Baseball justice has become skewed in favor of forgiving and forgetting. In doing that, however, it has forgotten eight players who probably deserve a little bit of forgiveness by now.
Every baseball fan, it seems, knows the story.
It begins with the utter dominance of the 1919 Chicago White Sox in the American League. The freight train that was the White Sox stormed through junior circuit, winning 88 of 140 games (a winning percentage of .629, or roughly 102 wins today).
There was talent all over the diamond, from Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, and Dickey Kerr on the mound to stud hitters Joe Jackson, Eddie Collins, Chick Gandil, and Buck Weaver. They were the best team in baseball, destined to win the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds of the National League.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the championship.
They White Sox stopped playing winning baseball.
It was almost inexplicable. The usually slick-fielding players botched easy catches and didn’t leg out long flies. Shutdown pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams were suddenly walking and hitting batters and serving up meatballs at an alarming rate. At the plate, the White Sox's usually excellent hitters seemed to have left their bats at home.
Here’s a sample of how one player performed in the season versus during the Series:
Eddie Cicotte, SP
29-7 in 35 starts, a 1.82 ERA, 30 complete games (five shutouts), 256 hits in 306.2 innings pitched, 62 earned runs allowed (77 total)
In the Series, 1-2 in three starts, a 2.91 ERA, two complete games (zero shutouts), 19 hits allowed in 21.2 innings, seven earned runs allowed.
That performance is not beyond the realm of possibility in and of itself. Several pitchers perform differently in a higher pressure environment. After some searching, here’s another star pitcher (in his day) that didn’t so as well during the World Series:
Roy Oswalt, SP (Houston Astros)
20-12 in 35 starts, a 2.94 ERA, four complete games (one shutout), 243 hits in 241.2 innings pitched, 79 earned runs allowed (85 total)
In the 2005 Series against, ironically, the Chicago White Sox, 0-0 in one start, a 7.50 ERA, zero complete games (zero shutouts), eight hits allowed in six innings pitched, and five earned runs allowed.
Oswalt only pitched one game to Cicotte’s three, but the comparison is evident. Oswalt was Houston’s ace during the season but failed miserable to get outs in the World Series.
So Cicotte and his teammates just suffered from a case of championship jitters right?
Wrong.
That funny thing that happened on the way to the championship? It was an attempt to fix the World Series by gamblers and disgruntled White Sox players.
There is no way to ensure a victory. But you can ensure defeat by downgrading your caliber of play. This is what happened in 1919.
The names, by now, are clear: Arnold Rothstein, a New York gangster who supplied the major financial connections for the fix; Chick Gandil, the first baseman for the White Sox who was one of the architects of the plan; Abe Attell, the former boxing champion who provided the $80,000 (or promised to do so) so that the players would carry out the fix; Cicotte and Williams, the star pitchers in on the plan; and hitters Jackson, Oscar “Happy” Felsch, Charles “Swede” Risberg, Buck Weaver, and Fred McMullin.
These were Major League Baseball’s first black marks—the “Black Sox” who nearly brought down organized baseball by actually throwing a World Series.
And then, as the story goes, they were ferreted out. New baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis handed down his thundering lifetime ban of all eight players, and Babe Ruth rescued the sport by suddenly hitting an unheard of number of home runs.
There are a few problems with this story though.
Landis, for all his thunderous orations against the eight banned players, was not brought in to save baseball from gamblers. He was brought in to save baseball from Ban Johnson, the miserly American League organizer who had assumed full control of baseball early in the 1900s.
Another issue is that neither Landis nor Ruth saved baseball. Baseball evolved. The eight banned players were found innocent, which probably would have been good enough for fans who still had no better option when it came to sporting events.
The worst problem is that the truth has long since gotten muddled and lost in history’s dark corners. Covered in cobwebs and now living in only flickering memory and yellowing text, the real story lingers.
Here are some facts laid out in various documents and accounts:
—Buck Weaver knew of the fix but adamantly refused to participate in it. Landis banned him for knowing about a fix and not reporting it to the authorities. He hit .324 in the Series with four doubles and four runs.
