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)
#274 November 4, 2002
"THOU SHALT NOT QUIT"
This issue's title happens to be the first of "The Ten Commandments of Sports" -- according to Hugh Fullerton. It was something Fullerton practiced, too. He enjoyed tracking things down. When he became convinced that the 1919 Series was fixed, he refused to let it go, even though other sportswriters did. For this he was vilified by the baseball establishment, and forced to break his strongest story out of New York, not Chicago.
When I discovered Fullerton and started looking into the 1919 Series myself, I found it hard to stop. With this issue -- my seventh straight devoted mainly to "Baseball's Great Cover-Up" -- I have finally reached a place where I can set it aside and move on to other things. Thou shalt not quit. I will likely return to the subject in the future, either in response to what I have presented here in Notes, or as I learn more from other people, living or dead. There are more books to review, and some real research to be done -- later.
Instead of summing up the contents of this issue on this front page, as I usually do, I am going to provide an index of topics as they came up, in issues 268 through this one, 274. So for a look at this issue, just skip on ahead.
But first I want to acknowledge those who assisted me and encouraged me the past two months. I tried hard to give credit where due as I went along, but looking back, special mention is deserved by Gabriel Schechter, Trey Strecker, Mike Nola, David Shiner, Paul Wendt, Bill Deane, Dorothy Mills, Jim Sandoval and Sean Lahman. If the material here ever makes it into a book, I will be delighted to acknowledge you all again.
#268: OUR MOVEABLE FEAST'S DARKEST DAYS
His Pen Was Mightier Than the Cover-Up. Hugh S. Fullerton Sr.
The Problem of Buck Weaver. Could he find someone who didn't know about the fix?
History and Fiction -- Often Confused. Blue Ruin by Brendan Boyd.
Shoeless Joe. The "seven triples to left" argument examined -- and found wanting.
Reminiscing. Looking back, some players think the Reds would have won the Series anyway.
Aftermath. What the fix meant for its key players.
#269: THE BLACK SOX REVISITED
Baseball Put on Trial. Hugh Fullerton calls for baseball reform.
The Response to Fulleryon's Charges. The Empire strikes back.
Don Quixote? What did Fullerton really accomplish?
Harvey Frommer's Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball. A review
Harry's Diary. Veeck's unique chapter from Hustler's Handbook.
An Amazing Chronology. From the end of the Series to 8 men out.
Eight Men Out -- The Movie. A brief review.
From the Notes Archive: Eliot Asinof in Cooperstown. In July 1999, Eliot Asinof was keynote speaker at a baseball symposium.
What About Shoeless Joe Jackson? The question will not go away.
Afterwords: Eavesdropping on the SABR-L. Opinions from 1995.
#270: PRELUDE TO A WORLD'S SERIOUS
Meanwhile, Back in 1919 ... Power covers up, and absolute power?
Hustler's Handbook. A note on the credibility of this source.
Judge and Jury. David Pietrusza's bio of Landis examined.
Dickie Kerr. How the the only "clean" Sox pitcher get banned?
Eliot Asinof. On Pete Rose.
The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony. A look at the seven Reds' triples in the 1919 Series through eight different reporters.
The Problem with Judging Guilt/Innocence by the Stats. By the numbers, Jackson should be in the Hall, Collins and Roush out.
From the Notes E-Mailbox. Contribution by David Shiner.
'Mo Mail. In search of ... Harry's Diary.
1918 -- Was It Fixed, Too? Allen Wood's book doesn't say.
#271: CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'
17 Years After the Fall. John Lardner in the Sat. Evening Post.
From the E-Mail Box. A double play by Mike Nola, on Jerome Holtzman, MLB's "historian," and a note on Buck Weaver.
Yet Another Take. Bob Carroll in Baseball Between the Lies.
And Another. Writer Joe Williams on Fullerton and the fix.
