Notes #481 — The Fourth Estate

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

#481                                                                                                                    MARCH 25, 2009
                                          THE FOURTH ESTATE
 

            If the press is the Fourth Estate for society, keeping an eye on the clergy, nobility (the wealthy), and the commoners (the rest of us) — then sports writers are surely the Fourth Estate of Baseball. They keep an eye — or should — on the players, the team owners (“the Lords of the Realm”) and — the rest of us. In any case, this issue is all about sports writers.
 

            Up top is a piece by Hugh “Thou Shalt Not Quit” Fullerton, from the spring of 1921. Hughie had tried to blow the whistle on the fix in October 1919 and the months that followed. For his trouble, he was ridiculed, especially by The Sporting News and Baseball Magazine and, well, the mainstreamers. The press in 1919 was not much of a watchdog, with the exception of Collyer’s Eye (a paper devoted to making it safe to gamble), and scattered reporters, like Fullerton. Clobbered for a year, Fullerton was vindicated when the B-Sox scandal broke, so when he writes in 1921, with the B-Sox trial on hold, but holding the promise of the purging he thought baseball needed, he is holding his head high. Not gloating, but he’s earned the right to the pulpit.
 

            Then there’s Billy Evans, the longtime AL umpire who was also a writer, and I’ve found some of his recollections in print from the 1919 Series, where Billy was behind the plate and in a pretty good position to notice fishy plays.
 

            There is lots more, too, from Fullerton, Jimmy Isaminger, and James T. Farrell. The fact is that as we stay on the B-Sox trail, we meet lots of “pressmen” — they were “the media” in 1919, and what they wrote, then and after, is an important part of what we have today to help us understand what happened. They left a record in print, and accessible to the public. I think they understood how important their record was, even though they never could have guessed that one day, their readers would be sitting at microfilm machines or at home computers. 
 

            So in this issue I salute some of the Fourth Estaters of the game, while at the same time, I recognize the limitations of their documentation. They may not be primary sources, but they are important ones. In another time, maybe they all would have written much more, and more freely, with less restriction from their editors, and less fear of libel suits. Maybe.
 

 

THE HITS KEEP ON COMIN’  
 

            I mentioned several times here recently how Hugh Fullerton was not satisfied, it seems, with Baseball’s lopping off eight White Sox players (and a few more, less publicized, like Joe Gedeon), and then calling the sport clean. Browsing thru the papers of the day, I found a good column to illustrate this. It appeared in the Washington Post on March 10, 1921, when the B-Sox trial was On Hold. Hughie called his readers’ attention to a problem of Judge Landis’ — how to deal with the other players who had “guilty knowledge” of the Fix, and (unlike Buck Weaver) cashed in on it.
 

            Heinie Zimmerman of the NY Giants was in the news, charging Rube Benton, Benny Kauff, and Fred Toney with taking bribes to throw games. Benton was preparing for the 1921 season in spring training, while Joe Gedeon, Fullerton noticed, was not. Why? And if Benton himself was to be believed — his grand jury testimony was sensational news and led to the end of the 1919 WS fix cover-up — others Giants had the same tip he had. Fullerton says it would be unfair to expel Benton, but not some of his teammates, and maybe there would be little left of McGraw’s team if the Judge really got busy. To Fullerton, Zim’s attack held the promise that Landis would go after the Giants, and thus “open up the entire matter of crooked practices in baseball and give us a real housecleaning.”  Today, Hughie might be asking, “Why pick on Bonds and Clemens and A-Rod?  Why not a real housecleaning?”
 

 

AS I SEES ‘EM  
 

            I was curious about the reactions of the umpires of the 1919 World Series, when the scandal broke, and found a couple that I inserted into Burying the Black Sox :
 

National League umpire Richard Nallin said he had “no suspicions whatever of any wrong-doing.”  American League ump Billy Evans said, “Well, I guess I’m just a big dope. That Series looked all right to me.”
 

