Notes #419 — Sweeps Week

                             NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
                                           Observations from Outside the Lines
                                     By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@adelphia.net)
#419                                                                                                                 OCTOBER 8, 2007
                                                               SWEEPS WEEK
 

            Well, almost. I hate best-of-five, but if they MUST be played, then let them be sweeps. (Yes, comebacks from 0-3 have happened, but they are highly improbable.) So this time around, even though the two NL teams I was rooting for lost, I was consoled some by the fact that they lost “decisively” — swept. Too bad the Yankees couldn’t get in the spirit of things and give up game three to the Indians. Oh well.
 

            This issue is not about current events in baseball. We’ll begin with another look (it’s been a while) at the reaction when the cover-up of the Fix of 1919 was ended, in September 1920. It is interesting that — like the steroid mess eight decades later — the focus was kept on the players, versus management. But unlike the more recent scandal, in 1920 there was some finger-pointing at the “clean” players as well. Surely they knew what had been going on — why hadn’t they spoken up?  There is some hypocrisy in that accusation — the writers themselves had been overly tolerant. Anyway, it’s an interesting and timely issue.
 

            Then we will visit briefly with Tom Meany, before hitting the road to the birthplace of “Honest Eddie Murphy” and then we will go in search of the resting place of Abe Attell. I’ll end with a bit of fiction I have brewing. If you are in a hurry and can just skim this issue, I’ll point you to the Top Ten list in the Abe Attell item. If you enjoyed it, let me know and suggest other Top Ten targets, please.
 

 

IN THE WAKE OF THE SCANDAL  
 

            Just to clarify this — the B-Sox scandal was the reaction to the news that hit the newspapers following the revelations by Cicotte and Jackson, on September 28, 1920, that the fix was in . Quite a few folks may have been shocked — “scandalized” — the previous October, when they heard rumors of a fix, or perhaps even found some evidence. But I doubt it — because those who were listening hard, and investigating, and taking notes in the wake of the fix, were not rookies, they knew that gamblers had been tampering with ball games for quite some time, maybe forever.
 

            That early group would include Comiskey and Ban Johnson, who were informed of the fix in time to prevent it; the many ballplayers who had been tipped off about the fix and had bet on it (Hugh Fullerton thought maybe a hundred players knew); and the many reporters whose job (it seems) was to find out what was going on — and then bury it from the public eye. Only a few were able to get their suspicions, or hints of the fix, into the papers. Only one paper, Collyer’s Eye , tried to investigate and to force baseball to investigate.
 

            After September 28, some reporters were finally unleashed and given the green light, by their editors, to write about the fix. Eight White Sox players had been indicted, so the fear of libel suits was removed. So those on the B-Sox Trail in 2007 can still excavate nuggets from the newspapers and magazines of late September and early October 1920, in the wake of the scandal.
 

            I recently browsed again through The Sporting News of October 14, 1920. I had (from somewhere unknown) a clipping with the headline Chicago Fans Grieve Most for Weaver and Still Hope for Him , but I only had the top of the article, and it looked like the rest of it might be worth tracking down, so I did.
 

            The long piece was authored by Oscar C. Reichow, and has a date line of Chicago , October 11. According to Reichow, the bigger shock wave in Chicago came from Buck Weaver’s connection to the fix — perhaps bigger than to the tossed World Series itself. Weaver was an idol, partly because of his personality, but more because of his aggressive, hard-nosed play. His style had placed him above suspicion — he was a Cobbian battler who never gave an inch, let alone let up for a whole game or series. He won fans by sheer determination and grit.
 

            Reichow then recounts how Weaver’s name had never surfaced in the rumors that had hovered over the Sox during the summer of 1920. If it did, Chicago fans refused to believe that there was any real link. Weaver insisted that he was innocent, too, and they wanted to believe him. At this point, all Chicago fans knew was what was in the papers, that the fix was in , that Buck had been indicted, and therefore suspended, and that he said he had played to win. In his favor was his claim that he took no money. But he was accused of having sat in on meetings. So his “guilty knowledge” was of a different degree than, for example, a Rube Benton, who only heard about the fix (then bet and profited from that knowledge). And Buck was accused of keeping quiet, instead of informing his team — informing on his teammates. Buck would not inform on Gleason , either, by saying that The Kid knew all about the fix early on, most likely before Game One, like Comiskey. Buck’s loyalty was also supported by his doubt — he did not know, he really didn’t , exactly who — if anybody — was going to go through with the fix. He knew he wasn’t , and he must have hoped that the arguing he did in those meetings had given others cold feet, too. If not his arguing, then Gleason’s talk, indicating that the team knew all about the bribery.
 