#272: BACK ON THE TRAIL
Who Threw the First Pitch? A look inside the head of Ed Cicotte.
Baseball's Great Cover-Up. Six "red herring" questions which we recognize as familiar; nine things they cover up. "Slacker Joe."
A Tip for Researchers. Using the internet to track things down.
Priorities! My hunches about Comiskey and Judge Landis.
Meanwhile, Just Down the Street. Chicago race riots of 1919.
A Book We Need. The relationship between Comiskey and Ban Johnson was long, and absolutely vital to understand, 1919-21.
Not Clueless About Shoeless. A deservedly long look at David Fleitz' Shoeless and Donald Gropman's Say It Ain't So!
#273: TO BOLDLY GO ...
One More Thing ... The eight men out committed no crime.
The Women of the Cover-Up. A couple wives, and Mrs Kelly.
Two Simple Twists of Fate. Pitchers not available to Kid Gleason.
Curiosities. A potpourri of anecdotes.
Abbott and Costello Meet the Gamblers. An attempt to show the scope of the problem and the difficulty in finding its limits.
They Said It for the Record. A medley of quotations.
Say It Ain't a Song -- Please. Lyrics to Say It Ain't So, Joe.
#274: "THOU SHALT NOT QUIT"
An Index to Issues 268-274. The Notes Archive never closes!
Did Jackson Asked to be Benched for the 1919 Series? So much hinges on the answer to this question. What is the evidence?
Speaking of Serendipity. Jim Crusinberry happened to be handy.
And a look at Ring Lardner, after the fix was uncovered.
Postscript on Dickie Kerr. His TSN obit: "guilty knowledge."
A Joe Jackson Triptych. A look at five issues involving Joe, with Best/Worst Case Scenarios, and my own Most Likely explanation. One more fact covered up: there was no real investigation.
We All Make Mistakes. David Voigt and three Bucks.
DID JACKSON ASK TO BE BENCHED FOR THE 1919 SERIES?
This seems to me to be the most crucial question of all. It has implications for the question most fans have today about Joe Jackson; and also for the actions of Charles Comiskey during and after the Series.
Briefly, if Jackson stepped up before the Series, calling attention to the interference of gamblers, and requested that he be benched, then it is harder to believe that he gave less than his best on the diamond during the Series; and punishing him for "guilty knowledge" seems unfair.
If Comiskey was informed of the fix before the Series, then he was covering up all along, not just after Game 1 or 2 or 8. And because Jackson told him, Jackson had to be prevented from giving that information to anybody else; silencing Jackson would be a crucial part of the larger cover-up.
What is the evidence that Jackson asked to be benched? Let's take a look at what evidence there might be:
* In an article by Furman Bisher in Sport (1949), Jackson said that he informed Comiskey and Hugh Fullerton (together) before Game One.
* Eliot Asinof, in Eight Men Out (1963), has Jackson making the request of his manager Gleason, before Game One. Comiskey is convinced after Game Two and goes to Heydler with the news.
* Donald Gropman, in Say It Ain't So, Joe! (1979), has Jackson requesting to be benched before the Series. There is no documentation provided by either Asinof or Gropman.
* Harvey Frommer in Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball (1992): "Joe never said anything about [the fix] until the night before the Series started." No documentation.
* David Fleitz in Shoeless (2001) has Jackson saying, "I don't want to play" to Gleason before Game One and footnotes Asinof.
There is one other piece of evidence to ponder, one that came to me in a serendipitous way, from Gabriel Schechter, who happens to be rooting around in the 1960s in search of his next book. He shared with me several clippings from The Sporting News.
* TSN August 17, 1960: Ford Frick is applauded for "turning down a request from a television producer [David Susskind] to present a drama involving the 1919 Black Sox scandal." "Banning such a production" was "using common sense." (TSN recommended stories about men like Mickey Mantle and following the formula of The Lou Gehrig Story.)
