Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown
Observations From Outside the Lines |
Carney's newest book,
Burying the Black Sox: How
Baseball's Cover-up of the
1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded, will be available soon.
Pre-order your copy today.
Click to subscribe to 1919BlackSox Yahoo Discussion Group
NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
Observations from Outside the Lines
By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)
#272 OCTOBER 25, 1919
BACK ON THE TRAIL
The week since last issue has passed quickly. I have remained on the trail of the under-told stories of Baseball's Great Cover-Up(s), while keeping one (drooping) eye on the World's Serious in progress. With the Giants up three games to two, I find myself rooting hard for Seven Games. I took last Monday off so I could see the end of Game Two, and I have next Monday off, too. So I've been rooting for Seven a long time.
I will hold off further observations on the 2002 Series until next issue.
On the trail I mentioned above, I have another batch of researched fact and opinion, with a couple of book reviews at the end. I begin with the question, "Who threw the first pitch?" Yes, we all know if was Eddie Cicotte on the mound for the White Sox -- but which Eddie threw the first pitch, for a strike?
Then I share my conclusions (so far) about the wrong questions to ask about the 1919 World Series -- what I call the red-herring questions, which mainly distract. From what? Well, from what was being covered up -- and I have ten items on that list so far.
To get inside and understand the events of 1919, the events of the wartime-shortened 1918 season need to be kept in mind. So I spend some time here looking at 1918. There's a lot in here about Joe Jackson, too, especially in the two book reviews.
While in Cooperstown last weekend for a SABR meeting and for Game One of the Series (on the big screen in the Hall's gallery), I was presented with an unusual item by Gabriel Schechter. He knew I was looking into the Cover-Up, and it reminded him of something that was given to him by a friend who attended a history class at the University of Massachusetts in spring 1977. A UMass teacher compiled over 300 pages of course material for a class that focused on the 1919 World Series fix and the scandal that followed. Thanx to e-mail, I found out that the teacher was Ron Story, and I credit him a few times in this issue.
His coursebook is a treasure trove of newspaper clippings, related articles and background material -- it even contains "Harry's Diary" from Veeck's book. I will likely return to this collection from time to time. For now, thank you, Gabriel, and thank you, Ron Story; and Ron, please check your e-mail!
WHO THREW THE FIRST PITCH?
The gamblers and players involved in the fixing of the 1919 Series disagree on a lot of things, but they all seem to agree on one detail: that the way Eddie Cicotte dealt with the first batter of the Series would be the signal that the fix was in.
Why did they need a signal? Because by the time Game One rolled around, news of the fix was rippling out across the country. Players were telling family and friends, and gamblers were giving out (or selling) tips in their networks. It must have seemed too good to be true, like finding out the score of the next Superbowl before the opening kickoff. No one was certain. There had been much wrangling in the negotiations. Cicotte's participation, as the White Sox' ace who would likely get three starts, was vital to have.
Cicotte insisted that he needed to win one game, to throw off suspicions. By some accounts, the players were indifferent about which five games they would lose. By most accounts, the gamblers wanted the first two or three. Cicotte insisted on $10,000 up front, before he threw a pitch -- exhibiting a very healthy distrust of gamblers. The other players in on the fix, whoever they were, surely regretted not so insisting for the big advance. (Some felt downright cheated when they wound up with a measly $5,000 -- not much more than a winning Series share.)
And so the signal was set up: the first Cincinnati Reds batter would either be walked or hit with a pitch by Cicotte. Anything else, and the fix was off.
Secondbaseman Morrie Rath, a .264 hitter who drew 64 walks in about 600 plate appearances during the season, stood in. The first pitch -- called strike one! Freeze frame, please.
Who threw that pitch? I believe it was the Eddie Cicotte who didn't really want to go through with the fix. I believe he was flipping a coin, leaving it to fate: if Morris swings and connects, the fix is off, and Eddie goes on to win three games (carefully returning the cash, lest his fingers be broken.)
