Notes #416 — Pebble Hunter

                             NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
                                           Observations from Outside the Lines
                                     By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@adelphia.net)
 

#416                                                                                                         SEPTEMBER 20, 2007
                                              PEBBLE HUNTER
 

            According to a very old baseball glossary put together by Hugh Fullerton, that is what they called a player who made excuses for his errors. “It took a funny hop, right at the end.” Sure it did. Most of this issue revisits (maybe for the last time) Collyer’s Eye , which never came right out and called MLB or Judge Landis or Charlie Comiskey “pebble hunters” — but you can decide for yourself if that’s what they were implying, in their watchful reporting of baseball (and other) irregularities.
 

            If the Eye is new to you, you might want to check the NOTES Archive , under “Recent Issues,” looking up #s 406-411 (411 has an index).
 

            This trip starts in 1925, and ends in 1931. Ban Johnson and Charlie Comiskey ended that year, too, and I recommend the coverage their passing received in Collyer’s Eye . Remember, Bert Collyer had been an ally of Ban Johnson, when Ban was Czar, in the push to rid baseball of the gamblers’ influence. The Eye was merciless with Comiskey, when he offered a reward for evidence of the fix in October 1919, then closed his eyes when it was given. The Eye eventually championed Johnson again, as he dueled with Judge Landis, the would-be “savior” of baseball with whom the Eye quickly grew disenchanted. 
 

            For future fans or excavators of Collyer’s Eye , I again point you to the April 7, 1923 issue (see NOTES #410 ), a special 16-page 9th anniversary edition that recaps the Eye’s history. There you find this remark about Bert Collyer: “His biggest and best story as a publisher was one that caused him infinite sorrow of heart — the 1919 world’s series scandal. ‘That was the most heart-rendering thing I ever handled,’ he declares, ‘because the hope of the paid puppets of the press lay in only one direction  — that of discrediting me. If I made just one single mistake I would have been journalistically damned for the rest of my life.”
            Bert Collyer apparently had deep feelings, and was not afraid to show them. He was married with kids, but when his mother passed away, that was front-page, bold banner top headline news. I believe his anguish over The Big Fix was real. And even though Bert has had to wait over 85 years to get anything like due credit — let’s face it, he’s still vastly unknown — in the words of “Honest Eddie Murphy” of the 1919 Chicago White Sox: “It’s much better to be a forgotten man, than one remembered for a terrible wrong.”
 

 

BACK TO THE ROARING TWENTIES  
 

1925
            My latest excursion into Collyer’s Eye had the old Time Machine set for me to land early in 1925. On my first visits, I covered the Eye from 1918 thru the Cozy Dolan scandal, which rocked baseball at the end of the 1924 season, clouding over that year’s World Serious. Judge Landis had been on duty for four years, and had insisted all was well with baseball. Ban Johnson disagreed, and so did Collyer’s Eye . When the Dolan-O’Connell bribe attempt made news, the good ship baseball was once again in troubled waters. All was not well. The word “cover-up” was not yet popular, but it looked like Landis was “hushing” things up, as the Series played on, with the Senators’ popular Walter Johnson the winner in an extra-innings Game Seven.
 

            When the 1925 season began, Collyer’s Eye shifted its gaze to the west coast. They reported April 11 that Arnold Rothstein had staked Nick the Greek (in L.A.) for betting on the PCL season ahead. On April 18, PCL president Harry Williams — yes, the same Harry who had taken an special interest in the B-Sox when he was a reporter for the LA Times — banned the Greek from PCL parks. Nick had routinely raked in about half a million a year.
 

            In the bigs, William Wrigley Jr had done some investigating of his own, and banned “fixers” from Wrigley Field ( Eye , April 18); he also would be keeping a disciplined eye on his Cubs. Joe LeBlanc (April 25) stirred things up with “Charges Ball Players With Laying Down,” but it was just malingering , by players out of shape and injury-prone. The players complained about long trips to meaningless exhibitions, and about teams who had no real trainers to deal with taxed athletes — only cheap “rubbers” (hired hands to give rub-downs). Wrigley wrote a letter the next week to the Eye , endorsing them for “telling the truth.”
 

            May 2, “B. Johnson Flays Pres. Williams” — yes, the same Harry Williams who seemed to be responding to the Eye’s warning. Ban Johnson, still the AL Prez — not Landis the Commish — called Williams incompetent. (Ban was an ex-sportswriter, too.) Apparently Harry had been in Chicago, but “streaked out like a greyhound” when Johnson confronted him with charges. Or tried to. “He never saw them and didn’t know what they were,” Ban whined, when Williams said the charges “fell flat.” Johnson regarded the PCL as the “rottenest” part of organized baseball. Johnson cited Nick the Greek’s big takes — assisted by his “chief lieutenant,” Chick Gandil, who (Johnson claims) took $30,000 from the 1919 WS. Barring the Greek “doesn’t mean anything.” The Eye adds that Harry Williams is now willing to take a look at the evidence. And he pointed out that no other league was as active against bettors, “something like 70 were ejected from one park alone, and many of these permanently barred.”
 

            In a sidebar, Garry Herrmann and his partying Reds were in trouble with the law for transporting liquor. When they took the train, it was apparently well-stocked, and they carted the stuff to their hotels.
 

            Not much going on in June 1925. Weaver, Risberg and Gandil (he gets around) were found playing as ringers, a June 6 story out of Portland, OR, said. There was a complaint lodged, but the teams involved were outside Organized Baseball.
 

