Notes #486 — So Much to Read, So Little Time

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

#486                                                                                                                            MAY 5, 2009
                           SO MUCH TO READ, SO LITTLE TIME!
 

            This issue is on the longish side, partly because it has some items that I could have added to #485, but held off. All I can say to those who prefer shorter issues is this: read this one in several sittings. I’m going on the road again soon, so it may be a while before #487.
 

            Since last issue, the first B-Sox Research Committee Newsletter is out, and I’ll thank editor Jacob Pomrenke, and all who contributed, one more time. Feedback welcome!
 

            Last issue, I mentioned that I ran across something from the White Sox bat boy in 1919. Since then, believe it or not, I found an interview of sorts with the assistant bat boy . In 1962, Father Kenney, a priest, ran into Henry McLemore, a reporter whose column ran in papers like the Idaho Falls Post Register , and you can look up the whole story in the August 14, 1962, issue. Just 12 in 1919, Father Kenney was born and raised a few blocks from Comiskey Park. According to McLemore, Fr K was one of the boys who, when the fix was exposed, is said to have cried to Jackson when he left the park, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” — James T. Farrell recalled it this way, too, but without the “Say.” “It was as if all my patron saints had left me,” said the priest in 1962. “I didn’t walk in a ball park for eight years, and neither did hundreds of other Southside Chicago boys.”
 

            Oddly enough, Fr Kenney is not the only Catholic priest to appear in this issue, as you’ll soon see.
 

            Much of this issue comes out of my computer, which is tuned in a lot these days to old newspapers. Which I enjoy a lot more than television. Mining, fishing, beating the bushes , it is even fun when I re-read an article but spot something new. For example, in Notes #377 I reported a nugget from a Dunkirk, NY, paper in 1932, in which Shoeless Joe Jackson says that he “asked to be suspended before the world series of 1919. I didn’t want to play after I heard what was going on. But I had to play. And I did play.” Then the usual “look at the record” and so forth.
 

            Well, that interview — by William Braucher, NEA Services Sports Writer — also appeared in the Piqua Daily Call (Ohio), the Frederick News-Post (MD), the Syracuse Herald (NY), and in the Waterloo Daily Courier . The headlines are different in each, and the length varies, too. In that last version, from Iowa, the headline reads Twelve Years After — Joe Jackson, Savannah Pants Presser, Takes Time Out from Healthy Business to Reminisce Just a Little . All the others headlines are considerably shorter. The Iowa article also has an anecdote that may be new to you, as it was to me. Jackson recalled how Eddie Collins was “the smartest man on the field” and often “did our thinking for us.”
 

Once he told me to play over on the left field line for Babe Ruth, I asked him why. I could move 10 feet, you know, after a ball and I couldn’t figure why Eddie wanted me to go over so far. But Eddie said Babe was going to hit over third base that day, and he wanted me to be all set. I stood almost on the foul line. Babe hit a smash right into my hands that would have busted up the ball game.  
 

            So if Jackson was playing out of position in the WS of 1919 (and I don’t think he was), was it his fault, or his manager’s, or McMullin’s (he scouted the Reds) — or Captain Eddie’s? 
 

            Anyway, although this is a longish issue, I had a lot of fun putting it together, and I hope you all find it fun to read.
 

 

EIGHTEEN MEN OUT — A POSTSCRIPT  
 

            Last issue, I wrote about the “Cobb strike game” of May 18, 1912. It included this paragraph:
 

A poor lad named Al Travers pitched the entire game, yielding 26 hits (although both box scores I found said 25), and giving him what turned out to be a lifetime ERA of 15.75; he walked seven and fanned one. Oh well, at least he could point to the CG and that one K.
 

            Thanks to Gary Livacari, I can now tell you the rest of the story.
 

            Al Travers was one of the young men recruited from nearby St Joseph’s College in Philadelphia. He was a 20-year-old junior with little baseball experience. Travers was found by Detroit manager Hughie Jennings with the assistance of a sportswriter from the Philadelphia Bulletin , Joe Nolan. Nolan knew Travers, the college team’s assistant manager, and apparently Travers was contacted first, and asked to find ten or twelve others. Nolan told them that they would not be expected to play the game, only to take the field — and that, only if the Detroit players went through with their threatened strike.
 

            Travers found eight volunteers: Dan McGarvey, 25, and Jim McGarr, 24, were teammates at Georgetown College. Pat Meaney, 20; Jack Smith, 19; Hap Ward, 20; Ed Irvin, 20; and Bill Leinhauser, 19, were apparently from St Joe’s. Billy Maharg, 29, and Leinhauser were both amateur boxers, Leinhauser being more noted. What this group had in common was a need for $25, not bad pay for a couple hours of hanging around.
 

            When umpire Bill Dineen called out “Play ball!,” the Detroit regulars took the field, while the recruits stayed in the bleachers. Ty Cobb trotted out to centerfield, but umpire Ed Perrine waved him off. Nice try, Peach. As Cobb walked off the diamond, his teammates followed him. Back in the Shibe Park clubhouse, they removed their uniforms. Jennings waved to the recruits, and they poured into the clubhouse, donning uniforms and hastily signing one-day contracts.
 

            Twenty thousand fans were waiting to see what would happen next. Connie Mack, the A’s manager and team owner, certainly did not want to lose the revenue, and insisted that the game go on. This stunned Jennings, and must have shocked the recruits. They were being fed to the Lions. Jennings put his coaches, Jim McGuire and Joe Sugden, behind the plate and at first base, respectively. Jennings offered Travers an extra $25 if he would pitch. He later confessed that he had never pitched before.
 

            He was not even a natural athlete. He played the violin and did some acting, and now he was cast as The Pitcher. As the baseball team’s assistant manager, his duties were writing up summaries for the school yearbook.
 

            The outcome was a 24-2 rout, and given the circumstances, it is a wonder that the score was not worse. Travers walked seven, and I have to believe the umpire was generous with his strike calls. Ed Irwin actually went 2-for-3, giving him a lifetime batting average of .667, higher than his fielding average of .500. Some fans did ask for a refund and left early. But no one disrupted the game.
 