* TSN October 12, 1960: "Why Can't TV Let Well Enough Alone?" Frick took some criticism for his August ban -- he was called a czar, and his decision, arbitrary. TSN really doesn't want a show on the Black Sox Scandal aired. And this is written of Joe Jackson: "To the best of anyone's knowledge, Jackson took no part in the fix. ... His problem was that he knew what some of the others were doing and planning and would say nothing about it. Does television know that the night before the Series opened, Jackson begged Owner Charles Comiskey to keep him out of the game and his request was refused? No, we don't think television could do justice to that story."
CBS-TV went ahead with its production. Witness was a thirty-minute crime drama that aired weekly between September 29, 1960, and February 2, 1961. The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs, 1947-1976 describes it this way: "People who have witnessed or become innocently involved in crimes appear and through the questioning of a panel of defense attorneys relate their experiences. The program attempts to expose rackets and criminals by making people aware of confidence games." And the show was effective, too, as there have been no rumors of fixed World Series since Witness featured Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Joe's episode aired January 28, 1961, right at the end. The series was doomed, they had nothing to lose now. I suspect that Eliot Asinof was in on the writing -- remember, he was commissioned to write a teleplay, which led to Eight Men Out. The regular panel of lawyers on the show were played by William Geoghan, Richard Steele, Benedict Ginsberg and Charles Hayden. Biff McGuire played Jackson; Royal Beal played Comiskey; Warren Finnerty and Frank Sutton played gamblers Evans and Maharg; and Bill Zuckert played Kid Gleason. If anyone can track this program down, I'd appreciate hearing from you.
The Sporting News (February 8, 1961) -- with Dan Daniels leading the charge and Jim Anderson following up with the reactions from Greenville, N.C. -- lambasted the program. They picked it apart, "full of inaccuracies," poor acting, bad casting, and so on. It was the review Max Bialystock dreamed of getting in The Producers, but never got.
Daniels: "After 40 years, the script writers figured they could get away with anything. The script plays up the purely apocryphal 'Say it ain't so' ... No boy asked Jackson that question. The dramatic bit was written into the baseball drama by a Chicago writer named McNamara -- and a good writer he was."
Curiously, inserted in the blitz was a little box with the headline, "'Begged' to be Benched in '19 Series." The story was from Greenville, so it is likely that Anderson wrote it. The report said Jackson "often told friends" that he "begged" Comiskey to keep him out of the Series. "'I went to the room of Mr Comiskey the night before the Series started and asked him to keep me out of the lineup,' Joe asserted." Well, Anderson is not quoting Joe -- he died ten years before. "He refused and I said to him , 'Tell the newspapers you suspended me for being drunk, or anything, but leave me out of the Series, and then there can be no question." Turned down, Joe "played his heart out." Then the TV show, Witness, is criticized for failing to include this appeal to Comiskey!
Why the exclamation point? Because here is the Bible of Baseball, which does not even want this show aired (they even protested to an ad agency to try to keep it off), pointing out what it sees as a gross inaccuracy -- the omission of the early information Comiskey received. This is as astonishing as Comiskey, testifying under oath in Milwaukee in 1924, and standing to forfeit over $18,000 if he loses the case -- that Joe Jackson did nothing crooked on the ball field in all his days in a White Sox uniform. If Jackson's lawyer says the same thing, not an eyebrow raised. And if some 1961 equivalent of The National Inquirer or some sensational tabloid came down hard on Witness for omitting Jackson's "begging" Comiskey for a way out of the mess he's in -- no big deal. But The Sporting News!
OK, now let's assume Jackson did ask to be benched, whether he did it directly or via Gleason. Why would Comiskey refuse the request? By most accounts, he tells Jackson they need him in the lineup to beat the Reds -- something he might have said if Joe had come to him with a hangover, or a cold, instead of news of a fix. No, Comiskey needs Joe in the lineup for other reasons. One might be to distract attention away from the fix. (I don't know that Comiskey knew of the fix from his gambling connections, and had money down on the Reds, but I bet he did. This cannot be proved any more easily than Rothstein's role.)
