Infamous America - BLACK SOX Ep. 2 | "A Turbulent Year"

Episode Date: August 14, 2019

In a time of great upheaval around the world, America experiences outbreaks of violence and fear. Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb and the other stars of the Deadball Era rise to prominence. The Chicago White Sox navigate the 1919 season and by the end of the year, they are on the verge of a World Series berth. Behind the scenes, some of the players begin to discuss the possibility of a big payday during the Series, much bigger than the bonuses they would earn for participating in the event. Special thanks to the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The meanest section of Brooklyn was probably an area in the Flatbush neighborhood called Pig Town. It was a filthy crime-ridden area, but Charles Ebbets thought it was a perfect place for a baseball field. Pigtown was a literal name. It was full of shacks and shanties, and pigs and goats roamed the streets, feasting on garbage that lay everywhere. Secretly, Charles Ebbets began buying parcels of land in Pigtown. He was the majority owner of of the Brooklyn Baseball Club, which had many nicknames over the years. But the one that stuck was the Dodgers, which was short for trolley dodgers. Trolley Dodgers referred to the pedestrians of Brooklyn who had to dodge streetcars or trolleys

as they walked around the city. Streetcars were the most popular form of mass transit in the boroughs of New York in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The trolleys moved with far more speed than the pedestrians were used to. These people had grown up with horses and wagons and carriages, and when an electric trolley came flying down the street, the pedestrians had to jump out of the way to save their own lives. Oftentimes, they didn't make it. As subways and automobiles became more popular in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, Brooklyn phased out the old streetcar system. But in 1914, during the height of the Brooklyn trolley system, Charles Ebbets opened Ebbets Field, the home of the city.

Dodgers. This was the era of the great cathedrals of baseball when steel and concrete stadiums replaced the old wooden grandstands. Rigley Field opened the same year as Ebbets Field, though it was called Weigman Park at the time and wouldn't acquire its permanent name for another 13 years. Fenway Park opened in 1912. Navin Field opened on the same day as the new home of the Detroit Tigers. The trend began with Scheib Park. the home of Connie Max Philadelphia A's built in 1909. The next year, Charles Kamiski opened Kamisky Park, which would host three World Series in a row to close out the decade,

the last of which would nearly ruin his club. From Black Barrel Media, this is season two of the infamous America podcast. I'm your host Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling the story of one of the most infamous events in Major League Baseball history, the Black Sox scandal. Chapter 1 walked us right up to the edge of the 1919 season. This episode will take us up to the edge of the 1919 World Series. It was a crazy year for baseball on the field and an even crazier year for America off the field.

This is Chapter 2, a turbulent year. On April 6, 1917, America entered World War I. Five days later, the Major League Baseball season began. By opening day of 1917, the Chicago White Sox had all the pieces in place for a championship run. They had sluggers Joe Jackson and Happy Felsch in the outfield. They had Chick Gandal, Eddie Collins, Swede Risberg, Fred McMullen, and Buck Weaver rotating through the infield. They had Ray Shalk at catcher, and they had a trio of reliable pitchers, Red Faber, Eddie Seacott, and the newest edition, Lefty Williams. That season, they snapped the streak of the Boston Red Sox.

Boston had won the World Series in 1915 and 1916, but it fell short of a three-peat when the White Sox surged to the top of the American League in 1917. The White Sox had been close in 1916, just two games behind the Red Sox. But with the addition of Chick-Gandle at first base in 1917, they had all the players they needed to overtake the Red Sox. and they did, winning their first World Series in 11 years. Chicago looked like a good bet to win the championship again in 1918, but that changed on July 1st.

The nation had been consumed by the Great War for more than a year, and on July 1st, the government issued a work or fight order. It required every able-bodied man who couldn't get an exemption to join the military or take a job to support the war effort. It gutted Major League rosters, and the White Sox lost most of their star players to enlistment or jobs in the Navy shipyards. With rosters depleted and profits falling, the owners cut the 1918 season short. They canceled the final month of games and played the World Series in early September instead of early October. Boston won the American League again behind the pitching of Carl Mays and Babe Ruth and beat the Chicago Cubs in the World Series.

