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The checks the players received for throwing the game 

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The legal name of the trial was the People of Illinois vs Cicotte. The Black Sox trial took place in summer 1921. It lasted for about six weeks. The players were charged with conspiracy to fix the 1919 world series.

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The players were acquitted, but they were banned from playing professional baseball ever again.

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I believe justice was served. The players and the gambler who were involved were all held accountable. The players were banned from baseball. I believe that this is the right punishment for the players because they didn't do anything legally wrong, they just messed with the MLB. So this is why their punishment wasn't as severe other than the punishment by the MLB. This made them much worse the next season losing all of their good players. The gambler in this situation, Arnold Rothstein, was never caught for his involvement because of his death in 1928. They didn't get him before his death but he did quit betting after the scandal happened though. After this scandal, there are now strict betting rules for players in Major League Baseball. To conclude, justice was served because the problems that the cheating caused were all resolved by higher powers.

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A big name gambler named Arnold Rothstein paid off the players on the White Sox to lose in the World Series on purpose. The White Sox were heavily favored so Rothstein wanted to bet against them. Knowing that if the White Sox ended up losing he would win a lot of money. So, he bet a total of $270,000 on the Cincinnati Reds to win the World Series, knowing that with the betting odds against the Reds the payout would be huge. The crime occured at the 1919 world series. The victim was the Cincinnati Reds which was the team playing against the white sox in the 1919 world series. The Reds won the world series because the other team wanted to lose. When the Black Sox got caught the reds now never had the respect and credit for the 1919 world series.

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At the time the united states was in a partying phase. There was also prohibition going on at the time. Many people resorted to illegally selling alcohol in order to make money. This was also heading towards the roaring twenties.

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There was no impact in Race, Gender, Politics, or religion in the Black Sox Scandal. The event only impacted the players and other people involved in the MLB.

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It shows that in sports crimes can can still be committed and justice can still be served. It also provides justice to the victims of sports crimes.

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The Black Sox Scandal was covered by the media in newspapers. The newspapers told the people about what happened in the scandal. The shocking news angered many baseball fans saying that the World Series was a fraud. Which forced the MLB in taking action to the players.

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https://www.history.com/news/black-sox-baseball-scandal-1919-world-series-chicago

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Just how the Chicago White Sox "Big Fix" of 1919 played out remains a subject of considerable debate among baseball historians. Players involved-dubbed "Black Sox"-were acquitted in court, but banned by the league from continuing to play.

Accounts differ, but the scheme to throw the game for money may have first materialized a few weeks before that year's World Series, when White Sox first baseman C. Arnold "Chick" Gandil and a gambler named Joseph "Sport" Sullivan met to discuss the possibility of Sox players deliberately tanking in the championship. Gamblers had long been greasing the palms of disgruntled, underpaid ballplayers in exchange for inside tips, but attempting to rig an entire World Series was a rare and perhaps even unprecedented proposition.

Gandil later claimed he was initially skeptical that it could work, but he eventually agreed that he and a few co-conspirators would throw the series in exchange for a hefty payout of around $100,000. He soon enlisted White Sox pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude "Lefty" Williams, shortstop Charles "Swede" Risberg and outfielder Oscar "Happy" Felsch into the scheme. Third baseman Buck Weaver was in on the early stages of the plot before pulling out, and utility infielder Fred McMullin was cut in after he overheard the players talking about the deal. Power hitter "Shoeless" Joe Jackson was also approached.

White Sox Players Conspire With Crooks

As Gandil recruited conspirators on the team, Sullivan and a tangled web of crooks- that may have included former Sox player "Sleepy" Bill Burns, former Detroit Tiger Bill Maharg and boxer Abe Attell-began raising the bribe money. New York mob leader Arnold Rothstein may have been a major player, but his involvement has never been proven, and evidence suggests that Gandil and his co-conspirators may have hatched multiple deals with different syndicates.

"They not only sold [the series]" Abe Attell later claimed, "but they sold it wherever they could get a buck." Bookies had previously had the Sox winning the World Series over the underdog Cincinnati Reds by as much as three-to-one, but the odds shifted after those in the know began betting heaps of cash on the Reds. As the championship drew near, the streets buzzed with rumors that several White Sox players were in the pocket of high stakes gamblers.