Comiskey also was probably knowledgeable about what happens when ordinary people start screwing around with the big-money plans of the underworld. Mike Nola shared this with me in a recent e-mail:
The famous crime boss Frank Costello was asked in the 1950's "What would have happened to Joe Jackson had he told what was going on?" Costello asked, "Before or after the bets were placed?" The reply was "After." Costello simply showed how serious these guys were with his answer: "Jackson wouldn't have made it home that day." Granted, Joe was uneducated; but he was far from stupid. He knew bits and pieces, enough to know gamblers were involved. And he had been around the game long enough to know those boys played for keeps, and bumping a fellow off was not above them or below them. Joe just decided to go out and play the best series a fellow could play and hope they didn't kill him.
So if the gamblers believed (from Gandil) that Jackson was in on the fix, and Jackson rode the bench, it might have gotten sticky for Jackson -- and for Comiskey, if the gamblers discovered who ordered or approved the benching. Mike's story, by the way, comes directly from someone who was at Toots Shor's in Manhattan in the 1950's and heard Costello answer the question.
When I ran the Costello story past Gabriel Schechter, he had this response:
That Frank Costello item you forwarded was very interesting. I assume that the question directed to Costello concerned the ramifications of Jackson going PUBLIC with his story of the fix, going directly to the press. Jackson DID go to Commy, so my follow-up question to Costello would be: suppose Comiskey had benched all the alleged fixers after Jackson went to him -- either after game 2, game 1, or before the first game -- and thereby RUINED the action on the Series? Either the Series would have been cancelled, or if it had continued, the price on the Reds would have been so prohibitive as to deter all bets. My point, I guess, is that the question posed to Costello was moot -- suppose ANY of the Sox had gone forward to the press and blown the pretense that the series was on the up-and-up?
Suppose Buck Weaver had gone forward? Suppose Gleason had gone forward, let's say, before the second start made by Cicotte and Williams, and had said "there have been a lot of rumors and stories suggesting that Eddie (or Lefty) wasn't doing his best in his first start. I'm publicly challenging him to prove those rumors wrong today." Suppose ANYBODY had gone forward -- an honest player or a fixer -- and said whatever it took to ruin the action of the gamblers? Would they have killed all of them? Would they have killed an honest player? That's why I think it was a pointless question to pose to Costello -- it was easy for Costello to give that answer in hindsight, because it didn't happen that way.
My best guess is that if Gleason wanted to go public as Gabriel imagined above, he would have needed clearance from Comiskey. And Commy, having refused Jackson, would likely have refused Gleason. "Kid, maybe it's just rumors ... happens every October ... it'll pass." And remember, when Hugh Fullerton wanted to go public, with names of players and probably gamblers, his articles were censored. "Can't risk libel suits, Hughie, sorry." Of course, Comiskey had a pretty tight handle on the presses in Chicago. All the wining and dining of reporters was an investment that paid off well -- for a while.
In any case, the evidence points to Comiskey knowing of the fix, from Jackson, early on. The documentation is thin. Comiskey had every reason to conceal the communication, with retaliation by the underworld probably a real, but secondary concern. No pun intended, but Comiskey pulled off a Hall of Fame cover-up.
SPEAKING OF SERENDIPITY...
In Notes #272, I mentioned reporter Jim Crusinberry, and his role in stirring up Chicago so that a Grand Jury was (finally!) convened to look into baseball and gambling:
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!
Here is another account of that July 1920 meeting, from Jonathan Yardley's biography Ring (Random House, 1977.)