            I got the Evans quote from Harvey Frommer’s book. Recently I found a lot more from Evans, who wrote a syndicated column — I’m pretty sure he did that before, during, and after the 1919 WS. Anyway, I found one in the Chicago Tribune , December 19, 1920, pg A4, “Crooked Work Fools Evans in Series of 1919.”  The sub-head: “Umpire Shows How Well ‘Black’ Sox Worked.” Less than three months after the cover-up ended, the tainted Sox were “Black.”
 

            Evans writes that after Cicotte implicated himself and a number of his teammates in the Fix, everyone was saying, “I told you so.”  Evans himself was genuinely stunned — along with the majority of fans, I think, who did not think that such a fix was possible — and so it was also unthinkable. He was confident in the integrity of the players, and if there were a few bad apples, that was not enough to throw a game, it took a larger group.
 

            Evans was behind the plate in Game Two, and says that “now that we know things were not right, it is easy to pick the work of Williams to pieces. Much stress has been laid on the number of bases on balls he gave” [in that game]. Evans was in the “perfect position to pass criticism” on Lefty’s work; Evans was an AL ump, and familiar with the southpaw’s way of working the corners.
 

            Did Evans think Lefty was missing on purpose? 
 

Of the four men walked, Williams didn’t throw one ball that would have been classified as a real bad pitch. Every ball delivered was at the waistline, and not one of them was over six inches inside or outside, and most of them [were] much less than that. There wasn’t a ball around the shoe tops or above the shoulders, so that even a spectator in center field would have known it was a ball. [Emphasis mine]
 

            “I regarded the loss of that game at the time as one of the hardest bits of luck I ever saw a pitcher go up against.”
 

            Evans adds that only once in the whole series did he “rave at the way the Chicago club was playing, and then with no thought of suspicion, but with pure disgust. “  That was when Cicotte made back-to-back errors in Game Four. “I didn’t think the crafty Cicotte could pull such a ‘bone’ with the play right in front on him.”
 

            So there is the testimony of a very knowledgeable man who was in the thick of the action, recalling it fourteen months later.
 

            But let’s end on a note of comedy. In his column on the morning of Game One, Ring Lardner said that he reckoned he’ll bet on a “hot tip” from Umpire Rigler. While most reporters were peppering managers Moran and Gleason with questions, Lardner went to the umpires. He asked Cy Rigler who was going to win. “‘I don’t know,’ was his ample reply. You can take that tip or leave it. Personally, I am betting on his word.”  Which makes you wonder how a Ring Lardner interview with Yogi might go. Next, Lardner found umpire Quigley, who responded, “My system is to call everybody out.”  Evans and Nallin, the AL umps, were not to be seen — they were, Lardner says, “up writing their stuff.”
 

            The Lardner column was syndicated; I read it in the Chicago Tribune . The Trib had a little box embedded in Ring’s words, “Red Money Appears.”  Jim O’Leary, whose establishment near the stockyards was “the best known clearninghouse for wagers in this city” [Cincinnati], reported that a lot of money was going down on the home team. Making the odds nearly even. The night before, O’Leary had the Sox at 5-4 to win the Series, and 5-6 on the Reds. He was not handling bets on the first game — which makes us wonder if he was playing it safe, checking out those swirling rumors. “Much of the money which arrived to depress the odds given the Reds was from out of town. There was considerable wagering.”  Yes, Virginia, indeed there was.
 

            OK, one more tidbit. Should this custom be revived? Same page in the Trib : “5,000 Cincinnati Homes Thrown Open for Fans.” The downtown hotels had all raised their rates when the Reds clinched the pennant. So many homeowners, in a display of hospitality, were taking in boarders — “agreeing not to charge more than $1.50 per day to anyone who registered with the commerce room committee.”   Those were the days. I’d like to see SABR conventions coordinate something like this. I’d even be willing to pay twice that 1919 rate.
 

            And a postscript: Evans rated Joe Jackson the greatest hitter he’d seen, and he saw a lot of Cobb.
 