            Reichow has clearly been wondering about all this, so in his column, he “figures” (guesses) that Weaver did not possess the courage to “go to the front and uncover the dishonest men on his team.” Reichow quickly generalizes — that’s the whole trouble with this gambling menace, the honest players are afraid to speak up. “They lack the guts.” Reichow thinks that if they did come forward, their teams and leagues would support them. He does not entertain the possibility that their careers might be terminated, because they were troublemakers. Things might be a bit tense in the clubhouse, too, while accusations floated about, waiting to be proved true. Reichow also has forgotten the case of Hal Chase, whose teammates had stepped forward, only to see the most crooked player alive, exonerated and signed up to play on.
 

            Deep in his column, Reichow notes that from what has come out so far, it sure looks like Gleason and Comiskey knew about the fix early on. “Yet they permitted the Series to finish with the players still in the game. That surely does not sound good.” Reichow has been busy since the scandal broke, surveying several owners and managers, asking them what they would have done if they were in Commy’s and Gleason’s shoes. “They all replied that they would have taken every man at whom the finger of suspicion  pointed and yanked him out of the game.”  That is exactly what Reichow thinks should have been done. (My opinion: Easier said than done. I believe Gleason always had just enough doubt about whether his players — especially Cicotte and Williams — were playing to win or to lose, that he chose every time to give them the benefit of that doubt. Same with the others.
 

            “I am compelled to criticize Comiskey for not doing it and for letting these players stay on his team this season,” writes Reichow, and this probably meant no more invitations to wine and dine in Commy’s Woodland Bards’ room at the park. Reichow thinks that if Commy had suspended everyone under suspicion, some of the players would have stepped forward — long before September 28 — and “coughed up everything that has since been printed.”  Reichow is upset that it took so long to get any of them to talk.
 

            Reichow goes on to said he thinks Comiskey erred, too, by not bringing the matter to the league — because, he believes, of his feud with Ban Johnson. (Well, it would also wreck his dynasty.) Reichow really thinks Commy should have wrecked his team, to rid baseball of the gambling ties. But it’s hard to see Commy doing this alone, and harder to see other magnates eager to join him, by suspending their own “rotten apples.”  Instead, “Comiskey let the affair drag.” (So did the league.) Reichow does not question his honesty (I do). True, his team made half a million bucks in 1920. But Commy could have been a hero ! Given the choice between half a million bucks and being a hero that is probably soon forgotten … hmmm, give me a minute.
 

            Now that the scandal has broken, Reichow looks back with 20-20 hindsight and remembers how, at the end of the 1920 season, the players now indicted used to keep to themselves. They were especially distant from Eddie Collins and Ray Schalk. Reichow then writes about how “rough and rugged a road” it was for Collins this past season. For some reason, he does not point out that Collins and Schalk had ample opportunity to step forward, too. Actually, he notes that Collins apparently did got to Commy in August 1920, with his suspicions about some loose play in Boston. “I saw Collins in New York recently and asked him whether this was true. I am going to leave it to the readers to guess what he said.” Really courageous reporting there, Oscar. You wouldn’t mind him protecting Eddie Collins for not “squealing” if he hadn’t already taken Buck Weaver to task for his silence.
 

            Collins is “honorable and loyal” and “would not say a thing to injure the man who pays the salaries of the Chicago American League team.” But Buck Weaver?  It’s OK for Buck to injure his fellow players?  Anyone else see a double standard at work?
 

            Reichow now goes easier on Commy — maybe he can still get invited in for free booze on occasion. Commy “always played fair” and boosted baseball (hey, it made him a millionaire, why not give the business a plug?) … “He might have been poorly advised on the crookedness of the last World’s Series with the Reds.” Poorly advised?   Commy had access to top-notch, expensive , legal advisors. Who was advising Buck Weaver and the other players? Why do they not get a break?  Didn’t they boost baseball enough? Yes, Reichow is sure of it, “I think this is the only reason [the poor advice] he did not tear his ball club to shreds last winter.”
 

            Reichow closes by giving his opinion that Gleason managed “one of the greatest teams ever formed” in the 1920 Sox. They “should have literally walked away with the championship … It was a great machine.” Reichow remembers their four-game lead in late August. Makes me wonder how Reichow would have written about the Mets this year. Investigate!  A team that great cannot just fold!  They must have been bribed to take a dive. This echoes all the complaints of all those who bet on the best horse, the boxer who was heavily favored, and the 1960 Yankees to beat the Pirates, 47 Octobers ago. And remember what I wrote up top last issue — the 1920 Sox had a pretty good final month, 18-8 before the scandal broke, winning ten of eleven at the end. Chokers.
 