But just before the season ended, a gambling scandal bubbled to the surface of Major League Baseball from a familiar source. First baseman Hal Chase was in trouble again. Hal Chase was undeniably a talented player, but he was also undeniably a crooked player. He was a star, but he was also well-traveled. He played for numerous minor league teams, semi-pro teams, outlaw teams, and major league teams between 1903 and 1920. In almost all of them, he was known as a good batter, a great defender,

and a selfish prima donna who gambled on games and tried to bribe other players. By 1918, he was on his second to last chance in the major leagues. The Cincinnati Reds had given him an opportunity after several tumultuous years in at least three different leagues. In the final month of the shortened 1918 season, he was suspended by his manager for bribing teammates and opponents. That manager was an icon of the game, a man whose character was unimpeachable.

Future Hall of Famer, Christy Mathewson. Hal Chase had escaped substantial punishment every time he'd been accused or implicated, and this time was no different. After the season, National League President John Hedler held a hearing into Chase's behavior, but ultimately he couldn't punish him. By that time, two key participants were unavailable to testify,

Matthewson and a pitcher on the New York Giants whom Chase allegedly tried to bribe. So once again, Chase was free to go. Ironically, he signed on with the New York Giants for the 1919 season, but it proved to be his last in Major League Baseball. The Halchase saga was no secret in baseball. Everyone knew his story, the players, the owners, and the sports writers. Yes, players had been baseball. for life for gambling.

But there were far more examples like Chase than those who'd received the ultimate punishment. The Hal Chase gambling case was just one of many issues the owners had to handle in the offseason between 1918 and 1919. The good news was that Germany had surrendered in November of 1918 and the war was over, which meant the players were coming home to their teams

and the 1919 season would be to return to normalcy. At least the owners hoped to, so. They didn't know for sure. After two years of war and all the other things that were happening around the country at the time, they wondered if the fans would still have the same passion for the game. Would attendance return to its pre-war numbers? To protect their profits, the owners shortened the season again, this time by two weeks, 14 games. By reducing the season from 154 games to 140, it allowed them to save one whole paycheck. If the players didn't have to play, the owners didn't have to pay them.

Other than that item, the owners agreed on very few things in the offseason between 1918 and 1919. A figurative war inside baseball was heating up. Many owners had been grumbling for years about the three-man National Commission that governed baseball. Though there were three men on the committee, Ban Johnson, President of the American League ruled the committee and therefore he ruled baseball. He had made enemies of several owners after his harsh and uneven decisions. Johnson was locked in her bitter feud with his old friend

Charlie Comisky and it would only grow worse over the next couple years. Animosity had been rising between the two, but it reached a breaking point that offseason and it centered on a pitcher named Jack Quinn. Comisky had signed Quinn out of the minor leagues to help. hope his White Sox finished the 1918 season after many of his players left for the war effort. Following the season, he wanted to keep Quinn on the team. But the New York Yankees claimed they bought Quinn's contract from his minor league team, and therefore, he belonged to them. Quinn, for his part, wanted to stay with the socks. But as a player, his word didn't count. Now, the National Commission had to make a ruling. Ban Johnson in the Commission awarded Quinn to the

which infuriated Charlie Kamisky. Another dispute over a pitcher caused the National League president to resign in protest. And then Red Sox owner Harry Frazee and New York Giants owner Harry Hempstead attempted a coup. They were sick of Ban Johnson and they wanted the National Commission dissolved. So they approached former President of the United States, William Howard Taft, about becoming the Commissioner of Baseball. As soon as word of the plan got out, several National League owners rushed to support the power play. But there was one big problem.

None of them had the authority to offer the job to Taft, and the plan collapsed. Ban Johnson stayed in power. The National Commission stayed intact, and the battle lines had been drawn. Some owners sided with Frise and Kamiski, the others sided with Ban Johnson. And now, the 1919 season was ready to do. to begin. Opening day was scheduled for April 23rd, 1919. Two days earlier was the running of the Boston marathon, which was caused for a unique celebration in Boston. The top two finishers were local boys. Carl Linder won the race with a time of two hours, 29 minutes, and 13 seconds. His good friend Willie Wick

finished second just one minute behind. They were both residents of Quincy, Massachusetts, and they were both immigrants from Finland. The man who finished third was also from Finland, and the newspapers began calling the three men the Flying Finns. But the newspapers did not note the man who finished sixth. His name was Aaron Morris, and he crossed the finish line just eight minutes behind the winner. He was the first known African-American man to finish the race.

Two days later, talk of the marathon died down, and excitement over baseball picked up. as the final season of the Dead Ball era began. The Dead Ball era commonly refers to the years between 1901 and 1919. It coincides with the creation of the American League and the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal. In those years, the baseball was more loosely wound than it is now, and fewer balls were used in a game than they are today. In those days, only three or four balls were used over the course of a game.

