Infamous America - BLACK SOX Ep. 5 | "Say It Ain't So"

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

After the World Series, Major League Baseball experiences an offseason of turmoil: White Sox owner Charlie Comiskey investigates his players; the National Commission begins to collapse; and Boston sends its best player to New York. As the 1920 season plays out, rumors of a World Series conspiracy fade from memory… until the final week of the year. Three White Sox players testify before a grand jury and the scandal erupts in the newspapers. 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

Two tragedies occurred within four days of each other to begin 1920, Prohibition and the sale of Babe Ruth's contract to the New York Yankees. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress in 1917 and ratified by the states in 1919. It took effect January 1st, 1920. The sale and consumption of alcohol was now illegal in the United States, unless you had a doctor's note. Four days later, Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth's contract to the New York Yankees for $100,000. It took 13 long years for America to come to its senses and finally repeal the 18th Amendment, which was one year short of the amount of time Red Sox fans were forced to watch Babe Ruth in a Yankees uniform. The unexpected consequences of both decisions, prohibition and the sale of Ruth's contract,

became apparent almost immediately. But the consequences of the gambling conspiracy around the 1919 World Series would take much longer to reveal themselves. It took exactly one year for the fix to unravel, but the investigations began the moment the series ended. My relentless sleep problems have always come from an overactive mind. I lay in bed at night with my mind racing from one thing to another,

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At mood.com, get 20% off your first order with our promo code, Infamous. Go to Mood.com and use the code infamous to get 20% off your first order. And they have a 100-day satisfaction guarantee. Mood.com promo code infamous. From BlackBeryl Media, this is season two of the Infamous America podcast. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the story of one of the most infamous events in Major League Baseball history, the Black Sox scandal. Previously on the show, eight players on the Chicago White Sox actively engaged in a conspiracy to one degree or another to lose the 1919 World Series. But the conspiracy was a mess from start to finish, and it was the worst kept secret in baseball. Now, it's a secret no longer.

The 1920 baseball season plays out, and the fix unravels. This is Chapter 5. Say It Ain't So. Three days after the 1919 World Series ended, Chicago White Sox manager Kid Gleason found himself in St. Louis, Missouri. He didn't want to go there. He was sent there by owner Charlie Kamiski. In all his life, Kid Gleason probably never thought he'd be on such an errand,

especially not after a World Series. But here he was, about to meet with gamblers who said they had proof that members of his team had conspired to lose the series. The gamblers had responded to public comments made by Comisky just one day after the Sox lost the series. 24 hours after the defeat, Charles Comisky was forced to publicly address

scandalous rumors about his team. He told the Chicago Tribune, I believe my boys fought the battles of the recent World Series on the level, but he knew they hadn't. He then offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could show evidence of a fix. Two gamblers in St. Louis took him up on the offer. They contacted him privately, and so began Kamiski's investigation of his players. It turned into an old-time detective story.

From the outside, the trail began in large part with Chicago sports columnist Hugh Fullerton. The night before game one, Hugh had bumped into Sleepy Bill Burns in the hallway of the Sinton Hotel in Cincinnati, and Burns had assured him the Reds would win. Fullerton had confidently predicted a Chicago victory, and he was shaken by Burns' statement that the Reds were a sure thing. Sure enough, they were. The day after the conclusion of the series, the same day Kamisky offered his reward, Fullerton wrote a column that said seven players from the Chicago White Sox would not return the following season. Fullerton didn't name the seven players, but their names would come out soon enough.

One week after his column, a gambling journal called Collier's Eye picked up on the story and began writing about it regularly. A month after those first two stories in mid-November, the gambling publication printed the names of the seven suspected players for the first time. Eddie Seacott, Lefty Williams, Chick-Gandle, Swede Risberg, Fred McMullen, Happy Felsch, and Shuless Joe Jackson. A month after that, in mid-December 1919, White Sox catcher Ray Schalk confirmed those seven names to Colliers as the players who would not return to the team in 1920. Ray got in some hot water for that one, publicly naming his teammates. But as you'll see, it didn't really matter.