            Detroit was not scheduled to play the next day (Never on Sunday was still the rule in some cities). Ban Johnson cancelled their Monday game, to avoid another travesty. Then he told the striking players that if they failed to take the field again, their careers were over. Ty Cobb urged them to play, and they did. Johnson reduced Cobb’s indefinite suspension to ten days, starting with May 16, the day after his mugging of the fan.
 

            Al Travers graduated from St Joe’s in 1913 and entered the Jesuits. He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1926. He taught some high school in Manhattan, then returned to St Joe’s, where he taught Spanish and religion for 25 years, until his death in 1968. He never talked much about his day as a major leaguer, but once was interviewed about it by Red Smith.
 

            He told Smith how he rounded up a bunch of fellows who were standing around the corner of 23rd and Columbia. Travers said that he threw the A’s a steady diet of slow curves, no fast balls. Like many pitchers, he complained that he just didn’t get any support.
 

            Gary’s article includes a photo of Father Al Travers. He is probably in his 70s. He’s holding a baseball, and smiling.
 

To read Gary’s full article:
http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=1937&pid=14325
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            I’ve only been in Philadelphia a few times. The first, in 1962, was for the Pennsylvania State Championship basketball game, Class A Catholic schools. I was a sophomore at North Catholic on Pittsburgh’s Troy Hill, and more than five busloads of kids made the trip. We won, finishing the season 26-5. The game was played at St Joseph’s College. If I was Rod Serling, I would now tell you that I sat beside a Father Al, who asked me if I liked baseball. That didn’t happen.
 

            I had no idea that I was anywhere near Connie Mack Stadium, which is the name Shibe Park went by from 1953-1970. What I remember, besides the game (now a blur), is hopping on a train that took us under a river, I think, to downtown Philly, where I caught a glimpse of the Liberty Bell (it was all that it was cracked up to be — sorry, I couldn’t resist), and was dazzled by being able to purchase food in something called an Automat. It must have been awful, but hey, it was a taste of the future .
 

 

THE SWEDE WAS A HARD GUY — TO LIVE WITH  
 

            Well, that’s what Agnes Risberg claimed, when she sued Swede for a divorce in 1922, a year after the Black Sox trial. The unhappy couple had their residence near San Francisco at the time, but when Mrs R. made national news, Swede was off playing ball in Chicago under the name of Jack Maples. Agnes charged her hubby with cruelty, without being more specific. She did elaborate some: they had been happy when Swede was playing in the Pacific Coast League. But after he went to the majors…. I’m not sure this divorce ever happened, by the way; I think Agnes and Charles (his actual name) were still together when he passed away in Red Bluff, CA, in 1975. But the 1922 incident did give us a great quote from the missus. According to her complaint, the Swede was fond of saying, “Why work when you can fool the public?” 
 

            I suspect that what Swede’s wife really wanted was for him to spend more time at home. That certainly was the case with Laurel Gandil, Chick’s missus, who may have been, for all we know, the main reason he did not return to the Sox for the 1920 season. (Personally, I think he and Comiskey had agreed to part ways.)  Mrs Gandil’s beef was that it was tough maintaining a home on the west coast and an apartment in Chicago, where rent was rising. So after the 1919 Series, Chick decided to look for a job closer to home, which was in northern California.
 

            As I wrote last issue, Swede was not the tight-lipped fellow that we think he was. Remember, it was Risberg who thrust himself into the national spotlight at the end of 1926, creating a stir by claiming there had been bribery and game-tossing back in 1917, involving two whole teams, his White Sox and the Detroit gang. That came at a time when Ty Cobb (and Tris Speaker) were already under the microscope for a little deal they did in 1919.
 

            Diamond Outlaw Asks Baseball Heads Lift Life-time Suspension , goes the headline in the Lincoln Star , January 15, 1934. It was an International News Service piece, originating not in Nebraska, but back in San Francisco. That’s where Swede had gotten his start in semi-pro ball, and where he returned, at age 38, to make his case.
 

            Swede was just 24 when he was ousted from baseball, “for something which he contends he did not do,” the INS reporter said.
“If I had held up a bank, I would have paid the penalty by this time,” he said, “and would be out of jail and able to earn a living. Those 14 years of punishment would seem to be enough, even if I had been guilty.
 

“At the time of the affair, I was going strong in baseball, with a good many years of baseball ahead of me. I have served my term and paid my fine, and I think I ought to have a chance to earn my living again in organized baseball. I am still young enough to have a great many years in the sport,” he declared, “and when I was through as a player I might catch on as a coach or a manager.” 
 

            Swede was truly a ballplayer, and had found ways to keep on playing even though he had been banned. In the years before this interview, he’d played mostly in Canada and the Dakotas.
 

            Swede Risberg Wanders Back Looking for Work goes the headline in the San Antonio Light , and it’s a shorter version of the same INS story. Risberg thought that he could “hold down the hot corner” in Pacific Coast League baseball.
 

            Risberg remained a baseball nomad for as long as he could, and there is something about that I like. Love of the game , it says, never in it just for the money . Or was he trying to fool the public?  When Westbrook Pegler sought our Swede in 1956, he had hung up the spikes and was operating a tavern in Weed, California. He had become as ordinary as anyone, enjoying his beer, hunting and fishing. He still followed baseball, and was sure that the White Sox teams of yesteryear would murder the easy pitching of 1956. He did not understand the infield shifts that were sometimes employed against Ted Williams or Mickey Mantle.
 

            Pegler told the Swede that Eddie Cicotte and Happy Felsch — he had visited with the earlier on his road trip — were both “amused” by the pitch that was all the rage at the time, the slider. “Me, too,” said Swede. “There can’t be any new curves unless some smart guy has one that starts back. I hear it is just an old outcurve with a little downer. Girls can throw that one.”
 

            Swede didn’t say much about 1919, if Pegler even asked him. But he went on and on about his son, who was a pretty fair ballplayer at Chico State College. I like that, too.
 

            For more on the whole series of interviews with living Black Soxers by Pegler in 1956, see NOTES #391.
 