Is there any basis for this theory? Only the fact that he indeed threw a first strike. And then Eddie's statement, reported in the September 29, 1920 Chicago Tribune, "The first ball I pitched, I wondered what the wife and kiddies would say if they ever found out I was a crook -- yet I had the $10,000."
Cicotte was absolutely filled with regret and remorse when he was escorted to the Grand Jury in progress by Comiskey's lawyer. His repeated "I was only thinking of the wife and kiddies" as his noble motive became a saying almost as famous as the fictional (I believe) "Say it ain't so, Joe." Cicotte's testimony was made sobbingly by a man who had been through "hours of mental torture, days and nights of living with an unclean mind, the weeks and months of going along with six of the seven other crooked players, and holding a guilty secret, and of going along with the boys who had stayed straight and clean and honest -- boys who had nothing to trouble them -- say, it was hell."
Keep in mind that we are not reading a court record -- that disappeared. We are reading a statement from the Chicago Tribune, which was covering the Grand Jury and reporting on events daily. Frankly, Cicotte's statement sounds like it might have been prepared for him (by Comiskey's lawyer) -- the same lawyer who had Eddie (and later Jackson and Williams) sign waivers of immunity, while at the same time promising to take care of them. I don't know, but the way Cicotte goes from "days and nights ... to weeks and months" just seems too structured a script for a man breaking down emotionally in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar setting. He thought he was helping put away crooked gamblers, and was looking for understanding, if not forgiveness. I've been through hell ... fine me, suspend me for a year, I deserve it. At least now I can sleep with a clear conscience.
That was not, of course, the Eddie Cicotte who threw the second pitch, which nailed poor Morrie Rath square in the back. Ouch!
What about the part of Cicotte's statement that suggests that one of the eight men suspended was innocent of being in on the fix? We know that he did not mean Joe Jackson -- Cicotte thought Joe was a co-conspirator (as if any of the players used five-syllable words.) He thought that only because Chick Gandil -- his partner -- told him so. I believe he meant Buck Weaver.
The Grand Jury would drag on another three weeks. In the meantime, the 1920 World Series took place. On the day that the Series opened, Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams are in Greenville, South Carolina, taking time out, and visiting a local attorney. Now indicted, they realize that Comiskey's lawyer was not looking out for their best interests after all. According to the Chicago Times of October 6, 1920 -- and it is just a squib, not two column inches long -- they "had no further comment to make other than the statement that if the investigators probe thoroughly they may find men higher up in baseball at the bottom of the scandal."
At the bottom of the scandal. How fascinating. There were not a lot of middle-men in those days, not many men up higher than the players except the owners, and the three Commissioners, led by Ban Johnson -- on their way out, as Landis was on his way in. I will go out on a limb here and guess that Jackson and Williams were not suggesting that the baseball authorities were behind the fix. But they may have been saying that the scandal here is not that games were fixed for gamblers (that was not so unusual), but that baseball's Lords knew all about it and tolerated it, and did nothing to stop it. Jackson begged Comiskey to take him out of the Series before it started. "Say it ain't so, Commy, don't tell me I have to play!" "I'm afraid so, Joe."
BASEBALL'S GREAT COVER-UP
"The Black Sox Scandal" must rank in history as one of the great cover-ups ever. Because those who controlled the hearings, the investigations, and the reporting of the events of 1919-20 concerning the Chicago White Sox players "fixing" the World Series in 1919, were so successful, Americans ever since have been asking the wrong questions. Here is a partial list:
(1) Was the Series really fixed? Some still deny this.
(2) Which players were involved? Three confessed before a Grand Jury (Cicotte, Jackson and Williams, in that order); four others were clearly implicated (Gandil, Risberg, Felsch and McMullin); one admitted to being in on meetings with gamblers, but claimed to have played all-out to win every game (Weaver.)
(3) Which Series games were fixed?
(4) Did the punishment fit the crime in every case?
(5) Jackson served his lifetime ban; vote him into Cooperstown?
(6) Who were the gamblers responsible for this awful event?