            If I seemed a bit harsh on a deceased sportswriter here, thanks to my own 20-20 hindsight, well, maybe I was. In his defense, he was writing on or before October 11, 1920. He was still in shock — unless, of course, Reichow “knew all about it” all along, but failed to inform — or inform on . And that’s a built-in problem with the sportswriters’ versions of things — they were clearly part of the problem. Above, we see Reichow struggling mightily to become part of the solution. And we must commend him for that. At least he’s thinking, he sees that not just players “erred” — so did managers and magnates and Baseball, with a capital B, and that rhymes with G and that stands for Gambling.
 

 

BITS AND PIECES  
 

            The same issue, the same page that carried Reichow’s article, also carried dozens of small blurbs, fielding reactions to the scandal from around the horn. I don’t have the full page, but here’s a sampling of the ones I found interesting. My own comments in italics.
 

            A correspondent addressed a letter to the players who were not banned, saying they were “lucky there is any game left at all.” The TSN editor agrees, “The honest White Sox who hushed up and consented to consort for a season with men they knew to be crooked are a whole lot to blame.” Again, the focus is on the players. Who should they have told, who did not already know? They knew Gleason knew — that should have been enough.
 

            Comiskey was in the news arguing that the Baseball Commission needed cleaning up (former president Taft and General Pershing were two candidates for the job that went to Landis). “If it takes Commy as long to get the new deal working as it did to clean up his White Sox, he’ll be dead and in his grave….” This prediction was wrong, the owners moved swiftly to hire the new Commish. The scandal meant Landis dictated the terms.
 

            Eddie Collins, in St Louis, hinted that some of the Sox had laid down in 1920, too. “The reporters who interviewed Collins,” TSN notes, “didn’t take the trouble to ask Kid Gleason about it. Collins blamed Chick Gandil for the mess in 1919, but “he didn’t blame anybody for failing to counteract Gandil’s ‘propaganda’ and save the dupes.”  This looks like another shot fired at Collins and the Clean Sox. Nothing fired at management.
 

            TSN challenges the honest players to “show up” all the crooks on their club. (Not just the Sox?) TSN thinks that the owners will welcome the information, and those who provide it will not be called “perjurers” — as Rube Benton was, when he testified before the grand jury. TSN assumes here that the owners don’t know about the crookedness, and that they really want to know all about it, so they can decimate their teams (or worse). I think TSN was wrong on both counts.
 

            Sportswriter Bill Phelon has blamed the whole B-Sox mess on John Heydler for not stepping on Hal Chase “like a cockroach instead of whitewashing him.” TSN replies by asking Phelon if he argued at the time for Chase to be banished. How many people were willing to back Heydler up?  Good questions, both.
 

            There was a brief rumor that Eddie Cicotte had committed suicide. “But he seems to have no such intention. He hasn’t broken under the strain, though his family has. I’m wondering where they got that. And again I make a note to visit the Detroit newspapers someday. I think they are a potential treasure trove.
 

            The president of the Texas League issued a statement that his league was clean. His detectives unearthed nothing. OK, OK, a few players were dismissed for suspicious conduct. But he is an optimist and prefers to rate his league free “from crookedness, in spite of scar-faced gamblers and their room mates.”  An early reference to Al Capone?  In Texas?  With a room mate?  Maybe the Texas newspapers would be fun, too!
 

            “Billy Maharg (McHarg)” has asked why he should be paid that $10,000 reward that Comiskey offered. There is much evidence that Maharg told his story precisely to obtain that reward, and I’ve gone so far as to wonder if he could have made up the story he told, based strictly on what had appeared in the newspapers up to September 27. (Maharg is tied to the Fix by Bill Burns, but I don’t think any players mentioned Maharg’s name, if they knew it.)  There is also much evidence that Comiskey never intended to give that reward money to anybody.
 

            Buck Weaver said he played his best, but “did not turn up the plotters on his White Sox team, but then maybe he figures no informer gets anything but the worst of it.”  There seems to be little appreciation for Weaver’s “Thou shalt not squeal” ethic. Buck did not seem to fear reprisals (from his teammates, or from the fixers), he seemed genuinely unwilling to “inform on” those about whom he was not absolutely certain. Precisely the defense Comiskey would employ. But Commy was a magnate.
 

            The World Serious of 1920 was underway. Napoleon Lajoie was an honored guest and attended his first WS. Chief Bender, “whose only crime was that he would likker up too much,” expressed his surprise at the scandal. He’d heard many rumors over his years, but never could or would believe them. “It’s like tearing a man’s soul out, he says, to read of what was done.” It was shocking enough to drive a man to likker up.
 