 

ON THE SCREEN OF SPORT  
 

            Last issue, we looked at the column Hugh Fullerton wrote on October 11, the day after his much more famous “seven will not return” column. Some sources think Fullerton fired off that dire prediction, then left town for a long vacation, and wrote little else about the 1919 Series and those ever-swirling fix rumors, until he was safely away from Chicago. His December 1919 series of articles in the NY World is indeed the next well-known writing he produced. But, as we now know, Hughie never really stopped his writing. It just looked that way, but thanks to ProQuest and the Atlanta Constitution , we can go back and see what Hughie was up to all along the way, until the cover-up is finally ended.
 

            This time we start with another soon-after column. On October 17, Hughie begins this way: “The most amazing and probably the last world’s series has left a bitter taste in the mouths of millions of fans.”  Here we see Hughie’s wishful thinking (no more WS), and his habit of assuming that millions of fans share his own experience, which was not always the case.
 

            The bitterness? A team greatly “outclassing” its rival was “beaten rather disgracefully.” (Remember, Hughie had given the Sox the edge, using his “doping” system.) And, “never before have the professional gamblers made such a clean-up.” He fingers the gamblers in New York, Boston and Pittsburgh for making the odds.
 

            Hughie then explains how his own “doping” is never just his “opinion or prejudices or anything personal. It is cold calculation from official records.” He then reviews his pre-Series scoring, which gave the Sox a 6% edge on offense, 2% on defense, but the Reds a 2% edge in pitching. (With pitching being so important in a series, even a best-of-nine, I’m still surprised that the Reds’ win was seen as such an upset. The team with the best arms, the most depth, won.)
 

            Fullerton then reviews how his dope went, position by position. Joe Jackson hit “a bit better than forecast” because three short flies fell safe. He mentions again the “scandalous rumors that circulated from the first — even before the series started,” but stops short of using the word “bribery.” Hughie was very upset that the Reds resorted to vulgar language, attacking mainly Eddie Collins and Joe Jackson with their verbal assaults.  And he ends with this: “This series has hurt the sport terribly. It is up to ball club owners to decide whether it is worth while to take a half million dollars for the good name of baseball. It is also up to them to investigate and run to their source the vicious stories connected with the series.” Yes, Fullerton also could be naive.
 

            Four days later, Hughie is excited that his good pal Charles Comiskey has offered a $10,000 reward for any proof that the Sox were not trying to win in the WS just over; that some folks were already pushing for the WS to return to best-of-seven (it would not, until the three-year experiment was completed); and that others were pushing for the system of selling WS tickets to be changed. “All this indicates that, in spite of the harm done the game by the world’s series, the owners intend to continue that event and ignore the scandals.”  He got that right.
 

            How can they ignore the rumors, Hughie asks. “Without mincing words, I’ll say that a numerically large minority, if not a majority, of the fans, think there was something wrong.” It could just be gambler conversation and losers’ alibis.
 

            Hughie then talks about the rumors he heard before the series, from many different sources. He and Christy Mathewson watched the games closely. Comparing notes after the fifth game, Fullerton and Mathewson agreed that they had not seen any crooked playing. (This contradicts the version Hughie would tell later, about how he and Matty circled suspicious plays in their scorecards, especially in the first two games.) Hughie was told before Game Eight that he’d see the biggest first inning in WS history (other reporters corroborated this); when that happened, Hughie looked up his source later, and he denied knowing anything, “said he had just been talking.”
 

            What Fullerton seems to be doing in this column, is backing off some. For ten days, he had been blasting baseball for closing its ears and eyes to the fix rumors; now he is saying that many rumors have little basis in fact. But they still hang over the game like a dark cloud, and the owners really do need to do something to get rid of them. He notes that newspapers are naturally cautious about the rumors, fearing libel lawsuits. “The ugly talk is all over the country. I have received telegrams and letters from Iowa, Missouri and two places in Illinois, asking whether to pay off bets on the series.” Considering the gamblers from those three states who, it turned out, were involved in the fixing — it looks like Hughie was tossing out clues.
 

            Hughie often ends his pieces with a flourish. “Did it ever strike you that the financial part of baseball has come to be bigger than the sport itself?” Say it ain’t so, Hughie! “If you doubt it, read the sporting sheets. During the recent series the money received was played up in black type, and, in many of the reports, it was given more prominence than Roush’s catches or Eller’s pitching.”
 

            OK, one more. Another four days pass, it’s October 25, 1919, and Hughie begins with this: “Baseball — both the business and the sport — need renovating. The winter scandal season has opened.”  The Carl Mays case has come up again — Frank Navin, the Detroit owner, wants the Yankees to forfeit the games that Mays won down the stretch for New York; that would put Detroit in the money. NY had edged out the Tigers for 3rd place in the AL race, by half a game. 3rd place in 1919 meant $13,000.
 

            The Mays case deserves its own long treatment, and I won’t do that here. Briefly, Mays quit the Boston Red Sox cold, and Boston let him sign with the Yankees. AL Czar Ban Johnson was not at all pleased, and suspended Mays, but the Yankees took the case to court, and that’s where it was finally settled.
 

            Fullerton sees the battle lines being drawn: Comiskey, Frazee (of Boston AL) and the NY colonels would do battle with the five other owners who were loyal to Johnson. The game was afoot, the National Commission was doomed, and the struggle for power that eventually vaulted Kenesaw Mountain Landis into the role of all-powerful Commish was underway. This struggle served, I think, to keep any investigation of the fix rumors, on the back burner. After all, a truly thorough housecleaning could mean some changes in club ownership; well, that was Hughie’s dream, anyway.
 

            Hughie has some inside dope on the politics, of course. “I happen to know that, during the world’s series, conferences were held and plans discussed for an entire re-adjustment of so-called ‘organized baseball.'”  We might see a new “smashing” big league come out of it all. Who knows? “Oh, for another Hulbert,” Hughie pines after getting his readers on the edge of their seats.
 

            Then he’s off in a totally different direction — he often does this in his columns, sometimes several times. You want him to stay on the subject, but — now he’s recalling how he and Christy Mathewson argued all during the 1919 WS about — ready?  — the double steal, and how to stop it.
 

