Notes #479 — Spring Hopes Eternal

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

#479                                                                                                                    MARCH 10, 2009
                                       SPRING HOPES ETERNAL
 

            I know that title looks twisted, but we are not talking about what comes out of the human breast here. We are talking spring as in spring training . The time of year when my Pirates trail nobody in the standings, and we can all dream away.
 

            There are still icy drifts of snow here in the shadows of Cooperstown, but baseball has returned to our TVs. And we even have choices, games out of Florida and Arizona, or the World tournament. Odd as it may sound, I think I prefer the grapefruit and cactus ball. Something about nations competing in baseball just doesn’t seem right. And it’s not like we don’t see players from all over the globe in the majors these days, we do. I caught the end of USA vs Canada, ex-Buc Jason Bay flying to right with the tying run stranded on second. Well hey, why was this game even close?  Let’s see these same two teams go at in on hockey ice and see what happens. Just an idea.
 

            Speaking of the Pirates, they march toward Opening Day one more time with that streak weighing heavy on their shoulders. To break it, they only have to win 81 games. One of the Pirates was interviewed during his ST workout, and said how he’d like to be part of the team that will end the streak — sixteen sour sub-.500 seasons — figuring the club that does it will be heroes, like the Red Sox who ended their WS drought a few years back, and the White Sox that did the same in 2005. Or the Cubs who carry on their backs a streak that has reached triple digits. But back to the Bucs — will they really be heroes?  If, on the last day of the season, they win #81 — will the fans swarm the field?  Give them a downtown parade? The Boys of Five Hundred just doesn’t sound like a winning book title to me. But — you never know.
 

 

DAYS OF OUR LIVES — OR, WHO CAN YOU TRUST?  
 

            Whoever put together the facts and Q/A for the 2009 desk calendar should have hired a good fact-checker. Like Bill Deane, of the Cooperstown suburb of Fly Creek, NY. Bill helped me with Burying the Black Sox (not the whole book, but the sections heavy with info on ballplayers — you won’t find any errors there), and when I have mentioned his amazing fact-checking skills to others, or recommended him, I’ve invariably been told, “He’s the best.”  And, he reads Notes , and thank goodness he usually reads it sooner rather than later, so when he catches one of my goofs, he calls it to my attention, and I can edit it out.
 

            Last issue he caught two, and I corrected just one, so that I can thank Bill here and give him the credit he deserves for doing this favor, without charging me. If you recall, in #478, I said my desk calendar asked who had the most hits in a World Series, and then told me, Bobby Richardson (but in 1964, not 1960 — I caught that error), and Lou Brock in 1968. Bill Deane noted that Marty Barrett of the Red Sox also had 13 hits, in 1986.
 

            Then on March 2, my calendar asked which three shortstops hit 300+ home runs. Its answer, Cal Ripken 431, A-Rod 345 as a SS and now 173 more as a 3B … and then they have Ernie Banks, 512. Well, Mr Cub had 512 all right, but even I know that he played more games at 1B (1259) than at SS (1125; he also played some 3B and OF). He may have over 300 as a SS, because those years at short were among his most productive, and I recall them well.
 

            But I just can’t trust this calendar any more, and we only started the third month of 2009. I don’t have the time to look up every “fact” it serves up. So look for fewer items in this feature in future issues of Notes .
 

 

O, HAPPY DAY  
 

            Last issue, I reported a nugget found in the Christian Science Monitor of September 29, 1920 — a date that, for those of us sauntering on down the B-Sox trail, is the Happy Day I refer to in this headline. The issue before that, in #477 , I commented on something I found on that date in the Hartford Courant , repeating my theory “that you can go to almost any newspaper in the country, look up the coverage of the B-Sox scandal breaking (September 28, 1920, and the days right after), and find something new.”  This time, same date, and another nugget, from the 9/29/1920 Boston Globe .
 

            “TWO WHITE SOX STARS ADMIT THROWING BIG 1919 SERIES” is the bold Page 1 headline, with a sub-head announcing Cicotte’s 10 G payoff and Jackson’s 5 Gs; the headline below that lists the other six players being indicted, and below that , the news that Commy has suspended them all, and “Abe Attell Named as Head of Gambling Clique.” To the left, photos of the 8MO below the caption, “Eight Alleged Baseball Crooks,” and then the story, just a few column inches on Page One, but lots more inside; it looks like it takes up most of page nine.
 