            By the 4th of July, my Pittsburgh Pirates were hitting up a storm on their way to the NL pennant, and an Eye column wondered why their batting averages were so high at Forbes Field — could they have invented a new method of stealing signals, so they knew what pitches to expect?
 

            August 8, RJ Rand, a Special Investigator for the Eye reported on a raid on PCL fixers. But the bigger news was that Bert Collyer had interviewed the German leader Von Hindenburg. It was the last in a series of reports Collyer sent in from Europe, and this might be worth clipping and sending to the U.N., because Bert was given the formula for world peace.
 

            It’s mid-August, and the Eye just can’t hold back any more. Under a 4-inch tall headline, “WHY, Judge Landis,” the Eye sends the Commish an Open Letter. It begins:
 

We regret that we must call you forth from your restful retirement where you have been enjoying your $50,000 a year as the high potentate of baseball. But there are incidents stirring around the national game that we feel it is necessary to call to your attention and to inquire why the unlimited expense fund placed at your disposal for investigations is not being utilized and why as the reputed savior of baseball you are not on the job.
 

            The Eye is plainly ticked off that Landis “hibernates” while their staff is out digging up evidence of the gambling menace. The PCL is exhibit A. An oil millionaire, Walter McGinley, has had no trouble placing a $25,000 bet on one coast game. Then they cite the Blue Ridge league fix rumors; the recent quelling of gambling in Philadelphia ballparks; the bleachers of Boston are still a hotbed (at least 250 men there will bet on balls and strikes); and Arnold Rothstein furnishes bail for all of Gotham! And those darn baseball pools continue to flourish! WHY ARE YOU NOT ON THE JOB? The fans DEMAND TO KNOW.
 

            Once the Eye is revved up, it will not let up. The next issue (August 22) carries the story “New Scandals Hit Baseball.” If you’ve been reading Collyer’s Eye (as I have) over the last six or seven years, this headline draws a kind of “ho-hum … not again” reaction, kind of like not another abduction by aliens! The Eye pours it on, estimating that Americans now wager daily about a million dollars (all leagues). Southern League players have been charged — but exonerated. Apparently someone from NY cleaned up $200,000 betting on the last Giants-Pirates series. But this is the most striking line: John McGraw had advised NOT betting on his Giants to win the NL flag this summer! Hey, Muggsy, it ain’t over till it’s over! Is he trying to lull the Pirates into thinking it IS over? “My pitching staff is shot,” McGraw says. His Giants will finish 2nd, 8.5 behind the Pirates.
 

            Sometimes, the Eye throws you a big slow curve. Like the August 29, “Ruth Hints Big Expose.”  Wow, the Bambino! This is like Jose Canseco telling all, but while he’s still playing in the All Star games. In 1925, the Babe had an off-year. His average fell from .378 to .290, as he played just 98 games. His HR total dropped from 46 to 25, and he did not lead the league, he finished 3rd, behind teammate Bob Meusel and Kenny Williams of the Browns. “Facing a big cut in salary or ostracism from baseball, Babe Ruth, the deposed Bambino, threatens an expose that will blow the roof off baseball.” Promises, promises. “They can’t crucify me and get away with it,” Ruth pleads. “I know a lot of things that would open the public’s eyes if I told them” — and he will, if he’s not given “a square deal.” “I’ve brought hundreds of thousands of dollars through the gates and am entitled to better treatment.” Hey, he could be an agent!
 

            As the season winds down, so does the Eye , or so it seems. On September 26 they give Landis a big front-page photo and congratulate him for nailing some PCL fixers.
 

            The Eye seems to take a holiday to enjoy the Series (the Pirates beat the Senators in seven). October 17 they report a trade rumor, Ray Schalk to the Yanks, Ruth to the Sox. Nah. And they are back on Landis’ case — “Skids Are Set for Judge Landis” when the owners meet. The Eye figures four AL owners are against the Judge, three on the fence, one for; in the NL, it is just two against, three undecided and three for. Too close to call , but the Eye wants to believe that Landis’ days are numbered.
 

            “Revive O’Connell Scandal” (November 7) — the Eye thinks that the NL owners will petition Landis for O’Connell’s reinstatement. The kid has been scapegoated, everyone knows it. But Landis will not budge, because if he lets O’Connell back in, it would be like admitting he and Cozy Dolan were not the only ones deserving punishment, over a year ago.
 

            The Eye reports on November 14 that Nick the Greek has made his usual half a million betting on the west coast. Wait a minute. In a December 19 story, “Bare Baseball Gambling Ring” (in Los Angeles, it seems the Greek pulled down only $300,000.
 

1926
            This was an uncharacteristically quiet year for the Eye , as far as baseball was concerned. Their attention was focused mostly on horse racing — always a popular subject.
 