It took many fans a long time to accept that the Series of 1919 was not played on the level in every game. But that's only because the fix was baseball's dirty little secret for nearly a year. Once Cicotte, Jackson and Williams stepped forward, the public had no choice but to accept the fix as fact, not rumor.
The exact involvement of the eight players who were indicted is not so easy to pin down. Winters can be spent around the Hot Stove just on Jackson's and Weaver's cases. There is also some doubt about which games were thrown, with Game Three (Dickie Kerr's first win) being the most controversial. The other questions can occupy writers and researchers for years. The last one, about the gamblers, seems somewhat disconnected to baseball, but in fact, because gamblers testified, researchers need to get to know them some, too, to evaluate their credibility.
The six questions above are all interesting, but I have come to regard them as decoys and red herrings. The first three are the questions that the press of the day seized upon. The press only reluctantly reported on the event at all, and must have been eager to slam the lid shut once Landis ruled eight men are out.
Here is a partial list of what I think was covered up:
(1) What baseball personnel, besides the infamous eight players, were either involved with the fix, profited from it, or knew about it before, during, or immediately after the Series ended.
(2) What Charles A. Comiskey knew, and when he knew it. What Ban Johnson and the National Commission knew, and when. (If the Grand Jury had not been convened in the closing days of the 1920 pennant race, would Comiskey or Johnson have ever come forth with the information they both possessed?)
(4) The treatment of ballplayers by owners. Comiskey is fortunate to have gone down in history as a skinflint. He was much worse. The "trial" of the indicted players opened the window on this just a crack.
(5) The fact that baseball was a business -- a big business -- that was booming after World War I. Any investigation into the connections between baseball and gambling would expose corporate greed, a system of labor that was perfectly legal but morally corrupt, and dozens of shady financial practices, all hidden not just from the public but from the players themselves.
(6) The role of Comiskey, his secretary (GM) Grabiner and his lawyer Austrian in orchestrating the cover-up.
(7) The role of Ban Johnson in convening the Grand Jury. Johnson (in a clear conflict of interest) did have financial interests in the Cleveland team, who won the 1920 pennant when the Sox team was gutted for its final games.
(8) The 1919 Series fix was evidence of a few bad apples in the game, but maybe it was the tip of an iceberg of corruption.
(9) The role of the press in covering-up the eight items above.
(10) The role (if any) of politicians in the cover-up.
I tacked that last item onto the list only because the movers and shakers of baseball were not just businessmen, but well-connected fellows who made campaign contributions. In the politicking that resulted in Judge Landis being selected over a state judge (someone whom Ban Johnson could control), there was some lobbying by the Republican National Chairman.
America in 1920, when the scandal hit the papers, was still getting over the war, and the ravages of the even more deadly flu pandemic. The presidential election pitted a Democrat who stood for the League of Nations -- which Americans feared and rejected -- against a compromise Republican candidate whose qualifications included "looking like a president" -- much like Landis looked extremely Commissioner-like. Warren G. Harding promised what Americans wanted -- a return to normalcy. He won in a landslide. Only later was much of the land found to be mud, as Harding's cronies got into all sorts of trouble, with the Teapot Dome Scandal being the climax. (Harding himself apparently had a mistress and an illegitimate child, so when he died in office, there were rumors of suicide or poisoning by his wife.)
All I intend to suggest with that last paragraph is that the climate in the land was don't rock the boat, don't dig into things too much. Baseball was a sport, not a business (no less an institution that the Supreme Court would say so in 1922, in a ruling that still mystifies.) Let it entertain you. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
One more thing about 1919: it followed 1918, a season that was shortened due to the war; on May 18, 1918, the famous "work or fight" order was issued by Sec'y of War Baker. Baseball was ruled "nonessential" and the bulk of MLB players were subject to the draft. According to David Fleitz in Shoeless (McFarland, 2001), Ban Johnson wanted to shut down baseball, but the owners ignored him and kept playing. (Most of the minor leagues closed.) Though President Wilson allowed the MLB season to continue, the War Dept ordered baseball to end its season on Labor Day, Sept 2, and start the Series ASAP.