According to Eliot Asinof in Eight Men Out, Ring and Jimmy Crusinberry were talking in a New York hotel when Kid Gleason called to tell them that Abe Attell, one of the fixers, was spilling the beans at Dinty Moore's restaurant and speakeasy. After they heard Attell out, Crusinberry filed a story that Harvey Woodruff [in Hustler's Handbook, Bill Veeck notes that Woodruff was a "confidant" of Ban Johnson] declined to print for reasons of potential libel. But the scandal was bound to emerge in full....
Just another illustration of the cover-up. You can just see Kid Gleason aching for the press to blow the whistle. He had probably invested in a lot of whiskey to get Attell talking about it, and he summons Lardner and Crusinberry -- not Hugh Fullerton, who is a Comiskey loyalist.
Crusinberry is silenced, but gets around his editor later. Lardner? He had been a close friend of Eddie Cicotte, and when he learned that he (and the world) had been betrayed (Yardley), he was profoundly disillusioned. According to Yardley, Lardner was disgusted by the fix, and when the public refused to share his reaction, he became even sourer.
In an article he contributed to Civilization in the United States, edited by Harold Stearnes and published in 1922, Ring Lardner argued that America is "a nation of watchers rather than doers," and that while the country is obsessed with "sport," it is pursued by spectators rather than players. "We don't play," wrote Lardner, "because (1) we lack imagination, and (2) we are a nation of hero-worshippers." The latter "keeps the grandstands full and the playgrounds empty." It is an angry but perceptive essay that seems to stand the test of time.
Ring Lardner and F. Scott Fitzgerald were known to have shared a drink or two from time to time, and Yardley suggests that Lardner may have influenced Fitzgerald to use the 1919 Series as a symbol of corruption in The Great Gatsby. Remember Gatsby pointing out Meyer Wolfsheim (Arnold Rothstein): "He's the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919."
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people -- with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.
"He just saw the opportunity."
"Why isn't he in jail?"
"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man."
There are books available on Arnold Rothstein, by the way, and also on his lawyer William Fallon, "The Great Mouthpiece." For more on the gambling side of this story, Dan Ginsberg's The Fix Is In has been recommended to me.
POSTSCRIPT ON DICKIE KERR
In The Sporting News obituary of Dickie Kerr, the Sox pitcher who (perhaps pretty much on his own) won Game Three of the 1919 Series, is this tidbit: Kerr said that he was tipped off by newspapermen that the fix was in after Game Two.
When Gleason came to him after Game Two and asked Kerr if he knew anything, Kerr replied, "Yes, but I'm not telling you who told me." We usually thing of reporters protecting their sources, but things were reversed in 1919.
And again, this just illustrates again how widespread the knowledge of the fix was. The reporters were thick with the gamblers and the players (who blur together sometimes.) A strict application of Landis' "guilty knowledge" across the board would have turned Chicago into a ghost town!
A JOE JACKSON TRIPTYCH
[This little summary probably should best be in chart form, but this will have to do. Call it fuel for the Hot Stove. The "Most Likely Scenarios" below are my own views. I thank David Shiner and Mike Nola for their suggestions in revising this.]
1. JACKSON'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE FIX WHAT HE DID ABOUT IT
A. Best Case Scenario: Jackson was repeatedly recruited to be in on the fix, but continued to say No, and attended no meetings. When his name came up in the rumors, he went to the Sox owner Comiskey and asked to be benched, so there could be no doubt that he was not a participant in the tossed games.
B: Worst Case Scenario: Jackson was in on the fix, and tried to blow the whistle only after the Series, when he was paid only $5,000 of the $20,000 he demanded.
C: Most Likely Scenario: Ringleaders like Gandil and Cicotte used Jackson's name to recruit others, but more importantly, to sell the plan to more gamblers. Joe was not in on the planning, but knew of the fix. Whether he told manager Gleason and/or Comiskey before the Series, or early on, or later, remains unclear, but he most likely tried.
2. JACKSON'S PERFORMANCE DURING THE 1919 WORLD SERIES
A. Best Case Scenario: Jackson gave every game his best, knowing he was being closely watched (because he told his superiors about the fix.)
