gandil – was a bit more ragtag, “tobacco-chewing guys with limited education and a penchant for alcohol and rowdyism,” said Lindberg.
Then there was Charles Comiskey, the team’s owner who, after the scandal, developed a penny-pinching reputation. Despite the oft-repeated myth that Comiskey had underpaid his players, leading them to seek payment by less honest means, many members of the 1919 White Sox were among the highest paid in professional baseball. Still, as the boss, Comiskey was not popular with some of his players.
The plan to throw the World Series was first hatched during the summer of 1919 on a train headed east for a few road games. The masterminds of the plan – reportedly Cicotte, Gandil, and Risberg – apparently tossed around the idea of fixing the World Series, should they make it that far. They had heard rumors that some of their North Side rivals, the Chicago Cubs, had each received $10,000 each for fixing the 1918 World Series.
“There is very little evidence that the Cubs actually fixed the World Series or received any money, but the White Sox players might have believed that,” Pomrenke said. So that was their price for losing the World Series: $10,000 apiece. But who else would be in on the fix?
“They could really get going and start recruiting the other players and say, well, Eddie Cicotte’s in. So that convinced Lefty Williams to be in,” Pomrenke said. “It’s this snowball effect: The more players that are in, the more players want to be in and make some extra money.” Jackson reluctantly joined the scheme (though he would later claim he never played to lose).
Though there would be some questions in the years to come about who knew about the scheme, eight players were involved in the fix: Eddie Cicotte, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Fred McMullen, Lefty Williams, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Happy Felsch, and Buck Weaver.
Bankrolling such a scheme required someone with deep pockets. First, the players approached a former player-turned-gambler known as “Sleepy” Bill Burns and his pal Billy Maharg. But Burns and Maharg couldn’t float that big of a bankroll, so they approached New York businessman, organized crime boss, and racketeer Arnold Rothstein.
Through a series of meetings with Rothstein’s proxies, including one at the Warner Hotel, the players named their price. Cicotte took it a step further, demanding his money up front, or he wouldn’t go through with it. Cicotte left the meeting, and when he returned to his hotel room later, he found $10,000 under his pillow. It was “the point of no return,” Pomrenke said. “Once Eddie Cicotte got the money, by then the players knew that this was really in motion.”
One question remains all these years later: Why would professional ballplayers choose to willingly lose the World Series? While it’s not clear for all eight of the men, according to Lindberg, at least for Cicotte, it was simply about the money. “Cicotte had a family. He had a brand new farm. He had financial pressures that he claimed were coming to bear on him. He didn’t really know what his future was going to be. He was an aging pitcher with a sore arm,” Lindberg said.
According to Pomrenke, many of the players didn’t think they would get caught, and they never imagined they would be punished even if they were. The decision was made. The players were going to do their best to throw the game in a way that would, hopefully, not be glaringly obvious to fans, and the players would get paid.
“It boils down to a moral question: Do I deserve this money enough to betray my city, to betray my teammates, and to betray the sport of baseball for the coin of the realm?” Lindberg said. “For these eight players…the answer was a resounding yes.”
Throwing the Series
The best-of-nine series began on October 1, 1919. The Cincinnati Reds and the White Sox were set to play in Cincinnati. The favored White Sox were expected to dominate the series, as they had much of the season. But the Sox – or eight of them, anyway – were ready to lose, and the key to successfully losing the game, said Savage, was the pitcher.
“Cicotte and Lefty Williams were dominant pitchers. If you could get a dominant pitcher to throw balls on purpose, which they are capable of doing…you can lose ball games,” Savage said. Cicotte was the starting pitcher for Game 1.
“I think when Eddie Cicotte gets out to the mound and turns around, sees all these fans in Cincinnati, and he’s got the ball in his hand, he realized it was all up to him now.”– Jacob Pomrenke, baseball writer and editor
Cicotte, after all, was the one who had received a payment at this point. His second pitch of the game hit the Reds’ leadoff hitter Morrie Rath in the back. It served as a signal to the gambling world: the fix was in.
Though many spectators likely thought this was an unfortunate error, rumors of a fix had reached the ears of some baseball reporters. According to William Lamb of SABR, Hugh Fullerton, a sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune, had run into Sleepy Bill Burns, who implied that the Reds were definitely going to win the series – a surprise to Fullerton, who knew the Sox had been the favorites all along.
The fourth inning of Game 1 was a “crucial turning point,” said Pomrenke. The Reds were at bat and hit the ball back toward Cicotte on the mound. Cicotte then turned “very slowly,” making a low throw to Risberg, the shortstop. Instead of going for the double play to end the inning, Risberg double-clutched and made a bad throw to first base.
“The Reds were able to keep the inning alive, and they immediately went on to score five runs and blow the game open,” Pomrenke said. “This was the play that everybody who knew the rumors about the fix said, ‘Oh, we’ve gotta keep an eye on something, because this is not the normal White Sox team.’” The White Sox lost the first game 9 to 1.
Many – though not all – of the subsequent games went the same way: The White Sox made errors, intentional or not, and lost games 2, 4, and 5. But after losing Game 5, just one game shy of blowing the entire series, the players found that the gamblers had not made good on their promise to pay them off. According to Lindberg, they demanded more money from Rothstein, who declined because, “he believes he’s got them over a barrel now.” Irate at being stiffed, the Sox fought back and won games 6 and 7 and were on the verge of tying the series.