And you've probably noticed that all this talk referenced seven players instead of eight. In the earliest days after the series, Buck Weaver was not publicly associated with the other conspirators. He had not accepted any money, and he'd played well during the series, and therefore he was not included in the seven. But that would change soon enough. In his first meeting in St. Louis, Kid Gleason was about to learn of Buck's participation. Gleason's first meeting was with a theater owner named Harry Redmond. Redmond said he lost more than $5,000 betting on the series, and presumably he wanted to make it back by earning the $10,000 reward

that Kamiski had offered for information of the fix. Redmond told Gleason there were eight players involved in the conspiracy. He named Buck Weaver as the eighth, and said the third baseman had attended multiple meetings with gamblers. Redmond said he knew these things because he was connected to the Midwest syndicate of gamblers who had tried to revive the fix after Chicago unexpectedly won game three. At that time, Abattel and David Zelser had used Zelser's connections to gamblers in Omaha, Indianapolis, and St. Louis to get the fix back on track.

Zelzer's contact in St. Louis was Carl Zorke. Redman said he ran into Zork during the series, and Zork had bragged loudly about being the man who fixed the World Series. Harry Redman relayed the information to Kid Gleason, and it probably proved Gleason's worst fears. He knew all the rumors, of course, and he had talked to his team about them during the series, but this was probably his first insight into the width and depth of the scheme.

Gleason reported back to Charlie Khamiski, and then Khamisky launched a full-scale investigation. He instructed the team, lawyer, Alfred Austrian, to hire a private investigation firm to track down his players in their off-season homes. He now had eight players to follow, with the addition of Buck Weaver after Gleason's St. Louis trip. Alfred Austrian hired Hunter's Secret Service for the job of spending the next three months going undercover to infiltrate the lives of the White Sox players suspected in the conspiracy. John R. Hunter and his detectives fanned out across the country to learn as much as

possible about most of the starting lineup of the Chicago White Sox. They ran four simultaneous investigations in Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles. Hunter's first stop was L.A. He had been told before his trip by team secretary Harry Grabiner that the most suspicious person of the eight was Chick Gandal. If there was a scheme with gamblers, Gandal was the most likely to be involved. Gandal, Fred McMullen, and Buck Weaver all lived in L.A. in the off-season, and Hunter found McMullen first. The shortstop was working in a blacksmith shop for the Southern Pacific Railroad in November 1919.

According to Hunter, Fred was very outspoken about the suspicion around the players, but he expressed only disappointment at the way things turned out. Fred stated he knew nothing about a fix, and Hunter believed him. Next, Hunter tracked down Chick Gandal. Hunter posed as a real estate salesman when he met Gandal because Gandal and his wife had just bought a new bungalow that was reportedly worth $6,500. That was almost double Gandal's one-year contract with Chicago in 1919.

Later, Gandal claimed he did not buy the house. He took out a mortgage. He did buy a new car, but he said all the money used for these things had been legally, earned. During his time spent with Hunter, Gandal said all the rumors of a fix were just the lousy whinings of a few gamblers who lost money early in the series. Gandal flatly denied taking any money or being approached by anyone about throwing the World Series. But, according to Hunter, Gandal did hint that there was one person who might know about such things.

Buck Weaver Hunter sent someone he described as a real estate man to talk to Buck at his home in Venice near the beach. Buck denied knowing anything about a plan to fix the series, but he did allow that some of the plays could be construed as suspicious if you wanted to look at him that way. Later, Hunter himself called Buck on the telephone and posed as a newspaper reporter. Buck repeated the same story, but he also expressed concern about the future of baseball. He was worried that the rumors of gambling would taint the sport like they had with horse racing. Again, Hunter believed the player's story.

He sent reports back to Chicago that essentially said he believed Gandal, McMullen, and Weaver were not involved in a conspiracy. And now he had one last stop to make on the West Coast. Hunter headed up to San Francisco to find Swede Risberg. But when he arrived, he received a telegram from the White Sox saying his West Coast investigation was done. It was late December, and it was time to run. wrap it all up. But there was one thread of the investigation that lasted a little longer, and it was the stuff of old-timey espionage. One of Hunter's detectives spent two months

getting close to Happy Felsch in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The detective was known as Operative No. 11. He had been assigned to the task by a man called Mr. R. For the first three weeks of November, operative number 11 scoured Happy's neighborhood in Milwaukee searching for the famous ballplay. He went to saloons and shops and asked everyone where he could find Happy. With every answer, he still seemed one step behind the center fielder. So now, Operative Number 11 asked for help from the home office in Chicago. Hunter's Secret Service dispatched Operative ABG to assist Operative Number 11. And yeah, this is all real.