Suspicions that the championship was "in the bag" only increased after the White Sox and the Reds met on October 1 for the first game of what was then a best-of-nine World Series. After hitting a batter with one of his first pitches-supposedly a signal that the fix was on-pitcher Eddie Cicotte went on to make a series of uncharacteristic blunders from the mound. Chicago lost the game 9-1, leading The New York Times to marvel, "Never before in the history of America's biggest baseball spectacle has a pennant-winning club received such a disastrous drubbing in an opening game..." The faulty play continued in game two, when Sox pitcher Lefty Williams gifted the Reds a 4-2 win after walking three batters in a row.

White Sox Players Call Off the Fix-But Still Lose

The White Sox continued losing over the next few games, and by October 6, the series stood at 4-1 in favor the Reds. Everything was proceeding as planned, yet according to later accounts, many of the crooked Sox players had begun to grow restless. They had purportedly arranged to receive their bribes in five $20,000 installments-one after each loss-but the gamblers had failed to deliver the full amount.

After game five, the furious ballplayers supposedly called off the fix and resolved to play to win for the rest of the series. Over the next two games, the Sox sprang to life, winning 5-4 and 4-1 and putting themselves back in the race for the championship. Backing out of a deal with gangsters proved difficult, however, and several of the players later hinted at having received threats against their families. Whether because of intimidation or merely an unexpectedly strong opposition, the Sox went on to lose game eight to the Reds 10-5, giving Cincinnati their first ever World Series win.

The Outcome of the Scandal

Rumors of a fix continued to persist in the months after the championship defeat. Leading the charge was sportswriter Hugh Fullerton, who investigated the 1919 series and later wrote a famous article for the New York Evening World titled "Is Big League Baseball Being Run for Gamblers, With Players in the Deal?" Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was quick to shrug off any reports of impropriety, saying, "I believe my boys fought the battles of the recent World Series on the level." Despite his claims to the contrary, evidence would later show that Comiskey had been tipped off about a possible fix early in the series and may have attempted to bury the story to protect his business interests.

Baseball's leading figures appeared content to let the 1919 World Series go unexamined, and it largely did until August 31, 1920, when evidence surfaced that gamblers had rigged a regular season game between the Cubs and the Phillies. A grand jury convened to investigate, and speculation soon turned to the previous year's World Series.

Around that same time, gambler Bill Maharg went public with an account of his own involvement in the fix. As the accusations mounted, Eddie Cicotte decided to testify before the grand jury. During a tearful mea culpa, the pitcher admitted involvement in the scandal, saying, "I don't know why I did it...I needed the money. I had the wife and kids." Shortly afterward, star hitter "Shoeless" Joe Jackson testified and admitted to having accepted $5,000 from his teammates. Over the next few days, Lefty Williams and Oscar Felsch also confessed their involvement.

In October 1920, Gandil, Cicotte, Williams, Risberg, Felsch, McMullin, Weaver and Jackson-now dubbed the "Black Sox"-were indicted on nine counts of conspiracy. While they were lambasted in the media for "selling out baseball," the players coasted through their June 1921 trial after all the paper records relating to their grand jury confessions vanished under mysterious circumstances. Many now believe that Comiskey and gambling kingpin Arnold Rothstein arranged for the papers to be stolen as part of a cover-up. Whatever the cause, the prosecution's case disappeared along with the confessions. On August 2, 1921, the Black Sox were found not guilty on all counts.

Baseball's First Commissioner Bans the Players for Life

The ballplayers' vindication would not last long. Only a day after the acquittal, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, recently appointed as baseball's first commissioner, decreed that all eight players were permanently banned from organized baseball. "Regardless of the verdict of juries," Landis wrote, "no player who throws a ballgame, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame, no player that sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball."

The edict effectively destroyed the careers of the eight Black Sox. Some of them later tried to win reinstatement to the league, but Commissioner Landis ensured that none of the disgraced ballplayers ever set foot on a big-league diamond again. The decision was especially harsh toward Buck Weaver, who was banned even though he supposedly dropped out of the plot before it started. Joe Jackson, meanwhile, had admitted to accepting money from the Black Sox, but later claimed that he was an unwilling participant and had tried to tip Comiskey to the scheme. "Shoeless Joe's" true level of involvement remains unclear, but his series-best batting average of .375 suggests he took no active role in throwing the 1919 championship.

