Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (31 page)

The owners panicked. The multimillion-dollar structure of organized baseball was on the verge of tottering. The recent history of the game had been too heavily loaded with inner turmoil, dissension, and power politics. The reputation of the business had hit bottom. The New York
Times
editorialized:

"Professional baseball is in a bad way, not so much because of the Chicago scandal as because that scandal has provoked it to bringing up all the rumors and suspicions of years past…their general effect is to wrinkle the noses of fans who will quit going to ball games if they get the impression that this sort of thing has been going on underground for years."

There was another threat quietly lurking in the background, perhaps the most dangerous of all: the District of Columbia Supreme Court Decision of April, 1919, that marked baseball as a combination in restraint of trade, in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The case in point involved the dissolution of the Baltimore Baseball Club in the recently disbanded Federal League. The decision loomed as a threat to the very structure of organized baseball. If it was permitted to stand, baseball would have to dissolve the National Commission; sever relations between the National and American Leagues; completely sever relations between the major and minor leagues; completely revise the contracts by which players were hired, eliminating the ten-day clause and the reserve clause itself.

This decision was now being appealed in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. It did not take any great imagination to see how greatly the new baseball scandal might affect that Court's ruling.

It was an apt time for panic.

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Albert D. Lasker was a prominent Chicago businessman and gentleman sportsman. He was a leading stockholder of the Chicago Cubs. A year before, he had offered a proposal to reorganize the National Commission. It was built on the principle that the game belonged to the public and must be governed by the public—not by the owners. The owners had all but laughed at such a proposal. Now, however, it could be pulled out of the drawer for serious scrutiny:

It became known as the Lasker Plan. To the public at large it seemed like an excellent idea, but wasn't it like putting a lock on the stable door
after
the horse was stolen? And just what difference did it make who was controlling baseball: if baseball really wanted to purge itself of corruption, the owners could have done it under any system.

Charles Comiskey, William Veeck of the Cubs, Barney Dreyfuss of the Pirates, and John McGraw of the Giants sponsored the plan. Comiskey's sponsorship was a logical step in protecting his reputation and preserving the game. It was noteworthy that the first objections should come, not from old baseball men like these, but from the millionaires who had only recently bought their way in. But then, they were the owners in Ban Johnson's camp, and Johnson was not a man to give power away to strangers. The rumors of a fresh war began to spread.

Immediately, however, important names were suggested to head the new Commission. They were among the most prominent people in America: General John Pershing, Senator Hiram Johnson, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Major General Leonard Wood. It ran like a Presidential nominating committee list for the Republican Party.

John Heydler, President of the National League, appeared to be an eager witness before the Grand Jury.

He assumed the attitude that the 1919 scandal was something of a freak. It would never have happened, he said, but for the disorganization of the National Commission. If baseball had had a real governing body, the moment anything went wrong, the manager or club owner would have notified the tribunal and justice would have been quickly administered. The present governing body of the major leagues, he sang out, should be relegated to the scrap heap.

The ensuing applause for Heydler was something less than well deserved. It would be difficult to admire any baseball potentate who assumed the role of a bold and perspicacious man, after so many years of equivocation. Jury foreman Harry Brigham had some thoughts on this: "Actually, I can sympathize with those boys [the ballplayers]. They were foolish, unsophisticated country boys who yielded to the temptations placed in their path by professional gamblers. There was no one around," he added significantly, "to keep those gamblers away…."

The Jury voted indictments for the two gamblers mentioned by Lefty Williams: Sullivan and Brown.

Sullivan, the Jury was informed, was Joseph "Sport" Sullivan of Boston. The identity of Brown—the file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:46 AM

name, of course, that Nat Evans had taken—remained a mystery to everyone, exactly as Arnold Rothstein had anticipated.

Late that afternoon, Buck Weaver received a call from Alfred Austrian. The message was simple and direct: Austrian wanted Weaver to go along with the others and confess his involvement. Would Weaver come down to his office either that evening or the first thing in the morning?

Weaver's first reaction was one of fury. He wanted to tell Austrian to go to hell. He swallowed his anger, but declined the offer. He was smart enough to sense that Austrian was his enemy. He was finally and fully aware that he was in a real bind. He had been named by three confessors before the Jury. He would obviously be tied in with the sellout—unless he did something to prevent it.

Impetuously, he called the Assistant State's Attorney, Hartley Replogle. Replogle was sympathetic. Yes, he would listen to Weaver's story, but only if Weaver agreed to waive immunity and appear before the Grand Jury. Replogle assured him that the Jury would also be sympathetic.

Weaver hung up. The lawyers were all such agreeable fellows. They even sounded harmless. But the bodies were dropping like flies.

The shattered remains of the great Chicago White Sox reported at Comiskey Park for a practice session, but Gleason called it off. It was too cold out. Gleason talked to the players for a half hour and turned them loose. He spent the rest of the afternoon discussing with his coaches a makeshift line-up for the coming series with the St. Louis Browns. Mathematically, they were still pennant contenders. In fact, they could jump into the lead with one victory, if Cleveland should lose. But not one man in the park believed they could win it. Not even Gleason himself, for all his show of enthusiasm. The pall of defeat hung over them all. Whatever they felt about the eight men who had "sold them out," they were not pleased by the suspensions. It was too easy to count the money they stood to lose because of them.

The reporters who gathered around these loyal boys, however, did not see things that way. Or, at least, they so indicated in the words they wrote. The line was supposed to be one of hope and a promise of great new prospects. What does money matter when it comes to matters of justice? "You guys are pleased, now, aren't you? You're gonna win that flag without them, isn't that right? No more sellout! No more betrayal!"

Sure, the ballplayers nodded. They were delighted.

