One of the most
written about, iconic, and remembered sordid events in American sports history
was the 1919 appropriately named Black Sox Scandal. Because it involved a
cultural and sacred event in sports annals, the World Series, it remains in
popular lore as an aberration in America’s baseball history. From a literary
perspective, the scandal remains widely written and subject of an entire film
based on the seminal book by Eliot Gorn and John Sayles’s movie of the same
name (“Eight Men Out).”[i]
It was part of another 1920’s movie (“The Great Gatsby”) and novel penned by J.
Scott Fitzgerald.[ii] City-wise
Meyer Wolfsheim (in real life Arnold Rothstein), “the man who fixed the World
Series back in 1919” was featured in the film.
During the beginning of professional baseball in the middle of the 19th century, there were probably more real than reported scandals as “hippodroming” or the faking or fair play was as common as a bat in the game. In one of the few reported incidents in the 1860’s, two New York Mutuals were banished from the game for consorting with gamblers. While that single event was portrayed as a common event by baseball insiders, the next scandal was a little more brazen, but not enough to warrant any formal rules changes directly aimed at banning players who rigged games. In 1877, four Louisville Players were banished from the National League (NL) for “throwing” or deliberately losing games after they had clinched the pennant, but were unpaid by their owner.[iii] By the early 20th century, personal gambling at games in specific locations in minor and major league ballparks was open and normally not a threat to the game’s integrity. Unless, a pitcher or catcher had arranged a set of signals with specific gamblers that a batter might walk, fed a diet of “batting practice balls” to get a basehit, or hit by a pitch. In one instance, two pitchers were quietly dismissed from the San Francisco Seals’ owner Charles Graham. Barely a month into the 1920 season, pitchers Tom Seaton and Casey Smith were detected colluding with gamblers between pitches via a secret code.[iv] However, the big money involved betting on game or series outcomes. During World War I horseracing tracks shut down forcing many gamblers to shift to baseball and many stayed in the business as baseball players proved easier to bribe than jockeys who were more closely regulated.
By 1919, the game had grown up, matured, and Major League
Baseball (MLB) became America’s 17th most popular entertainment
event.[v]
But, so had gambling on the sport as many gamblers hung around in the same
social circles as minor and major league owners, boasted of carrying
professional players on their payrolls, and in some cases traveled on the same
Pullman sleepers as the players.[vi]
The gamblers still controlled the game to the consternation of many
owners. A three-person committee
composed of the two league commissioners and one executive selected as major
league Baseball Commissioner talked about the gambling problem issuing perfunctory
warnings. Without any local, state, or federal statutes prohibiting
hippodroming, baseball executives, managers, and sportswriter were reluctant to
accuse well known player-fixers such as Hal Chase and many others fearing a
lawsuit. Hence, the problem had spread like an ugly wart on a disease and was rarely
cured. Gambling was also quietly favored by the owners as a source of income. Parley
cards in which a spectator had to select the correct outcomes out of a certain
number of games, runs scored in an inning, or hits given up were regularly sold
near major and minor league parks. The income generated by the card sellers was
substantial. Outside of some ballparks on houses, a sign was posted “make your
bets.”
Players at all levels
of the game were not unreceptive to listening to and agreeing to play for
gamblers. Before 1919, at least 38 players were quietly dismissed or asked to
leave MLB.[vii]
Adding to these conditions was that unofficial betting areas in ballparks
attracted gamblers that had become well known among the owners, players,
sportswriters, and law enforcement. Spectators who might see as much as $5000
changing hands during the course of the game. At times, a reform-minded
administration might be elected and temporarily shut down the wagering in the
park forcing the gamblers to temporarily relocate just outside the venue. In
Emeryville, the Oakland Oaks of the PCL
played in Oaks Park, just over the border from north Oakland on the north side
of Park Avenue and east of San Pablo Blvd.[viii]
If gamblers were temporarily removed from the park with a “wink of an eye,”
they would move their fluid baseball gambling business 300 yards away to Park
Ave.[ix]
The gamblers were not hard to spot at games at they sat as a
group in a specific ballparks' locations to consummate personal or game outcome
bets sporting fancy Fedoras with a fistful of money. At Washington Park in Los
Angeles (before Wrigley Field on 32nd and Avalon), home of the
Angeles and Tigers, it was in the right field bleachers. After PCL president
William H. McCarthy visited the franchise during the 1920 season, 11 gamblers
were arrested at the ballpark, jailed, paid a $10 fine, but were back in business
the next day.[x]At
San Francisco’s Recreation Park, it was an area along the first base line above
the dugout adjacent to the better-known “booze cage” that resided directly
behind homeplate.[xi]
Ignoring Prohibiting, gamblers and spectators could buy a shot of whiskey for
ninety cents in the cage. After banning Roy Hurlburt and two other gamblers
from PCL parks, McCarthy was walking with a lady friend to a restaurant on
Geary Street when he encountered Hurlburt expecting a plea of innocence.
Instead, the league president was sucker-punched barely avoided gambler’s foot,
and was quickly on his feet ready to do battle. A nearby policeman broke up the
fracas.[xii]
The gambler owned the Colonial Club on Powell Street. Despite McCarthy’s tenuous legal position in
banning reported gamblers from PCL parks, he and the owners were determined to
rid the gambling parasite from the league.
[i] Eliot
Gorn, Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and
Winston, 1963.
[ii] The
Great Gatsby
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Daniel E. Ginsburg: The Fix Is In: A History of Baseball Gambling and Game Fixing Scandals.
Jefferson,
NC: McFarland,
1995, 264-268, Dennis Snelling, The
Greatest Minor League: The History of the Pacific
Coast League, 1903-1957. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2012, 83-90.
[v] Ibid.,
269-271
[vi] Eliot
Gorn, Eight Men Out: The Black Sox.
[vii] Ibid
[viii]
Emeryville is Born: 1890’s to 1930’s.
[ix] Ibid
[x] Larry R.
Gerlach, “The Bad News Bees: Salt Lake City and the 1919 Pacific Coast League
Scandal”
Baseball, 6 (1), Spring 2012. (Available
at: https:www.questia.cor/read/1P3-2707713321/the-bad.news-bees-
salt-lake-city-and-the-bad-news-bees. Accessed
16 March 2015).
[xi] Ibid
