Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (38 page)

"Well, you're trying to belittle these ballplayers…."

Judge Friend took pains to quiet the stormy scene. If Comiskey's anger seemed out of proportion to the attack, no one made mockery of it. His sensitivities on the score were well founded.

Short proved to be a better-informed interrogator when he got on Comiskey's financial history. He tried to point out that the White Sox organization had made more money in 1920 than it had in any previous year. Gorman objected: Comiskey's finances were not relevant. Judge Friend sustained the objection.

Short raged at this. "This man is getting richer all the time, and my clients are charged with conspiracy to injure his business!"

Again, objection. Again, sustained.

Short pursued Comiskey on his penuriousness: "Isn't it a fact that you only pay your players three dollars a day board—"

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"Objection!"

"Sustained!"

In disgust, Ben Short released the witness.

The trial came alive on the following day. William Burns was called to the witness stand by the State.

Though this move was no surprise to anyone, there was considerable tension in the courtroom as the witness was sworn in. The questioning began with Assistant State's Attorney, Edward Prindeville.

Burns was dressed in a dark green checkered suit and a lavender shirt, with a light bow tie. He was nervous at first, and wiped his face repeatedly with a large handkerchief. He revealed a peculiar habit of running his hands over the bald spot of his head. There were periods during the questioning when he couldn't seem to take his hand away from it. He would lean forward with his chin resting on his right hand. His voice was pitched low, too low, in fact. He was constantly, embarrassingly, reminded by the Court to speak up. After a few minutes, he requested and was granted permission to shed his coat.

Burns gave his address as San Saba, Texas. He was forty-one years old, married since quitting professional baseball in 1912 when he went into the oil business. He then told how he had visited New York in September of 1919, specifically to sell some oil leases. It was then he had bumped into Eddie Cicotte at the Hotel Ansonia. Prindeville asked Cicotte to rise so that Burns could identify him.

Eddie Cicotte slowly got to his feet and stared aimlessly at the witness stand. He kept his hands by his sides and waited obediently. Burns looked back at him but said nothing for a moment. It was as if he were momentarily lost in daydreams. There were seven other ballplayers and four gamblers, but to Cicotte, the lawyers were singling him out as if he were some special breed of criminal. He could guess why: the State was going to make him the number one target because it was he who had spit up his guts last September.

"That's him!" Burns finally spoke out, and Cicotte sat down.

"What did Cicotte say when you met him in New York?" Prinde ville asked.

At this point, Michael Ahearn leaped to his feet. "Objection!" All eyes turned to him. "The prosecution has no right to relate any conversations with alleged conspirators before a conspiracy has been proved!"

The Judge nodded. "Sustained."

Prindeville shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. He assured the court that he would have no trouble proving this. Burns would be allowed to give this testimony later.

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The questioning continued. Burns exposed the initial negotiations, contact by contact. He was led through a daily record of his meetings with Cicotte, Maharg, Chase, Attell, Bennett, and Arnold Rothstein at the Jamaica Race Track. Burns also told of his meeting with the players in Cincinnati at the Hotel Sinton, just before the game.

Q: Who was there?

A: There were Gandil, McMullin, Williams, Felsch, Cicotte, and Buck Weaver.

Q: How about Jackson?

A: I didn't see him there.

Q: Did you have any conversation with them?

A: I told them I had the hundred thousand dollars to handle the throwing of the World Series. I also told them that I had the names of the men who were going to finance it. I told them they were waiting below.

Q: Who were the financiers?

A: They were Arnold Rothstein, Attell, and Bennett. (This was either an incredible error by Burns, or an outright lie. To say that Rothstein was in the Sinton lobby was preposterous. Burns, significantly, never mentioned it again.)

He described how Attell offered them $100,000 to be paid in five installments, that Attell was representing Arnold Rothstein who was "a walking bank."

Prindeville looked at Cicotte as he asked Burns the next question. Those sitting close to Cicotte saw him redden.