            Many people, TSN says, see the scandal as part of “a wave of moral delinquency that swept over the world in the wake of the war.” TSN will not apologize for the statesmen who had brought on the war ( thank goodness! ), but they will ask for an explanation of the corruption of ballplayers “as far back as 1908.” They are forgetting the 1877 Louisville thing, and a lot more!
 

            “There are some people narrow enough to suggest that the only way to clean out the gamblers who have corrupted baseball is to start a ‘pogrom,’ Polish-style. Well, it does look like most of the Attell gang — but then we’re all American born, and don;t forget that a Sullivan is involved as well as a Rothstein.”  I include this one in its entirety, and it really doesn’t need my comment. The scandal did spark some anti-Semitism, with the worst appearing in Henry Ford’s newspaper out of Dearborn, MI. You don’t see the word “pogrom” in many sports stories, and its use here seems misplaced, since it refers, I believe, to the massacre of helpless innocents.
 

            “Everybody else being crooked — reference being to profiteers, politicians, and so on — why should anybody be shocked that one ballplayer in a hundred should have fallen from grace?  Sure you were cheated in the 1919 World’s Series, but what did you pay for the last shirt or pound of beefsteak you purchased? And who won the war?” Another item that I pass along uncut. I found this sentiment (that no profession is without its bad apples) in many post-scandal editorials. But the hint here that Americans are being cheated every day by the over-pricing of merchandise and food is fascinating. And what about that last question? Was the war won by cheating?
 

            TSN does not want baseball to be made straight by fear. They prefer the clean players to turn in the crooked. Right.
 

            “Everybody who thinks seems to be convinced that now is the time to cut out the cancer in baseball and not leave a root….  Nobody, in the long run, is going to be fooled by stalls for appearance sake.” I think they overestimated the American public.
 

            A year ago, TSN opines, a President would have considered it an honor to shake the hand of Cicotte or Jackson. “Today not a gutter snipe in the slums would admit he knew either of them. There is your penalty.”  TSN comes down hard here on the players who stepped forward to clean up baseball — exactly what they are calling on others to do. Great motivational speech here, TSN!
 

            When an Eastern writer returned from a trip to the West and suggested that “the West was in the grip of gamblers,” TSN points out that the West harbors no Attells, Rothsteins or Sullivans. I think this might be tongue in cheek, except that they end with “bad as it may be.” Now TSN seems to be OK with crime that is less organized. Remember, TSN came out of St Louis — the West.
 

            George Weaver (Buck) “had the nerve to show up at Comiskey Park” the day after the scandal broke, “as though nothing had happened. Well, he’d been showing up there all season, hadn’t he?” Again, TSN finds it hard to imagine any of the indicted and then suspended players could be innocent, or rather, less guilty than, say, an axe-murderer. They might have suggested that Buck’s conscience was clear, because he followed it.
 

            Swede Risberg has denied that he ever threatened to “bump off” Joe Jackson for “squawking” and he “has made Jackson apologize to him for such a charge.” Probably threatened him into the apology?  If Jackson did apologize (perhaps when he sobered up), did he also say that Swede was not such a hard guy after all, and in fact, was just an old softy?
 

            A Rochester correspondent has informed TSN that in 1912, “Chick Gandil, playing first base for Montreal, was accused of throwing games to Rochester in a hot pennant fight.” I have my suspicions that the key to the whole Fix will finally be known when someone who can read French visits the Montreal microfilm and not only confirms gems like this, but finds the definitive story, given by Abe Attell while Rothstein is in Chicago, giving up the Little Champ to the grand jury.
 

            “There’s been scandal enough, and we hope that they won’t call on the players’ wives to testify. Enough is enough.” Another verbatim item, and I think TSN shows here that they are REALLY out of touch with America. Of course we want the wives to talk! A few days before, the Boston Globe had reported that they learned “that the ramifications of the clique which engineered the deal [the Fix] included the use of blackmail tactics, wine, and women lures.” We always thought that it was never just about the money.
 

NEW YORKER  
 

            Tom Meany was a familiar name in sportswriting when I was growing up in the 1950s. Meany was a prolific writer of books (14) and articles, and baseball was his dish. He was born and raised and died (in 1964) a New Yorker, who rooted or worked for at various times, the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets. One internet bio said his first claim to fame was the scoop when John McGraw resigned.
 

            There is a reference or two to Tom Meany in Burying the Black Sox . I had seen his Baseball’s Greatest Teams (1949) and pulled out some Eddie Collins’ quotes about the Sox. But I had not seen his Baseball’s Greatest Hitters (1950), and in that book, Meany devotes Chapter 8 to Shoeless Joe Jackson. Meany’s book is his own “Top 20” list — only nine of his picks were in the Hall of Fame at the time, but four more still-active players (including Ted Williams and DiMaggio) were headed that way. One reviewer thought that eventually they would all get in, even Al Simmons and Bill Terry (elected in 1953 and 1954 respectively; they were apparently not popular among writers). Even Jackson. In case you’re wondering, Jackson is Chapter 8 because Meany listed his Top 20 in alphabetical order.
 