Obviously, baseball revenues took a big hit in 1918. Attendance was off over 40% and who knew if it would bounce back? This meant players negotiating salaries for 1919 were really in the hole.
Something else happened in 1918 to one of the players we have our eyes on in the 1919 Series and after. Joe Jackson, originally deferred from service as a married man, was reclassified 1-A. Joe passed a physical and was set to be inducted into the army, when he got an offer from a shipbuilding company in Delaware. Joe took their offer and went to work building ships -- a very essential wartime occupation. (Joe also played some ball for the shipyards, quite possibly earning almost as much there as from the White Sox!) To no one's surprise, there were those who regarded players who took jobs in the "paint and putty league" (Fleitz) as draft-evaders and slackers. What is harder to understand is why Comiskey would publicly criticize his star player. (Hugh Fullerton went after Joe, too.) Jackson was "the first prominent player to decline service" and took the brunt of the heat from sportswriters. (Ruth joined a reserve unit and kept playing in the majors.) His teammates supported Joe.
According to Donald Gropman in Say It Ain't So, Joe! (Little, Brown, 1979), Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was a big fan of military conscription, and when the US entered WW I, "he went after pacifists and anti-war defendants with a vengeance." Landis, never accused of being impartial or objective, as judge or Commish, just might have recalled Joe Jackson as the poster boy for "slackers" in WW I. Comiskey, too? I only raise this point because revenge is a powerful motivator.
The two books I have mentioned above, by Fleitz and Gropman, both are deserving of a full review here, which they will not get. I will get back them both later on, however, because they both have information or views I've not seen elsewhere.
I will also be returning from time to time to the two lists above -- the six "red herring" questions, and the ten things that might have been covered up. Remember Two Finger's Maxim from Notes #270: "Power covers up, and absolute power covers up absolutely" -- but not permanently.
A TIP FOR RESEARCHERS
When I asked my friend Don Wigal about the 1919 Series, he replied with the following, which might be of interest to others researching anything:
There are 30+ files found on the 1919 scandal in Copernicus 2001, which is an umbrella searcher that links to about 30 search engines and searches them simultaneously. The search doesn't take long, but capturing and downloading each file does. Here is one of the hits. [deleted] I glanced at the page and noticed that this one has a side bar that links to several other pages on the topic. You may have searched Amazon for books in print, but a fan has probably retained a search form the old bibliofind.com site before Amazon bought [and destroyed] that service. If you can find a fan who downloaded a search on the topic in the former bibliofind service, you would have the jump on other researchers, I'm sure. Also as you might know, at $100 an hour the Associated Press will search (about as fast a the Babe walking the bases) their old files for you and then give you an estimate of costs per historical item. Also, a search of dissertations surely will show who has done bibliographies at least on the topic. Good luck.
FROM THE E-MAIL BOX
[For a change, this is an excerpt from something I wrote in response to comments from a NOTES reader.]
PRIORITIES!
The way I understand it, Comiskey & his lawyers had these priorities: (1) cover Comiskey, so he would not lose the franchise; (2) cover up the fix, so he wouldn't lose a huge investment; (3) cover the players, so if they were reinstated, they would still be White Sox property.
I think Landis' priorities were different (and these are more guesses): (1) save the image of baseball, so the franchises retained their financial value to the owners; (2) cover the owners and previous MLB leadership, who had known about the gamblers for years and done nothing (they may have even gambled themselves -- some certainly had ties, as Fullerton pointed out a few times); (3) deal with only the public scandal (the 1919 WS fix), in a decisive, firm way; (4) cover up everything not public, past and future. I believe that although Joe Jackson (and Weaver) could have been sorted out from the others who conspired to fix games and followed thru on their plans, Landis wanted to keep it sweet, short and simple, and it was a bonus having a star like Jackson in the accused group, because "no player is above the new law." [I wrote this before learning of Joe Jackson's "slacker" image from 1918 ... something Landis surely remembered.]