If Landis' blanket ban helped cleanse baseball's damaged image, it also served to sweep the Black Sox scandal under the rug. Chick Gandil and others would later produce contradictory accounts of what happened, leading to still unanswered questions about who was really involved in the 1919 World Series fix and to what degree the games were thrown. Arnold Rothstein, one of the most likely suspects for organizing or financing the fix, was never even charged with a crime. He would maintain his innocence for the rest of his life, despite widespread rumors that he made a fortune betting on the series.

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What Was the 1919 'Black Sox' Baseball Scandal? | HISTORY

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In 1919, Chicago White Sox players allegedly threw the World Series. It remains one of professional baseball's most notorious scandals.

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https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-Sox-Scandal

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Black Sox Scandal, American baseball scandal centring on the charge that eight members of the Chicago White Sox had been bribed to lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The accused players were pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude ("Lefty") Williams, first baseman Arnold ("Chick") Gandil, shortstop Charles ("Swede") Risberg, third baseman George ("Buck") Weaver, outfielders Joe ("Shoeless Joe") Jackson and Oscar ("Happy") Felsch, and utility infielder Fred McMullin. Court records suggest that the eight players received $70,000 to $100,000 for losing five games to three.

Suspicions of a conspiracy were aired immediately after the World Series ended, principally by Hugh Fullerton and other sportswriters, but controversy over the allegations had died down by the beginning of the 1920 season. Then, in September, a grand jury was called to investigate various allegations of gamblers invading baseball. On September 28, 1920, after Cicotte, Williams, Jackson, and Felsch admitted to the grand jury that they had thrown the 1919 series in return for a bribe, Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox, suspended seven of the players. (Gandil was already on suspension in a salary dispute.) The indicted players stood trial in the summer of 1921 but on August 2 were acquitted on insufficient evidence-largely because key evidence, including the original confessions of the players, had disappeared from the grand jury files. (They probably were stolen.) On August 3 the new baseball commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned the eight players from the game for life.

Few of the alleged gamblers testified at the trial, and none were themselves ever brought to trial for the White Sox bribery, though the notorious New York racketeer Arnold Rothstein was mentioned in hearings as the probable banker of the bribery scheme.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Black Sox Scandal | Overview, Suspensions, & Facts

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Black Sox Scandal, American baseball scandal centring on the charge that eight members of the Chicago White Sox had been bribed to lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

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https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Black_Sox_Scandal

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The Black Sox scandal is the name given to the conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series played between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. A number of players on the Chicago franchise conspired with gamblers to throw (intentionally lose) games in what is the biggest scandal in major league history.

This betting conspiracy between a group of players and gamblers led to the permanent banning of eight players from the White Sox from baseball, to the introduction of the post of commissioner, and to strict rules prohibiting gambling that live on to this day.

The Scandal

While the origins of the conspiracy are unknown, it appears that there were two (or more) separate plans to "fix" the World Series. One involved Boston gambler Joseph "Sport" Sullivan, while another included retired pitcher "Sleepy" Bill Burns and his partner, Billy Maharg, a former professional boxer. These two gambling cliques were approached sometime between July-September 1919 by White Sox first baseman Arnold "Chick" Gandil and/or pitcher Eddie Cicotte. During the regular season, the Chicago White Sox had shown themselves to be the best team in the major leagues and, having clinched the American League pennant, were installed as the bookmakers' favorites to defeat the Cincinnati Reds in the Series. At the time, gambling on baseball was rife and there were many stories about fixed games during the regular season, which were typically ignored by team owners and administrators.

Gandil, Cicotte and six other teammates - pitcher Claude "Lefty" Williams, outfielders Shoeless Joe Jackson and Oscar "Happy" Felsch, and infielders Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Fred McMullin - were involved in the fix, although their levels of involvement varied by player. It is generally agreed by historians and Black Sox researchers that Weaver took himself out of the fix before the Series began, and it is certain that he received no money from the gamblers. According to the testimonies of Burns and Maharg at the 1921 trial, Jackson did not attend any of the pre-Series meetings where the fix was discussed, although he did receive $5,000 at some point during the Series. Before the Series, both Sullivan and Burns or Maharg approached the wealthy New York gambler Arnold Rothstein to provide the money for the players, who were promised a total of $100,000. A shady character named Rachie Brown served as the go-between between Rothstein and the conspirators. Even before the Series started on October 1st there were rumors amongst the gambling community that things were not square, and the influx of money saw the odds on Cincinnati fall rapidly. The rumors also reached the press box where a number of correspondents, including Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago Herald and Examiner and the ex-player and manager Christy Mathewson, who resolved to compare notes on any plays and players that they felt were questionable. Fullerton wrote later that he approached White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and Pittsburgh Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss in a Cincinnati hotel before Game 1, demanding that they do something to stop the "crooked" Series.