B. Worst Case Scenario: Jackson actively participated in the tossing of four or five games, playing out of position, making poor plays in the field, and giving poor efforts in the clutch.
C: Most Likely Scenario: Reviews of the Series play-by-play accounts are inconclusive, but support A. more than B. above. If Jackson was trying to play it straight, he was likely confused by the response he received from his management, and worried about repercussions from gamblers, who thought he was in on the fix.
3. JACKSON'S GRAND JURY TESTIMONY (SEPTEMBER 1920)
A. Best Case Scenario: Jackson wanted to clear his name, but was guided by Comiskey's lawyer to give the Grand Jury something they could use against the gamblers. Thinking that what he said could not be used against himself, Joe made several statements that could be taken as admission of being in the conspiracy. He also insisted at times on his innocence. Since he was drunk or badly hungover at the time, it is questionable if his testimony should have been taken at that time.
B. Worst Case Scenario: Jackson confessed because he felt guilty and wanted to relieve his conscience. He was coached to add several statements that made him seem innocent.
C. Most Likely Scenario: Affected by alcohol and confused by Comiskey's lawyer, intimidated by being in a strange, formal setting, Jackson's testimony is inconclusive regarding his role in the fix. The written accounts that survive may be regarded as suspect, as they were stolen and open to editing before the reappeared, four years later, in the possession of Comiskey's lawyers. Press reports of the testimony carry the bias of the newspapers, some of which were heavily influenced by Comiskey, or by Ban Johnson.
4. THE TRIAL AND THE BAN (SUMMER 1921)
A. Best Case Scenario: Unable to be tried separately and kept off the witness stand, Joe is tried, found not guilty of the charges (of fraud, not fixing), and banned along with his teammates. To contain the damage to baseball -- and to those in power (especially the three-man National Commission and Charles Comiskey) -- Landis comes down hard on the eight players, to send a strong message to past and future fixers.
B. Worst Case Scenario: Jackson, like Buck Weaver, had "guilty knowledge" of the fix, but also participated in it, and deserved the lifetime ban.
C: Most Likely Scenario: Jackson, if he made an attempt, or if he successfully reported the fix to his superiors, especially if before Game 1, probably deserved to be treated as a special case; if he reported later, he and Buck Weaver deserved to be treated separately. The lifetime ban, based on the evidence, seems out of proportion for both Jackson and Weaver.
5. THE AFTERMATH
A. Best Case Scenario: Jackson maintained his innocence, and was believed by a Milwaukee jury when he took Comiskey to court for back pay in 1924. His side of the story remained suppressed by those in power, especially Comiskey.
B. Worst Case Scenario: Jackson hinted at his guilt a few times before he died. His Milwaukee 1924 testimony was fiction, and recognized as such by the judge who charged Joe with perjury, because his 1924 testimony contradicted that from 1920, produced by Comiskey's lawyers.
C: Most Likely Scenario: Jackson's 1924 testimony was made (or made up by his lawyer) under the assumption that no records from 1920 existed. The contrast between versions hurt Joe at the Milwaukee trial, and raises doubts about whether either account is wholly Joe's, or Joe following legal advice.
* * * * *
In 1920, that legal advice came from a lawyer whose top priority was protecting Charles Comiskey; in 1924, it was given by a lawyer whose goal was to maximize Jackson's chances of receiving over $18,000 in back pay. It appears that Jackson was never properly represented in any court or hearing by someone concerned with getting at what actually happened.
That is the way the courts work in an adversarial system. Charges are made. Prosecuting attorneys try to make them stick. Defense attorneys try to knock them down. Both sides argue with whatever ammunition they can muster, to sway the jury to their point of view. The court is not about investigation to discover what happened -- that is done before the charges are made.