            Two more photos follow, too: Poor old Commy, forced to wreck his dynasty; and then, curiously, Johnny Rawlings , under the caption “Ex-Brave To Be Called in Baseball Inquiry.”  I’ve seen references to Rawlings before, so this was nothing new, but I can’t say that I’ve ever seen Johnny put quite so on the spot. The Globe has him reportedly winning big by backing the Reds. But don’t you think that any ballplayer who won big (and naturally they would brag about it for at leadt the next year), would be a suspect? Except I think Rawlings had some connections to the 8MO; in Burying , I note that he had played high school ball with Fred McMullin “and was said to only bet on sure things.” Rawlings, as I recall, was usually paired with Ivy Olson, a SS with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1920, and don’t you bet he was grilled before they let him take the field for the 1920 Series! (He hit .320 as his team lost, pretty much Buck Weaver’s story.)
 

            But none of the above qualifies, to me, as a nugget. This does. “Says Knabe Warned Gleason of ‘Fixing'” is the headline over the short item, one of three that trail the main story. (The other two are from Philadelphia, where Billy Maharg, an overnight celebrity, insists that Attell “double-crossed the White Sox out of $90,000”; and the other is from New York, where Abe Attell is threatening to “shoot the lid sky high.” He never did.)
 

            So who is Knabe ?  Franz Otto “Dutch” Knabe was a rough 2B, a Pennsylvanian who played for the Phils before jumping to be a player-manager for Baltimore in the Federal League. He was a Cubs coach in Chicago during the 1919 season, and managing in the minors in Kansas City at the end of 1920. He remained there until he was released mid-season in 1922, and that’s where he was on the Happy Day when the B-Sox scandal broke. Knabe was thrust into the spotlight — briefly — by Effie Welsh, once a basketball star, but then a sportswriter for the Wilkesbarre Times Leader . Welsh was one more writer who was at last unleashed to tell what he knew about The Big Fix.
 

            Welsh had been sitting on his story since December 1919, when he learned from “a close personal friend, one of the Sox players [Buck Weaver was from Pottstown, PA]” that the fix had been in.
 

News that the series games were fixed first startled baseball fandom a few days after the last game of the series had been played. The investigators secured their first tip from Otto Knabe, the Phillies’ old second baseman. Knabe was in partnership with “Kid” Gleason in the bookmaking business. They had been partners for years and a pool of money had been gotten together by the sporting element and placed in the hands of Knabe to bet. The latter was inclined to back the White Sox and was all primed to place these bets, when a friend, a ballplayer, handed him a tip. It was to this effect:
 

“Chicago will not win series, certain ballplayers have been fixed.”
 

The source of the tip was not made public, but it set Knabe investigating. He found the charges were true and accordingly informed “Kid” Gleason, manager of the Sox.
 

Kid, who is one of the squarest big men in baseball, became indignant at the charges made by Knabe; they quarrelled, split partnership and Knabe acting on the strength of his information switched bets and placed all his bookmaking account on the Reds. Sure enough, Cincinnati won the world series.
 

            End of item, or at least the reprint in the Globe . Did Welsh say more in the Wilkesbarre paper?  What did Otto Knabe say, out in Kansas City?  More pieces of the puzzle!
 

            That Kid Gleason had advance warning is not new, if he didn’t hear it from John McGraw (who was told of the plot by Arnold Rothstein, according to A.R. — McGraw denied it), he had received a number of telegrams, and now we can guess that one was from his partner in bookmaking , Otto Knabe. If Welsh is correct, Gleason probably had lots of contacts among the bookies. That is news to me. By the way, Otto Knabe made the papers in 1919, by giving his pick in the Kentucky Derby.
 

            Timing is everything . In 1920, folks could talk or write freely about such stuff. After Judge Landis’ edict, it was risky to appear to have “guilty knowledge” — could cost you you career in baseball.
 

            This is the first time I’ve seen Otto Knabe’s name come up in the B-Sox story. No surprise, it’s a Russian novel, remember? Always room for more characters. Otto apparently stayed under the radar; maybe he simply denied Welsh’s story, then clammed up. In any case, let’s say he did bet and win big on the Reds in 1919. That would remind us of Rube Benton.
 