For a more detailed account of the games, see the 1919 World Series article.

The first game began at 3 p.m. on October 1st in Cincinnati's Crosley Field with Cicotte on the mound for Chicago. In the bottom of that inning Cicotte hit the lead-off hitter, Morrie Rath, in the back with just his second pitch, a prearranged signal to Rothstein that the game was going to be thrown. In the 4th inning, Cicotte gave up a sequence of hits, including a two-out triple to the opposing pitcher, as the Reds scored five times to break a 1-1 tie. Cicotte was replaced by a relief pitcher but the damage was done, and the Reds finally triumphed, 9-1.

By the evening of that day, there were already signs that things were going wrong. Only Cicotte, who had wisely demanded his $10,000 in advance, had been paid. Burns and Maharg met with Abe Attell, a former world boxing champion who claimed that he acted as an intermediary for Rothstein, but he did not provide the next installment ($20,000), wanting to place it out on bets for the next game. The next morning Gandil met Attell and again demanded their money. Again, the players went unpaid. In the meantime, other gamblers who did not know about the fix were getting wise, and one told Reds' centerfielder Edd Roush that things were not on the level.

Although they had not received their money, the players were still willing to go through with the fix in Game 2. "Lefty" Williams, the starting pitcher, was not going to be as obvious as Cicotte. After a shaky start he pitched well until the 4th inning, when he walked three and gave up as many runs. After that, Williams went back to looking unhittable, giving up only one more run; but a lack of clutch hitting, with Gandil a particular villain, meant that the White Sox lost, 4-2. Attell was still in no mood to pay up. Burns managed to get $10,000 and gave it to Gandil, who distributed it among the conspirators. The teams headed to Chicago, Illinois for the third game.

Dickie Kerr, who was to start Game 3 for the Sox at Comiskey Park, was not in on the fix. The original plan was for the conspirators, who disliked Kerr, to lose this game; but by now dissent among the players meant that the plan was in disarray. Burns still believed, however, and gathered the last of his resources to bet on Cincinnati. It was a decision that would leave him broke, as Chicago scored early - Gandil himself driving in two runs - and Kerr was masterful, holding the Reds to 3 hits in throwing a complete game shutout and a 3-0 victory.

Cicotte was again Chicago's starter for the fourth game, and he was determined not to look as bad as he had in the first. For the first four innings he and Reds pitcher Jimmy Ring matched zeroes. With one out in the 5th, Cicotte fielded a slow roller, but threw wildly to first for a two-base error. The next man up singled to center and Cicotte first cut off the throw home and then fumbled the ball, allowing the run to score. When he gave up a double to the next batter the score was 2-0 - enough of a lead for Ring, who threw a three-hit shutout of his own. The Reds led the Series 3 games to 1.

After the game, "Sport" Sullivan came through with $20,000 for the players, which Gandil split equally between Risberg, Felsch, Jackson, and Williams - who was due to start Game 5 the next day.

The next game was delayed by rain for a day, and when it got under way both Williams and Reds pitcher Hod Eller were excellent. By the 6th inning, neither had allowed a runner past first base, before Eller hit a dying quail that fell between Felsch and Jackson. Felsch's throw was off line, and the opposing pitcher was safe at third. Leadoff hitter Morrie Rath hit a single over the drawn-in infield and Eller scored. Heinie Groh walked before Edd Roush hit a double - the beneficiary of some more doubtful defense from Felsch - to score two more runs, and Roush himself scored shortly later. Eller pitched well enough for the four runs to stand up and the Reds were only one game from winning the Series.

Note: Due to increased enthusiasm in baseball after World War I, Major League Baseball decided on a best-of-nine format for the 1919 World Series. This is why Cincinnati's 4-1 lead in the Series at that point was not enough to give it the World Championship.

Game 6 was held back in Cincinnati. Dickie Kerr, starting for the White Sox, was not as dominant as in Game 3. The Reds jumped out to a 4-0 lead before Chicago fought back, tying the game at 4-4 in the 6th, which remained the score into extra innings. In the top of the 10th, Gandil drove in Weaver to make it 5-4, and Kerr closed it out to record his - and Chicago's - second win.