            However — “so much gossip prevailed at the end of the baseball season” about the NL pennant race, that the Eye has unleashed its big gun, Frank O. Klein, to look into the rumors. It was Klein who was credited with the B-Sox expose in 1919. Now he’s in St Louis, where the Cardinals are squaring off with the Yankees (Ruth bounced back, .372, 47 HR, 145 RBI, 0 exposes). In the October 9 issue, Klein has linked the Cards with a wagering coup. Surprise — Klein calls on Landis to fully investigate.
            What has really got Klein’s attention is that Rogers Hornsby, the Cards’ playing manager, has been alleged to have won “fabulous sums of money” betting on baseball and horse races — possibly $100,000 down the stretch. St Louis handbook operators are suspicious about the play of the Reds on their final Eastern trip. The Phils are also suspected. The St Louis bookies have lots of Hornsby gossip for Klein to pass along. Tom Kearney, the “dean of local operators” (he was a betting commissioner, I believe — and we’ll see him again in 1927) told Hornsby he’d have to bet cash with him, no credit. It looks like The Rajah bet a lot — sometimes he won big, sometimes he lost big. (The Eye doesn’t report this, but my recollection is that Hornsby and Landis were constantly at loggerheads over the gambling issue. Rogers liked the horses, Landis liked the stock market, and I think that made for a stalemate.)
 

            The next week (October 16), a follow-up said “Cincinnati Puts Roush on Griddle.” The future Hall of Famer had slumped down the stretch, especially in the field, and the Eye had prompted the normally quiet umpire Hank O’Day to comment on it. I think the Eye liked Edd Roush and may have been helping him get traded out of Cincinnati, where he’d become dissatisfied. “Friends of roush contend that he was trying too hard … to keep the Reds in the race.”  He was not out partying with his teammates.
 

            The quietude of 1926 is shattered with a bold Eye headline on November 27: Kearney Breaks Silence; Bares Series Scandal. No, not the Series just won by the Cardinals. The 1919 Series. Tom Kearney is called “the storm center” in the old investigation, for refusing to tell what he knew. Now he’s talking.
 

            * Comiskey knew about the fix before the Series started, “or at least by the time the first game had been played.”
            * George M. Cohan was the “chief target of the manipulators.”
            * Kearney almost owned a lot of stock in the Browns, with Otto Stifel — Otto was a Federal League owner and brewery baron. [And apparently in October 1919, Stifel had some stock in the St Louis Browns, a partner with Phil Ball; Otto, who also was famous for his part in horse-racing, sold his interest Dec 19, 1919, saying he was too busy with business — adjusting to prohibition. As I noted in Burying , he didn’t adjust well, and committed “the Dutch Act” — suicide.] 
            * He said he was “propositioned” by the “Black Sox” — they were going to “take” an Eastern millionaire for a million bucks. It was Cohan. “I wouldn’t touch their money. I wanted to see the American League win.”
            * Kearney says he told Otto Stifel, and Stifel told Comiskey about the fix. “Naturally, Comiskey didn’t believe the story. Neither did Kid Gleason.”
            * Abe Attell handled the money. Cohan lost $12,000 the first day, then doubled and lost $20,000. He doubled again and Kerr won and Cohan took a train to New York. “That’s why some of the players thought they were double-crossed. They weren’t. Cohan won, with the cards stacked against him. And he had the sense to quit.”
            * Ban Johnson heard about Kearney tipping Stifel and wanted Kearney to testify to the grand jury. “He [Johnson] was no friend to Comiskey. I was. And besides I’m no informer.”
 

            In his memoirs, Ban Johnson alludes to “the tip that went astray” — claiming that Stifel did not pass on the tip to Johnson because he didn’t think it was credible. Had Johnson received the tip — so he says — he’d have halted the fix in its tracks. Maybe — I happen to believe Hugh Fullerton confronted both Comiskey and Johnson before Game One with news of the Fix, and neither stopped the show to investigate.
 

            Ray Schalk Named Sox Managersaid the December 11 Eye , and this time it was no rumor. There is a photo of the feisty catcher, who will lead the Sox in 1927, but the Eye cannot resist: Schalk was named by Comiskey , “who offered $10,000 in the Black Sox case which he never paid. Schalk will be expected to win the flag with a nickel’s worth of players.” It is now over seven years since Commy offered that reward, and the Eye just won’t let it go. I got curious to see if they would bring it up in Commy’s obituary, so I looked ahead to October 1931, and — they did not. But what I noticed as a theme in the Eye over the post-scandal years, is that Comiskey was regularly accused of being miserly, when it came to stocking his team. This was the complaint of managers and ex-managers, not just the Sox fans on the staff of the Eye . And it made me wonder if Comiskey — who had built a dynasty team in the years leading up to 1920, and gave raises for that last great summer, had perhaps felt burned by his players. Never again would he pay big bucks for a pennant contender — why should he? Can’t trust them to win it for you. Another theme — and this may be just the jaundiced view of the Eye , too — is that Comiskey was ostracized by his fellow owners. He needed their help to get the Sox back on their feet, but they declined, choosing instead to punish him, perhaps, for the black eye suffered by the industry when the cover-up failed.
 

            The Sox would not finish in the first division again in Comiskey’s lifetime. They had a couple +.500 seasons under Eddie Collins in 1925-26, finishing fifth. Ray Schalk would finish 5th again in 1927, 70-83, and not last another full season. Lena Blackburne was at the helm as the team sank to 7th in 1929, and Donie Bush took over as the Sox sank to new depths, winning just 62 and 56 in 1930 and 1931, ending up in the basement in Commy’s last summer on the planet. There were four decades between the Sox pennants in 1919 and 1959.
 

            Merry Christmas!The final Eye of 1926 (Dec 25) has the headline Exposes Unmask Landis, and it’s a holiday broadside fired at the very visible head of baseball by Frank O. Klein. If the Eye had seemed to warm up to the Commish in October 1925, that is now eclipsed. What Klein is charged up about this time, is the way Landis is handling the Cobb-Speakeraffair.
 