As a consequence, the ball became battered and bruised and lopsided. It was covered with dirt and grime and smeared with all the substances that pitchers were allowed to use at the time. The result was a dead ball, one that didn't rocket off the bat when it was hit, and one that was very hard to see when it was thrown. It was a major reason why there were so few home runs during this era, and part of the reason pitchers like Walter Johnson had so much success. Yes, pitchers like Johnson and Matthewsson were amazing in their own right, but when players said, you can't hit what you can't see, they weren't just talking about the speed of the pitch. All of this made the home run an even more impressive feat than it was naturally.

And as 1919 progressed, a new home run king emerged. Fans began to fall in love with the long ball, and by 1920, the balance of power completely shifted from the pitcher to the batter. The home run would be the most anticipated feature of the sport, and baseball would never look back. The White Sox began their season in St. Louis against the Browns, and the first game of the year was a signal to the rest of the league that the 1917 champions were back. The entire squad had returned after the shortened 1918 campaign, and now they pulverized the Browns 13 to 4. pitcher clawed lefty Williams opened the season for the White Sox, and he pitched a complete game, but he was a little shaky. The left-handed sidearm pitcher had joined the Sox in 1916, and had played a small role in the World Series victory in 1917,

but this season would be his first as a full-time starter and major contributor. Luckily for him, the White Sox offense started hot. third baseman Buck Weaver and second baseman Eddie Collins, the captain, had multiple hits and multiple RBIs. The next day, the socks beat the Browns again, and this time veteran pitcher Eddie Seacott was on the mound, and he allowed just six hits and no earned runs. Eddie had been Ty Cobb's teammate in Augusta, Georgia, before both men had been called up to the Detroit Tigers in 1905. But Eddie had been inconsistent with the Tigers, and he spent three years. more years in the minors before signing with the Boston Red Sox.

He was with the Red Sox for four years before Charlie Kamisky bought his contract and brought him to the White Sox. Eddie excelled in Chicago. The best season of his career was 1917 when he helped lead the team to the world championship. Eddie had been hampered by an ankle injury in 1918 and the whole season had been a mess anyway with the shadow of the Great War looming over the nation. But now in 1919, he appeared to be back in his 1917 form.

But the third game of the year showed the one glaring weakness on the White Sox, the pitching depth behind Eddie and Lefty. Over the course of the season, the Sox tried almost a dozen different pitchers in a desperate attempt to find a couple additional reliable starters. Dickie Curris showed promise immediately, but he was just a rookie. No one knew if he could hold up for an entire season. So in the third game of the year, the socks trotted out Dave Danforth. He'd had an up-and-down career since 1911, and 1919 proved to be his rock-bottom season.

As far as baseball history is concerned, he's the man credited with inventing the Shine Bowl. In this era, when all kinds of freak pitches, as they were called, were legal, Danforth rubbed oil or rosin on one side of the ball. He smeared the oil on his pant leg and then rubbed. rubbed the ball on it before he pitched. The discolored ball was hard to see and it wobbled through the air, making it very hard to hit. It was said that he taught the pitch to Eddie Seacott, and that was what stabilized Eddie's career after years of inconsistent play. Danforth and the Sox lost the third game of the season, but shoeless Joe Jackson made his presence felt for the first time in 1919.

He went two for four in the loss, and his hits were a double and a home run that scored the only two runs of the day for the Sox. The Sox bounced back in the fourth game, the final contest of the opening series with St. Louis. Red Faber, the pitching ace of the 1917 World Series, finally took the mound. He probably would have started on opening day, but he had contracted the influenza virus that had devastated the world's population in 1918 and 1919. He had spent most of the offseason battling the illness. By this point, it was clear he would win the battle, but it took its toll.

He was tired and weak and not the competitor he had been in years past. But he did enough to win the fourth game of the year, and he was helped by an offense that would soon be the talk of the league. This time, first baseman Arnold Chick-Gandle had the biggest day. He went four of five with a double and three RBIs. After the opening series of the season, the Sox moved on to Detroit to face Ty Cobb and the Tigers. The Sox won all three games, and now the Chicago Tribune newspaper shouted headlines such as,

just like 1917, Sox outslug ravenous tigers. The White Sox were back, and they had found their third starting pitcher, rookie Dickie Kerr. He won the final game of the Detroit series and earned his first Major League victory. It wasn't the greatest performance. He gave up lots of hits and lots of runs, but shoeless Joe Jackson and the rest of the offense did their work, and it was a win nonetheless. The Sox led the American League in batting average,

hits, runs, and stolen bases in the first seven games of the season. They were in first place as the calendar flipped to May. They had a one-game lead over the Boston Red Sox and a one-and-a-half game lead over the Cleveland Indians. The next month, they would leave both teams in the dust as they became the hottest team in the American League. On May 1st, the White Sox home opener got rained out. But compared to the news that shook the nation that day, the disappointment over a rained out baseball game was mild. May 1st was International Workers Day, a day that was celebrated by the radical and anarchist groups that were prominent in the early 1900s.