Finally, the two detectives located Happy Felch. One of the reasons he was so hard to find was that he loved to hunt and fish, and he was always out of town on trips. But the operatives eventually discovered that he ran a Christmas tree lot, and that was the way in. First, number 11 bought a big tree from Happy's father-in-law. Then he came back and bought 25 more from Happy himself, and that certainly got Happy's attention. Throughout the month of December, operative Number 11 positioned himself in Happy's life. The two men hung out in saloons and talked about hunting and fishing and bowling, Happy

love to bowl. And the detective met Happy's friends and family and spent time in Happy's home and went on an ice fishing trip with Happy and his friends. They talked about all kinds of things, but the operative learned very little information about a possible gambling conspiracy during the World Series. In January 1920, three days after Babe Ruth became a Yankee, operative number 11 made his final report to the White Sox. He said Happyfelsch probably knew more than he was willing to tell,

but he believed the man was innocent. That made it four-for-four. Chick-Gandle, Fred McMullen, Buck Weaver, and Happy Felsch had all been investigated and judged by the detectives to be clean, more or less. There was still a little suspicion, but the Los Angeles and Milwaukee threads had discovered no hard evidence of corruption.

In Chicago, the Hunter Secret Service Agency embarked on a complicated and convoluted investigation centered on two women who knew Swede Risberg, but nothing came of it. In St. Louis, detectives followed up on the trip made by Kid Gleason, but ultimately it hit a dead end. There were three men in St. Louis who were most associated with the fix. Theater owner Harry Redman, pool hall owner Joe Pesh, and merchant gambler Carl Zork. Redmond and Pesh actually traveled to Chicago and met Charlie Kamski in person in December, and they told the owner that the fix definitely happened.

But again, they could not provide any tangible evidence. So after four months of work and nearly $4,000 in expenses, Kamisky was right back to where he started. It seemed likely that there was a fix, but no one could prove it. On the surface, it was the perfect scenario. It gave Kamisky cover to bury the whole thing and bring back all his players. Interestingly, no one investigated Eddie Seacott, Lefty Williams, or Shulis Joe Jackson, the three men who would testify before a grand jury less than one year from now.

At the same time Kamisky was conducting his investigation, American League President Ban Johnson was conducting an investigation of his own. Johnson's detectives followed similar threads as Kamiske's. and came to roughly the same conclusion. Several White Sox players had probably engaged in a conspiracy to lose the World Series, but there was no concrete proof. Johnson did uncover two crucial details, though.

They were names, Sleepy Bill Burns and Billy Mahargue. Johnson didn't do anything with him at the moment. He just kept them in his back pocket. No one knew it yet, but the two gamblers would be star witnesses in baseball's trial of the century, in about 18 months.

But at this point, in the early winter of 1920, Johnson was embroiled in the power struggle that seemed to reignite every offseason. Between the 1918 and 1919-offseasons, the owners of the Boston Red Sox and the New York Giants had tried to dissolve the National Commission that governed baseball. The commission was made up of the two league presidents,

Johnson from the AL and John Hedler from the NL, and a chairman, August Gary Herman, the owner of the Cincinnati Reds. But Herman was the chairman in name only. Ban Johnson was the real power. And now, Charlie Kamisky, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, and Yankees owner Jacob Rupert, led an insurrection. They wanted Johnson out, and they wanted the commission abolished.

