Month: September 2024

From Lord Stanley’s Cup to the Superbowl to the NBA’s Larry O’Brien Trophy, the world of professional sports has little to compare with the race for the pinnacle trophy. The championship contest when entire economies slow to a crawl and even casual sports fans are swept up in the spectacle.

For professional baseball, the “Fall Classic” began in 1903, a best-of-nine “World Series” played out between the Boston Braves and the Pittsburg Pirates. Boston won in eight games.

Excepting the boycott year of 1904 when there was no series, most World Series have been ‘best-of-seven”. That changed in 1919, when league owners agreed to play a nine-game series, to generate more revenue and increase the popularity of the sport.

Today, top players are paid sums equivalent to the gross domestic product of developing nations, but that wasn’t always the case. One hundred years ago, much of that revenue failed to find its way to the players.  Even the best among them held second jobs.

Chicago White Sox owner Chuck Comiskey built one of the most powerful organizations in professional baseball around this time, despite a well-deserved reputation for stinginess.

The scandal of the 1919 “Black Sox” began when Arnold “Chick” Gandil, the first baseman with ties to Chicago gangsters, convinced his buddy and professional gambler Joseph “Sport” Sullivan, that he could throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. New York gangster Arnold Rothstein supplied the money through his own right-hand man, former featherweight boxing champion Abe Attell.

Pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude “Lefty” Williams were principally involved with throwing the series, along with outfielder Oscar “Hap” Felsch and shortstop Charles “Swede” Risberg. 

Third baseman George “Buck” Weaver attended a meeting where the fix was talked about, but decided not to participate. Weaver produced some of his best statistics of the year during the 1919 post-season.

Star outfielder “Shoeless” Joe Jackson may have been a participant, though some dispute his involvement.  Other players, it seems, may have used his name in order to give themselves credibility. Utility infielder Fred McMullin was never involved in the planning but threatened to report the others unless they cut him in on the payoff.

The more “straight arrow” players on the club knew nothing about the fix. Second baseman Eddie Collins, catcher Ray Schalk, and pitcher Red Faber had nothing to do with it, though the conspiracy received an unexpected boost when Faber came down with the flu.

Rumors were already flying as the series began on October 2. Sports bookies placed so much cash on Cincinnati, the odds were dead even.  Gamblers complained there was nothing left on the table.  Cicotte, who had shrewdly collected his $10,000 the night before, struck leadoff hitter Morrie Rath with his second pitch, a prearranged signal that “the fix was in”.

The plot began to unravel that first night.   Attell withheld the next installment of $20,000 to bet on the following game.

Game 2 starting pitcher Lefty Williams was still willing to go through with the fix, even though he hadn’t been paid.   He’d go on to lose his three games in the best-of nine series, but by game 8, he wanted out.

The wheels came off in game three.  Former Tigers pitcher and Rothstein intermediary Bill “Sleepy” Burns bet everything he had on Cincinnati, knowing the outcome in advance.  Except, Rookie pitcher Dickie Kerr wasn’t in on the fix.  He pitched a masterful game in game three, shutting Cincinnati out 3-0, and leaving Burns flat broke.

Cicotte became became enraged by game 7, thinking that gamblers were trying to renege on their deal.  The knuckle baller bore down to a White Sox win and the series stood, 4-3.

Williams was back on the mound in game 8.    By this time he wanted out of the deal, but gangsters threatened to hurt him and his family if he didn’t lose the game. Nothing but mediocre fastballs that game allowed four hits and three runs in the first inning alone.  The White Sox went on to lose that game 10-5, ending the series in a 3 – 5 Cincinnati win.

Rumors of the fix began immediately and dogged the team throughout the 1920 season.   Chicago Herald & Examiner baseball writer Hugh Fullerton opined that there should never be another World Series.   A grand jury was convened that September.  Two players, Eddie Cicotte and Shoeless Joe Jackson, testified on September 28, both confessing to participating in the scheme. Despite being in a virtual tie for first at that time, Comiskey pulled the seven players then in the majors, Gandil being back in the minors by that time.

Professional baseball’s reputation had suffered a grievous blow.  Franchise owners appointed a man with the best baseball name in history to help straighten out the mess, Major League Baseball’s first Commissioner.  Federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

The “Black Sox” trial began in 1921 in the Cook County Criminal Court.  Key evidence went missing before the trial, including both Cicotte’s and Jackson’s signed confessions. Both recanted, and, in the end, all players were acquitted.

The missing confessions reappeared several years later in the possession of Comiskey’s lawyer. It’s funny how that worked out.