            What caught my eye in Greatest Hitters was Tom Meany’s story about Joe Jackson, asking to be benched before Game One in that Series of 1919. “Only a benched player would be safe” — I’m pretty sure that is Meany’s comment. But where did he get the “asked to be benched” thing? This is long before Asinof started his research. Jackson was still alive in 1950, but it does not appear that Meany interviewed him for the book.
 

            Jackson did go on record with that story himself, in a 1932 interview with NEA Service Sports Editor William Braucher. But the detail is elusive, when you try to corroborate it. The Sporting News is emphatic about it in a 1961 story, but the report is out of (perhaps) the collective memory of Greenville, SC.  Of course, it’s in Eight Men Out but Asinof cannot recall his source. It appears in many places after 8MO , with the citation being — 8MO . In Harvey Frommer’s Jackson biography, he seems to be quoting Jackson, but there is no citation, but he almost duplicates Tom Meany’s words.
 

            Other players from 1919 were alive in 1950, including Eddie Collins, and we know he was on speaking terms with Meany. Did Collins tell the “begged to be benched” story? Or Red Faber (one of Asinof’s sources for 8MO )? Where are Meany’s notes?!
 

            It’s always seemed a crucial little detail to me. A player asking or begging to be benched before Game One of a World Series is not just out of the ordinary. It also seems like that last thing that would be done by someone planning to toss a game. Was Jackson playing mind games with Gleason and Commy ( I’ll throw off their suspicions by asking to be benched … this will put me off their radar )?  I have to doubt that, Jackson was, in my view, too simple, uncomplicated and basically honest to try such a ploy. Was he trying to affect the outcome of Game One and the Series precisely by removing himself — the Sox’ best hitter — from the lineup?  Again, i have to doubt it, based on what Jackson later revealed about his own knowledge of the Fix — which was not much. No one ever placed him at a meeting. Even those who met, were not certain about who was in or out, especially after Gleason told them the team knew all about it and was watching their every move. Benching himself to give the Reds an edge seems too subtle for Jackson, and this notion can be found nowhere in anything I’ve seen on the Fix.
 

            Which leaves us with the probability that the remark should be taken at face value, with nothing sinister read into it. Jackson had run into Bill Burns the morning of Game One, he testified in 1920, and when asked, Jackson indicated to Burns that he was not much in the know about what was supposed to happen. (Just to confuse things, another Joe Jackson — the Detroit writer — also bumped a gambler as he was drinking breakfast with Hugh Fullerton. The gambler confused him with the ballplayer and the Other Jackson and Hughie strung him along, telling him the Sox were going to tank five straight. Who knows how widely that rumor swirled: “Joe Jackson says its the Reds in five straight!” That little prank of Hughie’s may have done Joe Jackson as much damage as HSF’s embellishment of “Say it ain’t so.”)
            There is one other line in the 1950 Meany story that struck me. “That Comiskey had this information in advance of the Series seems improbable.” To me, that Comiskey, Gleason, Herrmann and Ban Johnson did not have some knowledge about the Fix before the Series, seems improbable. They all had far too many connections among the gamblers, the writers, the baseball people (such as John McGraw, but toss in Otto Stifel, Charles Weeghman, and others, too) — groups that overlapped, of course. That Hugh Fullerton confronted the baseball authorities in time to do something before the bribers got away with it — his 1935 memoir is perhaps the most fascinating page in Burying the Black Sox — seems believable.
 

            That Comiskey and Gleason needed to bury the request Jackson made — lest they be suspected and accused of having advance knowledge of the Fix — is obvious. (Fullerton waited until after Commy, Gleason, Herrmann and Johnson had died before committing his story to writing; he was too close a friend of Commy’s, and perhaps of baseball.) 
 

            If Asinof got the detail from someone he interviewed — Red Faber or Happy Felsch — there is still hope. His interviews were taped, probably the old reel-to-reel. We can only hope they have survived decades of being buried themselves, in Asinof’s attic.
 

            As for Tom Meany, who knows where his notes from 57+ years ago might be today?  I’m going to start looking in three or four of his other books. I’m counting on Meany to have realized the significance of the detail, in the bigger picture, for Joe Jackson. Maybe the fellow who reviewed Meany’s book, and then said that all of his Top 20 would someday be honored in Cooperstown, realized that, too.
 

