1919 World Series Scandal: Baseball's Black Sox

In 1919, eight of the Chicago White Sox allegedly threw the World Series. Charles Comiskey was the ruthless owner of the White Sox and was the main motive of the sox to throw the series. Chick Gandil was the first player to get involved and then he spread it to the other players on the team. The act by these players would be called the Black Sox Scandal. The Scandal nearly ruined America’s pastime. The baseball commissioner, Judge Landis, banned all eight of the players for life. Based on how Joe Jackson played in the world series and how he was proven innocent in a court of law, he should be reinstated into baseball and be put in the hall of fame.

Although gambling was intertwined with baseball long before the eight White Sox were accused of fixing the Series, the number of gamblers at ballparks had dramatically increased by 1919. Ironically, Comiskey posted signs throughout the park declaring, "No Betting Allowed In This Park."

With that ball pitchers were allowed to scuff, cut, and spit on it, affectively being able to make the ball “dance” and harder to hit. People put the end of the “dead ball” era on the 1919 season when Babe Ruth hit an unheard of 29 homeruns. People began to pack the stands to see the long ball, so owners decreased the dimensions of the fields thus increasing the odds of someone hitting a homerun. They also added rules to the pitchers against scuffing and cutting, and the balls were switched out more frequently too.

The 1919 World Series players took part in a scandal mainly through the influence of manager Charles Comiskey. Charles Comiskey is the primary reason that fueled the team to throw the series away by his cheapness and overall dislike. The 1988 film Eight Men Out directed by John Sayles depicts an accurate depiction of how Charles Comiskey influenced the White Sox to throw away the series. Charles Comiskey is illustrated as an unfair manager: who paid his players the minimum, a manager who didn’t keep his promise for winning the pennant, and overall the players greatly disliked Comiskey.

Black American men were banned from being able to play professional baseball from the early 1900’s till the late 1940’s. This sparked the creation of what was known as the Negro Leagues. The first successful Negro League was formed in 1920 by Andrew "Rube" Foster (https:// negroleaguebaseball.com), but suspended operations in 1931 due to the financial hardships associated with the Great Depression (Baseball: An Illustrated History, G. Ward, Page 87). As the Great Depression ended and America got closer to WWII, the popularity of the Negro leagues grew. The creation of the Negro National League and the Negro American League represented the two premier Negro leagues in the 1930’s and 1940’s. They were just as organized as their white counterparts. They played a 140 game schedule, had their own all-star games, as well as their own World Series (Baseball: An Illustrated History, G. Ward, Page 247). The Negro leagues flourished during WWII. The white players of the professional teams were being drafted and their

For anyone who knows anything about baseball, the 1919 World Series brings to mind many things. "The Black Sox Scandal of 1919 started out as a few gamblers trying to get rich, and turned into one of the biggest, and easily the darkest, event in baseball history" (Everstine 4). This great sports scandal involved many, but the most memorable and most known for it was Joe Jackson. The aftermath of the great World Series Scandal left many people questioning the character of Joe Jackson and whether or not he should have relations thereafter with baseball. There is still question today whether or not to let Joe into the Hall of Fame.

     This conspiracy was the innovation of the White Sox’s first baseman Chick Gandil and Joseph “Sport” Sullivan, who was a

Baseball remains today one of America’s most popular sports, and furthermore, baseball is one of America’s most successful forms of entertainment. As a result, Baseball is an economic being of its own. However, the sustainability of any professional sport organization depends directly on its economic capabilities. For example, in Baseball, all revenue is a product of the fans reaction to ticket prices, advertisements, television contracts, etc. During the devastating Great Depression in 1929, the fans of baseball experienced fiscal suffering. The appeal of baseball declined as more and more people were trying to make enough money to live. There was a significant drop in attention, attendance, and enjoyment. Although baseball’s vitality

Game 1 of the series was a complete success as fans were treated to the best baseball from both leagues. The Pirates played well on both sides of the ball as Deacon Phillippe pitched a six hit game and right fielder Jimmy Sebring hit the first home run ever in World Series history. He drove in four runs for a 7-3 victory. Game 2 was not bad either as Boston reflected Pittsburgh's previous performance. They tied the series up when Bill Dinneen threw a three-hit game and Patsy Dougherty hammered two homers in a 3-0 win. Pittsburgh's pitching staff, full of illness and injuries, forced the Pirates to start

     "Over the decades, African American teams played 445-recorded games against white teams, winning sixty-one percent of them." (Conrads, pg.8) The Negro Leagues were an alternative baseball group for African American baseball player that were denied the right to play with the white baseball payers in the Major League Baseball Association. In 1920, the first African American League was formed, and that paved the way for numerous African American innovation and movements. Fences, and Jackie Robinson: The Biography, raises consciousness about the baseball players that have been overlooked, and the struggle they had to endure simply because of their color.

It was right after World War II that Branch Rickey decided to come up with his plan that some call the “Noble Experiment or Great Experiment” to integrate baseball (Glasser).

When asked to describe a baseball the first word generally voiced is white, and before April 15, 1947 that is exactly what the game of baseball was, white. “There is no law against Negroes playing with white teams, or whites with colored clubs, but neither has invited the other for the obvious reason they prefer to draw their talent from their own ranks” (‘42’). These were the feelings of people living in 1947, that blacks and whites were not meant to play baseball together. Then, why decades earlier, had there been an African American in the league? In 1887, an African American Pitcher, George Stovey, was expected to pitch a game with Chicago, however, the first baseman, Cap Anson, would not play as long as Stovey was on the field. Other

Today I want to share with you the story of the black sox scandal of 1919.

The story of the campaign to integrate baseball remained unknown to most whites in the United States. For blacks, it was one of the most important stories involving racial equality in the 1930s and 1940s. Black sportswriters and others framed the campaign to end segregation in baseball in terms of democracy and equal opportunity. To black’s newspaper, if there could be racial equality in baseball, there could be racial equality elsewhere in society. The black sportswriters took their campaign to baseball commissioner. They made their case to baseball executives at their annual meeting. They met individually with a number of team owners who promised tryouts and then canceled the tryouts. Yet the story of the campaign to desegregate baseball remained unknown to most of the United States.

About a week before the World Series had even begun, the two teams were set. The Cincinnati Reds were going to take on the Chicago White Sox in the 1919 World Series. There were many bookies wanting to make big money off of the series. Some of these bookies were Abe Attel, Bill Maharg, and Bill Burns. Arnold Rothstein was also suspected, but he was found innocent on every major court. Eight Chicago White Sox players were in search of more money than their contract implied. The fans that knew about this were