 

WORTH A PONDER  
 

            In Notes #479 , I mentioned Otto Knabe, who claimed that he had informed Kid Gleason about the Fix, before the Series. The Kid and Otto were not just business partners (bookmaking!); Gleason had taught Knabe how to play second base. Otto replaced Gleason as the keystone guardian for the NL Phils in 1907. Small world. I thought that Knabe was new to this story, but it seems that I ran into him on the B-Sox trail about five years ago, in Notes #324 . You can read the whole thing there, but here is a snippet:
 

When the Fix of 1919 was revealed in 1920, a lot of dirty laundry hit the clothesline. “The former nominal owner of the Phillies, Horace Fogel” (Seymour in The Golden Age , page 284) corroborated rumors about the Giants “stooping to conquer” (win the pennant) in 1908. Fogel, according to Seymour, had been banished from baseball in 1912 for charging that Roger Bresnahan, as manager of St Louis, had fielded a weak team against the Giants to help McGraw pick up some wins. An exile retaliating?  Perhaps, but his 1B Kitty Bransfield and his catcher — Red Dooin — supported his charge. At that time, Dooin said he, Bransfield, Mike Doolin, Otto Knabe, Sherwood Magee, and other Phils were all offered “even more cash to throw their series to the Giants that the White Sox were offered in 1919” (that public figure was $100,000).
 

            Last issue, I mentioned how Eight Men Out (among many sources) perpetuated the theory that Billy Maharg was really “Peaches” Graham (Maharg spelled backward) — crediting Billy, I think, with a lot more smarts than he seemed to display. Maharg himself squelched the theory, under oath. Anyway, I think it’s time to start a new misconception. I recently learned that Purdue grad Ray Schalk married Lavinia Graham in 1916. So let’s expand the theory — Maharg changed his name precisely to avoid having the name Graham linked to the Fix. Because if you think the Swede was a hard guy, remember it was The Cracker who threw punches. We are very close to April Fool’s Day; this is NOT FACTUAL!
 

 

A LOT OF FISH IN THE OCEAN  
 

            And ProQuest is not the only way to catch them. Sometimes Google works fine, too. I recently netted an article by Tim Gay, from June 9, 2005, in the USA Today archive. “Cubs-Red Sox Series Framed by WWI, Strike Threat.”  It’s on the 1918 World Series, which is becoming, I think, the one most likely to have been tampered with, after 1919. In fact, it appears that whatever went down in 1918 was downright inspirational to the White Sox.
 

            Tim Gay notes some of the players involved in the 1918 WS, and they are familiar names on the B-Sox trail: Gene Packard, Shufflin’ Phil Douglas, Carl Mays and Joe Bush (cf 1921 WS), Jean DuBuc, Cubs’ owner Charles Weeghman. Cubs’ coach Otto Knabe . And who was on the scene, being stunned by gaffes and by players out of position?  Hugh Fullerton . It’s a good article and I recommend it — as well as Tim Gay’s excellent biog of Tris Speaker.
 

 

ON THE SCREEN OF SPORT  
 

            That was Hugh Fullerton’s column title, and sometimes I think I ought to make Hughie a regular guest columnist here in Notes . I just keep finding more good stuff from this guy. By now, I am no doubt reading some articles for a second or third time, but they seem fresh and, when on the trail, timely.
 

            Besides the one up top (on Benton & The NY Giants), I found Hughie suggesting in his November 30, 1919 column (the Atlanta Constitution version), that Ban Johnson was probably not the AL President — that he had not been legally re-elected. [In a later column, Hughie points to the meeting of February 1910.] There it was announced (by Johnson) that he was still Prez, but that was not enough for Hughie. He recalled accounts of the meeting — wine was flowing freely, Commy & Ban were good buddies at the time. Johnson was to receive $5,000 a year for life, or maybe for the next twenty years — it wasn’t quite clear. What Hughie’s editor WAS clear about was that the AL constitution called for annual elections, and the owners had not bothered to amend it before handing Johnson that long-term deal. In November 1919, Johnson was hanging onto his job by his fingernails, Comiskey leading the charge to cut him loose.
 

            Fullerton has left Chicago, he’s writing this from New York:
 

Johnson still makes strong medicine out in Chicago, and hints that he has something on someone and could talk a great deal were he not too vitally interested in the fair name of the game to spill his knowledge.
 