“It is very likely that…the gamblers paid off the players a little bit more and said, ‘Okay, we gotta end this now,’” Pomrenke said. The White Sox lost Game 8. “Billy Maharg in his interviews and testimony later said that Game 8 was definitely part of the fix.”
The White Sox had lost the 1919 World Series. But some of the eight players responsible for throwing the games did not all get what they were promised.
“Ironically, they would’ve received more money than they actually got if they had won the World Series than they did for losing the World Series,” Pomrenke said. The winner’s share for the 1919 World Series was approximately $5,200. “The money that most of the White Sox players ended up making from the bribes was about $5,000.”
The Scandal Exposed
In December 1919, Hugh Fullerton penned a column for the Tribune. In it, he expressed concerns that gambling had a grip on baseball and that the World Series had been fixed. The rumors that had been whispers began to grow louder.
“We can only surmise the number of the sleepless nights [the players] might have felt in fear of detection,” Lindberg said.
To get ahead of the rumors, Comiskey hired private investigators to look into the allegations, but they found no real evidence. Comiskey had likely known about the fix for a while, but kept whatever he knew private.
Things took a turn during the 1920 season, however, when more rumors of gambling in baseball emerged, this time on the North Side. Chicago Cubs President William Veeck was tipped off that his team planned to fix a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. He welcomed an official investigation, and a grand jury was convened in Cook County in September 1920. The grand jury investigation eventually examined corruption in baseball as a whole and turned its attention to the White Sox. A press interview with Billy Maharg blew the story wide open: Maharg confirmed some players had conspired to fix the game.
“By the end of September in 1920, the pressure is building so much,” Pomrenke said. “Eddie Cicotte finally cracks.” Cicotte informed Comiskey and the team, and then testified to the grand jury. “He’s pretty consistent that he regretted his involvement, and he showed a lot of remorse over the years for the rest of his life,” Pomrenke added.
Joe Jackson’s confession before the grand jury followed, further rattling the baseball world. Jackson, who had grown up in poverty and never learned how to read or write, had been long admired as a talented hitter and still holds one of the best batting averages of all time. In his testimony, he admitted to playing a role in the scheme and receiving a payment, although he claimed he still played every game to win. Jackson’s testimony was a bombshell that exploded across the front pages of newspapers throughout the country. Though some players (including Buck Weaver, Chick Gandil, and Fred McMullin) maintained their innocence, all eight players involved in the scheme were indicted, and Comiskey suspended them.
“In the immediate aftermath, the players were the villains, because they had betrayed the ideals of American manhood, which they allegedly embodied. And Comiskey and the fans were perceived as the victims…Betrayal of your teammates is a huge aspect of the moral weight of this narrative.”– Bill Savage, historian
The players as well as some of the gamblers went on trial for conspiracy to defraud the public in the summer of 1921. While Cicotte, Williams, and Jackson confessed to the grand jury, their testimony was not allowed to be presented at trial. They pleaded the fifth, and without much evidence, the jury ultimately acquitted the players. But the new commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, had another punishment in mind for Cicotte, Jackson, and the others: a lifelong ban from baseball.
“I think they thought, ‘Well, if we’re acquitted, we will get back into baseball,’” Pomrenke said. “I don’t think the players foresaw that they would get kicked out.”
According to Savage, team owners had a “vested interest” in reestablishing baseball’s reputation as an honest sport, “’cause why would you go sit at the ballpark and pay your money if the outcome is predetermined. If you want that, you go see a production of Hamlet.”
A Higher Standard for Baseball
Many of the disgraced players “scattered throughout the country,” said Pomrenke. Some played semi-pro baseball, but their major league careers were over. “To lose their livelihood, to lose their careers was something that was very devastating to all of them,” he said. Joe Jackson was one of the game’s greats, but because his reputation was tainted by scandal, he went on to live a quiet life, working with semi-pro teams and running a liquor store. He was never inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“The tragedy of Joe Jackson, one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, [was] losing not just his livelihood, but his reputation and his ability to look other guys in the eye and be thought of as an honest man,” Savage said. “My personal take on Jackson is he’s dead now. Put him in the Hall of Fame; banned for life means life. He’s not with us anymore.”
Landis’s decision to permanently ban the players was meant to serve as a clear deterrent for any future gambling schemes. “It was a punishment that some see as unjust, but it was also very, very effective,” Pomrenke said.
As any fan will know, the sport has hardly been controversy-free since the Black Sox Scandal. The Cincinnati Reds’ Pete Rose was banned from MLB after gambling accusations. Several hitters, including Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, and many others, were implicated in the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. In 2017, the Houston Astros were caught using a video system to steal signs from their opponents. In 2024, an interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani was fired after it was discovered he had transferred several million dollars from Ohtani’s bank account to a gambling operation. Each time, the public response was often disappointment and disillusionment.
“Baseball holds a place in American culture,” said Pomrenke. “There’s always going to be a little bit of a higher standard for what is allowed in the game.”
Related