            Landis has been in office six years, but it took the AL Office (Ban Johnson) to come up with evidence from this 1919 case. (That is not really true, as we’ll see later, but that’s the way it looks to Klein right now.) Klein minimizes the crime (“a total of $420 was won on the game), which is “practically unsupported,” resting mostly on the testimony of the “discredited” Dutch Leonard. Klein is more upset with Landis, who seems to Klein to be posturing again as “the savior and emancipator of baseball!”
 

            Of course it also ticks off Klein that Landis has been ignoring more recent problems, which the Eye has been tracking all along. Ballplayers are associating with gamblers and making bets, there have been peculiar pennant races and World Series, and Rogers Hornsby! (What seems a bit odd to me, reading the Eye as the Twenties roared on, is that here is a Chicago paper, and they are finding all sorts of irregularities in the world of sports, coast to coast, but no mention of Al Capone and the gangs that were plaguing America’s biggest cities. Going after the High Commissioner of MLB might seem risky today — but compared to the targets who might retaliate by bombing your offices to smithereens, it was the safe route to take.
 

1927
            And Happy New Year!Just a week has passed, and Frank Klein is back at his typewriter. Landis to Reinstate Speaker and Ty Cobb, the headline goes — this is January 1. Now it turns out that Klein was right, but Landis would not clear the two icons until January 27. In the meantime, Swede Risberg’s charges of a 1917 series of fixes, would distract Landis and the press.
 

            But on January 1, Klein predicts Cobb and Speaker will be suited up for the 1927 season, probably playing in the National League. He probably thinks Ban Johnson would protest their return to his “cleaner” AL. Klein then proceeds to give the story he’s ferreted out. He thinks it’s really a case of a mountain being made of a molehill.
 

            Klein says the AL received the evidence from Leonard during the summer. Proof that they didn’t think it was very strong, is that they permitted Cobb and Speaker to finish the season. In Klein’s version, Landis then investigated and saw it differently, and asked the pair to quietly resign, with no publicity of the charges. But Leonard sold his story to the Universal Service and the US office in Chicago told Landis they were going to print it. “Fearing there might be more to the affair,” Landis beat the newspapers to the punch.
 

            Klein seems to think that Ban Johnson was above covering-up the affair; I don’t think he was. My impression has been that Ban Johnson had asked Cobb & speaker to retire, and the AL magnates had agreed, and then it was brought to Landis’ attention. This may be one of those “dueling versions” situations, where both Johnson and Landis wanted to come out of this looking good. The Judge had just signed a new contract to be guardian of the game.
 

            Klein cites Ban Johnson as his source, though. Landis had no new evidence, just what the owners had had. Again, Klein tries to minimize the offense — “this was general practice before the 1919 world’s series expose,” and none of the players thought much about it then — although they sure would now. Klein also cites Landis: “Leonard’s story is not evidence and it proves nothing.”
 

            When a juicy story is in the news, Bert Collyer likes to chime in with his own comments in his editor’s column. The heading this New Year’s Day is Comiskey, the Comedian. Bert calls attention to Commy’s statement, in the wake of the Cobb-Speaker affair: “When the White Sox players [involved in the 1919 fix] were found out and the facts were substantiated, I took immediate action by suspending every player involved.” Commy received no help from the National Commission or from Ban Johnson. “I might have withheld my facts from the public.” Might have?
 

            Collyer then skewers Commy by pointing out that he was told “on the eve of the first game … that things were not on the ‘up and up.’ He was so informed by Otto Stifel. And then he was so informed in the weeks after the Series by Collyer’s Eye . If “the facts were substantiated, Commy, how come you didn’t pay that $10,000 reward?   Collyer suggests that Commy was a reluctant witness in the B-Sox case, and that the grand jury report “did not make it appear that Mr Comiskey was so solicitous for the welfare of baseball as he now attempts to make himself out to be.”  Commy forgot to mention he carried the crooked players for another year, and “did not refund a cent” of the profits from the crooked world’s series. Collyer credits Ban Johnson with the investigation that resulted in the B-Sox trial (rightly so). Collyer thinks Commy is trying to “camouflage himself as an angel in disguise.” And he ends his essay/rant with a line that might have brought joy to Buck Weaver’s soul: “If Commissioner Landis wants to be consistent with himself for keeping out of baseball men who had knowledge of crooked dealings in baseball as far back as 1919, he should institute an investigation as to Mr Comiskey’s status. We wonder if he will.”  (He won’t.)
 

            Another week has passed, and “Cobb-Speakergate” has been pushed to the side by the Risberg charges, backed up by Gandil. Baseball Scandal Growsannounces the January 8 Eye . And New Blow at Baseball . Frank Klein writes that the “cumulative multiplicity of baseball scandals piling up at [Landis’] door only serves to emphasize the alertness of Collyer’s baseball investigators,” who are completely vindicated, again. (The Eye , it should be noted, rarely passes up the chance to call attention to its correct calls. Their off-the-mark, or off-the-wall predictions do not receive nearly the same publicity.)
 