 

HONORING HONESTY  
 

            News item. Track and field star Marion Jones admits that she took substances banned for Olympic athletes, after years of denying she did not. (Any hasty comparison with Barry Bonds needs to note that the Olympic standards were much higher and tougher than baseball’s for many years, a fact that reflects poorly on baseball, not Barry.)
 

            News item. Former baseball player Eddie Murphy is honored in the rural New York town where he was born, and celebrated for his simple honesty.
 

            The two news items above were fairly contemporaneous, but for ten points (or $200 on Jeopardy ), which one got more space in the media?  My point is that honesty rarely makes headlines, and receives roughly one-millionth of the attention that the media gives to scandal, crime, sleaze, cheating, and so on.
 

            (By the way, before coming down so hard on any athlete who trained with assistance from the BALCO boys, think of how many pills you take, without knowing exactly what they are and what they do. I have taken an aspirin a day forever, it seems, and I forget why — to prevent memory loss?  But I take six other pills daily, and all kidding aside, I’m really not sure what each of them is or does. I just trust my doctors, and so it’s not at all hard for me to believe that some athletes put themselves in the hands of trainers, and don’t ask questions. That’s obviously a problem, and can be not just hazardous to one’s health, and life, but — these days — to one’s future in sports.)
 

            Call this a minority report.
 

            On Friday, October 5, over 25 relatives of “Honest Eddie” Murphy — who was born 116 years ago and hadn’t played in the majors since 1926 — gathered in Eddie’s birthplace, Hancock, NY, to honor his memory. Fittingly, it was a simple, short ceremony, climaxed by a ribbon-cutting, officially opening the Honest Eddie Tap Room in the Hancock House Hotel. The speeches were short — I think mine was the longest, as I summarized the material that appeared here in Notes #s 413 and 417 . I ended with some of Eddie’s own words: “It is much better to be a forgotten man than one remembered for a terrible wrong.”
 

            The old (400-325 BC) cynic Diogenes was said to have roamed Athens, carrying a lantern even in daylight, searching for an honest man. Are they that rare? Hard to find, perhaps, but my hunch is that there were plenty of honest folks in Diogenes’ day, and Eddie Murphy’s day, and today. But the media will not seek them out, you have to go looking yourself. And take a flashlight, because the honest folks usually do not bask in the spotlight.
 

            I had visited the Hancock library before the event, to see if they had anything more on Eddie. They didn’t, but I can report that news about the Fix of 1919 reached Hancock a little over a week after the scandal broke. The faces of the eight indicted players were crammed into a box, with their names, and the caption was the story. National news was not the focus of the Hancock paper in 1920, the result of the World Series got even less space than the scandal. Harding’s election was a big deal, however, with the locals voting for him 2-to-1. Return to normalcy was the perfect slogan for 1920, in politics and in baseball. Harding looked Presidential, and Judge Landis looked like the wrath of God, the one who could and would purge baseball of corruption and sin.
 

            Let me end this with some recommendations. First, the Hancock House Hotel is brand new and major league, and I’ve stayed in lots of hotels the last five years. It is also quite reasonable and their food is good. They have a sports bar now, but you can also use the hotel as a base when you go to Binghamton Mets games, or the new Rod Serling Museum, both nearby. Or stay there before or after a visit to Corning, NY, where you can view (I’m told) that glass bat that once belonged to Eddie Murphy, now on display at the Corning museum. Finally, I recommend honesty. It makes life so much easier, for everybody. And it is clearly rewarding, now and forever.
 

 

NOTES ON THE ROAD  
 

            I had some time on Friday afternoon to drive around that part of New York, which is award-winning scenic, even before the leaves change colors and peak. I went looking for the grave of Abe Attell, who (a web site suggested) was buried in Beaverkill Cemetery. I thought that this was just down the road from Hancock, in or near Roscoe, in Sullivan County.
 

            The autumn air was crisp and the day was sunny, and Route 17 really is spectacular. That evening I would hear a story that Honest Eddie Murphy’s son — he’s in his upper eighties now and was unable to attend — still tells his family. Shoeless Joe Jackson was driving the upstate roads with Eddie and Joe noticed how every so often there would be highway signs, such as “Ithaca 15, Deposit 10” or “Scranton 20, Binghamton 9.”  Which prompted Joe to comment, “They sure get the scores posted quick here, don’t they?”  (Stories like this one make me wish that Jackson had played on a team with Yogi Berra. Forget the game, just hook these guys up to the P.A. system!)
 