MEANWHILE, JUST DOWN THE STREET
You can read dozens of books about the 1919 season in Chicago, without finding out much about something that happened "in the very shadow of Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox" (Ron Story, history teacher at U.Mass, 1977.) On July 27, 1919, one of the worst race riots erupted in Chicago. There were 25 or 26 in American cities that summer, but the worst were in Chicago and Omaha.
With the war over, and industries booming in the northern cities, there was a dramatic movement of the black population. In Chicago, there were now over 100,000 blacks, more than double the 1910 population. And no wonder that they were fleeing the south -- lynchings were on the rise, up to 83 in 1919 from 64 the year before.
The Chicago riot that began in late July lasted nearly two weeks before law and order was restored. Thirty-eight persons were killed (twenty-three of them black), 537 injured, and over a thousand black families were homeless when it was over. (It wasn't really over, Chicago boiled again the next summer, too, but for some reason I could not find out much about 1920.)
To complicate things even more, it was not just a black and white (or blacks versus whites) problem. There was a post-war movement to "clean up" America, and foreign-born citizens were under suspicion. It was a Red Summer (as in bloody), marked by the Red Scare, a fear that communism would infect America from Russia as surely as the flu riddled the country the year before. There were calls for mass roundups and deportations. And Prohibition was being phased in: no whiskey manufactured after September 8, 1917, and no beer after May 1, 1919 (World Book Encyclopedia.) After July 1, 1919, no more intoxicants were sold -- legally. The 18th Amendment soon followed (January 1920), and was not repealed until 1933. What is interesting about this little chronology, is that those books you read about the baseball events of 1919 and 1920 have many references to the drinking of alcohol, particularly by Ban Johnson and Joe Jackson (before he faced the Grand Jury.)
Reading about 1919 and 1920 reminds me of the late sixties, when it felt like the country was struggling to hold together. Civil rights, women's rights, minorities' rights ... sexual freedom, new music, a skepticism about politicians, "gaps" between generations ... a polarization that seemed to echo everywhere, even in baseball, where the games went on. I am not sure if any games were cancelled at Comiskey while the gangs swarmed the streets in July and August of 1919 ... but I do not recall many games being cancelled when the big cities of America shook and burned in the summers of the late sixties. I am not sure what to make of this: baseball out of touch, aloof, detached from the segments of America that suffer or protest? Or is the ballpark a kind of island of stability, where the umpires' order reigns, and players expect fair treatment, as the fans expect fair play? Well, the fans wuz robbed of that in October 1919. Forget the world, play ball!
A BOOK WE NEED
If you focus on the years just around 1919, as I have been doing here the past month or so, you would think that White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and AL President Ban Johnson were mortal foes, each other's nemesis, like Holmes and Moriarty, or Giamatti and Rose. But in fact they were once very close friends. Ban Johnson, fresh out of law school, was a reporter in Cincinnati when Comiskey, then manager of the Reds, induced him to get into baseball. Soon after Johnson took over the struggling Western League, Comiskey bought the Sioux City franchise and moved it to St Paul, and when Johnson was ready to challenge the National League in 1900, Commy invaded Chicago. Less than two decades later they were scheming against each other, using the thrown Series of 1919 as their weapon, in a titanic power struggle. No telling of the Great Cover-Up is complete without a look at their long relationship.
NOT CLUELESS ABOUT SHOELESS
David Fleitz' Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson (McFarland, 2001) was recommended to me when I first entered the trail of the Cover-Up, and it is certainly a book that I can recommend to all. Unlike Eight Men Out, the book is well-documented, and the footnotes are worth checking out. (Maddeningly, a few of them refer to Asinof in Eight Men Out, which doesn't really help when you want to know the source of a post-fix quote from Felsch, or Kid Gleason's remark that he might pitch game five himself.
