Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown
Observations From Outside the Lines |
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NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
Observations from Outside the Lines
By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)
#328 APRIL 30, 2004
BAN I AM
This is one of those rare issues with a single subject. It was not planned that way, I hardly ever plan these things. But when I finished the essay below, it seemed long enough to take up an issue, and why not let Ban Johnson have the whole stage?
More than a few times in my B-Sox research, I ran into the observation made back then and today, by those who looked closely, that Ban Johnson is the fine line running through and tying together the events of 1919-1921. At first, that seemed off the mark. Were Ban Johnson and the National Commission not off in an ivory tower, above the sordid October of 1919? Was the cover-up not Comiskey's doing, with the assistance of his fellow owners? Wasn't Hugh Fullerton the crusader who blew the whistle on the Fix and caused the grand jury to be convened? (He was not.) And wasn't Judge Landis the fellow who ruled those eight men out to purge baseball for the boys of the twenties, and for all fans in the future?
After all, didn't Ban Johnson dismiss the claim that the fix was in with that famous, "That's the yelp of a beaten cur" -- a slogan right up there with Say it ain't so, Joe as near-gospel?
In fact, Ban Johnson got his uniform dirty, so to speak, right at the beginning of the B-Sox story, and no one -- no one -- not even Hugh Fullerton -- was more responsible for bringing the Fix to the light of day, and the accused players and gamblers to trial. His amazing investigation and the almost-bizarre events that led to these results is the meat of my book.
The essay below is like the bread that sandwiches that meat. Ban Johnson, and his relationship with Comiskey, deserve a book. I cannot fit too much more into mine. But I can write more about them here. So without further introductions, please enjoy:
BAN THE MAN
If I was asked to pick the person with the principal and most central role in the events that were touched off by the fixing of the 1919 World Series, it would not be Joe Jackson or any of the players. It would not be Rothstein, Attell, or any of the gamblers. It would not be Hugh Fullerton, or any of the writers and reporters. It would not be Charles Comiskey, or any of the White Sox management. It would not be Kenesaw Mountain Landis, or any of the judges and lawyers. It would be Ban Johnson, who was the president of the American League, and baseball's Czar.
I've started thinking about what I might say on that SABR 34 panel in Cincinnati next July 16, and given the very limited time, I have decided to devote my minutes to three men: (1) Hugh Fullerton, who blew a whistle, all right, but did not in fact manage to pull the Fix out from under its covers; (2) Bert E. Collyer, whose newspaper Collyer's Eye was the only one to investigate the Fix in any real way; that today Collyer remains almost totally obscure shows how deeply he was buried by those in power; and (3) Ban Johnson.
"All his troubles came because he neglected so many wonderful opportunities to remain silent."
John Kieran applied that French proverb to Ban when he died in March 1931. When Johnson left baseball in 1927, he was succeeded by Ernest F. Barnard; Johnson's death followed Barnard's by a little more than twelve hours. Surely the odds were against that -- but Johnson had been beating the odds for most of his life.
Back in Notes #323, I reported on a little wager Johnson and Comiskey made with Garry Herrmann in 1904. Johnson was still making bets even after Judge Landis' verdict. After ill health and the wrath of too many AL owners forced Johnson to take a leave of absence from his duties as AL Prez in 1927, he traveled to Excelsior Springs, Mo., to recover. He spent some days in bed at the home of John Emmke, a close friend, until he gained enough strength to go back to Chicago to do battle. Johnson bet Emmke he'd return -- and he did. "The amount of the wager was not made public," according to the anecdote I read, from an unidentified newspaper. Emmke: "There was the 'million-dollar smile' on [his] face when he collected it."
That squib is just one from dozens of random articles on Ban Johnson that I recently received from Rebecca Poe, a Special Collections Associate at Dawes Memorial Library, Marietta College. This was the second packet I've received from Ban's "alma mater" (his degree there was honorary), and eventually it will join the first in Ban's Cooperstown file, for future researchers. And I might be one of them -- in thinking of my next book, the relationship between Ban Johnson and Charlie Comiskey seems a more than worthy subject.
Born in Ohio -- Somewhere
Ban Johnson was born in 1865 in Cincinnati -- or Avondale, or Norwalk, all three take credit (so did Cleveland). He was in the Marietta, Ohio, Class of '87, but never quite graduated. He previously attended Oberlin, and played baseball at both schools, as well as on a pro team in Ironton, Ohio, as a catcher, until a broken thumb forced him to quit. His family expected him to be a lawyer, and he went to Cincinnati to study law, graduating and practicing briefly before taking on a real job, sportswriting.