            I did find a no-name cemetery in Roscoe, but apparently it was not the right cemetery, and I started wondering if Attell was still up to his old tricks, still playing hard to find. I am not one of those folks who delights in tracking down the graves and tombstones of the famous or infamous, I’m really not, but I made an exception in this case. I just had to see what was on Abe’s marker — I could think of a couple different possibilities. In fact, maybe a Lettermanesque Top Ten List is in order:
 

The Top 10 Epitaphs for Abe Attell’s Tombstone
 

10. Reunited with Rothstein.
9.  The telegram with news of my death was no fake.
8.  Bet on the Reds to win the Series.
7.  Rothstein made me do it.
6.  Yes, Bill Burns is here, but he’s asleep.
5.  Better here than testifying in Chicago.
4.  Did I say “Bet on the Reds?” I meant the Sox !
3.  You’ll get your money later.
2.  Try telling the Grim Reaper that he has the wrong guy.
1.  You’re mistaken, this is the grave of the other Abe Attell.
 

            I suppose something in all of us would gasp if Abe Attell and Honest Eddie Murphy, poles apart in the B-Sox story, wound up in the same graveyard. (They didn’t.)  But let’s be honest, we all end up in the same earth. “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones” — words put into Mark Antony’s mouth by Shakespeare, and food for thought. Seems to me that good deeds echo into the future, too. What is certain is the bones thing. And taxes, of course.
 

            Driving to and from Hancock, I happened to listen to a book tape, The Borgias , by Marion Johnson. It has nothing to do with baseball, but it certainly helps put things in perspective. Compared to the villains of history, Abe Attell, the other fixers, and the crooked players, out to make a quick buck on a scheme that fell apart quickly — were Little League sinners, compared to the Borgias and others of their era. You want corruption, deceit, duplicity, fraud, murder and other unmentionable crimes on a major league scale — pick up The Borgias . “It is much better to be a forgotten man than one remembered for a terrible wrong.”
 

            Well, it turns out that Abe Attell is in Beaverkill Cemetery, all right, but in Rockland , not Roscoe. Had I spent a little more time on the internet, I’d have saved myself some gas. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have discovered one of those old wooden covered bridges. One-way traffic, and hold your breath. Like many of the most interesting things in life, it was just off the beaten path, the more-traveled road.
 

            I also found on the ‘net, a photo of Abe Attell’s tombstone. It was a great disappointment: “ABE ATTELL, 1884-1970, Featherweight Champion of the World, 1901-1912.”  Not even his nickname, The Little Champ.
 

            I’ve noted here before that Attell is in more than a few Boxing Halls of Fame, and as far as I know, has never shown up in the same sentence with an asterisk. Boxing, apparently, is OK with what Abe did or did not do, outside the boxing ring. Joe Jackson is in a number of Halls of Fame, too, by the way, just not Cooperstown’s (yet), and I’m guessing that Pete Rose is, too. I remember when Burying the Black Sox was in its final stage before publication, I decided to remove a couple paragraphs on Abe Attell. They were, I believed, controversial, and I did not have the interest to dig deeper, and besides, the fixers and gamblers were not my focus. So I replaced those paragraphs with a little more material on Damon Runyon.
 

            When he was researching the book that became Eight Men Out (the title came from editor John Blaylock), Eliot Asinof spent a lot of time with Abe Attell. Attell told Asinof all kinds of contradictory versions of the Fix, summing it up with the crystal-clear, “It was a game of cheaters cheating cheaters.”  In Abe’s defense, I don’t believe that even he knew the full story, only his little corner of the ring. A play-by-play of the Asinof-Attell match can be found in Bleeding Between the Lines , and perhaps a better title would have been Inside the Ropes .
 

            Earlier in this issue, I noted how Reichow and other writers of that day took issue with the silence of the honest ballplayers. Well, Abe Attell was never all that quiet, but his story kept changing. After a while, silence indeed seems golden.
 

 

PREVIEW OF COMING DISTRACTIONS  
 

            Sometimes here in NOTES, I just toss out ideas for stories. Sometimes I return to them and finish them, sometimes not. Here is the seed of one that I’ve been kicking around a long time.
 

            Agnes, Katie, Lyria, Laurel, Delia, Rose, Helen, and Marie. The eight wives sat together at a safe distance from hard line drive fouls, along the first base line. All summer they had met at Comiskey Park, most of them at every home game. They were not as recognizable as their husbands, who were better known to the other fans at Comiskey as Swede, Shoeless Joe, Lefty, Chick, Fred (there was pressure on Delia McMullin to come up with a nickname that could get her spouse off the White Sox bench), Knuckles, Buck, and Happy. The eight women had gotten to know each other well, and it looked like they would continue to meet into October, with the Sox in control of the AL pennant race.
 