In the time between the end of the 1919 Series and the convening of the Grand Jury in September 1920, two investigations were conducted. Charles Comiskey led one -- being careful that his own early knowledge of the fix was covered up. If Jackson informed Comiskey early on, then it is very plausible that at some point, Comiskey concluded that Jackson was a threat, and had to be sacrificed if Comiskey was to survive with his image intact and the franchise still in his possession.
The other investigation, parallel to Comiskey's, was conducted by Ban Johnson. Johnson's bias was to destroy Comiskey, discredit him, and wreck his team (some go on to say that Johnson would then buy the franchise for cheap.) If Jackson's name was bound up in the rumors -- and it surely was -- Johnson would have every reason to do his best to implicate Joe in the version of events that he would, along with Comiskey, tie up in blue ribbons and present to the Grand Jury.
For the record, there were two other investigations -- one by the Cubs' organization, which apparently did not turn up much; and one by the NL Prez, Heydler, which fizzled out fast.
If the Grand Jury had not been convened, who knows how long Comiskey and Johnson would have continued to collect information and simultaneously cover up what they were learning? They could both argue "we had nothing hard, just rumors and statements that we could not verify." Comiskey carefully avoided asking his players -- he let Harry Grabiner do that dirty work. And as near as I can tell, Ban Johnson never called in any of the Sox players, either. It looks very much like neither man really wanted to know exactly what happened.
That there was never any real investigation -- but only what would be called later a bungled Grand Jury hearing -- is yet another fact covered up by the dismissal of these events as "the Black Sox Scandal" and "Eight Men Out." (My list in Notes #272 had nine items, not ten; I added #10 last issue.) And the absence of an investigation hurt Jackson, even as it "helped" baseball.
WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES
I happened to pick up David Q. Voigt's American Baseball, Volume 2 (U. of Oklahoma Press, 1970) again -- I consulted it back when I started looking for the person(s) responsible for uncovering the fix. This time, a few things just startled me.
In describing what I would say was the turning point in the Grand Jury hearing -- Maharg's interview with Isaminger, naming names (which was published in Philadelphia, by the way; Commy would not have let that particular cat out of the bag in Chicago), followed by the confessions of White Sox players -- Voigt writes (page 127),
At this point, pitcher Ed Cicotte and infielder Buck Weaver confessed their part in the conspiracy to Comiskey.
Huh? No, David, you have mixed up Buck with Joe Jackson. But it gets worse:
The rest of the dismal story is well known. Eight men from Comiskey's team were implicated in the conspiracy and were branded as the "Black Sox," including Jackson ... Cicotte and Williams, infielders Freeman, Swede Risberg and Chick Gandil....
Voigt has confused Buck Weaver with Buck Freeman, who played most of his eleven seasons in MLB with the Red Sox -- and none of those seasons after 1907. He does it again a few pages later:
Only Buck Freeman fought back. Suing in the courts, he won partial payment on his 1920 contract. He appealed six times to Landis for reinstatement.
Poor Buck -- Weaver, that is. Bad enough to be associated forever with fixers. But even his appeals are erased to history!
There is an anecdote that fits in nicely here. I believe that it was during the Grand Jury trial in 1920 that an angry fan stabbed Buck Herzog for being involved in tossed games. The first time I read this, I imagined that the fan was mixed up -- he was after Buck Weaver. But later, I learned that Herzog's name came up in the hearings, too, and he was accused of fixing games in 1919 (by Rube Benton), and in fact Herzog had a key role in getting Benton to spill what he knew of the 1919 Series fixers. My point is that Herzog probably was stabbed by someone who lost a bundle on the game Herzog was accused of tossing.
As far as I know, Buck Freeman was not stabbed, nor was he implicated in any fixes, except by David Voigt, in 1970. I toss this out as a caveat -- we all make mistakes -- I'm sure that I have, in my coverage of Baseball's Great Cover-Up -- and the lesson is plain: never rely on just one source. Not even Notes!