According to legend, a young boy approached Shoeless Joe Jackson one afternoon as he came out of the courthouse. “Say it ain’t so, Joe”.

There was no response from the outfielder.

Irrespective of the trial’s outcome, the commissioner was unforgiving. The day after the acquittal, Landis issued the following statement: “Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball”.

Everyone involved is long gone by now, but Commissioner Landis’ verdict stands. All eight of them remain banned from baseball from that day to this.

Ironically, the 1919 scandal lead the way to the “Curse of the Black Sox”, a World Series championship drought lasting 88 years and ending only in 2005, with a White Sox sweep of the Houston Astros.  Exactly one year after the Boston Red Sox ended their own 86-year drought, the “Curse of the Bambino”.

The Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper published a poem back on opening day for the 1919 series. They would probably have taken it back.  If only they could.

“Still, it really doesn’t matter, After all, who wins the flag.
Good clean sport is what we’re after, And we aim to make our brag.
To each near or distant nation, Whereon shines the sporting sun.
That of all our games gymnastic, Base ball is the cleanest one!”

From the dawn of Christianity, faithful believers have traveled from the length and breadth of Europe to the Holy City of Jerusalem, to renew and affirm a lifelong faith in scripture.

The Rashidun Caliphate captured the Holy City in 637, following a long siege.  Except for an 88-year period following the first crusade in 1099, the Temple Mount in the old city has been under Islamic administration, from that day to this.

Nevertheless, the number of these pilgrims increased over time.  Many suffered robbery and even murder at the hands of Muslim fanatics, who considered it their Islamic duty to kill the “Infidel”.

The French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1119, with a proposal.  He would create a monastic order of warrior knights to protect these pilgrims, to be headquartered in a wing of the recaptured Al Aqsa Mosque, built on the ruins of the Temple of Solomon.

They were monks and they were warriors, “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon”.   For 200 years, these “Knights Templar” provided for the safe passage of Christian pilgrims.

The original nine knights of the order lived up to the “poor knights” part of their name, relying on financial donations for their survival.  So destitute were they that their emblem showed two knights riding a single horse.

That would come to change.

In time, the Templars gained favored charity status, their new-found wealth helping them to found an early banking system. Pilgrims to the holy land could deposit gold coins in Paris and take them out in Jerusalem, or vice-versa.  The knights Templar achieved vast wealth in this manner, at their height running over 800 castles, every one of which ran as a full service banking institution, financing military campaigns and shoring up the treasuries of Kings.

Following what must have seemed a never ending series of wars with the English King, Philip IV of France found himself deeply in debt to the Templars.  In 1307, he needed to wriggle out of it.

It was Friday the 13th of October that year, when Philip sent out his arrest warrant.  Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and scores of other French Templars were simultaneously arrested. Charges included everything from obscene secret rituals to financial fraud. “Confessions” were extracted by torture.

Under pressure from the French King, Pope Clement issued the bull “Pastoralis praeeminentiae” on November 22, instructing Christian monarchs throughout Europe to arrest Templar officials and seize their assets.

Thousands of knights fled to areas outside Papal control.  Some were burned at the stake, or absorbed into the rival Knights Hospitaller. Within a couple of years, the order had ceased to exist.

Some will tell you that’s where the Friday 13th superstition began.  Others say it goes back to the Friday when Eve offered Adam that forbidden apple, or the Friday crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Ancient Egyptians and Chinese believed the number 13 brought good luck, but some actually fear Friday the 13^th.  It’s called “Friggatriskaidekaphobia”.

People in Spanish-speaking countries will tell you it’s the 13-part that brings bad luck, but for most, it’s Friday.  At least one psychotherapist asserts that 21 million Americans are afraid of Friday the 13th.

Smithsonian Magazine reports that fear of the number 13 costs the United States a Billion dollars a year in absenteeism, train and plane cancellations and related commerce on the 13th of the month.

FDR avoided dinner parties with 13 guests.  In France, there are professional 14th party guests called “quatorzieme“.  I wonder how I get that job.

Who knows, maybe thirteen really is bad luck.  There are 13 steps leading to the gallows, where the condemned meets the 13 knots of the hangman’s noose.  The guillotine’s blade falls 13 feet.  Diana hit the 13th pillar at Place d’Alma.  Tupac was shot on Friday the 13th, and Fidel Castro was born on one.

So knock on wood and cross your fingers.  Watch out for black cats.  Don’t look at the full moon through a pane of glass, and be sure to throw salt over your shoulder.  You’ll be fine.