            From his box closer to the field, Charles Comiskey, the Sox owner, puffed on his cigar mightily as he glanced back at the chatting wives. A good wife was an owner’s friend, she would help keep her husband sober, rested, and in good health. She was more attentive than the trainer to her partner’s needs — physical and emotional. On the other hand, the wife often was more sensitive to the economical needs, too, and could be a nuisance at contract times. They always want more , Comiskey groused.
 

            Last summer, not many wives came to the park. It was a terrible summer, 1918. The war caused many ballplayers to leave the team for the military or for jobs related to the war effort. The season was cut short by a month, the World Series almost cancelled. Comiskey had received a dozen letters from wives when the team announced that all players were released for September, a cost-cutting move made necessary across both leagues. What did they expect , Commy wrote back, defensively, the money just isn’t there. And we’ll be lucky if we play the 1919 season at all. Damn war. And don’t be looking for raises next spring, if we do play.
 

            Of course, the war had ended in November, and every owner claimed every player that they had released. Not knowing if the fans would return to baseball after the disaster of 1918, the magnates also played it safe, scheduling a shorter season, just 140 games. Salaries would be frozen until the fan response was known. When the fans did return to the parks, more enthused than ever over the national pastime ( has a nice ring , Commy mused), the players, urged on by their wives, asked for mid-season raises, or bonuses, anything to help them keep up with the bills at home. Comiskey told the Sox manager Gleason to put down the strike with the usual empty promises. Besides, all they had to do was win the pennant again, and every player would end up with at least three more thousand dollars in October.
 

            Those words rang hollow with the players, and with their wives. The eight wives behind first base were particularly galled by the arrogance of the Sox owner, whose own bank account swelled as the turnstiles clicked more than three times as much as the year before. And they remembered October 1917, when they were told that each player on the winning team in the World Series would take home at least $5,000 — enough for a down payment on a new house, or a farm, or a new car. New clothes for the kids, money to invest for those days when their husbands could play no more — and who knew how soon that might happen?  All it took was a freak injury, and the paychecks would stop. Then what?
 

            The Sox did win the Series in 1917, and took home the winners’ share, about $3,500 apiece. All fall, the wives looked for the $1,500 check from Comiskey, making up the difference between the money received and the $5,000 promised. Christmas came and went, and soon it became clear that there would be no bonus. And when the contracts were issued, few received raises of any significance. The Sox had some of the best players in baseball, but only a few were paid what they were worth. If the players were reluctant to share their salary information with each other, the wives had no such reservations. And on the road trips, they found out what Mr Cobb and Mr Speaker and Mr Walter Johnson were bring home to their wives. Mudville after Casey’s strikeout was brimming with joy, compared to the section at Comiskey Park where the Sox wives gathered.
 

            The summer of 1919 had been long and hot, and like many fans, the players’ wives often sought shelter from the sun, back near the lemonade stand. It was there that Laurel Gandil and Rose Cicotte came up with the idea. At first, it was just a joke. They noticed how groups of men huddled together all during the game, betting on something or other, and exchanging fistfuls of money. With the missing bonus, the frozen salaries, and the knowledge of the gap between their have-not husbands and the other stars of the league, with all this nagging at them, they gaped as they watched bankroll after bankroll emerge from one pocket and disappear in another.
 

            Once Laurel and Rose started talking about the Big Idea, that is all they wanted to talk about. Lyria and Katie joined in, then Agnes and Helen, and finally Marie and Delia. The eight then closed the circle, fearing that with too many involved, the Big Idea would never work. Homestand after homestand, the women sat and talked, occasionally looking up to see the progress of the games on the diamond. But what they were discussing was so much more interesting.
 

            Comiskey craned his neck to look back at the wives again, and this time their collective cold stares snapped his head back around. What can they be so excited about? Commy wondered. In all my days in baseball, I’ve never seen eight ladies so — so apparently hooked on baseball. I think they haven’t missed a home game since July. Rain or shine, they come early and stay till the last out. Mighty strange. But they are getting the job done, their boys will bring home the pennant, all right. This time, I might even buy the good champagne to celebrate.
 

            The women laughed together when Comiskey reacted to their glare. The Old Roman, Mr Noble Chicago, Toast of the Woodland Bards, Owner of the Sox and most of the writers who covered the game. The press had turned a deaf ear to the women when they took to the reporters at the park, their tales of unfair treatment. Do you know we have to wash the socks and jocks at home?  And send food with the players on the road trips, because the allowance from the team is so low?  Do you realize what Ty Cobb is getting paid. compared to Jackson?  Johnson, compared to Cicotte?   The reporters might as well have been under contract to Commy themselves.
 

            But as September wore on, and the World Series neared, things were falling in place for the Big Idea, and the women frowned less and less at Comiskey and his ways. The Big Idea had given them hope, like a rainbow in the sky after a storm.