—Jackson led all Series participants with a .375 batting average—hardly a poor performance—and set a still-standing record with 12 hits in the series. He also hit .416 with runners in scoring position.
—The players did eventually admit to agreeing to a fix, but said that they attempted to pull out of the plan when the money didn’t come in from Attell. Another account claims that Lefty Williams, who pitched the decisive game of the Series for Chicago, only threw the final game because he was told that his wife and children would be harmed if he didn’t follow through.
—Several White Sox players not in on the fix weren’t effective in every performance. Dickey Kerr won both of his starts, but was much better in the first. In the second, he yielded four early runs. Pitcher “Big” Bill James also pitched ineffectively in relief of Williams in the deciding 8th game. Also, Cincinnati made 13 errors in the series compared to Chicago’s 12.
—Jackson’s connection to the fix is doubtful on several levels. In Eight Men Out, author Eliot Asinof contends that Jackson was not literate enough to know what he was signing when he added his signature to a prepared confession. Jackson also may not even have been fully aware of what the fix entailed.
He is portrayed in Asinof’s account as knowing but not comprehending the fix. His series performance also seems to indicate he may have not been in on it at all. Some accounts say that Gandil threw his name into the list to give the players’ promises to the gamblers some credence.
There is no doubt that a fix was both planned and carried out by the gamblers and the players. The question is who fully participated and who did not.
The other question is if these players should be forgiven. If they should be, the question is when will it happen. It has been 89 years since the players were banned in 1920 from baseball. At some point, perhaps we should let bygones be bygones.
There can certainly be debate to which is the greater sin now in baseball: gambling and fixing games or taking steroids. Both are forms of cheating to achieve a desired result. Both can even involve money.
Take for instance the case of Jason Giambi, now of the Oakland Athletics. He received a contract extension during his supposed steroids use that made him one of the richest players in baseball. Would he have been as attractive a player to the New York Yankees if he hadn’t used performance enhancers?
Eddie Cicotte actually received money for throwing the games during the 1919 World Series. He even got his $10,000 in advance of game one because he was shrewd enough to realize that sometimes gamblers don’t have the money to pay up after a deal has been completed.
In both instances, players received more money than usual through methods of cheating.
Giambi is still playing baseball and has largely been forgiven for admitting his role in the Steroids Era. Cicotte and the eight other Black Sox haven’t been permitted any contact with the sport for 89 years. All are now dead, so they can never get a second chance.
It can also be argued that on some levels, steroid use has an even worse impact than fixing the 1919 World Series.
No records were broken through dishonesty in 1919. Joe Jackson’s record for hits in the series was not a product of a fix. His record might have even been greater had the rest of the players played on the level.
We’ll never know for sure. The fixed games represent eight games out of a total of over 13,000 regular and post-season games. Those involved constitute only eight players on one team.
By contrast, those involved in the use of performance enhancing drugs or rumored to have been involved with them totals an unknown amount of players. There are likely several hundred. These include some of the greatest stars of the last 20 years on virtually every major league and several minor league teams.
Records are now owned by these men—including the most hallowed record in the sport. Those using steroids played parts of the last 15 years (at least) knowingly cheating.
The only defense that can really be offered was that some of the steroids that are now being held up as performance enhancers were not illegal when players started using them. But, just as with gambling, the moral implications of using a substance that you know will boost performance should be enough for you to realize that not taking them is the correct thing to do.
In light of these comparisons, perhaps it is time to forgive the eight members of the Chicago White Sox who were convicted in a court of Judge Landis’ opinion (they were acquitted in federal court) of throwing the 1919 World Series.
The eight players have served a life sentence as a result of their actions. The true crime is that at least two of the players may have been innocent in the matter. Baseball should look into this matter and consider reinstating these players so that, particularly in Joe Jackson’s case, these players can be considered for entry into the Hall of Fame.
Eighty-nine years is a long sentence. Either we should subject steroid users to the same lifelong bans or we should start commuting these sentences to time served.
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