In 1887 Byron Bancroft -- Ban -- Johnson was covering baseball, boxing and other sports for a Cincinnati paper (the Gazette Times may have had other names while he worked there). In Cincinnati, he met the Nationals' manager Charles Comiskey -- in Axelson's flattering Commy, Comiskey "discovered" him -- and they formed a real-life "dynamic duo" that would change baseball forever.
Around 1894 (the dates vary from source to source), Comiskey and Johnson took over the struggling Western League, and in seven years, it was ready to call itself, like the National League, "Major" -- on a par with the best. The American League was "born" in 1900, and suddenly baseball at its top level was at war. Comiskey was Johnson's general on the Chicago front, and delivered victory there. While Johnson ruled the AL with an iron fist, the NL lacked leadership, and after three years, peace was declared.
Johnson was a gracious winner. The agreement -- the treaty was signed in Cincinnati at the Grand Hotel -- was remarkably fair, to the utter surprise of the defeated NL heads. Johnson also let the swing vote on the new National Commission be a NL owner, the Reds' Garry Herrmann, so it appeared that the older NL had the upper hand. But Johnson was baseball's czar, make no mistake about that.
And that was good for baseball, and the National League. The formula that led to success in the Western/American League was now applied to the NL. Ban Johnson had a dash of Barnum, he knew what fans wanted, and he gave it to them. They wanted baseball, not cussing, brawling, rowdyism. To civilize the sport, Johnson supported the umpires, making them Law and Order on the diamonds. It worked. Attendance rose, and so did the value of each franchise. Once a ballplayer himself, Charlie Comiskey was on his way to being a millionaire, as owner of Chicago's White Stockings. And Commy gave the fans what they wanted, too: winning teams, cheap seats, and that ever-popular new ballpark, in 1910.
Happy Days, Interrupted
These were happy days for Commy and Ban, and while they had disagreements from time to time, their friendship endured and their occasional differences were overcome. Johnson never stopped working to make baseball a better product. I described him above as a betting man, but that did not mean that he tolerated gamblers in the ballparks, or on the fringes of the sport. I believe Johnson understood that while a friendly wager between friends harmed no one, professional gambling was a real threat to the game. Players or managers or umpires or groundskeepers could all be bribed to tilt the outcomes of games, and thus of pennant races. With tens of thousands of dollars at stake, players making just a few thousand a season were vulnerable targets. Johnson tried to keep gamblers away from the parks, but did not get much cooperation from the owners.
When World War I finally hit America, Johnson wanted to shut down baseball early in 1918, but the owners ignored him, continuing the season as long as they could (through Labor Day, one last big doubleheader crowd). The war had closed racetracks earlier, and gamblers had flooded into baseball. America's favorite pastime -- gambling -- was on a collision course with the game that couldn't be fixed.
What happened in October 1919? None of us were there. Hugh Fullerton was there, and he said only Comiskey, Johnson and Garry Herrmann knew what happened for sure. Loyal to Comiskey and to baseball, Hugh Fullerton waited until those men had passed away before he revealed that he personally informed Commy and Ban (and Barney Dreyfuss, a NL owner and leader) about the Fix -- before Game One even started. And Fullerton -- who did more than anyone after the Series to coax the baseball authorities to investigate -- was upset when he was ignored: baseball's leadership seemed to know the fix was in, but they were going to let it happen, prompting Fullerton to call them "whitewashing bastards." (If you missed this before -- you can look it up in The Sporting News, October 17, 1935.)
That's the yelp of a beaten cur! That is what Ban Johnson was supposed to have said, when he was first informed, after Game One or Two, in a hotel or on a train or via a phone call -- take your pick. You can also take your pick of eight or nine different versions of the "beaten cur" thing. The fact is that Johnson denied ever saying it, and there is ample evidence from multiple sources that he never needed to be informed by Comiskey (through others). The saying is in all probability pure spin, to make Commy look like he was blowing a whistle (instead of covering up), and Johnson was playing unbeliever, denying the Fix.
Put yourself in Ban Johnson's shoes on the morning of Game One, October 1, 1919 (just his shoes -- the rest of his wardrobe will be too large). You have worked hard to build baseball into a prosperous, million-dollar industry, and you have succeeded -- the fans returned after the war in record numbers. You have worked hard to rid the sport of the gambling menace. Just last October, when there were rumors of tampering by gamblers, you asked the owners for money to investigate -- but the war dried up all the contingency funds, times were hard, so there was no looking into those allegations. Maybe the owners would have told you to back off, even if the money was there. Maybe not.