            And that’s Hugh Fullerton for you. In the end, he was always a fan, who would rather write about great catches by Edd Roush, or how he discussed the double steal with old King Kelly or Ray Schalk. I think he had the good sense to know that his was, after all, a sports column. His newspapers did no real investigative reporting, not yet, so he would often stray into that area. And he’d talk baseball economics and politics, too. But he left his readers with the images that they wanted to read about, the same ones that drew them to ballparks.
 

 

LOST IN SPACE; CHICK GANDIL’S 1920  
 

            When the 1919 Series was over, Chick Gandil was cited for his gutty performance. Despite injuries, he had played well, only one error in over 80 chances, and several game-winning RBIs. The rugged first baseman had been rock solid, and after the scandal broke, Gandil took the same tack that the .375-hitting Jackson took, “Look at the record.”  He may have pulled a boner or two on the bases, but I doubt that his number was circled in any plays or at bats that looked suspicious to Fullerton and Mathewson.
 

            Gandil met with Comiskey right after the series, and while we have nothing from that meeting, my hunch is that Commy brought up the Fix, Gandil argued that it never happened, and the two agreed that 1919 would be Chick’s last season with the White Sox. Commy would let him go respectfully, offering him a contract of $4,000, knowing Chick was asking for $6,000. There was a little back-and-forth, then silence, and on April 14 Comiskey would officially suspend Gandil for failure to sign his contract and report to the club for the 1920 season.
 

            The papers across America that spring noted that NY Giants Hal Chase was gone, along with Heinie Zimmermann; only later would John McGraw say why; Lee Magee, who spent 1914-1919 with seven different teams, was also dropped from MLB, and he would lose his lawsuit to protest the blacklisting — never pay your bookie with a personal check, especially when you bet against your own team. Swede Risberg and Buck Weaver were holding out, too, but both would come around, leaving Chick Gandil alone as the man who never returned.
 

            The papers also worried out loud about the Sox’ chances to win a third pennant in four years without Gandil. He had been the anchor of the infield, catching anything thrown in his direction. His absence gave Ted Jourdan a shot; but the youngster from New Orleans would play just 48 games, hit .240, and never play in the majors again after 1920. John “Shano” (or “Shauno”) Collins would play 117 games at first, and hit .303, then be traded after 1920 with Nemo Leibold to the Red Sox for Harry Hooper. Harry had a few more .300+ seasons in him at the end of his Hall of Fame career, but the shock of losing seven players all at once, at the end of the 1920 season, required decades of rebuilding.
 

            The six months of the 1920 season must have been strained for everyone on the White Sox, including their owner. Everyone knew what they did last October , but no one spoke about it. Four pitchers won 20 or more games as Kid Gleason guided the Sox toward a photo finish. I have occasionally wondered if the cover-up would have ever ended, if the Sox had pulled away in September. Would Cicotte have waited until after the 1920 Series to go to the grand jury, if he went at all?  And if none of the players confessed to anything , and won the Series — proving they were winners after all — would the Cook County grand jury decide to drop the case from 1919, saying “no hard evidence” and issuing stern warnings?
 

            But what about Chick Gandil?  He drops off the radar screen when he decides to return his contracts unsigned. He pops up here and there — in San Francisco, he is hoping Comiskey releases him so he might catch on with a PCL team. He’s managing the St Anthony’s team in Idaho in the Snake River-Yellowstone League, light years away from the majors. But he seems happy, he likes the west and would spend the last years of his life in California. When the scandal breaks, Chick is in a Lufkin, Texas, hospital, having removed the appendix that bothered him all during the 1919 season (Commy told him to ice it and play). After September 28, 1920 — the day that shook baseball — Chick was back in the public eye, and his name, at least, would remain there forever. He was one of them , the dirty Sox, eight men out .
 

            So far, I’ve found just one story from Chick’s “sabbatical” year, that quiet 1920 season. It was in the Fort Wayne News & Sentinel , an Indiana paper, on July 1, 1920.
 

            Baseball is Different in the Western Tall Timbers , the headline informs us. “Players From Majors Find It Queer Going in the Sticks” is the sub-head. James J. Corbett, a King Features Syndicate reporter, has tracked Chick down.
 

            Manager Gandil, it seems, had his St Anthony boys in Pocatello, Idaho, and he sent “a youth named Keogh” to the mound. When the hurler started getting hit hard around the 4th or 5th inning, Gandil decided to send him to an early shower. He waved to the mound for Keogh to make room for the new pitcher. But Gandil was ignored. Finally, Gandil went to the mound and told the lad to “git” but again Keogh refused and got nasty about it. This prompted Chick to grab him by the collar and lead him off the mound. (Chick was a big fellow, remember, and a former boxer.) Keogh hung around in the dugout, and when Gandil came back, Keogh “took a swipe at him.” Chick retaliated, and Corbett says that “a pleasant time was had by all (the spectators) when some officers  of the law interfered and shooed Keogh right out of the park.”
 

            Corbett adds that Gandil — “famed as a battler — suffered quite a few cuts and abrasions.” So perhaps Chick’s year away from it all was not a vacation.
 

 

BEATING THE BUSHES  
 

            Gems like the one above can be found using NewspaperArchive , which allows digital searches (you can plug in “Gandil” or “Black Sox” and you’re off) scanning millions of pages of tiny newspapers all over the country. With ProQuest , you do that, too, viewing articles; with Archive , you view whole pages. But it’s easy to enlarge them and to print out just what you want. I just might make “Beating the Bushes” a regular feature in Notes , an umbrella for whatever I fish out of my computer.
 

            I actually now have ProQuest from two different libraries, and their menus are slightly different. One offers the Pittsburgh Courier , so I can now read Wendell Smith lobbying for integration. As he did August 26, 1939, after a long interview with Casey Stengel, who was managing the Boston Braves. “Owners Must Solve Color Problem in Majors” — Stengel was the bold headline. Casey was all for integration, and seemed familiar with many Negro League stars; he named at least eight, and was very high on Satchell Paige. Casey noted, and Smith seemed to agree, that the Negro Leagues could be operated on a better business basis; as it was, there seemed to be some player unrest … and we sure don’t want any of that in MLB, do we?
 