            A few days before our Happy Day, Rube was on the grand jury stand, telling of his own knowledge of the Fix, and how he bet on that knowledge and won some big bucks. (Lots more on Benton back in Notes #417 .) For this admission, Benton received no punishment at all , he left Chicago and the grand jury behind and reported to McGraw’s Giants for spring training in 1921 like nothing happened.
 

            Ban Johnson was not amused, but had no authority in the NL, and in 1921, Judge Landis was in office and flexing his muscles. It is not clear why he turned a blind eye toward Benton, while coming down hard on Joe Gedeon, for example. I think McGraw was a factor. In any case, Benton started 1921 with the Giants, then was let go. Why?  Well, here’s a clip from Notes #417 :
 

Well, according to his obituary, Benton was sent to St Paul (American Assn) in 1921 after he made charges that he had been offered money to throw a game. He rebelled at this transfer, but went quietly. McGraw really didn’t want Rube talking about fixes, while the country was buzzing about the B-Sox trial that summer. Maybe McGraw wanted to spare Rube the chance of being attacked by the press, if his name came up in the trial, and Rube just happened to be handy for a quote or two. The fact is, Rube was released as “an undesirable” — but when Kansas City immediately expressed their desire to sign him (it’s just like today, nobody has enough left-handed pitching), the Giants recalled the release, and instead sold him to St Paul.
 

            In the Boston Globe of August 2, 1921, is an item that says Kansas City (American assn) did sign Benton — according to KC manager, Otto Knabe:
 

Benton was given his unconditional release by the New York Nationals last week. Knabe was the authority also for the statement that New York wanted the pitcher to go to St Paul, but instead came on here [Toledo, Ohio] for a conference. After signing his contract, Benton left for his home in Cincinnati. He is to join the Kansas City club at Columbus Wednesday, Knabe said.
 

            So Knabe and Benton did not really connect in KC as manager and pitcher. They could have had some interesting conversations.
 

            And Otto Knabe was never hauled before the grand jury, or into the 1921 trial, or to Judge Landis’ quarters. But Otto did have at least one audience with the Judge — he testified in the Federal League lawsuit, the case Landis heard as a federal judge.
 

            And here’s a PQPS — a postscript from ProQuest . In October 1937, Otto Knabe and four others were indicted in Philadelphia, where a grand jury was investigating charges of gambling that existed in their fair city with the knowledge of the police . I am shocked, shocked to read that such a travesty could occur. Otto was apparently still “pool selling and bookmaking” in what the Christian Science Monitor called “a prosperous industry.” When Otto asked if this was true, he replied, “You bet.”  No, he didn’t, I made that up.
 

 

MEANWHILE, BACK IN BOSTON    
 

            O Happy Day. Bostonians were reading a lot about The Big Fix, much of the information “leaked” from the grand jury — and not at all accurate. But if you lived in Beantown, and got so fed up that this was the last you would read about baseball, here is what you might still be believing (oh yeah, you’d be at least 95, so I’ll refresh your memory).
 

1) You would admire Comiskey for acting “like a Brutus” (I haven’t seen that before; it suggests Commy assassinated the crooked Sox), suspending them all; “He did this early in the day” — which meshes with Jackson getting his notice when he arrives at Austrian’s office, from Gleason — before he tells the grand jury his story.
 

2) You would think Eddie Cicotte told the grand jury that he tossed Game One and threw away Game Four on his errors. In fact, Eddie told the grand jury he plunked Rath, then pitched the rest of the series to win.
 

3) You would think that Cicotte and Jackson gave their stories to the grand jury in exchange for immunity; they did not, although both believed they would be taken care of by Austrian, Replogle and Judge McDonald. They were wrong, too.
 

4) You would be expecting the grand jury to start indicting gamblers from Philadelphia, Indianapolis, St Louis, des Moines, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and other cities. That’s what Replogle said would happen. It did not.
 

5) Besides having a new admiration for The Old Roman, especially after reading his statement in praise of the wonderful game of baseball that is “worth keeping clean,” you will also admire John McGraw. His grand jury appearance was pre-empted by Eddie and Shoeless, but Muggsy addressed the press anyway. The confessions were
 

enough to break an old ballplayer’s heart, this damned crookedness among men, who make more a week than we made in a year [McGraw should have lived longer, what would he say after free agency?!] when we fought with our bare hands to keep the game clean. I’ve had a hunch on this for a long time [since Rothstein told him?], and take it from me, Dan [O’Leary, veteran Chicago newsman], before I get through I’ll make baseball one unpopular place for crooks.
 