Despite the rumors that were already circulating over Cicotte's prior performances, Chicago manager Kid Gleason showed faith in his ace for Game 7. This time, the knuckleballer did not let him down. Chicago scored early and, for once, it was Cincinnati that made errors in the field. The Reds threatened only briefly in the 6th before losing, 4-1, and suddenly the Series was close again.

Now the White Sox were just two wins away from claiming the Series, which was a little too close for comfort in the gamblers' minds. Rothstein had been too smart to bet on individual games but had a considerable sum riding on Cincinnati to win the Series. In the meantime, it seems that another group of gamblers was trying to recoup some of their losses by arranging a counterfix. Both Edd Roush and Hod Eller of the Reds - and perhaps others - were approached with substantial offers of cash to throw the next game, but refused.

The night before the eighth game, Williams, who was due to pitch, was supposedly visited by an anonymous hitman - given the alias "Harry F." by Eight Men Out author Eliot Asinof - who threatened to kill his wife if the outcome of the game was in doubt after the 1st inning. This story has since been exposed as a fabrication by Asinof, however, but there may have been other means by which pressure was exerted on Williams. This is reflected by the fact that Fullerton later wrote that a gambler approached him before Game 8 and told him, "It'll be the biggest first inning you ever saw!"

Whatever Williams had been told made its impression. In the 1st, throwing nothing but mediocre fastballs, he gave up four straight one-out hits to yield three runs before Gleason replaced him with relief pitcher Bill James, who allowed one of Williams' baserunners to score. James continued to be ineffective and, although the Sox rallied in the 8th, the Reds ran out 10-5 victors - clinching the Series 5 games to 3.

The White Sox were defeated on October 9th and throughout the country rumors were rife that the games had been thrown. Fullerton, disgusted by the display of ineptitude with which the White Sox had "thrown" the series, immediately wrote that the Series should never be played again.

The National Commission was much embarrassed about all these rumors of a fixed series, and tried its best to quench them, pretending that nothing untoward could possibly have happened. However, the rumors continued to dog the White Sox throughout the 1920 season, as the team battled the Cleveland Indians for the AL pennant that year, and stories of corruption touched players on other clubs as well. At last, in September 1920, a grand jury was convened to investigate.

During the investigation, three players - Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams - confessed to the grand jury, and the eight players were tried for their role in the fix. A few of the underworld figures were also called to testify, including Arnold Rothstein himself, but their accounts only served to muddy the waters. Prior to the trial, some of the grand jury transcripts, including the players' confessions, were stolen from the prosecutors' office. But when the theft was revealed, the players' testimony was quickly re-created using notes from the court recorder and re-read into the record. This incident had little effect on the trial or its outcome, although some later chroniclers - and Jackson himself - would try to use it to discredit the damning sworn testimony given to the grand jury. The players were acquitted following a jury deliberation of nearly three hours on August 2, 1921.

The Leagues were not so forgiving, however. After Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed to investigate the fix, all eight players were banned from organized baseball for life, and Landis was appointed the inaugural Commissioner of Baseball. Another player, Joe Gedeon of the St. Louis Browns, was also banned for having played a role in one of the attempts to double cross the original fixers. Landis went on a crusade against gambling as Commissioner, banning or suspending several players, and establishing rules against association with gambling that stand to this day. It was very harsh, but it succeeded in restoring the public's confidence.

Some of the banned players later applied to Landis for reinstatement, but the Commissioner never budged. He also threatened any other player caught participating in a game with any of the banned players with being banned in turn, although he rarely (if ever) followed through on that threat and several players who took the field with the banned Black Sox in independent semipro or "outlaw" games later played in the major leagues, including Ernie Wingard, Syd Cohen and Emmett Nelson, among others.

Beginning in the fall of 1921, four of the banned players, Buck Weaver, Joe Jackson, Happy Felsch and Swede Risberg, sued the Chicago White Sox for back wages that weren't paid when the players were suspended by Charles Comiskey. Initially, the players asked for an additional $100,000 in damages because their reputations and means of earning a living had been annihilated, but these charges were dropped as they would have been too hard to prove in a court of law. Felsch, Risberg, and Weaver eventually settled out of court, but Jackson's case went to trial in 1924 in Milwaukee, WI, where the White Sox were incorporated. The jury found in his favor, but the presiding judge set aside the verdict as some of his testimony contradicted what he had told the grand jury in 1920, thereby constituting a prima facie case of perjury. In effect he claimed that he had never said some of the damning admissions contained verbatim in the transcript of his grand jury testimony, something that was too much for the judge to swallow. He was charged with criminal perjury and a warrant was issued for his arrest, but since he never returned to Wisconsin after that episode, the warrant was never executed.