            That got Smith writing about how MLB was not always the best-run operation, either, and he brings up the Black Sox scandal. “It was the biggest, sloppiest, crudest, rottenest plot ever conceived and carried out in the history of the game.” For Smith, the B-Sox thing was an indelible stain on MLB. And it brought Judge Landis into baseball, as the game’s policeman. In Smith’s view, Landis is what he is because of eight banished ballplayers. The scandal is still a taboo topic. Smith: “The Whitesox scandal is such a horror to them … that they don’t even want innocent black players.”  All this was Smith’s reply to Casey’s worries about blacks causing problems in MLB.
 

            It’s an interesting point. My own view is that the scandal did not absolutely require a Judge Landis, but it enabled him to assume the post of Commish in a crisis, and demand powers that he might not have been granted in less turbulent times.
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            Speaking of the Commish, I found another interesting article via PQ , this one from 1945, the January 10 NY Times . Judge Landis had passed away, and John Drebinger looked up old John Heydler to talk about What Now?  Heydler saw a need to replace Landis quickly, but recalled, correctly, that Landis had been a candidate for Commish even before the B-Sox scandal. (Before the 1919 series was played, I think.) Heydler had a front row seat for the scandal (and cover-up), as NL prez from 1919 until his retirement (ill health) in 1934. Heydler had urged Garry Herrmann to resign from the National Commission September 12, 1919 (he had a letter to prove it). Heydler and others thought with Herrmann in charge during a World Series in which his own team was playing, was “a bad set-up; it just didn’t look right.”  Garry finally did resign, January 8, 1920.
 

            After that, Ban Johnson and Heydler were in charge, and they could not agree on a new third party for the Commission. Heydler offered to toss a coin to settle it, but Ban said no way. And Heydler lobbied for Landis — perhaps that’s why Ban balked. Johnson really wanted a Commish with baseball credentials.
 

            Heydler wondered, in 1945, if swifter action in 1919 to appoint a new Commish, “who knows but that there might never have been a Black Sox scandal.”  Who knows, indeed. Drebinger did not ask Heydler about why he exonerated Hal Chase earlier in 1919, giving a green light to players to deal with gamblers; or why he failed to make public the knowledge he had of the October 1919 Fix, if not from day one, then certainly after he had looked into a situation in May 1920 in which two Boston NL players said they heard Rube Benton had won big, betting on the crooked series. These are two questions I’ll have for Mr Heydler, if we ever meet. I bet he avoids me.
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            OK, from the mainstream NY Times , we take a long detour into the real bushes. Or beaches. The Long Beach Independent , to be exact, a California paper, and it’s July 25, 1953. Reporter Dave Lewis decides to devote his “Once Over Lightly” column to something we haven’t talked about here in Notes since March 17, issue #480 — Eddie Cicotte’s shine ball!
 

            Stop groaning, I’ll skim. Lewis — who never read Notes — says “probably no delivery has been discussed as much as the ‘mystery pitch’ of Eddie Cicotte.” Why is Lewis bringing this up, in 1953?  Because Ty Cobb had recently called Cicotte “the trickiest spitballer of all.”
 

            Now the cool part. Lewis calls Cicotte, who is living happily in Michigan, “where he raises some of the finest strawberries and raspberries found in the state.”  Didn’t know that , did you, Cicotte experts?
 

            Asked about the “mystery pitch” Cobb had written about in some detail, Eddie laughed. “The mystery was supplied by the players themselves. The pitch was successful because of the mental hazard the players themselves created.”  Cicotte was being consistent: Read my lips — there never was any shine ball .
 

            Cicotte went on some. He’d learned the spitter from its inventor, Elmer Stricklett, at Sault Ste Marie. He learned the knuckler from Eddie “Kickapoo” Summers, 1906, Indianapolis.
 

            “The other pitch” took on a life of its own, however, causing opponents to raid his locker to steal his uniform and send it to the lab (I think I saw this on CSI — “just dust and dirt,” Grisham said). Cicotte was also called into Ban Johnson’s office numerous times — this article says “nearly a dozen times” but another time, Eddie said just five or six. He said the conversation would always go something like this, and remember, Cicotte apparently had a good sense of humor, Johnson had none.
 

            “You’ve got to quit using that pitch, Eddie.”
            “What pitch?”
            “The one they’re all complaining about.”
            “Well if you tell me what I’m doing wrong I’ll be glad to stop doing it.”
            “You know what it is you’re doing wrong.”
            “I’m doing nothing that is illegal.”
            “Well quit doing it.”
            “What do you want me to do, pitch left-handed?”
 

            Let me quickly point out that there is no record of Johnson ever calling Cicotte on the carpet before, during or after the 1919 World Series, to ask him if he was doing anything illegal. Maybe he was tired by then of Eddie’s humor.
 

            Cicotte went on and on with Lewis about all kinds of stuff pitchers did in the old days to get an edge. Every investigation made his “shine ball” more effective, as it made batters more suspicious and off-balance. But he insisted, as always, that it was simply a pitch he threw with perfect or near-perfect control, breaking it either left or right, and keeping it low. That is, when he wasn’t tossing spitters or knucklers. “The manner in which I delivered it made it look different. And it became really effective and successful when the boys [his teammates, too] began making a mystery out of it.”
 

            This was a really long interview, and hats off to Mr Lewis for keeping Eddie on the phone so long. Too bad he didn’t ask him about — oh, never mind.
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            An intriguing headline in the LA Times on December 20, 1953, went like this: ‘Black Sox’ Scandal Investigator Passes . This is one I missed in my research for Burying , but Susan Dellinger caught it. If you haven’t seen her 2006 book Red Legs and Black Sox yet, put it on your list. It has the fullest treatment yet of the Cincinnati side of the gambling carried out in October 1919. At the recent Seymour Conference, I cited Red Legs as a good example of finding what is still out there , if anyone cares to look, stuff that can flesh out this murkiest corner of the B-Sox puzzle.
 