Fleitz uses the Veeck & Linn Hustler's Handbook as a source, as other authors have done. He does not mention Harry Grabiner's note pinning the fix of the 1918 WS on Eugene Milo Packard, but does discuss that Series some. Remember, the 1918 season was cut short by the war, so every team lost a month of revenues. (The owners cut their losses some by releasing players who had a ten-day notice in their contracts, agreeing not to let the players re-sign next spring with any team but their old one.)
The owners also decided, on their own, to divvy up the 1918 WS receipts among the top four teams of each league. This did not go over well with the two teams in the Series, the Reds and Cubs, and there was a serious strike threat before game five. Harry Hooper talked the players into playing and getting something -- Fleitz has Ban Johnson showing up too drunk to negotiate -- but it was clear that there was a lot of anger in that Fall Classic. The Series participants wound up with shares of less than $1,000 after taxes, and "rumors abounded concerning the honesty of the 1918 Series" -- just like the next year.
Ban Johnson asked the AL owners for funds to investigate, but they turned him down. It may well be that the Cover-Up of 1919 was really a sequel, and Ban Johnson's role in the uncovering, his way of saying "I told you so."
Fleitz does not focus on the details of the 1919 fix -- he wants us to know who Shoeless Joe Jackson was, and why he did what he did. He has done a lot of digging into newspapers, but he also notes, maybe as a caveat, that "if Comiskey pinched pennies with his players, he spared no expense for the writers." The press was the only eyes fans had in those days before radio and TV. And Commy's press' wines were fine and their steaks thick.
Fleitz decided that Comiskey was "not a monster" -- but a "typical purveyor of the business ethics of the era." He maximized his own profits and spent as little as possible on his players. How does the old lyric go? "There's nothing surer: the rich get rich and the poor get poorer." What is hard to keep in mind as attendance soars after the war and revenues rise, is that as poorly as Comiskey's players were paid, they were still making wages well above what they would receive back in the mines and mills. That is a whole 'nother cover-up: the Civil War didn't really end slavery, it just put it in a better disguise.
In Eight Men Out, Eddie Cicotte is motivated partly by his anger at Comiskey's weaseling out of a bonus clause -- if Eddie wins thirty games, he gets a big bonus, but he is rested for the Series and misses the necessary last few starts. Fleitz does a nice job de-bunking this piece of fiction. Comiskey was not likely to have given out bonus clauses, and in the seasons where Cicotte won 28 and 29 games, he had his chances at 30. On the other hand, he should have been paid at least twice his salary.
On the Comiskey cover-up, Fleitz writes "public exposure of the scandal was the last thing that Comiskey wanted. He had worked for months to cover up the evidence and smooth over the traces" (pg 201).
Sometimes Fleitz drives readers crazy when he does not list his sources. For example, page 207: "Comiskey's detectives reported that, after the 1919 World Series, Gandil deposited thirty $1,000 bills in his hometown bank, and that he bought diamonds and other luxuries for himself and his wife that winter." I've seen a lot of guesses about how much Gandil pocketed, but this is the first time I've seen a reference to what Commy's sleuths uncovered.
It happens again a few pages later, where Fleitz is eavesdropping on a July 1920 conversation among Tribune writer Jim Crusinberry, Kid Gleason, Ring Lardner and gambler Abe Attell. Perhaps Crusinberry wrote about it later?
In any case, Crusinberry was now convinced about the fix. And that was significant. When the August 31, 1920, Cubs-Phils fix was uncovered, the Cubs' president (Veeck, Sr) hired detectives to gingerly investigate, but the Herald & Examiner broke the story about the gamblers' big take. "Not to be outdone, the Tribune gauged that the public was fed up with baseball's foot-dragging." Crusinberry "arranged for a prominent Chicagoan named Fred Loomis to write a letter to the editor demanding a thorough investigation" of MLB.
Crusinberry had in fact written the letter, which was front page on the Trib September 5. The public outcry forced the impanelling of the Grand Jury that ultimately blew the lid off the 1919 fix. Wow. And I thought Hugh Fullerton was tough trivia! Let's hear it for Jim Crusinberry!