6) Even though Billy Maharg had said only games One, Two and Eight were tossed, you would likely believe that all eight games were played with eight Sox players — the 8MO — all doing their damndest to lose.
 

7) You would think that the only loot that the Sox got was the $10 G under Cicotte’s pillow, with Attell pocketing $90 G. No wait, Jackson was promised $20 G, got $5 G. And Jackson must have found it in his bed, because someone said that Eddie said that “Every one was paid individually and the same scheme was used to deliver it.”  Wait, if two guys got $15 G and others were paid more, how did Attell get $90 G. Well, maybe Maharg was confused, only knew part of the story. Maybe Eddie was misquoted, maybe — oh, the heck with it. I give up, no more reading baseball!
 

 

WORTH REPRINTING  
 

            My first guide on the B-Sox trail back in 2002 was Hugh Fullerton, and his First Commandment of Sport, “Thou Shalt Not Quit,” was my headline for Notes #274 . Those words have turned out to be the best advice anyone on the trail can take. Here (again), thanks to Steve Klein, are Hughie’s commandments:
 

            Fullerton’s “Code of a Good Sport” consisted of: “1. Thou shalt not quit. 2. Thou shalt not alibi. 3. Thou shalt not gloat over winning. 4. Thou shalt not be a rotten loser. 5. Thou shalt not take unfair advantage. 6. Thou shalt not ask odds thou art unwilling to give. 7. Thou shalt always be ready to give thine opponent the shade. 8. Thou shalt not under estimate an opponent, not over estimate thyself. 9. Remember that the game is the thing, and that he who thinketh otherwise is a mucker and no true sportsman. 10. Honor the game thou playest, for he who playeth the game straight and hard wins even when he loses.”
 

— Hugh S. Fullerton, “The Ten Commandments of Sport, and of Everything Else,” American Magazine, Vol. 92 (August, 1921), p. 54.
 

MORE FROM HUGHIE  
 

            Hugh Fullerton called Charles Comiskey his closest friend in baseball. I believe it was his fierce loyalty to Commy that may have prevented Fullerton from revealing all he knew about Commy’s early “guilty knowledge” of the Fix, until after Commy had died. Hughie got a good idea of what he could safely say about the Fix when he tried to write a series of articles, “64 separate pieces by his count,” on Comiskey for the Chicago Tribune , after the 1922 season; four of the articles dealt with the World Series of 1919, and they were immediately set aside when reviewed by Commy and Harry Grabiner, his secretary/GM.
 

We had another morning and revised the stuff. When we reached the crooked worlds series both Commy and Grabiner warned me that we must be careful in dealing with it. We took the four articles I had written and literally revised them to pieces — and they still were not satisfactory.
 

            The series was killed (no pun intended). Of all the B-Sox material still waiting to be found, I am perhaps most hopeful about that 1922 series, and its four articles in October 1919.
 

            His loyalty may also have prevented Fullerton from being completely forthcoming when he testified at the 1924 Milwaukee trial, about where he got his information that “seven players will not be back” for the 1920 season — a stunning statement in his first post-Series article, October 11, 1919. Fullerton had actually reveal in his column, after the scandal broke, that his authority was no less than Comiskey; but on the stand in 1924, he said he was just reporting hearsay and rumor.
 

            Fullerton had a certain admiration for the accomplishments of Ban Johnson, too. He knew Johnson had struggled to clean up baseball, long before the 1919 Series. And he worried mightily that the Comiskey-Johnson feud would damage or even destroy the American League. In an Atlanta Constitution column, January 18, 1921, Hughie traced the feud back to jokes gone wrong between the two giants, with nary a mention of the Quinn issue (pointed to by Johnson himself as the last straw) or the Carl Mays case, which pitted Commy in alliance with the NY and Boston owners against the AL czar.
 

            Fullerton also defended Judge Landis, when his honeymoon had ended and he came under attack by some team owners for prejudice, in 1922. His November 27, 1922, Constitution column blames the Johnsonian reactionaries for failing to see how Landis has, so far, saved baseball from itself — that is, from the owners. It is interesting to revisit this column, in light of the current crisis in fan confidence in baseball’s leadership.
 

            Landis did “blunder” by saying he would wipe the slate clean and start all over; it seems that Fullerton wanted a genuine house-cleaning, instead of an amnesty; he saw Landis as pretending that the leopards in baseball no longer had spots, instead of trying to change them.
 