Here's what you know for sure. The rumors of the Fix before Game One in 1919 are so thick that they are on everyone's lips. You cannot escape them, not in your hotel lobby, not in the bars, not on the sidewalks, not in the ballpark. Already Hugh Fullerton has been nagging you to stop the Series and investigate the rumors. Taylor Spink and Fred Lieb made sure you knew, too. Fullerton said Comiskey knew before he (Fullerton) told him, and of course he did, he had a dozen Woodland Bard friends with connections to the gamblers in the big cities. Fullerton added that Comiskey was furious that you (Ban Johnson) were doing nothing about it.
What happens if you decide to call off the Series? Well, you can't make that decision by yourself -- technically, the Series is in the hands of the National Commission. You need one more vote -- from either the rookie NL Prez John Heydler (Barney Dreyfuss is the real NL spokesman) or the Reds' owner Garry Herrmann. Dreyfuss is angry that Fullerton is making waves. Heydler, who failed to punish Hal Chase earlier in 1919 when there was a lot more evidence of a fix than there is today, is no help. Garry Herrmann? How can you break the old man's heart by yanking this Series away from him? This is Garry's last, finest hour ... his days as chair of the National Commission are numbered, he will resign soon. He's waited so long! And -- he's probably been hitting the suds and will be in no shape to make this decision!
The Silver Lining on the Black (Sox) Cloud
At this moment, Ban Johnson -- who has been emptying a few pitchers of Cincinnati's best brew himself on this warm day -- surely realized that he had been handed a gift from heaven. He will let the games go on -- even if he wanted, he cannot stop this Series, he would have no support at all. There are fantastic advance ticket sales, records will be set this October, and both leagues need the cash to keep recovering from the disaster of 1918. He will let the games be played. His alibi is foolproof: no one can fix a World Series. Hardly anyone believes a single game of baseball can be fixed -- too many players would need to be bribed, and the game hinges on so many unpredictable variables. Sure I heard the rumors, but I heard them before or during or after practically every World Series ever played. Nothing new, they always prove to be just that -- rumors.
But the gift from heaven is not what later American politicians would learn to call "plausible deniability" -- no, the gift is that if the fix is really in, and Comiskey's best players are the ones involved, I can wreck the White Sox and cleanse baseball of gambling, all at the same time.
Why wreck the Sox? Because Charles Comiskey, once bosom buddy to Ban Johnson, has become his bitterest enemy. They had a little row over the closing of the parks, at the end of the 1918 season. But the past year, when Johnson ruled that pitcher Jack Quinn was the property of the Yankees -- and not the Sox, who hired Quinn in the summer of 1918 but never bought his contract from the Pacific Coast League (the Yanks did) -- Comiskey was pushed over the edge. Comiskey is angling to remove Johnson from power, and he has allies. There is talk of putting the game in the hands of a Commissioner -- one-man rule, instead of the troika which is no longer working.
And the little irony here is that when ChiSox pitcher Red Faber was sidelined for the Series, the Sox' manager Gleason had to rely on just three starters. With Faber -- or Jack Quinn -- Gleason would not be looking to Cicotte and Williams for three starts each. Now he was -- without knowing that those two men had made a bargain to drop five of their six starts, if necessary, to give the Series to the opposition. Unwittingly, unintentionally, Johnson's pre-season ruling on Quinn made the Fix thinkable and easier to pull off.
So Johnson was no only going to use this Fix to wreck the Sox, devalue Comiskey's million-dollar franchise, and perhaps drive him from the game. No, Johnson's own knowledge of the Fix -- and he would learn every detail he could -- would be a hammer to hold over Comiskey, as Commy tried to knock Ban out of power. As fiercely as Johnson would struggle to remain on top, Commy would struggle to bury the Fix and topple Johnson.
If Ban succeeded, he would be a hero, baseball's savior -- and he just might be rewarded with that top post himself. At the very least, he would be the king-maker, and remain de facto in charge.
But if Comiskey succeeded in covering up the Fix, Johnson could very well be out on the street, his league pulled out from under his feet by Commy, his AL allies (the New York and Boston owners), and those National League magnates he had antagonized over the years.
Those were the stakes, once the Series was played out.