Two days earlier, a housekeeper in Atlanta opened a package for her employer, a former senator. The box exploded and tore off her hands. The attack was nationwide news, and the mayor of Seattle found a similar package on his doorstep, but the bomb inside did not explode. Law enforcement frantically scoured the mail service for more packages. They found 36 boxes with bombs inside. All of them were supposed to be delivered. on May 1st.

They were addressed to congressmen, Supreme Court judges, bankers, businessmen, and the Attorney General of the United States. If the boxes in Atlanta and Seattle had not been delivered early, the destruction could have been horrible. The larger tragedy had been avoided, but more dark days were ahead.

The White Sox resumed their schedule on May 2nd, and two days later, they resumed their hot streak. They ran through their schedule in May, winning 24 games and losing just seven. And the storylines came fast and furious in the first full month of the season. May 4th saw the first legal baseball game in the major leagues. 35,000 fans packed the polo grounds in Manhattan to watch the New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies.

Six days later, a horse named Sir Barton won the Kentucky Derby. His jockey was Johnny Loftus. That same day, a violent racing. riot broke out in Charleston, South Carolina. It would be one of many that would plague the nation as the weather grew hotter over the course of the summer. One of the worst would hit Chicago in just two months, though no one knew it yet. The day after the Kentucky Derby, May 11th, the Yankees faced the Washington Senators. Walter Johnson was on the mound, and he pitched a masterful game, but as usual, he received no support from his offense. The game went 12 innings, and

and was finally declared a tie because of darkness. It ended zero to zero. The teams met again the following day, and that game went 15 innings, and again ended in a tie, four to four. But as remarkable as the back-to-back ties was, it might have been more remarkable in hindsight because the lead-off hitter for the Yankees

was a rookie named George Hallis. He was a good outfielder and a speedy runner, but not a great hitter, and his future as a big league player was uncertain. As it turned out, it wouldn't matter. One year later, in 1920, he met ten other men in the showroom of a car dealership in Canton, Ohio, to form the first professional football league in America,

which would later be called the NFL. Hallis and a teammate, Dutch Sternaman, took over the management of a semi-pro team called the Staley's, which was named after the man who owned the team. Within two years, Hallis and Sterniman had moved the team to Chicago and renamed it The Bears. Hallis was the driving force behind the franchise for the next 60 years as a player, manager, coach, and owner. His last big move was to hire an outspoken cigar-smoking former player as his new coach in 1982. That player was Mike Ditka.

George Hallis passed away just one year later. two years shy of being able to see his beloved bears when their only Super Bowl. Two days after the second tie between the Yankees and the Senators, Johnny Loftus rode Sir Barton to victory in the Preakness. That same day, May 14th, the White Sox began the most anticipated series of the spring. It was their first duel with the Boston Red Sox. The White Sox were the world champs in 1917. The Red Sox were the world champs in 1918.

The White Sox Aces from the 1917 series, Eddie Seacott and Red Faber, would start two of the three games, despite Red's weakened condition from the flu. The Red Sox aces from the 1918 series, Carl Mays and Babe Ruth, would start two of three for the Boston Club. The difference between the teams would be the offense. The White Sox were hitting at a torrid pace. The Red Sox were not. Nearly all of Chicago's batters were in great form in the spring. Left fielder Shulis Joe Jackson, center fielder Happy Felsch, third baseman Buck Weaver, shortstop, Swede Risberg, second baseman Eddie Collins, and first baseman Chick-Gandle.

Chicago took two of three from Boston in their first clash, and it would be a sign of things to come for the Red Sox. They fell way behind the White Sox and never caught up. Chicago kept cruising, and the month ended with a bang, a fist fight between Chick-Gandle and Trist Speaker. But two days before the brawl in Chicago, an event off the field briefly drew attention away from baseball. A solar eclipse proved a theory that a young German physicist had been working on for 12 years. Albert Einstein had been writing papers about the theory of general relativity since 1907. On May 29, 1919, a photograph of a total solar eclipse taken by Sir Arthur Eddington proved the theory that gravity could bend light.