            Hughie had a sense of how deeply corrup baseball had been. Had Landis been consistent in applying the same “justice” he meted out to Buck Weaver, across the board, banishing any player who had ever met with gamblers as well as those who had taken bribes, every team would have lost a fair chunk of their roster, in Fullerton’s opinion.
 

            Fullerton wanted those of questionable character to be put safely outside the game:
 

You and I know that a man who is “wrong” in one line will be in any other. As a result, the evil forces remain in the game we are trying to clean — and the evil extends through owners, managers and players. The percentage is not large, but there is a larger percentage of unfit owners than there is of managers, and a larger percentage of unfit managers than there are players. [Emphasis mine.]
 

            Fullerton writes this sixteen months after the Black Sox trial and the banishment of those players. Hughie is dismayed that so many “unfit” men are still around, and instead of supporting Landis, some owners are trying to make things so hard for him, that he might resign. If he did resign, Hughie goes on, and announces that he simply cannot make baseball clean, “What would you give for a major league franchise?”
 

            If he were alive and blogging today, would Fullerton focus on the management’s role in the steroid mess?  On Bud Selig’s?  On Donald Fehr’s?  On that of baseball’s coaches and trainers, of the player agents ?  I think that he might.
 

 

ON DECK: THE 2009 SABR SEYMOUR CONFERENCE  
 

            Last year, the Seymour Conference, held annually in Cleveland since 1999, was embedded within the convention. The Seymour had been getting better and better every year, in my view, thanks to Ryan Chamberlain and the SABR office staff. It is the closest thing SABR offers for baseball writers, and I’ve hoped that it could continue to evolve in that direction, becoming a crossroads for researchers and writers, editors and agents, publishers and more.
 

            This time around, the Seymour will be April 24-26, and I’m scheduled to give a presentation. Here is an early draft of what I’m thinking of talking about:
 

WHAT’S NEW ON THE BLACK SOX TRAIL  
 

            Burying the Black Sox is a summary of my first three years of research on what I like to call “the B-Sox Trail.”  When it went to press, in Fall of 2005, I continued my research. When I last reported, at the 2007 Seymour and the St Louis convention, I noted these highlights of things that happened and things that I’ve learned since Burying :
 

1) The publication of Red Legs and Black Sox , by Susan Dellinger, with unprecedented information on the Cincinnati side of the fixing of the 1919 WS.
 

2) The discovery of missing volumes of Collyer’s Eye , through a bizzare series of events.
 

3) More evidence that Joe Jackson asked to be benched before Game One of the Series; Bill Madden takes interest in Jackson’s case.
 

4) A second visit to the material from the 1924 Milwaukee Trial , thanks to a Yoseloff Grant, turned up unprecedented detail about the Fix (see BRJ 35 ).
 

5) The finding of more interviews with living Black Sox players, notably a series by Westbrook Pegler in 1956, where he got more out of them than Eliot Asinof did five years later when he was researching Eight Men Out .
 

            This April, I want to report on the research and events of the past two years.
 

1) Collyer’s Eye . We now have the microfilm from 1919 and the following years, enabling us to read all the details of their investigation of the Fix rumors, as well as their continued monitoring of baseball scandals in the years that followed. (Refer to TRIPTYCH.)
 

2) The 20th Anniversary of the film Eight Men Out in 2008 meant a DVD with a feature on 8MO ‘s historicity.
 

3) December 2008, the Chicago History Museum is high bidder ($100,000) for a small mountain of documents from the law firm of Alfred Austrian, Comiskey’s lawyer. Still not accessible, I’ve seen a fraction of this “treasure trove.”
 

4) The Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum opens in June 2008 in Greenville, SC, a possible magnet for more info.
 

5) Also last June, Eliot Asinof passed away. His papers have been purchased by the Chicago History Museum. I’ve submitted a memoir on my correspondence and talks with Asinof to SABR.
 

6) New books with B-Sox info: Rick Huhn’s biography of Eddie Collins ; Mike Lynch’s Frazee, Johnson and the Feud That Nearly Destroyed the AL . 
 

7) The newest SABR Research Committee: a progress report.
 

            I think interest will be highest in #3, but I can only report on the tiny fraction that I’ve seen. I’ll also spend some time on #1, with a poster-size triptych along to help. And I’ll end with #7, inviting all those addicted to join.