            Klein chides the “sycophantic sports writers” of the mainstream press who ridiculed the Eye’s revelations, and the baseball moguls who call the Eye a “scandal sheet.” He harkens back to 1919 — and even then, the Eye “did not publish all we had in our files.” Hmmm … this makes me wonder whatever happened to all the old files of the EYE? Klein repeats other old questions, that Landis has consistently ignored: What did Commy know about the Fix, and when did he know it? (I paraphrased that to echo Watergate.) Did Jackson inform him and then offer to come to Chicago to tell his story? Why was the grand jury report about Comiskey not “made public and acted upon”? Klein goes on for about nine column inches, ending with, “Let the scoffers laugh it off now, if they can.”
 

            Collyer editorializes in harmony with Klein. “And now corruption, ancient but demoralizing, again cracks public faith on the jaw.” Cobb and Speaker are “idols, alas, with feet of clay.” And Hornsby is in the news again. As Collyer looks back, he wonders “how many devious baseball plots escaped detection” — and he recommends that papers devote their “sport space” more worthily to amateur athletics.
 

            Another Saturday, another scandal.Well, that’s how it seems. The January 15 Eye has the banner Exposes Landis Baseball Farce. Klein thinks he has unmasked Landis at last. Why? Because his big “Investigation of the 1917 Scandal” (“Risbergate” to us) is all for show. Someone has unearthed baseball and court records, showing that Landis already looked at this affair in 1921, heard all the evidence and acquitted all players involved.
 

            This is something that I realized some years back, after coming across the transcripts from January 1921, where Landis questioned Tigers and Sox, including Eddie Collins. These can be read by any researcher, at the Cooperstown HOF library. See BURYING THE BLACK SOX, pages 227-234. Unless the Judge’s memory was impaired, he knew the verdict before he called 30-some players together in his Chicago office in January 1927. There was no risk of a bigger scandal, Landis knew there was a safe way out of this mess — the bribe could easily have been instead a reward, and there was no way to prove otherwise — that is, if all the players agreed. Risberg and Gandil had gone public — the 1927 hearing was Landis’ EASY answer.
 

            Klein has another theory about 1927 — the Chicago Tribune , having paid Risberg and Gandil for their stories, leaned on the Judge “to make their stories good.” For Landis, it was “a new opportunity to emblazon his name on the front pages of the country.” He apparently installed four telegraph wires in his office and the press was invited to make him the “savior of baseball.” (This is the hearing where national columnist Will Rogers just happened to stop by and sit in on.)
 

            A brief digression on this “savior of baseball” thing. It seems to me that what saves baseball every time, is not any man or woman, but the game itself. Thank goodness it’s not human.
 

            Reveal Why Landis Hearing Was a Big Farce, Klein’s story continues. He describes the 1921 hearing, and describes the transcript, which “no one knew existed until it was requisitioned by the state’s attorney of Cook county in connection with the White Sox scandal case.” The transcripts were given back to Landis, so they were not stolen when the grand jury material went missing before the B-Sox trial. (Actually, I believe that theft occurred in December 1920, a month before the Landis hearing.)
 

            It was a Don Maxwell of the Chicago Tribune staff who had got to Risberg and offered $500 for his story. (If true, this may explain the timing of the Risberg charges, which seemed to come from out of the blue, as if in protest of the cloud forming over Cobb and Speaker.) Weaver was also offered $500, Klein understood, but turned it down. Good old Buck! When Weaver failed to support Risberg, Swede telegraphed Gandil, saying the Tribune was offering easy money and a free trip to Chicago.
 

            Landis gave no indication in 1927, that he had heard this case six years earlier. Klein: “It was purely a Roman holiday for the ex-judge at the expense of the reputation of some twenty-odd baseball men.” Klein goes on to note that the hearing did bring out something new about the 1919 fix. “There was considerable criticism following the hearing for the suspension of Joe gedeon of the St Louis Browns. It developed this week that Gedeon knew more about it than generally credited and that it was Gandil … who put him wise.”  Gandil approached Gedeon before the Series, asking if he wanted to make some easy money. Gedeon was to wait until the first $40,000 delivered (and then bet it?) “Gedeon went to David [Carl] Zork, the story goes, told what he knew and was sent to Cincinnati as Zork’s betting commissioner. He laid considerable money for Zork and won $900 himself.”
 

            Ban on Cobb, Speaker Sticksis Joe LeBlanc’s headline. He has been talking to Ban Johnson, who will not admit Ty & Tris back into the AL, not even as managers. LeBlanc has more details about “Cobb-Speakergate” — which is now on the back burner. Ban will lose this one, however — Landis was holding the trump cards.
           
            On January 22, the Eye tries to make Johnson’s case, Bare Speaker Probe Details. There seems to be some evidence that Tris Speaker has done some betting, and so maybe was not an innocent bystander in that 1919 incident. The betting was on horses — but he may have, the Eye says, “supplied much of the information on which the wagers were made and was instrumental in having several of the police officers, among them being Folger, it is said, act as commissioners for [Speaker and his Cleveland players] in placing them.” The Eye reports that while Rogers Hornsby was “cold-blooded” in his betting — it never distracted him from his hitting — not so, the Clevelanders. The dugout buzzed with the results from the track. (Was it like that when Pete Rose was in his betting heyday with the Reds?) The Eye says the players won big one day ($4,200). This bothered some of the players, though, including catcher O’Neill and pitcher Coveleskie. This was all being investigated by — drum roll please — detective Cal Crim of the Crim & Ryan Detective Bureau of Cincinnati. See Susan Dellinger’s Red Legs and Back Sox for more on Crim, who, the Eye has it, “is reputed to have uncovered much of the evidence in that scandal [the 1919 WS], by forcing the confession of a prominent Cincinnati lumberman” with connections to the Levi brothers. (The Levi Brothers, according to the Eye , were “not independently wealthy” in 1919, but are now millionaires who are living in luxury in Los Angeles.)
 