Fleitz book has a super chapter toward the end that cannot be overlooked, if you are focusing on the cover-up and not the red herring questions. Enter attorney Raymond Cannon, a former minor league pitcher, who, in 1923, was disgusted with baseball, especially its reserve clause that locked in the slavery system. Cannon decided to seek change in the courtroom, embarrassing the owners to treat players fairly. He claimed to have over 200 players in his organization -- the National Baseball Players Association -- when he decided to help Joe Jackson recover his salary for 1921 and 1922 from the White Sox.
Jackson contended that his contract was for three years (1920-22) and was "ironclad." That's what Harry Grabiner told Joe, anyway. In fact, it had that ten-day clause in it. But if Joe could prove that the clause was fraudulent, he indeed could lay claim to the $16,000 he felt was due -- because, in the eyes of the law, he was acquitted in court in 1921. To show cause for not paying, Comiskey would be forced to prove Jackson really did help throw the Series in 1919. As we know -- not an easy task.
Raymond Cannon had some ammunition, too, a letter from Jackson to Comiskey offering to tell what he knew, back in November 1919. This would back up his claim that he tried to tell Commy (or, by some accounts, did) before or during or right after the Series. The suit went to court in Milwaukee (the Sox were incorporated in Wisconsin, probably to save some tax bucks.)
What happened next is really interesting. Coached by Cannon, Joe testified to a very different version of events than he gave to the Chicago Grand Jury. Those records had disappeared, so who was to know that? Suddenly, one of Comiskey's lawyers, George Hudnall, pulls Jackson's missing testimony from his briefcase!
Fleitz believes that what happened to the missing court documents is simple to explain. Comiskey's lawyer Alfred Austrian, who coached Cicotte and Jackson and Williams in the Grand Jury hearings, also represented Arnold Rothstein. So Comiskey and Rothstein were "aligned" as early as October 1920, and when they both had reason to destroy the evidence that would show Comiskey's early knowledge of the fix, and probably Rothstein's role in the fix, they simply paid off the right people and got their papers.
And that's why the testimony surfaces in Milwaukee in January 1924 -- to save Comiskey big bucks. The judge admitted the papers over Cannon's objections. Hudnall read from the transcripts, while Cannon's requests to see them were "side-stepped" (Gropman.)
Jackson's testimony was confusing. Remember, he was badly hung over, probably struggling to recall lines that Comiskey's lawyers had rehearsed. Comiskey's lawyer made it seem like Jackson contradicted himself in his 1920 sworn testimony, and when asked if he was telling the truth back then, Jackson sometimes agreed, and sometimes disagreed. It must have been ugly, and the picture painted was quite at odds with the one Cannon had hoped to paint on the clean canvas of the Milwaukee courtroom.
When the jury left to deliberate, Judge John J. Gregory called Jackson before the bench and slapped him with perjury -- one of his versions was false, that was plain. Apparently Happy Felsch's testimony was present in Milwaukee, too (most sources have only Cicotte, Jackson and Williams testifying, but the other players may have signed statements for Austrian.) Because Happy had testified on Joe's behalf, the judge ordered Felsch (who lived in Milwaukee) arrested and charged with perjury, too. The next day, the jury found in Jackson's favor, but Judge Gregory set the verdict aside. Comiskey offered Joe a settlement and Jackson accepted -- there would be no further questions about stolen evidence! Cannon had blown the case and Jackson's public image sank. Few players were in Cannon's union when 1924 ended.
Fleitz quotes from a 1949 interview of Jackson by Furman Bisher that appeared in Sport in October 1949. Thirty years after, Joe's story changed again. Now he remembers going to both Comiskey and Hugh Fullerton before Game One of the 1919 WS. (In his account of the Series, Fleitz has Jackson blurt "I don't want to play" to Gleason, minutes before the first pitch, but the footnote, alas, says only "Asinof." He has Commy going to Heydler and Johnson after Game Two.) Jackson blamed his expulsion, however, on Ban Johnson, who "caused the thing to go into the courts" to "get even with Mr Comiskey."
