proclamations from attorneys on both sides and political shenanigans that included the theft of transcripts from the prosecutor’s office. The stolen records, which included players’ grand jury testimony, was quickly re-created by courtroom stenographers and read back into the record. While this was portrayed as a dramatic scene in Hollywood films, the incident had no bearing on the trial’s outcome. The players were found not guilty by a jury, but one day after the verdict, they were banned for life from professional baseball by the game’s new commissioner, federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. None of the eight Black Sox players ever appeared in a major league game again. Following their banishment, Shoeless Joe Jackson and three other players sued the Chicago White Sox for back pay
the country and earned a living while playing in low-level independent or “outlaw” leagues. But as their skills faded, so did their time in the public eye. The scandal was revived in the winter of 1926-27 when Swede Risberg and Chick Gandil made explosive accusations that the White Sox and Detroit Tigers had conspired to fix games late in the 1917 season. Landis held hearings to investigate the charges and called in dozens of players from both teams as witnesses, but ultimately took no action. He chastised Risberg and Gandil for bringing the sport’s dirty laundry all over again. Jackson was the first to die in 1951, at the age of 64. Like some of his ex-teammates, he remained proud and defiant to the end. Risberg was the last Black Sox survivor, passing away on his 81st birthday in 1975. By then, interest in the scandal was on the rise after Eliot
204. c.1917 Happy Felsch Original Type 1 Photo (PSA/DNA) MINIMUM BID: $100
205. c.1910’s Fred McMullin Original Type 1 News Service Photo by Charles Conlon (PSA/DNA) MINIMUM BID: $100
they felt were owed to them by the multi-year contracts they had signed. Only Jackson’s case went to trial. On the witness stand in 1924, Jackson was confronted by his old grand jury testimony, in which he had admitted accepting bribe money and fixing the World Series. Now, he denied ever saying those things under oath. When the jury awarded him a $16,000 verdict (about $280,000 in 2024 dollars), the infuriated judge set aside the verdict, cited Jackson for perjury, and threw him in jail for an afternoon. THE AFTERMATH Without the benefit of a players’ union and no other legal recourse available to them, the Black Sox’s attempts to clear their names and get back into baseball were continually denied by Commissioner Landis. For a time, they all traveled
Asinof’s best-selling book Eight Men Out brought the story to life for a new generation. W.P. Kinsella followed with the fictional Shoeless Joe, which would become the basis for the beloved film Field of Dreams. The story of Jackson and the other White Sox players who fixed the World Series moved into the realm of legend. “Say it ain’t so, Joe” became a phrase that transcended baseball and an enduring part of the American lexicon. What really happened during that fateful Fall Classic in 1919 remains a source of unending debate. New details may come to light in the future and new sources of information may be discovered. The Black Sox Scandal remains a cold case, not a closed case.
Jacob Pomrenke is the chair of SABR’s Black Sox Scandal Research Committee and editor of Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox (2015); Eight Myths Out (2019); and Joe Jackson, Plaintiff, vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club, Defendant (2023, with David J. Fletcher.) He lives in Chicago with his wife, Tracy Greer, and cat, Nixey Callahan.
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