            Bert Collyer reprinted editorials from other papers from time to time, and on February 12, he ran part of one from The Missouri Democrat , out of Kansas City. Collyer said it showed that editors “outside of the subsidized area” — those he feels are controlled by MLB teams — are well aware of what has been going on. The KC writer, like Frank Klein, thinks Landis has made political hay of a matter he had already settled (Risbergate). “Commission Landis, in labor, is not respectable … the man is unsafe. His day ended with the day of the Spanish Inquisition. Baseball had better be rid of him. He has become a common scold. … How can Landis reform baseball if he cannot reform himself?” Landis had left the Federal Bench — was it just for the money? (Landis had just wangled a raise, from $50 G to $65,000 per year.) He is a “misfit marplot” (I had to look that one up, and I’m glad I did: marplot: one who frustrates or ruins a plan or undertaking by his meddling. I think “micro-manager” is today’s equivalent. That’s not in my trusty, but old, dictionary.)
 

            Then things quiet down — as they always do. Life goes on. There’s a ripple in the March 26 Eye : Detectives Trail Baseball Players. But it’s a cautionary tale, letting players know that they will be spied on during the coming season. Kind of like today’s annual spring pep talk about not doing drugs.
 

            And believe it or not, that is pretty much it for 1927. August 20, the Eye notes that the coming World Series might be Cubs-Yankees (it wasn’t, the Pirates got to face Murderer’s Row), and that caused the Eye to recall the last time the Cubs had played in October, 1918, and to Recall Another Series Plot. There had been rumors of a fix attempt in 1918, but they were drowned out when the Big Fix came along the next year. Otherwise, had the plans gone through, the 1918 series might have been “thrown into the limelight of publicity.”
 

            This story comes out of St Louis, and seems to corroborate what I found suggested elsewhere — that St Louis gambler “Kid” Becker “inspired” the 1918 attempt. The Eye interviewed numerous St Louis “plungers” (bettors), who said Becker tried to pull it off, all right, but couldn’t get enough folks aboard. “It is said the proposition finally simmered down to so much money being demanded to put it over [were the Cubs and Red Sox greedier?] that the attempt was abandoned.”  “Whether the foundation was laid in 1918 for the big operation in 1919 has not been determined, but undoubtedly the negotiations conducted during that year awoke the big gamblers to the possibilities and they were ready to set the machinery in motion at the propitious moment.”  I’ve written about Kid Becker here before — he was gunned down early in 1919, and so we can wonder if the Big Fix of 1919 was a tribute to the memory of this underworld genius, who never lived to see his dream of a Fixed Series fulfilled.
 

1928
            A box on page one of the January 28, 1928, Eye has the simple title Bohne-Duncan Libel Suit. This thing has been tied up in the courts since 1923. But now it is finally scheduled for a hearing before Federal Judge James Wilkerson on February 21. The Eye notes that the suit was brought after the Reds were pressured by NL Prez Heydler and Commissioner Landis. (They do not credit Landis with breaking the legal logjam and getting the thing heard, as some accounts do.) The Reds have a new president, a C.J. McDiarmid, who has spoken by long-distance telephone with Landis; McD is said to be “not so keen for the re-opening of old sores” but Landis wants the case disposed of.
 

            I was anxious to read the Eye from early 1928 just to see how they handled Bohne-Duncan . I had read somewhere that just before the case was settled, the Eye published something that almost ruined the agreement (the 2 players were awarded $50, not the $50,000 they were seeking). It might have been a little piece the Eye ran on February 18, A Voice From the Tomb. It made no reference to the article in 1923 that Frank Klein wrote, saying only that Bohne and Duncan were among several players approached by gamblers, just before a series that the Reds coughed up to McGraw’s Giants. Instead, they reprinted the lead to a story by the late and respected Bill Phelon that ran in The Sporting News on August 16, 1923, following Klein’s piece, which led to the libel suit. Phelon’s colorful descriptions of how the Reds “tossed away” the five games outstrip Klein’s details. It was a picture of a team floundering, but he does say tanking .
 

            While looking for other potentially upsetting stories, I found a Collyer editorial on February 18, Ban Lets in Light. It is Ban Johnson’s explanation to Collyer about his rift with Comiskey. And it’s the same one he gave in his own memoirs, a year or so later: it was the dispute over pitcher Jack Quinn, in 1918. Quinn had gone to the Federal League, then to the PCL, when the Sox picked him up in 1918, and he responded with five wins in six starts. But the Sox never actually bought his contract — so the Yankees did, and Ban Johnson awarded Quinn to New York for the 1919 season (he went 15-14 for the Yankees, and yes, we wonder if Quinn had been on the Sox, would the Fix have seemed as do-able?  Or … would Quinn have joined in the plot!?) There were other differences later, but according to Ban Johnson, the Quinn case is “where the trouble started.” Collyer remarks that even though Johnson is sidelined with health problems, none of the other AL teams have “held out the glad hand” to help Comiskey strengthen his still-depleted White Sox. “And it looks like the Old Roman is still an outcast in his own league.”
 