It was said that only three people in the world truly understood the complex theory, and the vast majority of people didn't understand what it meant that the theory had just been proved, but it made Albert Einstein a household name in the scientific community nonetheless. Then, two days later, on the last day of May, May, Cleveland Indian star outfielder, Trist Speaker, slid into first base, and Chicago first baseman Chick-Gandle took exception to the hard play. And things went downhill from there. Everybody understood that event. The Chicago Tribune called it an old-time fistfight, the likes of which hadn't been seen in the last 15 years. The paper said it looked like the two

men used everything in the fight, fists, feet, the spikes of their shoes, and maybe even even their teeth. The police eventually rushed onto the field to pull the two men off each other. Trist Speaker and Chick-Gandle received five-game suspensions from American League President Ban Johnson. They would miss the first week of June, and for the White Sox, Chick-Gandall's suspension was only the beginning of their problems, as baseball moved into the summer months. In June of 1919, the U.S. Congress passed the 19th Amendment, which finally gave women the right to vote. Sir Barton won the Belmont Stakes and became the first horse to win the Triple Crown. The New York Daily News published its first issue, and two days after it did, it was one

of millions of newspapers around the world to announce the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the peace treaty that officially ended World War I. For the White Sox, the season completely flipped. They had been the hottest team in the American League for the first two months of the year. But in June, they turned ice cold. They had spent most of May playing in their home stadium of Kamiski Park. In June, they spent virtually the entire month on the road. They played 23 of 27 games away from home, including 18 in a row, which in those days meant long hours on trains.

The Sox suffered two four-game losing streaks and plummeted in the rankings. When the month began, they were five games ahead of the Cleveland Indevales. and six games ahead of the New York Yankees. When the month ended, they were in second place, two and a half games behind the Yankees. And the series against the Yankees that month added insult to injury for White Sox owner Charles Kamiski. In the offseason, Kamisky had lost pitcher Jack Quinn to the Yankees, and the dispute over his contract had effectively ended the old friendship between Kamisky and Ban Johnson.

And it robbed the White Sox of much. needed pitching depth. Eddie Seacott and Lefty Williams were the only two reliable starters. Red Faber was great at times, but he was still hampered by the flu and he would fade as the year went on. And as good as Dickie Kerr had been, he was still a rookie and largely unproven. If the socks had been able to keep Quinn, it could have changed everything. As it was, Kamiski had to watch him pitch for the Yankees as the Yankees overtook the socks to lead the American League. On July 4th, America's Independence Day, Jack Dempsey became the boxing heavyweight champion of the world. But as temperatures rose in the dog days of summer, so did the violence

across the country. More than 20 race riots erupted in the spring and summer of 1919. Hundreds of African American citizens were killed in a wave of hatred that became known as Red Summer. It spread across the south from Georgia to Alabama to Michigan. Mississippi, to Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee. It broke out in the north as well, in Connecticut, Maryland, Omaha, Nebraska, Syracuse, New York, and Chicago at the end of July. That month, the Chicago White Sox bounced back from their June slump. Chicago's manager, Kid Gleason, shook up the lineup in an effort to find a spark, and it seemed to have worked. He sent shortstop, Swede-Risper to the bench, moved third baseman Buckweaver over to shortstop, and put

Fred McMullen in it third. The Sox won 22 of 29 games after the change and rocketed back up the standings. Pitchers Eddie Seacott and Lefty Williams were solid on the mound. Red Faber seemed to regain some of his old form and rookie Dickie Kerr proved he could handle the big leagues. And the offense returned in full force. First baseman Chick Gandal was on fire. He was having one of the best months of his career until he hurt his knee and was sidelined for three weeks. But that didn't affect his teammates. Joe Jackson, Happy Felsch and Buckweaver, hit big in July. Even Swede Risberg and Fred McMullen, who began sharing time in the infield, contributed at the plate.

The biggest moment of the month came courtesy of the biggest hitter, Shoeless Joe. On Sunday, July 20th, one day before tragedy struck Chicago, Joe smashed a game-winning home run in the 10th inning to lift the socks over the Yankees. over the Yankees. The Chicago fans were elated, but the next day, during a doubleheader, they would be horrified. Late in the second game, fans at Kamiski Park saw an interesting sight. The Wingfoot Air Express Blimp drifted past the stadium heading toward downtown Chicago. But then as the fans watched, the blimp burst into flames.