(Nover Mind)
(Never mind that the Fix was called off -- too many people were in on it, the odds had dropped, the payoffs would not be that great, too many people watching every move, Gleason knew all about it and confronted his players -- and they liked Kid, he'd gone to bat for them all along, he knew they were underpaid; but the kicker was, the gamblers were not delivering neat bundles of $20,000 after each White Sox loss. Miss one payment, well, OK, Cicotte got his $10,000 fine, the rest will be coming ... but miss two payments, fuhgedaboudit! This was a bad idea, and we can still win this thing, and -- )
On October 10, Ban Johnson picked up the Herald and Examiner to read over breakfast (or was it lunch? He was up partying with Herrmann most of the night, and rose late) ... and how delightful, Hugh Fullerton says seven players will not be back next spring. Commy is wrecking his own team? Wait a minute, that is not like Commy. Oh, wait, another paper has him offering a $20,000 reward (lowered to $10,000 when Commy thinks about it, or is advised by Austrian and Grabiner) for evidence of the Fix. Commy is collecting evidence! You bet he is, and whatever he finds will never see the light of day again.
Last Man Standing Wins
What happens between the final out of the Series, and the "eight men out" thanks to Judge Landis after the trial in 1921, is the focus of my book. One of the headings I use is "Dueling Investigations" -- Commy's vs. Ban's. The two probes take place in the times and spaces when the two men are not attacking each other, either in the press or in meetings of the American League. The rift becomes severe: Comiskey, with the owners of the Boston and New York AL franchises, nearly bolt to the National League, leaving Ban and his "Loyal Five" owners behind. The schism is barely avoided, the leagues' structure holds, but the first wave of victory goes to Comiskey: Johnson has survived, but his power has been weakened, he is no longer Czar and he will be replaced by a new Commissioner.
But if Johnson can manipulate his man into that top slot, he can retain power. Judge McDonald is Ban's candidate, and it is to McDonald that Johnson goes to in early September 1920 give the green light to convene the grand jury -- it is the beginning of the end for the cover-up.
Fast-forwarding through an amazing series of events in September 1920, which climax with Eddie Cicotte's appearance before the grand jury on September 28, confirming the Fix, now it is Johnson's turn to crow. He has scuttled the White Sox with three games left in the season; the Sox had won three in a row, and ten of thirteen (they were 18-8 in September), but without the heart of their lineup and two of their aces, they will drop two of the final three games (in St Louis) and finish the season exactly those two games out of first.
Johnson now works hard to make the indictments stick and to bring the case to trial. Without Johnson, this trial does not happen. Judge Landis has become the image the owners feel the game needs, and they are right -- his photo in the newspaper is frightening, and the fans can see that the owners are serious about ridding the sport of the gambling problem -- which has become synonymous with the eight indicted Sox players.
(Never Mind, Again)
(Never mind that the problem is much more widespread, that it has infected every team. Never mind that many of the owners themselves are part of the problem. And never mind that perhaps all eight of those Sox, linked together in the rumors and in the tales of gamblers, are not all guilty, and certainly are not equally so. Never mind all of that -- there will be a trial, someone will pay for this black eye baseball has suffered. Then it will be business as usual.)
Ban Johnson fails in his efforts to indict more players, as well as the gamblers who provided the bribe money and who made huge profits from the Fix -- they all go free. But Johnson succeeds in bringing the case to trial. The verdict is not quite a slap in his face -- Landis has risen to the occasion and ruled that the eight men are indeed out, "regardless of the verdict of juries." Whichever Sox were not black before, are forever black from now on. And the Judge will be deaf to any appeals.
Comiskey, hopeful from the time he first heard of the Fix (before Game One), right up until Landis' call, is shattered. He has invested in providing his players with the best lawyers in town. He has carefully crafted every statement he has made since the scandal broke, to let the door open to their return. Hal Chase was caught with a hell of a lot more evidence against him, and he was allowed to play again. There in no precedent for banishment, not like this. Comiskey's dynasty has been crushed, and there will be forty years between World Series appearances for the ChiSox.
Johnson's victory over Comiskey is hollow. The scandal has forced the owners to give Landis absolute authority -- if there seems to be any power left over for the league presidents, it is power that Landis does not need or want. In 1924, Ban Johnson is furious that Landis permits McGraw's Giants to play in the Series, after a late-season mini-scandal (by comparison) -- Johnson boycotts the Series, but his protest is just a ripple.
After the 1926 season, Johnson confronts AL superstars Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker about a little game back at the end of 1919, shows them some letters, and the stars agree to quietly retire. But when Landis finds out, he makes the event public (possibly because if he didn't, the press would). Johnson is livid, and squares off with Landis again, and loses mightily. Johnson has sworn that neither Cobb nor Speaker will play in his league again, but he is overruled, and they do. In ill health, and without the support of enough owners, Johnson goes on leave, broken.