            The Eye’s coverage of the libel suit settlement looks like it was court-ordered. A box on the top left of page one, February 25, says merely: Bohne-Duncan Suit!The cases of the two players have been “amicably settled” (no details). The Eye was represented by Clyde L. Todd, and by Sigmund David of Stein, Mayer and David — in case a Chicago sleuth wants to look up the case in the records of whatever law firms survive today. Might be fun.
 

            The last item of interest to me from 1928 is from the same February 25 issue. Clarence “Pants” Rowland rated a mention in Bert Collyer’s column. Pants had guided the White Sox to the flag in 1917, but was let go after the Sox sank to 6th place in the war-torn summer of 1918. He returned to MLB as an umpire, maybe not the best, but Collyer thought “he called them as he saw them.” That honest approach put him at odds with Clark Griffith, Comiskey, and the Cleveland club, and with Johnson temporarily out of power, Pants was given “the bum’s rush.”  He was further charged with being a “yes man” to Johnson. This is the first time I’ve seen Rowland called a Johnson man, and again, it makes you wonder — if Pants had hung around for 1919 — would Johnson have let him keep Jack Quinn? So maybe no Fix?  Or, if there is no big rift between Johnson and Commy, do the old pals let the Big Fix fade away into the unseen depths of history … like how many other things that were covered up “in the best interests of baseball” — baseball the industry, that is, not the sport.
 

1931
            We skip ahead to 1931 because that’s the way the microfilm reels are divided. When I skimmed thru Collyer’s Eye between 1928 and 1931, I focused on how they covered the non-baseball story of The Crash of October 1929. After all, the stock market seemed to get lots more space than baseball, all along. Or at least until June 1929, when the Eye merged with The Baseball World . Then stocks — no pun intended — dipped. Frankly, I was amazed that the Eye seemed to be caught sleeping when the Crash hit. (Had they called that shot, they might not have become as obscure as they had. So obscure that when the first real books on the B-Sox scandal are written in the 1960s, there is no mention of their role. Talk about buried . Anyway, even after the Crash, the Eye is slow to grasp the significance, the far-reaching effects of what happened. It is as if the Eye is trying to boost the confidence of Americans in their country, so they keep investing, keep the economy going. What crash?
 

            The first hint of the old Eye I detected in 1931 was in the March 28 issue: Cubs in Gambling Orgy. But it’s tame stuff, they are just doing a little spring training betting in Catalina.
 

            When Ban Johnson, a hero to the Eye , passes away in April, the Eye salutes him. The words in Bert Collyer’s own column on April 4 seemed the most interesting.
 

[Baseball] no longer has the affection of the kids and when it lost the support of the youngsters it lost the wherewithal on which the pastime’s future depends. The sport is truly tottering. … the old fan will cherish the memory of that great leader [Johnson] who has passed on to that “bourne from which no traveler returns.” Under his vigorous direction and with honesty and loyalty as his guides he built a national pastime and with his death it lost its strongest prop.
 

            Amen . And I think it is consoling to read those words from 1931 … over 75 years ago now. Baseball tottering, has lost the youth and its leadership. Sounds like today to me. Baseball has survived — and probably will survive us, too.
 

            When Comiskey passes on in October of that same year, 1931, Bert Collyer writes that his life really “ended deep in the somber shadows of the 1919 baseball scandal and of his estrangement from ban Johnson, “the man who made his success and fortune possible.” (That’s Collyer’s take. Commy and Ban would battle each other, grumpy old men , to their graves, arguing over which had made the other a success.) The Eye reports that the two made no attempts at reconciliation — but I recall reading in one of their files, that when Johnson was at death’s doorstep, Commy sent his son to bid him farewell (Commy’s own health was failing). That was probably done very privately, if it happened.
 

            Collyer lays down his hammer and calls the two “stout hearted, friend loving and enemy hating heroes of baseball.” Both died practically alone, despite their successes, “deserted by the friends of their happier days.”  Collyer recalls other who shared their fate — Cap Anson (in 1922), and the old Cub owner Charles Murphy, whose death preceded Commy’s by just a few days. “Baseball is now a business or rare ingratitude. A hero today, a down-and-out discard the next. Most of baseball’s heroes have died exactly in the manner that old Omar would have predicted they would.”  He refers, I believe, to the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, and I’ll see what I can look up about Omar and his predictions about the passing of baseball heroes.
 

            A sort of fitting close to my excursions into the Eye , was a series by Joe LeBlanc, that ran at the end of 1931 (Dec 31) and into 1932 (Jan 7 & 14). What’s Wrong With Baseball?Interestingly, LeBlanc sums it up in a word that we heard a lot in 1994, before, during and after that last crushing and stupid war between the owners and players, called The Strike. And the word he uses is GREED. The one constant, Ray.
 

 

ONE LAST THING  
 

            I stumbled across this by chance, while skimming Collyer’s Eye . In October of 1932, the Eye ran a series of five articles by the late Earl Obenshain, on Judge Landis.
 

            Notes readers may recall the search for The Eighth Obenshain that ended in 2005 … Earl had written a 10-part tribute to Ban Johnson when BBJ retired, the series running in 1928-29. Here is how I reported on finding The 8th Obie in NOTES #359 (9/6/05):
 

THE EIGHTH OBENSHAIN: WORTH THE WAIT  
 

            You have to go back to Notes #313 (November 1, 2003) to find my first comments on the series of articles Earl Obenshain wrote in 1928-29 on Ban Johnson, and the cover-up of the Fix. Back then, I thought that perhaps there were more articles to be found, in addition to the six that Cliff Kachline showed me.
 