            Fullerton knows that Ban knows and Commy knows about the bribery that took place just the month before. In two weeks, he will be writing his series in the NY World , blowing the whistle as loudly as he can, to get a public investigation started. He will be ignored, as the struggle for power continues. “Baseball is at a standstill,” Fullerton declares in November. Garry Herrmann is a lame duck Commish. “The war between the magnates [the team owners] has put an end to trading and selling” of players, and the fans might see more “bad baseball” in 1920 if the managers are not allowed to strengthen their teams.
 

            Less than a week later, in his December 5, 1919, column, Fullerton is still nagging and nudging: “ the Johnson-Comiskey feud, … is at the bottom of everything wrong in baseball just now ” [emphasis mine]. Fullerton is on Commy’s side, but at bottom he is a fan, and wants the feud to end.
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            Fast forward to April 18, 1921; the cover-up of the bribery has been ended, the B-Sox trial kneels on deck. Hughie writes of the cleanliness of sports. Horse racing is his main subject, but he soon gets around to baseball:
 

Since 1876 there have been just two open cases of scandal in professional baseball, involving eleven ballplayers in all. [If you are doing the math, as I did, the Louisville Four expelled in 1877 leaves room for just seven guilty Sox; so Hughie was thinking seven men out , not eight; I suspect he was hoping Weaver could be forgiven.] I think that I have been cognizant of almost all the shady work that has gone on. Sometimes it was years later that I received the information. My figures show that during my connection with baseball, 21 players have been accused of wrongdoing in the major leagues. I count gossip and belated scandal. During that time there have been close to 8,000 ball players listed in the official averages. If 50 per cent of those accused were guilty it would mean about 1 bad boy in 1,000.
 

            Hughie then notes 60 cases of alleged crookedness in professional football in England in the two years before the war. A friend of Hughie’s who covered boxing guessed that maybe two dozen of maybe 2,400 matches were crooked. Returning to racing, Fullerton quotes another friend who underlined that while thousands of horse races were the subject of gossip, the actual number of fixed results was likely just a fraction of that. Fullerton was hoping, remember, for a general housecleaning in baseball — lest it go the way of racing and boxing.
 

            Fitting right in here, an HSF column two days later. Judge Landis has issued his first official proclamation (as “supreme head of baseball”), “to the ball players direct.”  He warned them of what they can expect, in the wake of the grand jury revelations at the end of the 1920 season. Namely, that their every error, no matter how legitimate; their muffs, fumbles and dropped balls, all would be seen as suspect. Fullerton thought this was very perceptive on Landis’ part. And Hughie cannot resist blaming someone for it, so he does — but not the B-Sox, he blames the “club owners, who are in position to hear all the whispers, all the rumors, and who ignore them.”  Again, don’t you wish Hughie was around when the steroid abuse became plain?
 

 

OTHER PRESSMEN WE MEET ON THE TRAIL  
 

            James C. (Jimmy) Isamingersometimes gets more credit for ending the Fix than Fullerton. That’s because Hughie’s crusade was almost forgotten by the time the Cook County grand jury set its sight on baseball, in September 1920. Isaminger’s interview with Billy Maharg may have been the final straw for Eddie Cicotte, who went to the grand jury himself the next morning.
 

            Isaminger was not just a Ban Johnson ally in those days — he had ties that went back much farther. Born in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1880, Isaminger’s family moved to Cincinnati when he was eight. There, Jimmy worked in a drug store, one frequented by Ban Johnson, who lived a block away. Another patron was Charles Murphy, later owner of the Cubs. Small world. Jimmy must have given Johnson some very good cigars, and Ban (a Cincinnati reporter at the time) helped him land a job with the local Times-Star . In 1905, Isaminger had moved on to the Philadelphia Inquirer , where he met Charles Dryden, another familiar name if you have read much of The Sporting News from those first decades of the last century. It was at the Inquirer where Isaminger made his mark.
 

