Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (41 page)

To the ballplayers, however, it seemed like a small thing. They had sat through five weeks in almost complete silence, unable to expose the real fabric of their lives as Comiskey's ballplayers. For that was the deal. Nobody was to testify. Not a word was to be spoken against the great American pastime. The name of Charles A. Comiskey was to be kept holy. The ballplayers would keep silent in exchange for protection. They would sit out the trial and Baseball would do what it could to shield them from the bite of the law.

And so it had gone. Nobody had spoken. Not even Gleason, not even Schalk.

On the morning of July 29, the prosecution began its statement. The first piece of oratory was delivered by Assistant State's Attorney, Edward Prindeville:

"What more convincing proof do you want than the statements made by the ballplayers? Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, and Claude Williams sold out the American public for a paltry $20,000. They collected the money, but they could not keep quiet. Their consciences would not let them rest. When the scandal broke, they sought out the State's Attorney's office and made their confessions voluntarily. Cicotte told his story to Chief Justice MacDonald. Then he told it to the Grand Jury. He was followed to the Grand Jury room by Jackson and Williams. On evidence which they gave the jurors, Bill Burns, the State's star witness, was indicted. They have called Burns a squealer, but I tell you that he owes his connection in the case to what these defendant ballplayers have confessed."

Short objected that Cicotte had not incriminated Burns. Judge Friend sustained.

Prindeville continued: "This is an unusual case as it deals with a class of men who are involved in the great national game which all red-blooded men follow. This game, gentlemen, has been the subject of a crime. The public, the club owners, even the small boys on the sandlots have been swindled. That is why these defendants are charged with conspiracy.

"This conspiracy started when Eddie Cicotte told Burns in New York that if the White Sox won the pennant there was something on and he would let him in on it. All the way through you will find that Cicotte's statements are corroborated by Burns and vice versa.

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"Cicotte was advised of his rights, yet he told his story. He told of the ten thousand dollars he got under his pillow. He told of meeting his pals and talking over the conspiracy details. He told of watching while his companions filed one by one from the meeting place so as not to raise suspicions of the honest players. Then what did this idol of the diamond do? He went home and took the ten thousand dollars from under his pillow. Of course he was uneasy!

"Then, the gamblers met again on the morning before the World Series began. The gamblers accepted the players' terms. It was agreed that Cicotte should lose the first game. Of course he lost. With ten thousand dollars in his pocket, how could you expect him to keep his balance and win. The weight would bear him down!"

The bailiff had to rap for order to quiet the laughter.

"Gentlemen, you will find that Burns was also corroborated in his testimony by Joe Jackson and Williams. Jackson tells you he got the five thousand dollars after the fourth game—"

O'Brien exploded. "I suppose that sharpened his batting average!"

"He certainly was batting 1000% when he got the $5,000!" Prindeville retorted. Then he continued:

"Swede Risberg then tells you he had a cold. The only trouble with him was that he had an overdose of conspiracy in his hide. You recall the defendants said they could not win for Kerr because he was a busher. Abe Attell told them to win and they won! There is no pitcher on God's green earth who could have won that ball game if the defendants had not backed him up!

"I say, gentlemen, that the evidence shows that a swindle and a con game has been worked on the American people. The crime in this case warrants the most severe punishment of the law. This country is for sending criminals to the penitentiary whether they are idols of the baseball diamond or gangsters guilty of robbery with a gun. Unless the jury, by convicting the ballplayers in this trial, does its part to stamp out gambling that is corrupting baseball, I predict restrictive legislation for baseball such as has been enacted for boxing and horseracing.

"The State is asking in this case for a verdict of guilty with five years in the penitentiary and a fine of $2,000 for each defendant!"

He was followed by George Gorman with more of the same: "…The attorneys for the defense will ask for mercy. They point out that Lefty Williams got only five hundred dollars a month for his services.

They charge that Charles Comiskey, the grand old man of baseball, is persecuting the players because he has tried to clean out rottenness in the national game. Gentlemen, Charles Comiskey wants to keep the game clean for the American public and I will tell you now that if the owners don't get busy when rottenness crops up, baseball won't last long.

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"Comiskey gave these men a job. And here we find the defendants deliberately conspiring to injure and destroy his business. They have dragged the game through the mire and in their blunders deliberately fouled their own nest.

"There has been much poison injected into the case by the attorneys for the defense. They have attacked Bill Burns, the man who bared the conspiracy of their clients. They have hit at Billy Maharg, the man who corroborated him. They tell you these men lied. They call Burns an accomplice. By their own words they convict their own clients. If Burns is an accomplice, some crime must have been committed.

If he has committed a crime with the defendants, then it is your duty to find them guilty. I tell you, at least three of their clients, Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, and Joe Jackson have condemned themselves so badly that I don't see how you can acquit them. In his confession, Eddie Cicotte tells how the games were fixed. Then we have the spectacle of the public going to the game believing it was on the square.

Thousands of men throughout the chilly hours of the night, crouched in line waiting for the opening of the first World Series game. All morning they waited, eating a sandwich, perhaps, never daring to leave their places for a moment. There they waited to see the great Cicotte pitch a ballgame. Gentlemen, they went to see a ballgame. But all they saw was a con game!"

The Court recessed for the weekend.

On Monday, August 1, the defense began its plea. As with the State, they were allowed ten hours to wrap up their case. Ben Short was the first to speak. He argued a strictly legal interpretation of the case:

"…The State failed to establish criminal conspiracy. There may have been an agreement entered by the defendants to take the gamblers' money, but it has not been shown the players had any intention of defrauding the public or of bringing the game into ill repute. They believed any arrangement they may have made was a secret one and would, therefore, reflect no discredit on the national pastime or injure the business of their employer as it would never be detected!"

