The 1919 World Series

Baseball has always been seen as a fun American family sport, a game free of the expected misconduct and corruption of the deviant world. During the 1919 World Series, however, the Chicago White Sox would be accused of intentionally losing to the Cincinnati Reds for financial gain.

The scandal began on the night of September 21st, 1919 when the planning of this unfortunate event begun. Within Chick Gandil’s room at the Ansonia Hotel in New York, the 8 White Sox players discussed the details of the trade and planned out the best possible way to achieve their goal of losing the game and going home rich. The White Sox were favored, and there was a lot of money to be earned if you bet against them and they somehow lost. The players agreed with the gamblers to throw the games in exchange for profit. Meyer Wolfsheim, from The Great Gatsby, is based on these gamblers. During the 8th and last game, Claude Williams, one of the players in the scheme, gave up four straight one-out hits for three runs. The Series was lost.

Following the game, rumors of corruption plagued the White Sox, fostering enough attention to convene a grand jury for the investigation. Consequently, Eddie Cicotte and Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox confessed to their participation in the scheme, and on October 22nd, 1920, the grand jury indicted the eight players and five gamblers on nine counts of conspiracy to defraud. On July 27th, 1921, the trial began. Key evidence was found missing, including the signed confessions of Cicotte and Jackson, thus the jury delivered not guilty verdicts for all eight players. Despite this anticlimactic outcome, the scandal and its damage to the sport itself allowed the owners the resolve to appoint federal judge and fellow baseball fan Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the Commissioner of Baseball, giving him virtually unchecked power and authority over every aspect of the game. One of his first acts as commissioner was to situate the eight players onto an “ineligible list”, effectively disqualifying them endlessly from professional baseball as a whole.  Landis issued this verdict, “Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.” While not financial punishment, the verdict sent a stern message to those who hoped to throw ball games in the future. This event opened the public to the corruption behind the scenes.