            OK, so who died in 1953? Not Hugh Fullerton, he was long gone by then, and not Frank O. Klein, the investigator of Collyer’s Eye . No, it was Cal D. Crim of Cincinnati. Crim ran a detective agency in 1919 and was employed by Ban Johnson to dig into those nasty Fix rumors, perhaps starting while the WS was still in progress. His agency had been around since 1911; Ban Johnson had lots of Cincy connections. Crim’s agency would eventually have offices in 25 cities; in 1919, it happened to have a Chicago bureau, and that proved handy. His 1953 obit says that Crim’s men “dug up canceled checks and a safety deposit box which proved the players had been paid to throw games to provide winnings for a gambling syndicate.”
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            Back to the bushes: Chicago Scandal is Back in News , announced the Daily Globe , a paper you might read if you woke up on September 14, 1956, in Ironwood, Michigan. Chick Gandil’s famous Sports Illustrated interview with Mel Durslag (see Notes #391 for my interview with Mel) had hit the stands, and if you were a sports writer in Michigan, who you gonna call for a reaction?  Of course — Eddie Cicotte was living in Detroit.
 

            The Chicago Tribune had already pounced on Happy Felsch (in Milwaukee) for his reaction. Happy claimed that he never got a dime (he had admitted getting $5,000 back in 1920), never tossed a game and never intended to toss a game. Gandil replied to that, saying Happy was correct, no one threw any games, “We tried to win them.” Gandil said he was paid for the SI article, but not that much, and yes, what he said there was the true story.
 

            Cicotte disagreed with Chick, but really didn’t want to go into detail. “I took my medicine. I’ve forgotten all about it. What [Gandil] is saying isn’t the truth.”  Nothing about the shine ball, thank goodness.
 

            This was not a brand-new nugget for me, but I report it here just to remind us how even very small newspapers can be sources of “after the fall” reflections from the B-Sox players. I like to think that they may have opened up more to reporters they knew, maybe guys they saw at the local pub or PTA meetings, or at the local ballpark.
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            Neale Says Black Sox Series Wasn’t Fixed . Alfred Earle “Greasy” Neale had roamed the outfield for the Reds in the 1919 WS, playing all eight games and batting .357, 10-for-28. He’d play a few more years after 1919 then become much more famous in football. In 1961, NY reporter Harry Grayson had the by-line in a story in the October 7 Ogden Standard-Examiner (Utah), but I saw the story in a September story out of Zanesville, Ohio. I suspect Grayson chose to run the thing during the Series, which in 1961 featured the Cincinnati Reds, versus the NY Yankees. Apparently Neale gave the interview after a Cardinals-Giants game at Yankee Stadium. (The Cards opened their NFL season in 1961 in NY on September 17 with a 21-10 win.)
 
            I included some of Neale’s remarks in Burying the Black Sox . Neale thought the Sox may not have played their best in Game One, but were definitely giving it their all after that. Neale recalled Felsch being robbed on a great catch by Edd Roush in Game Two, a game-changer.
 

            Here is Neale’s version of those controversial Cicotte plays in Game Four, some we last discussed here in Notes #482 :
 

… Eddie Cicotte fielded Pat Duncan’s swinging bunt down the third base line and in his haste threw high enough for the ball to ricochet off the tip of Gandil’s glove. Later it was written that the pitcher threw the ball over Gandil’s head.
 

When Larry Kopf singled Duncan home and Cicotte moved to cut off Joe Jackson’s throw to the plate, the ball took a bad bounce and got away from the pitcher. It was written that Cicotte deliberately cut off the throw and messed up the play.
 

            In Burying , I noted Neale’s comments on Jackson playing him correctly, as a singles hitter; so not Jackson’s fault when Neale’s fly went over Joe’s head.
 

            I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else suggest that the throw Cicotte cut off — and truly “messed up” — in Game Four, took a “bad bounce.”  But that’s the way Neale remembered it, 42 years later.
                                                                        * * * * *
 

            Join Swede Risberg for the World Series , says the inviting headline in the Red Bluff Daily News , October 9, 1970. Sure enough, there’s a great photo of Swede (then 75) and his dog. Swede lived in Red Bluff and the local paper leaned on its famous resident (a former major leaguer who played in two WS) to share his thoughts about the coming Series, between the Cincinnati Reds and the Baltimore Orioles. The Swede was a hard loser — he had picked the Reds, who lost in five. If you recall this WS, you remember Brooks Robinson playing a dazzling third base; for Swede, that brought back memories of Buck Weaver. That is as close as Swede got to talking about his old White Sox days.
 

                                                                        * * * * *
 

            Ted Williams Campaign to Clear Shoeless Joe is the headline in the AP story that I recently read in the Minneapolis Star Tribune of June 20, 1999. Jackson was not my focus in Burying , but I did report some on the efforts by Ted Williams (and Bob Feller made it bi-partisan) to get Jackson reinstated. No need to go into that here.
 

            But I will repeat my view that Ted Williams, bless him, took the wrong approach. For one thing, he hired a lawyer, who compiled a long, complicated and sometimes inaccurate document. He put too much weight on numbers and too little, I think, on the cover-up, which makes whatever Jackson did seem like a venial sin in comparison.
 

            Here is what was new to me in the 1999 article. Williams said that he first learned all about Jackson from Eddie Collins, who was once GM of Ted’s Red Sox. When Ted asked about Jackson,
 

“[Collins’] head dropped and there was quite a pause,” Williams said, recalling the conversation. “Then he looked to the ceiling and said, ‘Boy, what a player he was.’ His expression and that pause. That’s something I’ve always remembered. It was said from the heart. I was impressed by the reverence he had for Joe Jackson.”
 

            This article has not just Feller, but Yogi Berra and Tom LaSorda joining Ted’s campaign. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was doing a formal review.
 

            I think Ted (and others) might have done better by stressing that it was a lifetime ban, and Jackson’s lifetime had ended. So guilty or innocent, the ban should be over. Arguing that the penalty was too harsh complicates things. It is especially important, when dealing with Commissioners, to keep it simple.
 

 

UP FROM CAFFEINE  
 

            Although the two are often mixed in discussion, the B-Sox scandal is really a whole different issue than the steroids controversy. The Sox were offered bribes to play poorly, so that their opponents would win. Players who take steroids, ETC (and that’s a BIG “etc.” on purpose), presumably do so to make themselves the best athletes they can be, becoming more valuable to their teams and enhancing not only their performances, but their teams’ W-L records.
 

