OCT 1, 1919: The 1st game of the 1919 World Series is played between the underdog Cincinnati Reds vs. the heavily-favored Chicago White Sox. The Reds won 9-1 and would go on to win the Series taking 5 out of 8 games. Before long, much suspected rumors of a fix having grown louder & more persistent would be published resulting in a convened Grand Jury in Sept 1920 later indicting 8 Chicago players of conspiring to throw the Series. Hated club owner Charles Comiskey was forced to suspend the 8 men and promised to run them out of baseball if the plot allegations proved to be true. [In a fanciful gesture of solidarity, New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert had sided with Comiskey & Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee (all labeled 'The Insurrectionsits') against the American League's President Ban Johnson during the League's troubles and over his dictatorial rule. As a result of the joined faction's shared discontent that proposed moving their teams to the National League, Johnson ousted all 3 from the Board of Directors]. In Jul 1921, a motion to quash the indictments was denied and as jury selection began, details of the 'Black Sox' scandal broke publicly in newspapers across the country with gamblers William 'Sleepy Bill' Burns and Abe Attell subpoenaed to testify including New York underworld kingpin Arnold Rothstein who was beleived to have been the criminal mastermind. Chicago were the unlikely & unhappy AL champions and the schemers had used the team's disgruntlement to their advantage -- having been poorly underpaid, at odds with one another all season, cheated out of bonuses and mistreated by Comiskey. The conspiracy was led by their ringleader 1st baseman Arnold 'Chick' Gandil who had been involved with payoffs in 2 crucial late season doubleheaders to the Detroit Tigers in 1917 allowing the White Sox to win the AL pennant. The players at first received small sums of money through intermediaries to lose some of the games intentionally but were stiffed out of remaining payments resulting in a motivation to now win the Series on the level. While under intense scrutiny from numerous instances of suspicious play/errors on the field, the new mission for victory proved unsuccessful and their open complaints afterwards saw authorities forced to prosecute. By the trial's end in Aug 1921, gangster Rothstein was already exonerated (after bribes & having blamed a fellow associate), and signed confessions by 3 of the players along with the waivers of immunity mysteriously disappeared from the Illinois State Attorney's office. [The most famous confessed participant was outfielder 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson who would later recant and whose role remained in serious doubt as he protested his innocence for the rest of his life. And the famous phrase of "Say it ain't so, Joe" supposedly spoken from a heartbroken child who tugged on his coatsleeve in an encounter outside of courthouse steps is thought to be either misattributed or invented by reporters. After playing semi-pro ball, in Oct 1949 on the 30th Anniversary of the 1919 Series, Jackson gave his only interview in Sport magazine with his account of his involvement and saying the exchange with the young boy had never happened. He died in Dec 1951 in South Carolina at 64 and was the first of the 8 men to pass away]. After 3hrs of jury deliberation, a not guilty verdict was returned -- also stemming from a tacit agreement in which the 8 players had agreed not to criticize major league baseball or Comiskey. Jubilant celebrations took place at a nearby restaurant but inspite of the no convictions & the happy outcome of elated vindication, the damage had been done as the shame, taint & ugly stain of the whole sordid Black Sox ordeal shook the public's trust in America's favourite past-time and seriously harmed the sport's integrity (it would take Babe Ruth to restore it). Shortly after the verdict, hardline baseball Commissioner Kinnesaw Mountain Landis (a former federal judge & staunch racist) who had been appointed with extraordinary absolute power in which his decisions couldn't be reversed, responded to the scandal by immediately banning the 8 players from baseball for life despite their acquittal. None of them ever played pro ball again and in the decades afterwards, a sympathy was bestowed on the disgraced 8 for their rotten treatment at the hands of Comiskey & the unfairness of Landis. Gandil also played semi-pro ball in the aftermath and first told his version of events in a Sept 1956 Sports Illustrated issue, and again in a Los Angeles Times interview in Aug 1969. Both times he denied any wrongdoing and he died in Dec 1970 in California at 82. The Black Sox scandal was reconstructed in the very detailed 1963 non-fiction book 'Eight Men Out' by Eliot Asinof which was further dramatized in the 1988 film adaption starrring Michael Rooker as Gandil, and D.B. Sweeney as Jackson.
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