If this was less than a moral argument, Short at least had reminded the jury of the nature of the indictments.

A. Morgan Frumberg, attorney for the gamblers, followed with a big swing at the power behind the prosecution:

"Arnold Rothstein came here to Chicago during the Grand Jury investigation and immediately went to Alfred Austrian, the White Sox attorney. What bowing and scraping must have taken place when

'Arnold the Just,' the millionaire gambler, entered the sanctum of 'Alfred the Great.' By his own testimony, Mr. Austrian admits conducting the financier to the Grand Jury and bringing him back unindicted!"

Frumberg repeatedly asked the jury to ponder over why Rothstein had never been indicted when the State's own witness in the trial had named him as the financier! "Why was he not indicted? Why were file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:47 AM

Brown, Sullivan, Attell, and Chase allowed to escape? Why were these underpaid ballplayers, these penny-ante gamblers from Des Moines and St. Louis, who may have bet a few nickels on the World Series, brought here to be the goats in this case? Ask the powers in baseball. Ask Ban Johnson who pulled the strings in this case. Ask him who saved Arnold Rothstein!"

Later, Thomas Nash hammered it home: Rothstein was left out of the case at Johnson's instigation because he only wanted to get Comiskey by wrecking his ball club!

Ahearn followed by calling Burns and Maharg every name in the book. Liars, con men, fortune hunters, rattlesnakes. But the principal target remained Ban Johnson. "Ban Johnson was the directing genius of the prosecution. His hand runs like a scarlet thread through the whole prosecution. Johnson is boss. The czar of Russia never had more power over his subjects than Johnson has over the American League. He controlled the case. His money hired Burns and Maharg to dig up evidence. He sent Maharg on a wild-goose chase to Mexico to find Burns. The State's attorneys have no more control over the prosecution than a bat boy has over the direction of play in a World Series game.

"Maharg came to court as an auto worker, but he flashed enough diamonds on his fingers to buy a flock of autos. And Burns has been proved a liar in a score of instances. He said he talked to Gandil in Chicago after the second game. He lied. He said he talked to the ballplayers on the morning before the opening game. He lied. He makes me think of a drink of moonshine: It looks good, but when you drink it it gives you a stomachache!"

And that was it. A lot of words. Millions of words in a matter of weeks. All that was left was for the Judge to digest them and deliver his charge to the jury. The ballplayers realized that much depended on the manner in which this was done. A bunch of raw, green, unknowing athletes, they had inescapably picked up an education during the course of the trial. In the hallways of the Criminal Courts Building they discussed the testimony in speech that was colored by the jargon of their lawyers. Their emotions were keyed up in anticipation of the Judge's apparent friendliness. And when they finally heard his words in the early evening of August 2, they were quick to understand:

"The State must prove that it was the intent of the ballplayers and gamblers charged with conspiracy through the throwing of the World Series, to defraud the public and others, and not merely to throw ballgames!"

The ballplayers smiled. This charge was exactly what they'd been hoping for. It attached to the prosecution an extremely difficult burden of proof. And there had been nothing said during the trial that pertained to it. They could relax now, as the clerk read the nine charges solemnly to the jurors, and smile as the twelve good men filed into the jury room to begin deliberation. It was exactly 7:52 P.M.

Buck Weaver strolled down the long corridors with a celebrative cigar in his mouth and a grin on his boyish face. It was raining hard outside, and the halls were congested. He joined groups of idling spectators who were reluctant to go home for fear of missing the verdict.

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"Good luck, Buck!" they called out to him.

Many thought the players would be acquitted, but there were also some old courthouse hands who did not. They warned Weaver you could never trust a jury to do what was expected. You never really knew what was going on in a juror's mind. But Weaver's spirits were soaring. Just two days before, he'd had a long talk with John McGraw of the New York Giants. McGraw had visited the trial to see John Heydler, or so it had been reported. The Giant manager, himself one of the great third basemen of his day, had made it clear that he wanted Weaver to play in New York.

There was no other way for Buck Weaver to look at the future. His past was clean. No matter what the implications of being on trial in this scandal, he felt that everybody knew he was clean. No one could even accuse him of taking a dirty dime or making a suspect play in the series. No one had tried. He was Buck Weaver, a man in love with baseball, and that's where he belonged.

To Joe Jackson, life in the big cities of America had been a tremendous ten-year experience. But he had never fully become accustomed to being away from home. The confusions of the trial had emphasized this to him—all these smart men endlessly pouring out big words he couldn't understand. For all the hot-shot clothes and snappy dressing he'd adopted, the vaudeville tours and dizzy spins with show girls in night spots, the all-night drinking, restaurant eating, spending money as if it were a burden to keep in his pocket—despite all this, these ten years were merely seasons away from South Carolina. It was enough for him to adjust to it as well as he did. It was always in his mind how he had never wanted to come North in the first place, back in 1909, and how he had fled that first train ride to Philadelphia in the middle of the night. Suddenly, it seemed natural that he should end up this way, in a court of law, on trial for being dishonest, with a judge and a jury and a few hundred spectators with neckties on.

They all stood around and waited. With each passing minute, they lost a little more of the glow of anticipated victory. What was taking that jury so long? Would there be a verdict that night? They found themselves talking in endless circles of repeated comments, trying to buoy themselves through the nervous wait with words of hope. They joked and tried to forget the trial. They talked baseball, especially about Babe Ruth and the new lively ball. A fan remembered a game last year when Ruth had hit a tremendous shot off Cicotte's fast ball, but it had blown foul. Cicotte had taken a new ball, thrown the Babe a knuckler, only to watch Ruth hit another, farther than the one before, and this time fair.

Cicotte remembered and grinned. He said something about how he'd managed to keep Ruth from hitting more than one shot out of the park—each game.