Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (24 page)

Immediately after the game, Veeck asked the Burns Detective Agency to trace the telegrams and phone calls. Whatever happened, he specified, all this was to remain confidential. When a Burns official suggested that secrecy in this case might conceivably hamper the investigation, Veeck remained adamant: he simply did not want any of this to leak out.

On the morning of September 2, however, a letter arrived at the sports desk of the Chicago
Herald and
Examiner
. It was postmarked Detroit, September 1. It read in part: "…The [Detroit] hotel lobbies were crowded with gamblers wanting to bet any amount of money on the Phillies, despite unfavorable odds.

Conditions were so openly rotten that I was prompted to write as I do. Every fellow mixed up with baseball gambling hung around the tickers chuckling over the returns of that game…."

The sports desk saw the potential scoop and went into action. They began a quick, intensive investigation. Two days later, on the fourth of September, they ran a front-page expose: Bare Baseball Scandal.$50,000 Bet on Cubs and PhilliesSure-thing Game!

The publicity jolted Veeck and threatened all of baseball. He told the press: "The charges that there were

'fixed' players on the Cubs came as no surprise to me. If I had any regret at their publication at this time, it is merely that investigations which were being made might be hampered by publicity."

But, like all baseball owners, exposure frightened him. Any such incident was explosive and had to be kept under control.

It was, perhaps, indicative that his investigators seemed to be getting nowhere. Or so he told the press.

The Burns operatives had not been able to locate any of the people whose names had been given them.

Veeck then announced that he was asking the Chicago chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association to assist him. The entire membership was appointed a Committee of the Whole, Sam Hall of the Chicago
Herald and Examiner
to be Chairman. All expenses incurred by them would be paid by the Cubs.

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Veeck's challenge to the Committee was properly noble, and had the familiar ring of a Comiskey dictum: "Were the reflection on the Cubs the only matter entering this affair, I would not call for such assistance. But it is more serious than that. Baseball is much greater than the mere standing of the Cubs, and there must be no question as to its honesty. If your investigation develops that there is one man on the team who has done a single dishonest act, you will have rendered a service so great that its value cannot be estimated."

But the baseball fans of Chicago had had it. In the span of the past two seasons, they had heard enough stories of corruption to shatter their equanimity thoroughly. Now, finally, they wanted to see the fire that burned so well hidden below.

Like others who cared, newspaperman Jim Cruisenberry was sick of the inaction. Driven by his own knowledge of the truth, he had to make some kind of move. He called on Fred M. Loomis, a prominent Chicagoan. Loomis was a successful businessman and an avid baseball fan. Cruisenberry felt that perhaps a public statement by such a man might stir things up. Loomis agreed. He suggested that Cruisenberry write a letter to be made public over Loomis's signature. The letter, he insisted, must be angry:

"Up to this time, baseball has been accepted by the public as the one clean sport, a sport engaged in by men, both owners and players, whose honesty and integrity have been beyond suspicions or reproach. At this time, however, it occurs to me that the game must be cleaned up at once…if baseball is going to survive….

"It makes no difference who is hit in the investigation, from the president of either major league down to the clubhouse bat boy in the minors. The game must be protected.

"I am an intense lover of the game…. Just what is going to be done to clarify this situation which seems so badly confused? There is a perfectly good Grand Jury located in this county. The citizens and taxpayers of Illinois are maintaining such an institution for the purpose of investigating any alleged infraction of the law.

"Those who possess evidence of any gambling last Fall in the World Series must come forward so that justice will be done in this case where public confidence seems to have been so flagrantly violated."

The letter was published on the front page of the Chicago
Tribune
Sports Section. The response was immediate, far beyond even Cruisenberry's expectations. Illinois State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne sensed the public pressure and was forced to respond to it. Though mindful of his meeting with Comiskey, he had his own fences to mend. He was up for re-election in the Democratic primary a few weeks ahead.

He could not afford public disfavor. Furthermore, Chief Justice Charles MacDonald of the Criminal Courts Division, an ambitious man, was clearly eager to ride an investigation for whatever it was worth.

Hoyne had no choice but to give him the green light. The Grand Jury would be summoned.

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On September 7, 1920, when the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians, battling for the American League pennant, won morning and afternoon games respectively, the Grand Jury of Cook County, Illinois, convened. Judge MacDonald presided, and opened the proceedings with a lofty charge that a coterie of gamblers and bookmakers had fixed the Cubs-Phillies game of August 31; that these unscrupulous men were "besmirching the national pastime"; that even outside the ball park, through the operation of baseball pools in which the dimes of children were being swindled, their power was constantly growing, etc., etc.

As an added project, he recommended that the investigation include the possibility that the 1919 World Series might not have been played on its merits.

The enthusiastic members of the jury responded with a rousing cheer. Harry H. Brigham, President of the North American Can Company, was elected foreman. They were scheduled to sit for approximately three weeks. The prospects were completely nebulous. No one—either jury member, the Judge, the State's Attorney, Ban Johnson, Charles Comiskey, or any other baseball player or potentate—had the slightest notion of what would result.

And, for a while, it appeared that nothing would. The public had long since become inured to such inaction. It was more rewarding to follow the excitement of the brilliant American League pennant race, and watch the even more dramatic home-run-hitting spree of the amazing Babe Ruth, now approaching the unheard of total of 50!

On the morning of Friday, September 10, the Wall Street firm of W. E. Hutton and Co., a New York Stock Exchange brokerage house, received a startling "flash" over its private wire from Cincinnati: there had been a train wreck. Babe Ruth and several other leading members of the New York Yankees had been seriously injured while en route to a crucial series at Cleveland. Details would follow.

