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SouthwestRanger
B.V. Info Seeker
Joined: Jun 07, 2006
Posts: 2049
Location: Several Miles North of Rob & JRZGRL
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 Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:15 am Post subject: 90 Years Ago Today - THE BLACK SOX SCANDAL |
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One of the most sad and shameful chapters of American Sports occured today....
The Cinncinati Reds beat the Chicago White Sox on this date in a best of a Nine Games in the 1919 World Series, however their glee turned into sour wine when it was found out that Eight of the Players with the help of Gamblers such as Arnold Rothstein and "Sport" Sullivan conspired to throw the Game for big odds and a huge payoff....
Arnold Rothstein himself consorted with Organized Crime figures and Crooked Politicians. He would be murdered in 1928.
More can be learned about the Black Sox Scandal by reading Eliot Asinof's excellent book EIGHT MEN OUT which also was made into a fine movie with Christopher Lloyd and John Cusack...
Or you can go to the following link
Wikipidea Black Sox
However even though despite the sympathy generated by FIELD OF DREAMS for "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and his other hapless Teamates, they were the ones who engineered the whole fix.
Yet to be fair the blame must lie with Charles Comiskey who was notoriously miserly and treated his players no better than Sweat Shop Workers....
The term Black Sox came not from the Scandal but from their dirty uniforms which became that way due to Comiskey's scrimping on Laundry Services...
Comiskey would always pay his Ball Players no better than $3000 a year and if they attempted to join another Ball team for better $$$$ he would have them removed from the team..
So when the Gamblers induced the Eight Sox to begin the Fix with the promise of huge $$$$ , they naturally jumped due to Comiskey's Simon Legree behavior...
And when the Scandal was discovered and Players put on trial, it was naturally a travesty of Justice with the players being "persuaded' to confess and the Confessions then being stolen under questionable means during the Trial...
The Eight were found not guilty but were Banned for Life by the newly appointed Commisoner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis. Landis was a notorious Racist who did everything in his power to keep Non-White Players from joining Major League Teams and even overlooked far worse scandals and behavior from the likes of Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.
Once when he sentenced a 75 year old man to 15 years in Prison for a crime, the mans Defense Attorney pleaded for a lighter Sentence due to the Man's age and ill health...
Landis refused and responded "Tell your client to do the best he can"...
Out of the Eight Black Sox, Shoeless Joe and fellow Teamate George "Buck" Weaver deserve to be exonerated and restored to Baseball posthumously....
Jackson, one of the best hitters in the game, confessed to accepting money from the gamblers. He later recanted his confession and protested his innocence to no effect until his death on December 5, 1951, at 63. He was the first of the eight to die. Years later, the other players all said that Jackson had never been involved in any of the meetings with the gamblers, and other evidence has since surfaced that casts doubt on his role.
Weaver third baseman. Weaver attended the initial meetings, and while he did not go in on the fix, he knew about it. Landis banished him on this basis, stating "Men associating with crooks and gamblers could expect no leniency." On January 13, 1922, Weaver unsuccessfully applied for reinstatement. Like Jackson, Weaver continued to profess his innocence to successive Baseball Commissioners to no effect. He died on January 31, 1956, at 65.
But how could both men expect justice during the 1920's when Judges, Policemen, and Political Hacks were quashing dissent under the guise of "putting down Red Communism" ? |
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