            Players have always strove to “enhance their performances,” by any means possible, that is nothing new. What substances they may have used in this effort may have been legal or illegal at the time. (A number of Hall of Famers threw spitters, for example, or other pitches later banned; many more probably drank beverages during Prohibition that may have been at least tainted, if not illegally bought or sold; many took amphetamines without prescriptions, and so on.)
 

            Sometimes I wonder if the strong reaction we have seen in recent years to steroid ETC use, is fanned by the media into being a bigger deal than it should be. Obviously, I am not in favor of condoning the use of harmful substances — but are all these substances harmful?  Or are some more high-risk?  Many are now illegal (but were not so until recently, and so may not be at some time in the future). What is harmful now might be made safe tomorrow, and laws change, and vary country to country, sometimes state to state. What is constant, at the top level of any sport, is the pressure to keep pace with everyone else, to compete , and often this impulse makes athletes take terrible risks.
 

            What has me on this subject is an article in a recent New Yorker (April 27), having nothing to do with sports, at least on the surface. “Brain Gain,” by Margaret Talbot, pp 32 ff, looks at the way students and many other Americans today take Ritalin, Adderall, Provigil, and other substances that may be prescribed for ADHD or other medical conditions. But they are taken to enhance mental performance , helping people focus, remember, and more. They cannot create “A” students (yet), but they might help a C student get a B+ on a term paper or test; might help someone make a great sales presentation despite suffering from jet lag; and who knows?  They just might be helping some pitchers focus enough to remember how to get these guys out , or to control their best pitches better, enabling them to move up in their careers, and to avoid sliding down to the roster a class below.
 

            At the Seymour Conference, keynoter Joe Posnanski (a writer from Kansas City) was excited about the great start of KC pitcher Zack Greinke this season. At the time, he was undefeated and had not yielded an earned run. Joe was writing the cover story for SI , and you can read it (on line) in the 5/4 issue. As I write this, he’s slipped some, to 6-0 and 0.40. Greinke was diagnosed a couple years ago with a couple bona fide mental illnesses, clinical depression and SAD, social anxiety disorder. (I would not pass such labels on, ordinarily, because of the stigma that any mental illness still has (wrongly) for many people; but this info is easy to find on the internet, so it’s hardly confidential. It may also no longer actually “fit” Greinke’s state of mind. I am skeptical about labels, but take seriously what they point to.
 

            I mention this here because Greinke controls his problems at least partly by medication (therapy or counseling has probably helped as well). I am actually glad to report that whatever he is taking was not easily found on the internet, nor should it be. I will say that SAD is most commonly treated by benzodiazepines (such as valium), betablockers (I think I take these, or used to), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), like celexia, prozac, paxil or zoloft. At least that’s what one web site says; if I fished around, I could fill a page with other hard-to-spell words, I’m sure. But you get the idea. My own experience in working with many individuals with a wide variety of mental illnesses, is that all these substances may work differently for different people, and their frequency and dosage need to be carefully monitored. The miracle is that many work, enabling folks to function with a measure of normalcy. No one I know wants to take medications, and I include myself in that number; yet we do, “doctor’s orders,” and life goes on.
 

            Is there even a remote chance that Zack’s medications are doing more than helping him cope with his disease — that they are also enhancing his performance?  I don’t know, and to be honest, I don’t want to know. “I know it’s fashionable to say he learned how to pitch,” former KC GM Allard Baird says, “but I don’t buy it. The guy had a great feel for pitching from the start. I think he’s just in a good place mentally. He wants to compete. People talk about ‘Does he love to pitch?’ I think he likes to pitch. But this guy loves to compete.”
 

            Posnanski: “So what about the riddle ‑‑ the mind or the arm? Well, there are no easy answers to a good riddle.” 
 

            Well, if I’m a professional pitcher, and I read, back-to-back, the New Yorker article by Talbot, and the SI article on Greinke by Posnanski — I just might start wondering if something Zack is taking might help me focus better for a couple hours, every fourth or fifth day. Especially if I just got shelled and my future in baseball is hanging by a thread.
 

            Such is the society we live in, in 2009. A 50-1 longshot wins the Kentucky Derby and before we stop cheering, we ask, Wonder what HE was on?
 

 

A LITTLE LIGHT ON “RISBERGATE” — FROM 1922  
 

            Here is a recent post of mine to the B-Sox Yahoo group:
           
I recently found an article from May 12, 1922 ‑‑ in the Lincoln Star , but it was in lots of papers — in which Buck Weaver talks (or “Squawks” as the Star headline puts it) about that 1917 “non‑scandal” involving games tossed back & forth between the Detroit and Chicago teams.  It’s the same issue raised at the end of 1926 by Swede Risberg, which resulted in a hearing by Landis and an interrogation of 30+ players & coaches.
 
Weaver had appealed for reinstatement in January 1922, less than six months after the B‑Sox trial; he was not formally turned down until the following December. Anyway, in May 1922, according to James L. Kilgallen (one of the reporters hooked on the B‑Sox), Buck spoke up, in Chicago, saying that a deal was made in 1917 ‑‑ the Detroiters handing 4 games to the Sox around Labor Day, to help them clinch the AL flag, and then the Sox returning the favor in September 1919, to help Detroit win 3rd‑place money (they just missed). 
 

Buck was not speaking in a vacuum, Happy Felsch had started working with lawyer Ray Cannon in Milwaukee, and Cannon went public with a list of questions that he wanted to pose to Comiskey. It’s a wonderful, theatrical list, that he recycled when he took on Risberg’s and Jackson’s cases, too.  He hints that Comiskey knew all about the 1917 exchange of money (each member of the Sox kicking in $45 ‑‑ even Eddie Collins! ‑‑ Weaver was an exception, but it’s not that simple).
 
Weaver basically agrees with one item in the list, the 1917 bribing.  Buck has Gandil & Risberg taking up the collection, so his details vary with the version that Risberg and Gandil gave in 1926‑27.  But my questions are: (1) Why didn’t this blow up in the news in 1922, as it did in 1926?  Was it because the press was tired of scandals, or giving Landis a break, or was it because in 1926, Ty Cobb (and Tris Speaker) was in the news for a different scandal, making him the fair game that he was NOT in 1922?  And (2) how come no one brought this 1922 statement of Weaver to the 1927 hearing?
 