Q: Did the players make any statements concerning the order of games to be thrown?

A: Gandil and Cicotte said the first two games should be thrown. They said, however, that it didn't matter to them. They would throw them in any order the financiers wished.

Then Burns turned from the lawyer and again stared at Cicotte, this time with his slow Texas smile.

Involuntarily, Cicotte began a move to get to his feet, as if he was supposed to rise again. Burns was becoming adept at using timely pauses. "Cicotte said he'd throw the first game if he had to throw the ball clear out of the Cincinnati ball park!"

The courtroom broke into a wave of laughter. Cicotte winced. He had no recollection of saying anything file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:47 AM

like that. The eyes of everyone in the room were on him. Even the other ballplayers around him were laughing—especially Gandil who was laughing out loud. Cicotte was too embarrassed to do anything but force his lips into a stupid grin.

Burns began rambling on as to how Attell had refused payment after the first game and had gone back to the players to tell them this. Burns named Gandil as the spokesman for the players. Gandil fixed his eyes squarely, penetratingly, on Burns. Somehow, the witness appeared rattled and his voice dropped so low that Defense Attorney Ben Short broke in: "If it please the Court, the witness must speak louder!"

Burns snapped back. "I probably could if I were like you!"

Short scowled at him. "What are you, ashamed of your story?" At which point, the Judge interceded and calmed them down.

Gandil grinned in triumph. If nothing else, it was a pleasure to get Burns's goat.

Burns had always been afraid of Gandil, and had despised him. Now he was holding all the cards. If he played them right, he could enjoy his victory.

Prindeville asked when he had seen Attell again. Burns told of taking Gandil and Williams to meet Attell and Bennett, and of how Attell had showed them the telegram from A.R. in New York promising $20,000.

When Burns said that the players had objected to being paid on Friday because it was supposed to be bad luck, he got a big laugh.

Q: Did Gandil say anything?

A: Yes. He wanted to know if they were being double-crossed. I told him that I wasn't double-crossing them.

Q: Did you offer them any security?

A: Yes, I told them I'd give them an oil lease. Q: Did you put it up?

A: No. Maharg advised me not to. He said Rothstein might double-cross us, and then I would be out.

The ballplayers wanted to put my lease in escrow, but I refused.

Q: When did you see Attell next?

A: Immediately after the second game. Maharg was with me. We went to his room at the Sinton. Bennett file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:47 AM

was also there.

Q: Is Bennett in the courtroom?

A: He is.

The courtroom came alive, looking around in search of the mysterious Bennett.

Q: Do you see him?

A: Yes. He's behind that post. (Burns rose from his chair and pointed.) He's the man in that yellow shirt.

Judge Friend ordered the man so designated to rise and be identified before the jury. Max Lusker, attorney for the three gamblers, immediately leaped to his feet and protested. He was overruled. He then told the jury that the man so designated was not "Bennett" but his client, David Zelser! Burns, of course, had known this partner of Attell's only under the name he had assumed for the Series.

The State turned the witness over to the defense. James "Ropes" O'Brien plunged into attack. His aim was nothing more or less than an attempt at character assassination.

Q: Mr. Burns, how much money did you receive from Ban Johnson?

Gorman objected. Judge Friend sustained.

Q: Did you get five hundred dollars from Ban Johnson?

A: Yes, for my expenses for two months.

Q: How much of this went to your wife and how much did you keep?

A: (with a smile) I don't know.

Q: Had you any visible means of support during the last year other than Ban Johnson?

Burns replied that he had worked some in Mexico, where he had gone after he was indicted. At which, Defense Attorney Michael Abeam broke in and snapped at him: Q: I suppose you went to work for Pancho Villa when you were there?

A: (testily) No, I wouldn't work for Villa. And I wouldn't work for you, either, Mr. Ahearn!

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Burns then explained his return in April to Del Rio, Texas, where Maharg caught up with him.