Then, as they were breaking up for the day, the locker room door opened and Eddie Cicotte walked in.

He stopped, as if surprised that they were still there. This was clearly the last thing he wanted to face.

For a moment, he just stood still, trying to decide whether to back out the door or go through with his mission. They all looked at him, then looked away. Cicotte walked directly to his locker as if he were the only man in the room. He took his glove and his shoes and dropped them into his bag.

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The question must have occurred to many of them: Where would Cicotte get the chance to use them again?

Newspapers passed on to their readers a neat and simple package, explaining the World Series scandal.

Eight evil men had betrayed the purity of the great national pastime. Now that they were exposed, everything was going to be fine. It was a tragedy that a man with the stature and dignity of Charles A.

Comiskey should be so victimized.

The San Francisco
Call
headlined a story: "Grand Old Man of Baseball Feels Keenly the Ingratitude!"

In New York, the
Evening Sun
lionized him: "It is said that Comiskey has more friends than any owner.

In his dealings with the players, he has been like a father to many, the advisor to most, and the liberal square dealer to all. Ofttimes, some of Comiskey's men had cruelly taken advantage of his policy. They had cornered him when they knew he needed them and dragged unreasonable contracts from him…."

"Save Commy" fan clubs were organized. Real baseball fans were urged to send telegrams and write letters in support of the noble hero, to show Commy that they stood behind his fight for honest baseball.

It was reported that huge stacks of mail were already pouring in.

On September 29, newspapers supplemented their headlines of the revelations with several secondary stories: It was reported that a "mystery woman," Mrs. Henrietta B. Kelly of 3909 Grand Boulevard in Southside Chicago, the owner of a two-family house where several members of the White Sox were accustomed to staying, had "vital information" for the Grand Jury.

Then, too, in Beloit, Wisconsin, "because of the confessions of Cicotte and Williams, Mr. W. W.

Chesbrough today refunded to John Keenan $10 which he had won unfairly. Chesbrough had bet on the Reds."

Meanwhile, Eddie Cicotte was reported missing. "He had checked out of his hotel in Chicago, allegedly to go home to Detroit. But his family said he was still in Chicago, for all they knew. He never told them he was coming home. The Detroit police said there was no sign of him, dead or alive, in that city."

In Philadelphia, Bill Maharg suddenly changed his tactics and clammed up. "As for the reward, that ten-thousand-dollar offer by Comiskey may be on the level, and it may be the bunk. Either way, I don't want it. I didn't talk for money. My idea was to show how nice a double cross was wrung up. People that know me know I wouldn't take that ten grand. And as for people that don't know me, I don't care what they think!' "

Apparently William J. Fallon had done his work well.

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Illinois State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne had been vacationing in New York for almost two weeks. The Cook County Grand Jury investigation, he had thought, would wither on the vine. The surprising eruption that followed had caught him unaware. For one thing, it made him look bad, a kind of backhanded comment on his absence. He had lost control of his own administration, lame duck though it was; he didn't want his enemies to make political capital out of it.

When he read that the Grand Jury, led by the eager, impetuous Judge Charles MacDonald, was going ahead with indictments, Hoyne got his back up. "I have spent months looking into this matter," the New York
Times
quoted him. "I wired my office four days ago not to finish the investigation until I return."

He doubted that any crime, as legally defined, had been committed within the jurisdiction of Cook County. Such indictments would only be thrown out of court. The only applicable Illinois law, as he saw it, was a misdemeanor…unless, of course (he added slyly), the players had actually taken part in the gambling….

In the Congress of the United States, Representative Sidney Mudd of Maryland was incensed. If there was no law, by God, he would introduce one. Congress must make it a Federal offense to bribe ballplayers and throw ball games. Since professional baseball was played in leagues that cover two or more states, it was therefore in violation of interstate commerce.

In Chicago, Judge MacDonald would have none of Hoyne's dilatory tactics. "This probe will continue without interruption. And I say this in face of the fact that Mr. Hoyne ordered the indictments held up until his return. The law adequately covers the crime committed. Ballplayers and all others involved in crooked work will be indicted, prosecuted, and punished. The present Grand Jury will be reconstituted into a special body on Saturday and will continue its inquiry."

Alfred Austrian indignantly substantiated this. He quoted Section 46 of the Illinois Criminal Code:

"If any two or more persons conspire or agree together…with the fraudulent or malicious intent wrongfully and wickedly to injure the person, character, business or employment or property of another, or to obtain money or other property by false pretenses, they shall be deemed guilty of conspiracy."

To Austrian, it was a matter of law that men are responsible for the natural consequences of their acts

"even though these consequences differ from the end sought to be accomplished. It goes without saying that the natural consequence of throwing ball games was to injure the business and property of Charles Comiskey." Austrian took pains to illustrate how the owner of the White Sox stood to lose a total of a half-million dollars because of the conspiracy. Comiskey owned players' contracts worth $230,000, now all but worthless. (For example, Mr. Veeck had been prepared to purchase Buck Weaver for $75,000.

Weaver was no longer worth a dime.) The drawing power of the team and other losses of good will, Austrian estimated at a total of $300,000.

"It makes little difference that the case is unusual," he explained. "There is always a law that makes men responsible. Three hundred years ago it was held indictable to prevail upon a person to lay a wager on a file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:46 AM

footrace and then procure one of the racers to throw the race. This conclusion could only have been reached on the ground that there was a conspiracy between two persons to cheat a third."

Meanwhile, in New York, Maclay Hoyne talked with Hugh Fullerton and others familiar with baseball graft. Hoyne, bloated with new information, was hungry to re-establish his own power. To this newly ardent investigator, the world had become a sea of corruption. Its waters were about to drown them all.