Maybe it was because Weaver added something to his story. He said that the fix was in for the last two series between Detroit and Chicago, but he makes it seem like the money collected was to give Detroit an extra incentive to play hard against the Boston team, the only team still in contention (“They hated Boston, anyway.”)
 
At that 1927 hearing, the press reported that as Risberg was telling his story about 1917, Weaver was nodding in agreement.  BUT when Buck’s turn to talk came, he flocked together with the majority of birds around the table ‑‑ possibly to gain favor with Landis. Buck promptly followed his support of the majority with yet another request for reinstatement. But it looks like Buck really did not change his story from 1922. Landis ‑‑ who had already probed the 1917 stuff soon after taking office early in 1921 ‑‑ ruled that the money that exchanged hands was to reward Detroit for beating Boston, and NOT as payment for “sloughing” games to Chicago. Imagine, Landis agreeing with Buck!
 
The Felsch charges ‑‑ later Risberg’s as well ‑‑ had the money being bribe money, going to the pitchers (and catcher) who lost to the Sox. Weaver had the money going to the whole Detroit team, including his off‑season pal Oscar Vitt, also a third baseman. (Weaver also testifies that the 1917 manager Pants Rowland and coach Kid Gleason had told the team “in the club house time and again” that if they won the Series, Commy would see to it that they all received at least $5,000, regardless of the take at the gate.)
 
It looks to me like Ray Cannon, the lawyer, knows the “facts” and guesses that it will be hard to prove that the money that was turned over to Detroit was NOT bribe money.  Landis, in his ruling, knows that it is equally hard to prove that it WAS bribery, and not the more benign “thank you” donation from a pennant‑winner to a team that beat their closest rival. In any case, I think this sheds more light on “Risbergate” and also suggests, to me, that perhaps Ray Cannon prompted the Swede to bring 1917 up again, in 1926.  It put 30 jobs in jeopardy, and Cannon was ever‑hopeful that the players would someday organize for their mutual protection.
 

            After that post, I did some more digging. One thing I found is that “Weaver’s squawk” appeared in none of the major newspapers. Just lots of little ones. Interesting.
 

            The NY Times reported Felsch’s lawsuit, but interviewed Ray Schalk instead. Schalk admitted that there was a collection taken up in 1917 among the Sox and delivered to the Detroit team, but it was a “bonus to the Detroit pitchers if they defeated Boston in a series toward the end of the season. There was nothing crooked about it. We have nothing to hide.”  “That goes for me, too,” Captain Eddie Collins chimed in.
 

            On May 13, the Washington Post reported that Swede Risberg and Joe Jackson were also making charges similar to Felsch’s. They were pretty much identical, as they shared the same lawyer. Again, we can view Ray Cannon’s tactics here as foreplay, which he may have hoped would produce a quick, out-of-court settlement. There indeed was a lot of pressure on Comiskey to settle, but he refused; it would take until early 1924 before the first case made it to trial, Joe Jackson’s, in Milwaukee.
 

            The immediate battle for Cannon was to put Comiskey on the stand. He finally did depose him for the 1924 trial, and then got a chance to question him again during the Jackson trial. The results were not nearly as juicy or provocative as the questions he was asking Commy in public in 1922.
 

            The Post added that the Sox had thought this was all in the past, they had sent Felsch a check months before. But Felsch told them by letter, six months later. that he never received it. They then mailed a second check, with Felsch returned. Cannon had raised Happy’s sights, he, Risberg and Jackson were going for a jackpot.
 

            The Sox secretary Harry Grabiner denied any 1917 bribery. So did Kid Gleason. So did Eddie Collins, again. And so did Ban Johnson, still president of the AL, although in Landis’ shadow. Johnson stated that this 1917 story was nothing new — he had expected that it might come up in the 1921 B-Sox trial, but it never did. Johnson had learned about it long ago and informed Landis about it when the Judge took charge. Of course it was “wrong-doing and not permissible, yet it was not a criminal act like the Sox committed in the World’s Series … when they deliberately threw games to Cincinnati.”  Johnson then gave a lot of details, how much was collected (Eddie Collins in for $40), and where it went (he said $100 each to four Detroit pitchers and some to catcher Stanage). At the tail end of a long series of items, the Post quotes Detroit secretary Charles F. Navin, who characterizes the charges by Buck Weaver and Happy Felsch as “ridiculous.” Young Navin seems to be the only one who has read about “Weaver’s squawk.”
 

            As a kind of postscript to all this, we fast forward to December 1922, when Landis finally replies to Buck’s request for reinstatement. It’s a long reply, which can be summed up in one word, “No!”  But he mentions something that I’m not sure I’ve seen before. This was is the Washington Post , 12/18/1922, p 13, “Landis Delves Deeply in Buck Weaver’s Case.”
 

            After repeating Buck’s familiar story, he says that according to Weaver, about eight weeks into the 1920 season, he was approached by “one of the subsequently indicted players” with “another proposal from Cicotte to ‘throw games'” — again . Buck said he never talked with Cicotte about this, and told the “intermediary” that he’d “have nothing to do with any of his propositions.” He warned that if he heard anything else, he’d go to Gleason.
 

            Landis then reports that Weaver did go to Gleason — sort of. Cicotte was the starter, and Buck told Kid to have somebody warmed up — period. This was not “an intimation of Cicotte’s crookedness,” Landis went on, but a suggestion to a manager. Asked why he didn’t tell Gleason the rest of the story, Weaver said he did not want to be “put in the class of a ‘knocker’ or ‘tattler.'”  Landis goes on to fault Weaver for not denying at the 1921 trial that he was in the plotting — Buck was, of course, following his lawyer’s advice, which did yield — and this was Buck’s misfortune — a “not guilty” verdict.
 

            So there’s another something new from Buck, at least it is new to me. Maybe the documents that turned up recently in Chicago will have more from Weaver. If they do, this would be evidence that suggests that there was still hanky-panky going on in 1920, not just in general, but with our very own B-Sox!