Johnson regains enough health to return to his office, but his strength is sapped, and he will retire soon. He refuses to accept the money offered to him by the league (his contract ran for eight more years), $320,000. "Baseball can never repay me what it owes me."
The Nice Thing About Reading Your Own Obit
Alfred Nobel, so the story goes, woke up one day to read his obituary. And the Swedish chemist didn't like the idea of going down in history as the inventor of dynamite, which could be such a destructive force when used in wars. So he decided to change his image before his real obituary appeared. He set up a fund with nine of his millions of dollars, the interest of which was to be used to award annual prizes, one for promoting harmony among nations -- the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ban Johnson, when he was forced to turn his American League over to Detroit owner Frank Navin in January 1927, had that rare opportunity of reading his own obituary -- his baseball obituary. His health was so poor, that it appeared that his long career was over at last. Gene Hoffman, writing when the showdown with Landis was coming to a head (over Cobb/Speakergate), said Johnson got a "deep chuckle out of attending his own wake and funeral as 'late' president of the American League." The eastern press had buried him.
Johnson came back for 1927, but was finished, and he must have known that as his diabetes progressed, he did not have many years to live. He would leave behind a thriving industry, which one day would make millionaires of every player -- something no one could have predicted (unless they also predicted television). The game was healthy (it would survive the Depression), even if Ban Johnson was not. It did not need to be remembered in his will.
But Johnson was still battling, and now he was determined to write his own obituary. And so, with a little help from his many, many friends in the community of sportswriters, three different "biographies" soon appeared in newspapers across the country.
The first was a flattering series by Earl Obenshain, which made its debut on December 3, 1928. Six (of ten) articles ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer before the series was halted. No doubt, a letter to the editor by Charles Comiskey (on January 13) had something to do with this. I suspect Commy's lawyers wrote a letter or made a few phone calls, too. Comiskey's letter disputed Johnson's account of their feud, the investigation of the 1919 fix, and especially Johnson's claim that he -- nice guy that he was -- had "put his foot down" when the 1920 grand jury wanted to indict Comiskey, to strengthen their case against the players. Commy called that "an unmitigated falsehood."
Holmes and Moriarty were still going at it. Comiskey was nearing his own end, too, and probably knew it, his health had not been great since before the catastrophe of October 1919. Now these two former titans were spending themselves arguing their cases in "the media."
(I had thought the Obenshain series was scrapped everywhere, until Marietta College's library sent me the seventh, ninth and tenth installments. When I locate the eighth, I will report on them here in Notes -- maybe as early as next issue.)
Ban Johnson replied in a second string of articles, one which had been in the works for a while. John E. Wray and J. Roy Stockton had been interviewing Ban off and on, and their multi-part series, "Ban Johnson's Own Story," ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 10 through March 3, 1929.
Irving Vaughan gave Ban the by-line in yet another series, "Thirty-Four Years in Baseball -- The Story of Ban Johnson's Life," which appeared in the Chicago Tribune, February 24, March 3 and March 10, 1929.
I am not aware of any letters from Comiskey that either interrupted or followed the latter two series. It seems unlikely that The Old Roman (and his lawyers) would simply let Johnson have the last word, but it appears that is what happened.
"A Wild-Eyed Nut"
Ban Johnson breathed his last in March 1931. Comiskey out-lived him by six months. The White Sox were still in his family, the ballpark still bore his name. Johnson and Comiskey would be reunited in Cooperstown, although both probably would object to their plaques being on the same wall with his.
Everything I have read about Ban Johnson portrays him as a fighter, who gave the game of baseball much of his own integrity and spunk. Growing up, Johnson always appeared stuffy to me -- a typical fat cat who would be comfortable dining with robber barons or crooked politicians. But one of my favorite things about Johnson is the way he dueled with Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Anyone who calls the Judge a "wild-eyed nut" (in one source it's "white-haired nut") cannot be all bad. (Landis' reply was equally famous: "Keep your shirt on.")
When I started looking into the Big Fix, I had no idea that Ban Johnson would emerge as a main character. I had hoped to be able to avoid the guy -- as well as those slippery gamblers. But once I got hooked, following Johnson's activity was fascinating. The sliver of his letters and papers from those electric days of 1920 that reside in Cooperstown draw me back, again and again. The story I have told here has, I hope, whet your appetite for more -- which will be in my book. I welcome corrections, and especially additions to this account.