Q: What was your occupation then?

A: Well, fishing.

Q: What for—witnesses?

No reply.

Q: You knew you were coming under indictment when you came to Chicago?

A: Yes.

Q: Being under indictment didn't worry you, did it?

A: No.

Burns could smile. He knew he had had a real good day.

Refreshed by a night's sleep, he returned to the witness stand at ten o'clock in the morning. Assistant State's Attorney Edward Prindeville opened the testimony with a question about what happened in Attell's room after the second game.

Burns's fluent description of the rolls of money, "four to five inches thick," and of the suitcases stuffed with bills held the courtroom and particularly the players in a rapt silence. Then he explained how Attell and Bennett had claimed that all the money was tied up in bets. To Burns the important point was his own protest against the paltry $10,000 Attell finally handed over.

Burns told how he tossed it on the bed in Gandil's room and said $10,000 was all Attell would give.

"Gandil asked: 'Are we being double-crossed?' And I said, 'No, you ain't.' "

Q: Was anything said about the game the next day?

A: Yes. Attell told me to ask the players to win the next game. He said: "Tell the Sox to win a game so we can get more money down." This would help shift the odds. The players said they would think about it.

They thought about it, all right, Burns explained. Gandil told him the next day that the third game would go like the other two. But it didn't. Gandil himself had batted in the winning runs. Burns related how he and Maharg had lost their shirts, and how Attell and Bennett said it was the same with them.

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Q: What did you do then?

A: I asked Gandil about my part of the $10,000 I had given them.

Q: Did you say anything to him about the $20,000 that Attell offered?

A: No, he never gave me a chance. I asked him again about the money they owed me. I said, "I'll get my share or I'll tell everything."

Q: What did he say to that?

A: (indignantly) He didn't say anything. Just walked away from me.

Burns was on the stand for his own protection. But his threat of two years earlier was becoming a dramatic reality.

Then, once again, defense attorneys took turns badgering him, trying to break down his story. They never got to first base.

From New York, however, Arnold Rothstein released an angry statement to the press concerning Burns's testimony.

"…I talked to Burns once in my life when he approached me in the matter of throwing the games. I didn't think he had a chance in the world and told him so, and added that even if he could assure me he could actually do it, I didn't want him to ever speak to me again as long as he lived. That was the first and last time I ever had knowledge of the situation until I heard my name being used out West [Chicago].

"Burns said I was waiting downstairs in the Sinton Hotel, Cincinnati, to join a conference between himself and the other ballplayers. I was never in Cincinnati in my life. At the time he mentioned, I was at the race track in New York…."

If the Court wondered about Rothstein, there were others who wondered more about Attell. According to the State's own star witness, Attell covered the action of the fix like a giant octopus, with all eight tentacles reaching out for money. Where, then, was this little monster? Why wasn't he in court standing trial? The course of his escape was revived by the press. Somehow, they recalled, he had convinced a New York court that he was not the same Attell that the Chicago Grand Jury was looking for. Or, at least, Fallon had.

The New York
Sun
was bitterly derisive about it. "Is Abe Attell himself or is he somebody else? The good Abe Attell, one might almost call him the Dr. Jekyll Abe, thinks that somewhere in Chicago there is another, a bad Abe, a sort of Mr. Hyde Abe, who goes around fixing World Series games, and file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:47 AM

corrupting lily-white ballplayers who have wives and kiddies for whose sake they must become corrupt."

The little Champ could laugh. Nobody could hurt him nine hundred miles from the battleground.

As the third day of testimony began, the State had good reason to be jubilant. Burns continued to be a remarkably agile witness who, after his initial nervousness, took to the business of testifying as if it were his own particular cup of tea. He was amiable, quick-witted, and pleasant. He became cordial even to aggressive defense attorneys who constantly sought to trip him up. He seemed like a man without an ax to grind, an honest witness who was there to put the truth of the matter before the Court.