A few minutes later, several other brokerage houses received similar reports—from Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. This time, however, instead of a train wreck, an auto was involved. Immediately, of course, the odds on the coming game shifted heavily against the Yankees.

Sometime later, though too late to rectify the unbalanced betting that resulted, Colonel Huston, part owner of the Yankees, denied the entire report: "Sure-thing gamblers started these vicious stories.

Unfortunately, this is something baseball authorities have no way of stopping. I want to say, however, that there has not been a suspicion of anything wrong (with the coming New York-Cleveland series), no matter what one may think about betting on baseball…."

No one, however, mentioned the possibility of tracing who had been responsible for initiating the completely false report.

The Grand Jury ignored the whole thing. Judge MacDonald hinted at the possibility of a "great gambling trult, covering the entire country, designed to exploit the national game by all devious methods known to file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:46 AM

crooked bookmakers. I want to invite all persons knowing of baseball pools, lotteries, and handbooks to appear before the Grand Jury. I desire that this investigation be widened to include all baseball gambling and not the one particular instance recently charged."

Noble as this may have sounded, it distracted attention from both the 1919 Series and the alleged Cubs-Phillies fix.

Assistant State's Attorney, Hartley Replogle (State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne was busy seeking re-election in the Democratic primary), added another layer of confusion: he was inclined to view the whole Cubs-Phillies scandal as merely a frame-up among a group of Detroit gamblers. In short, it never really happened at all!

Ban Johnson followed with a pompous statement that the American League would ask the Congress of the United States to enact a law making all betting on baseball a penitentiary offense. "Only in this way could baseball gambling be eliminated." American League officials did not elaborate on how such a law might be enforced.

To the average baseball fan, it all seemed like the same old evasive hogwash. It was not a time for faith in the governmental process. People read reports that the Republican Party was "buying the presidency"

under Warren Harding's white plume. On September 14, the State of Maine went for Harding with a landslide. It was announced that 80 per cent of the new women's vote was directed against the League of Nations. The Senator from Ohio foresaw his triumph in November. "Maine is taking the lead in declaring for an American unmortgaged to the Old World." His reasoning was valid enough; Americans wanted to be left alone, uncommitted to anything.

The Chicago Democrats went to the polls for their primary elections on September 15. It was a frightening demonstration of the city's political climate. There were several killings, shootings, kidnapings, sluggings, riots, robberies, and a brutal attempt to steal a ballot box—all at the polls. Among the local incumbents, State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne was voted out of his job. He packed his bags and took his wife to New York. He wanted a vacation while he was still on the Illinois payroll.

It was a moment Ban Johnson had been hoping for. He had failed to see the reality of the World Series fix a year ago, but he saw it clearly enough now. His hatred of Comiskey had cleared his vision. He saw this Grand Jury as a tribunal that would lead to the destruction of his enemy and clean up baseball in the process.

Johnson was a mighty man, not afraid of scandal or exposure. He had long since seen Maclay Hoyne as another enemy, a man not eager to push this investigation to a decisive conclusion. Besides, Hoyne was Comiskey's friend. Johnson, as a result, had remained in the background. But now, with Hoyne gone and the Grand Jury floundering, he saw his chance. He marched into Judge MacDonald's chambers and laid it all out on the line.

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The President of the American League could give the Judge information that would set the Grand Jury snowballing down a mountain. Johnson began with a list of thirty names, many with specified contacts and involvements with gamblers. Get them to start talking and others would follow. One name leads to another, one story opens the door to another and so develops, compounds, multiplies. That is the way of inertia in such an investigation.

He told the Judge he wanted indictments. If the Grand Jury came through, the Judge would make a big name for himself. Johnson reminded him that there was talk of forming a new baseball Commission.

Who knew but what the Judge might not be an ideal man for such a post—and with Johnson's power behind him…?

Judge MacDonald knew a friend when he saw one. He called in Hartley Replogle and they went to work.

On the following day, Monday, September 21, Assistant State's Attorney, Hartley Replogle, announced that subpoenas had been sent out to scores of baseball personalities—owners, managers, players, writers, gamblers, etc. The Grand Jury would hear them all. He declared that there certainly would be indictments; on the basis of preliminary investigations, he was convinced that witnesses were ready to talk.

Among the first to testify was Charles A. Comiskey. His text was rich with glimpses of his nobility as a loyal baseball man, but poor on evidence. In effect, he did nothing more than admit that he, too, had heard suspicions of foul play in the 1919 World Series …but he had not pursued them. He added, "At no time since the playing of the World Series did I have any cooperation from Johnson or any member of the National Commission in ferreting out this charge of crookedness. Johnson now says that an official investigation was made. If so, it was made unbeknownst to me, my manager, or my ballplayers. The result of such an alleged investigation has never been communicated to me nor to the American League…." Then he said in stentorian tones, "If any of my players are not honest, I'll fire them no matter who they are, and if I can't get honest players to fill their places, I'll close the gates of the park that I have spent a lifetime to build and in which, in the declining years of my life, I take the greatest measure of pride and pleasure."

If the Grand Jury was moved, Ban Johnson was livid. He followed with a stinging charge that the Chicago White Sox were still under the control of the gamblers who threatened the players even now with exposure unless they acceded to demands. "I have heard," he said to the press, "that the White Sox would not dare to win the pennant this season!"

Comiskey raged at this statement in what was the first round of a newspaper tirade: "It was a terrible thing to report the blackmail of my players by gamblers just before they went into a series against Cleveland, a club in which Mr. Johnson has financial interests!"

On that day, some two hundred miles from the Grand Jury room, the White Sox opened the crucial three-game series with the Indians and trounced them, 10-3, moving back 1/2 game from first place.