Although many believe the Black Sox name to be related to the dark and corrupt nature of the conspiracy, the term Black Sox may have already existed before the fix was investigated. There is a (probably apocryphal) story that the name "Black Sox" was given because parsimonious owner Charles Comiskey refused to pay for the players' uniforms to be laundered, instead insisting that the players themselves pay for the cleaning. The players refused, and the subsequent series of games saw the White Sox play in progressively dirtier uniforms, as dust, sweat, and grime collected on the white, woolen uniforms until they took on a much darker shade.

On the other hand, Eliot Asinof in his book Eight Men Out makes no such connection, referring early on to filthy uniforms but only referring to the term "Black Sox" in connection with the scandal.

What is certain is that the scandal left a black mark on the Chicago franchise. The great team which Comiskey had assembled was in ruins, and it would take years before the White Sox were competitive again. As for a return to the World Series, they had to wait until 1959, when they lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The team would not be World Champions again until 2005, a gap between titles long enough for many fans to think that the team had been cursed for tampering with one of the basic tenets of the game.

"Shoeless" Joe Jackson. The star outfielder, one of the best hitters in the game, confessed to accepting money from the gamblers, both to the grand jury, and later to reporters assembled on the courthouse steps. He later tried to recant this confession and present himself as a man unjustly wronged, but his admissions, the text of which survive, are pretty damning. However, the story told by Hugh Fullerton of a tearful young boy standing on the courthouse steps, calling out "Say it ain't so, Joe!" is almost certainly apocryphal.

Eddie Cicotte. The pitcher also confessed to the grand jury to accepting money from the gamblers. His second pitch of Game 1 of the 1919 World Series hit Reds leadoff batter Morrie Rath in the back, which was the pre-arranged signal to the gamblers that the players had accepted the fix.

Oscar "Happy" Felsch, center fielder; later became Eliot Asinof's primary source for his 1963 book, Eight Men Out.

Claude "Lefty" Williams, pitcher. 0-3 with a 6.63 ERA for the series. His usually excellent control deserted him at key moments of the Series.

Arnold "Chick" Gandil, first baseman. The leader of the players who were in on the fix, he did not come back for the 1920 season.

Fred McMullin, utility infielder. McMullin was only in on the fix because he overheard a pre-Series conversation between Gandil and Risberg and demanded to be let in. He made two pinch-hit appearances and had one hit in the Series. However, when Gandil retired after the Series, McMullin became the chief liaison between the players and gamblers in 1920, when other games were suspected to be thrown.

Charles "Swede" Risberg, shortstop. Risberg was Gandil's friend and main accomplice during the Series.

George "Buck" Weaver, third baseman. Weaver attended the initial meetings, and while he didn't go in on the fix, he knew about it. Landis banished him on this basis, stating: "Men associating with crooks and gamblers could expect no leniency". Weaver, to little effect, continued to protest his innocence to successive baseball commissioners until his death in 1956.

The Black Sox Scandal had a large impact on Americans' imaginations. Baseball had become enormously popular across the country in the first two decades of the 20th Century. It had become a much more reputable endeavor during that time, with prominent personages such as Connie Mack, owner-manager of the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson giving the sport respectability. Beginning with William Howard Taft, Presidents would regularly attend ball games, and all of the country's newspapers covered the World Series in great detail. Magnificent concrete and steel ballparks had risen up in all the Major League cities to replace the makeshift ball yards of the previous century, increasing attendance by leaps and bounds. Thus, the scandal was played out before an enormous audience and ingrained itself profoundly on the nation's consciousness. The following are a number of works of literature, film and music, inspired by the events of the 1919 World Series and the ensuing scandal:

In Francis Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), one of Jay Gatsby's acquaintances in the New York City underworld, Meyer Wolfsheim, is introduced as "the man who fixed the 1919 World Series", a clear allusion to Arnold Rothstein.

Eliot Asinof's classic study of the scandal, Eight Men Out (1963), was turned into a film of the same name in 1988.