A moment later, it crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building. The blimp's gas tanks exploded and blasted out the glass roof of the building. Three crew members were killed, and so were ten people in the building. The game at Comiskey Park stopped as everyone watched the catastrophe unfold. The game eventually resumed, but enthusiasm for baseball was gone. And the enthusiasm would fall much further six days later when an even greater tragedy began. In the summertime, Chicago citizens flocked to the beach. beach at Lake Michigan to get relief from the heat.

In those days of fierce segregation, there was a beach for white citizens and a beach for black citizens, and they were separated by an invisible line that stretched out over the fresh waters of the lake. On July 27th, a black teenager named Eugene Williams was lounging on a raft in the lake when he inadvertently drifted across the invisible line and into the white section of the lake. White sunbaters became enraged. They threw rocks at Eugene. One of them hit him in the head.

He toppled off the raft and drowned. Tensions on the beach escalated fast. The first police officer on the scene, who was white, refused to arrest the man believed to be responsible for the stoning. The murder of Eugene Williams ignited five days of riots across Chicago. Homes and businesses were destroyed. 38 people died in the attacks, 23 black and 15 white. More than 500 people sustained injuries before the National Guard arrived to stop the violence.

Kamisky Park was on the south side of Chicago where the worst of the violence erupted. Many players had homes and businesses there, but the day after Eugene Williams died, the Sox boarded a train for an extended trip to the East Coast. They came home two weeks later to a neighborhood in the United States. ruins. The excitement over baseball was likely muted in July of 1919 as at least six major riots terrorized cities from the east coast to the Midwest. But on the field, the White Sox completely reversed the slide that happened in June. By the end of July, they were back in first place with a six and a half game lead over Detroit and Cleveland. But even with a good lead, the American

League pennant was still up for grabs. In the National League, John McGrath's New York Giants held the top spot for the first half of the season. By July, fans and sports writers had begun to speculate about a possible rematch of the 1917 World Series between the Giants and the White Sox. But the Cincinnati Reds were hot on the heels of the Giants, and on the final day of July, they overtook the league leaders. Then the Reds beat the Giants in six out of nine games to begin August, and that was the last one. was the end of the pennant race. The Reds coasted for the final two months of the season and easily won the National League title.

The White Sox were not so fortunate. At the end of August, they still had a six-game lead over Cleveland and Detroit, but it wasn't big enough to sit back and relax. The battle for the American League title would continue until the final week of the year. But even so, the White Sox were a confident bunch, so much so that in early September,

A couple players began discussing the possibility of making extra money on a World Series appearance. We think it started like that, a casual conversation on a long train ride as summer turned to autumn. The players knew the owners were worried about profits from the season. Attendance seemed to be good, and the fans seemed to come back as the shadow of a world war faded. But it didn't guarantee the profits in the 1919 series would return to the world. to the level of the 1917 series. And the players knew something the general public did not know. The Cubs and the Red Sox had threatened to strike before Game 5 of the 1918 World Series.

They had refused to take the field when they discovered that their World Series bonuses would be cut for the second time that season. Before the games began, the owners decided to distribute the profits from attendance at the series to teams throughout the major leagues, not just the two teams that were in the series. This, of course, reduced the amount of money paid to the men who actually played in the World Series. And then, after game three,

the owners voted to reduce the players' bonuses even further. So the players refused to take the field, and the game was delayed for an hour. But ultimately, the issue was resolved, and the series continued. The White Sox players knew, of the ordeal. They had heard rumors that some Chicago Cubs players had been bribed by gamblers to the tune of $10,000 apiece to lose the series. So, some of the White Sox began to talk amongst themselves.

And then, in mid-September 1919, a meeting took place in a hotel in New York City that set in motion the scandal of the century in Major League Baseball. That's next time on the Infamous America podcast. On the next episode of the infamous America podcast, the White Sox finished the season on a high note. Boston Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth breaks the Major League single-season home run record, then breaks it again. And gamblers from Des Moines to New York learn of a chance for a big payday at the end of the baseball season.

They crisscross the country to raise the money to fix the 1919 World Series. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave our rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. This story is produced with the help of the Sabre Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. If you want to know more about the people and events you've heard here, go to saber.org for a wealth of articles. That's sabr.org. For more details, please visit our website, blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.