            In Notes #326 , April 4, 2004, I reported that three more articles in the series turned up — in the Ban Johnson file at Marietta College (Ohio). But “The Eighth Obenshain” had proved elusive. A small army of librarians and SABR researchers (mostly in Ohio) joined in the hunt, to no avail.
 

            And then today (September 6, 2005), Mike Nola came through again. In his collection of clippings was the Obenshain series — from the Oakland Tribune , of all papers. And the 8th Obenshain (it ran on January 18, 1929) was indeed worth tracking down.
 

            Things were just getting interesting in Obenshain’s series, when a letter to the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer halted the string of articles after the sixth installment. Obenshain had suggested that Comiskey would have been indicted by the grand jury, if not for Ban Johnson’s intervention. Commy challenged that and, I suspect, threatened a lawsuit.
 

            In the 8th installment, Obenshain begins by crediting Johnson with preserving baseball’s reputation by his “investigation and prosecution of the cheaters in the world series sell-out of 1919.” Baseball won, but it cost Johnson his job — because the baseball owners did not want the Fix exposed. According to Obenshain, the only support Johnson received was from Phil Ball, owner of the St Louis Browns.
 

            The other owners, in both leagues, “were for following a ‘hush’ policy, dropping the players without a noise and preventing an airing of dirty linen.” They feared the loss of the fans, who were already suspicious about the ties between players and gamblers.
 

            Obenshain is aware that Johnson took some heat for delaying action until the 1920 season was almost over. The reason? “Johnson was playing a lone hand in obtaining necessary evidence; he was blocked at every turn by men in baseball who should have been eager to work toward the end he sought.”
 

            The next thing Obenshain reports can only be appreciated by those who understand how baseball worked so hard to discredit Bert Collyer and his publication, Collyer’s Eye — burying the Eye so deep that it has taken over eight decades to bring it to the light of day.
 

The story of the expose of the 1919 sell-out and the efforts to punish the guilty parties would not be complete without telling the part that Collyer’s Eye had in the case. The fearless action by that publication in publishing evidence of crookedness which it had obtained gave much heart to Ban Johnson in his own investigation.
 

            Wow!   Not only does Obenshain write positively about Bert Collyer’s role — he credits Collyer’s Eye with keeping Ban Johnson on the case. Probably it was a bit more complicated. No doubt, Ban Johnson, as well as Comiskey and all of the owners, kept a close watch on Collyer’s Eye , as the investigations by Frank O. Klein started naming names — not just the eight men out (except Weaver), but Attell and probably Rothstein, and the Eye was tapping Ray Schalk and probably Eddie Collins, too.
 

            It is just as likely that Johnson’s investigation was as defensive (to protect baseball from scandal) as offensive (to wreck Comiskey’s franchise). But remember how Ban Johnson dealt with the charges against Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker (stemming from 1919) — he had arranged for both icons to fade away in somewhat early retirement. Judge Landis put their cases in the headlines, probably because leaks to the press would have landed them there anyway. So it may be that Johnson — at the bidding of his employers, the owners — was going for a quiet dismissal of the crooked Sox … depending on how much attention was paid to Collyer’s Eye . In fact, the crusade of Collyer & Klein lost steam once the 1920 season started up.
 

            The way Obenshain recalls things, Collyer had challenged Comiskey by going public with the evidence they had collected. Commy’s $10,000 reward was strictly for show (the Eye announced in a headline they didn’t want the reward), “of course, there was no thought he ever intended to pay.”
 

            “But the Collyer story convinced Ban Johnson, up to that time loath to believe the rumors buzzing about his ears, that something was rotten about the 1919 world series, and with the evidence put into his hands” — did Collyer turn something over to Johnson? — “he began an inquiry that led to such an accumulation of testimony and confessions that baseball was amazed at the revelations.”  Well, this is very flattering for Johnson, but it is a terrific oversimplification.
 

            “Stole his evidence” goes the sub-head in Obenshain’s next volley. The only problem with that claim, is that the theft occurred well after the scandal broke, and the evidence that went missing only meant that Johnson had to track down Bill Burns, in order to get this case to trial. Landis wanted to avoid a trial, and he probably spoke for most of the owners. Dirty linen. Then Obenshain credits — mistakenly, I think — the owners, and not Landis, with the banishment of the B-Sox. The Judge’s ruling was “a mere gesture” — the owners had no other course, after Johnson’s exposure. No, Obenshain had it right the first time, Johnson’s trip down the B-Sox trail cost him his job.
 

            What Obenshain writes next shows how he has stretched things. “Johnson’s exposure” in fact antagonized enough owners that eleven of them were ready to form a new league, leaving Ban and his Loyal Five hanging. They also joined together to turn over the reins of MLB to Landis. The Loyal Five “got cold feet” and backed off. Peace was restored, making Ban Johnson One AL Prez Out .
 

            I’m not sure I knew back then that Earl Obenshain was not just another reporter. He had served for many years as Ban Johnson’s confidential secretary, and later was an editor on The Sporting News . Who knows what “deep throat” roles he might have played in the background, relaying messages between Johnson and Bert Collyer.
 

            And so the five “chapters” that Collyer’s Eye runs in 1932, after Johnson and Obenshain have both passed on, takes on a special significance. Next issue, I’ll summarize it.