In The Godfather II (1974), two gangsters are speaking; says Hyman Roth, interpreted by Lee Strasberg: "I loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919".

British songwriter Murray Head scored a cult hit with "Say It Ain't So, Joe" (1976), based on the legend of the little kid asking that question of Joe Jackson as he was coming out of the Chicago courthouse.

William Patrick (W.P.) Kinsella's 1982 novel Shoeless Joe has Joe Jackson as its central character, brought back to life to play in an Iowa cornfield. The book was turned into the very successful film Field of Dreams (1989), starring Kevin Costner. Both the novel and the movie paint a picture of Jackson as a wronged man, who only wanted to play baseball and was incapable of playing at less than his formidable level of natural ability.

In 2019, to mark the 100th anniversary of the scandal, composer Joel Puckett wrote the two-act opera "The Fix", based around the events of the scandal, which had its premiere at the Minnesota Opera in St. Paul, MN on March 16th.

References

Bruce Allardice: "Rachie Brown", SABR Baseball Biography Project, www.sabr.org, 2014. [1]

Eliot Asinof: Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY, 1963. ISBN 0805065377

Gene Carney: Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball's Cover-up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded, Potomac Books, Dulles, VA, 2005.

Gene Carney: "New Light on an Old Scandal", in The Baseball Research Journal, Society for American Baseball Research, Cleveland, OH, # 35 (2007), pp. 74-81.

Gene Carney: "Comiskey's Detectives", in The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 38, Number 2 (Fall 2009), pp. 108-116.

William A. Cook: The 1919 World Series: What Really Happened?, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2001. ISBN 978-0-7864-1069-9

Susan Dellinger: Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series, Emmis Books, Cincinnati, OH, 2006.

Rob Edelman: "Black Sox on Film", in Stuart Shea, ed.: North Side, South Side, All Around Town, The National Pastime, SABR, 2015. ISBN 978-1-93359987-8

James T. Farrell: Dreaming Baseball, Kent State University Press, Kent, OH, 2007. ISBN 978-0-87338-897-9

Charles Fountain: The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2015. ISBN 978-0199795130

Tim Hornbaker: Turning the Black Sox White: The Misunderstood Legacy of Charles A. Comiskey, Sports Publishing LLC, New York, NY, 2014. ISBN 978-1613216385

William F. Lamb: Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2013. ISBN 978-0-7864-7268-0

William F. Lamb: "The Black Sox Scandal", in Jacob Pomrenke, ed.: Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox, SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2015, pp. 298-309. ISBN 978-1-933599-95-3

William Lamb: "Jury Nullification and the Not Guilty Verdicts in the Black Sox Case", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 44, Number 2 (Fall 2015), pp. 47-56.

Bill Lamb: "An Ever-Changing Story: Exposition and Analysis of Shoeless Joe Jackson's Public Statements on the Black Sox Scandal", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Vol. 48, Nr. 1, Spring 2019, pp. 37-48.

Josh Peter: "Could players throw World Series today as Black Sox did 100 years ago?", USA Today, October 22, 2019. [2]

David Pietrusza: Rothstein: The Life, Times & Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series, Basic Books, Perseus Books Group, New York, NY, 2011 (originally published in 2003). ISBN 978-0465029389

Jacob Pomrenke: "Bringing Home the Bacon: How the Black Sox Got Back into Baseball", in The National Pastime - A Review of Baseball History, Society for American Baseball Research, Cleveland, OH, number 26 (May, 2006), pp. 45-53.

Joseph L. Reichler: "The Black Sox Scandal", in The World Series: A 75th Anniversary, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 1978, pp. 142-147.

Rick Swaine: "The Ninth Man Out", in The National Pastime, SABR, Number 20 (2000), pp. 87-89.

John Thorn: "Forget What You Know About the Black Sox Scandal: The 1919 plan to fix the World Series is shrouded in myth.", The New York Times, October 9, 2019. [3]

Bill Veeck with Ed Linn: The Hustler's Handbook, Ivan R. Dee Publishers, Chicago, IL, 2009 (originally published in 1965). ISBN 1566638275

Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns: "An Awful Thing To Do", in Baseball: An Illustrated History, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 1994, pp. 133-145.

Don Zminda: Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD, 2021. ISBN 978-1-5381-4232-5

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The Black Sox scandal is the name given to the conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series played between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. A number of players on the Chicago franchise conspired with gamblers to throw (intentionally lose) games in what is the biggest scandal in major league history.