            And that was really by coincidence. Billy Maharg had boxed some before landing his job at an auto manufacturer in Philly. And his manager was H. Walter Schlichter … who, in 1920, was sports editor at the Inquirer . Maharg first told his story about the bribery of October 1919 to Schlichter, who saw its potential as a blockbuster, if it could be proved true. So he sent Isaminger after Maharg, and had him try to corroborate as much as he could. The rest — we know. (For two good obituaries of Isaminger — if obits can be good — see Fred Lieb in The Sporting News , 6/26/46; and the PHA Inquirer , 6/17/46.  Lieb repeats the Graham/Maharg thing!)
 

            J. Ed Wraywas another Johnson supporter and by at least one account, an “intimate friend” of the czar. His series of articles with J. Roy Stockton in the St Louis Post-Dispatch , February 10 through March 3, 1929, celebrating Ban Johnson’s contributions to baseball, probably really is Ban’s “Own Story” — more than the series by Irving Vaughanin the Chicago Tribune , that appeared in three installments around the same time, with Ban’s by-line. (The third series on Johnson, which ran just a bit earlier, was penned by Earl Obenshain.)
 

            In Notes #478 , I mentioned James T. Farrell, a Chicago teen in 1919, not yet a writer. I recently found something new from Farrell, in his Cooperstown file. It’s not something that ever made a mainstream paper, nothing we can ProQuest . No, it is a piece from Park East News , a weekly in NY City, something that appeared December 1, 1966, and it’s only in Cooperstown because Farrell himself sent a copy to Lee Allen.
 

            In “The World is Today,” Farrell looks back and writes about the Black Sox. Remember, Farrell had launched Eliot Asinof on the B-Sox trail, giving him his notes and advising Asinof to focus on why they did it , and the result was 1963’s Eight Men Out . Farrell makes no mention of Asinof or 8MO in his 1966 memoir. Instead, he recalls rooting for the Sox from the bleachers during three of the games in the 1919 Series. He recalls interviewing Buck Weaver in 1954, maybe the last one for Buck. “He protested his innocence … but his was a feeling of lost years, for he was blacklisted when he had reached his peak as a player.”
 

Possibly, the full story of the 1919 series will never be known. Some of the secrets of this episode are possibly lost in the grave. Memories have dimmed. Everyone with whom I talk has added to my information, but there are now many contradictory stories current. The more you seek to piece this story together, the more contradictions you encounter. And also, I puzzle over the motivations of those who were involved. Obviously, they wanted easy and quick money. But why, and why in this way?
 

            Then Farrell, echoing Hugh Fullerton, perhaps, goes lightly on the players. “Now, years later, it is not for me to condemn or exonerate the players involved. But anyone reading the press of those days cannot but know the hypocrisy involved in condemnations of the players when so much that was worse was known to exist.” 
 

            Eight Men Out is in print, but Farrell is still “trying to piece this story together in a consistent pattern. But there are gaps in what we can state with any certainty.”  He seems not to be convinced that Asinof has uncovered the players’ motivations; to Farrell, they remain “very foggy.”
 

            And that seems like a perfect way to end this issue.
 

            But nobody’s perfect. James T. Farrell wrote a little more on the B-Sox, and his February 2, 1969, letter to the Chicago Tribune will be my closer. “Pardon the Fixers?”  That’s the headline the Trib gave JTF’s letter, written for the 50th anniversary of the year of the Fix. “Many men have done worse than these ball players but have been pardoned,” wrote Farrell. “A formal pardon would not hurt baseball.” Farrell thought that Jackson, Cicotte, Weaver and Williams belonged in Cooperstown’s Hall. “It is ridiculous to have a hall of fame without them.”
 

            I disagree with him about Weaver and Williams, although both were headed in the general direction of Cooperstown; but then, few fans agree about HOF membership, it’s a great Hot Stove log. But that pardon, I could live with. “I know many fans will support my proposal,” Farrell concluded. “I trust that organized baseball will adopt it. If not, I propose a congressional resolution on the matter.”  Well, MLB has gone deaf on the subject, and Congress has its hands full these days. But there is a White Sox fan in the White House. The question is, would MLB be moved by a Presidential pardon?