Finally, in Fleitz' version of things, there is no deathbed confession of innocence, just a sincere good-bye to his brother. In his epilogue, Fleitz addresses all of the main arguments about whether Jackson was guilty of throwing the Series. Fleitz thinks it more likely that Joe was truthful in Chicago, and not in Milwaukee, that he did something wrong to "earn" the $5,000 that he finally took -- but there is still, I think, room for doubt.
Say It Ain't So, Joe! by Donald Gropman (Little, Brown, 1979) is footnote-free, and while it has a respectable list of sources tacked on at the end, the lack of documentation is disappointing. But it's still a good read.
There's a nice debunking of Ty Cobb's version of the 1911 race for the batting title (Cobb did not psych out Jackson and whiz past him in the final games. Nice try, Ty.) There is also a nice account of Jackson's 1918 season and the "slacker" problem. And to underline how two-faced Comiskey was about that, "when he saw that Joe still drew large crowds [in 1919] through the turnstiles everywhere the White Sox played, Comiskey smugly announced that he was glad he had not listened to the critics who'd wanted him to get rid of slacker Joe." You get the idea that before the recording technology made it, people who controlled the print medium could get away with just about anything.
Gropman has Jackson going to Comiskey before the series and asking to be benched. "We do not know how much Joe told Comiskey, but at the least he must have mentioned the rumors and his fear of being implicated" (p. 167.) A good point -- Jackson's name must have been laced in those pre-Series rumors, along with Cicotte's, to give the thing more credibility. I think it was unlikely that Jackson would opt out, if he was planning to go ahead and participate with the crooked Sox; if he told Gleason and Comiskey before the Series, he's also challenging them to find fault with his performance during the Series.
Gropman's account has Jackson refusing, then grudgingly accepting $5,000 from his pal Lefty Williams, after the Series is over. I believe most accounts have this event after Game Four. In Gropman's view, he took the money with him to Comiskey's office the next morning, but was sent packing by Harry Grabiner.
Gropman includes one little story I've not seen elsewhere, I think. He has Comiskey knowing pretty much everything three days after the Series is over. Then he asks Hugh Fullerton, his good friend, to investigate the matter through all of his newspaper sources. When Fullerton could find nothing firm, Comiskey is relieved enough to offer a $20,000 reward (later $10,000.) But Gropman's source for this is not given.
Gropman does a nice job calling attention to the contradictions in Jackson's GJ testimony, noting that he was straining to both defend himself, and to feed the GJ the information that Austrian said they needed to convict the gamblers. Did nothing to throw those games ... yes, I said I'd take part ... I tried to win all the time ... I was ashamed of myself. A tape recorder there would have been really useful.
In the Gropman version, Comiskey himself takes the stand in Milwaukee in 1924, and under oath, swears that Jackson never made a dishonest move on a ballfield, from 1915 through 1920. This is interesting. I remember a point where I was so distrustful of anything Richard Nixon said, that I started habitually believing the opposite of what he stated. Was Comiskey so certain that this judge would side with him, that he could testify for Jackson -- knowing this would be in his own (Comiskey's) favor later, when he asked Joe to settle the case for a vastly reduced award? Again, the jury found Joe innocent of conspiracy, and they took his word over Harry Grabiner's on the contract signing. Poor Joe, another courtroom win overturned by a judge.
Finally, Gropman has some trivia I've not seen elsewhere. "More than fifty years later" there was a hit song Say It Ain't So, Joe, by Murray Head. He mentions "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo." who, "in a turnaround, sells his soul to the devil to win" in the musical Damn Yankees. And he thinks Jackson was the model Malamud used for The Natural.
Ron Story wrote of the 1919 Series fix: "To peel off its many layers is to uncover connections among wielders of urban influence and power in the early twentieth century." Joe Jackson learned that in taking on Comiskey, he was up against the establishment: "politicians (aldermen, public prosecutors, judges), press (publishers, editors, reporters), and the proprietors of pool halls or saloons on whose police-protected turf bets could be laid on ballgames"(Story.) Amen.