But just like last year, the plan failed in its ultimate goal, though it did get one step closer. Gary Herman resigned as chairman of the National Commission. The governing body of baseball was collapsing. The owners had chosen sides. Some joined the insurrectionists, as Kamiski, Frisee, and Rupert were called, and some stayed loyal to Johnson. There was so much infighting behind the scenes

that very little was accomplished that off-season, with one major exception. They didn't say it in these words, but they essentially agreed that the dead, ball era was done. The live ball era was about to begin. They ordered up a new baseball to be used in games, one that was more tightly wound and would jump off the bat when hit. And the ball would be changed out more often during a game. It would no longer be allowed to become bruised and dirty. And most importantly, nearly all the freak pitches were outlawed. The spitball, the shine ball,

the Emery ball, and all the others. There was just one exception. to that rule. Seventeen pitchers were allowed to continue throwing the spitball. Their careers were so dependent on the pitch that the owners thought it would be unfair to force them to stop using it. As soon as they all retired, the spitball would be retired as well. The owners could never have imagined the impact the changes would have on the game. Many teams set records for attendance in 1919 and 1920 would be even better,

thanks in large part to a 25-year-old pitcher-turned outfielder who was the son of a Baltimore saloon keeper. George Herman Ruth was about to obliterate the home run record he said in 1919. Babe Ruth didn't hit a home run in any of his nine games at April 1920, but he hit them at an unparalleled rate beginning May 1st. By mid-July, he was on the verge of breaking his own record. He hit 29 home runs in 1919, and as he stepped to the plate in the second game of a double-header on July 19, 1920, his total sat at 29. The games were at the polo grounds in Manhattan, and wouldn't you know it, the visiting team was the Chicago White Sox.

The two teams put on a show. There were 21 hits in the first game and 22 in the second. The Yankees won the first game, and the White Sox responded with a victory. in game two, but the real fireworks came from the two left-handed left-fielders. Babe Ruth broke his record by hitting two home runs in the second game, numbers 30 and 31 on the season. His counterpart on the Sox, Shulis Joe Jackson, also hit a home run. It was his fifth of the year. Babe Ruth finished the season with a nearly unbelievable 54 home runs.

That was four more than was hit by the entire roster, of the St. Louis Browns. In fact, Babe Ruth hit more home runs than every team in the American League. The White Sox and the Yankees split that four-game series in July, and as baseball moved into the second half of the season, the two teams were locked in a three-way race with Cleveland for the American League pennant.

Chicago seemed to be unaffected by the turmoil of the off-season. Charlie Kamisky had re-signed seven of the eight players who had been named in the press as possible conspirators, in the World Series Fix, and most had received substantial pay raises. The only player of the eight who did not return was First Baseman Chick Gandal. After Kamiski's detectives finished their investigations, the owner sent team secretary Harry Graveter to each player's off-season home with a new contract offer. Chick-Gandle demanded $10,000 per year.

That salary would have made him one of the highest paid players in all of baseball. Kamisky offered him the same salary rate he played for since 1917, $4,000. Gandal refused, and Kamisky didn't budge. So Chick-Gandle didn't play in 1920, and essentially retired from Major League Baseball. Sean O. Collins took over at first base and had the best hitting season of his career, and the personal best was not unique to him. Buck Weaver and Swede Risberg also had the best years of their lives. Shulis Joe was having one of his best, and Eddie Seacott and Lefty Williams were also having good seasons.

And pitcher Red Faber was back to his old self. The three best years of Red Faber's career were 1920 through 1920. He had been the pitching star of Chicago's 1917 World Series win, but he caught the influenza virus before the 1919 season, and he was weakened all year, in addition to suffering through a litany of injuries. He missed the entire 1919 World Series, but by 1920, he was fully recovered. And now, with Seacott, Williams, Faber, and Dickie Kerr, the Chicago rotation featured four 20-game winners for the first time in baseball history. The scandalous rumors surrounding the 1919 season had fizzled out over the course of the off-season.

And now it was no surprise that the White Sox were once again in the hunt for an American League pennant. They stayed in the hunt right up until the final week of the season, when it all came crashing down. The 1919 World Series scandal roared back to life through a series of seemingly unrelated events that were centered on the White Sox cross-town rival, the Chicago Cubs. In August 1920, rumors of two other gambling scandals collided in Chicago, but they began out in California. The previous year, the Vernon Tigers had outlasted the loss of the loss and the game of the game of the game of the Angeles Angels to claim the 1919 Pacific Coast League championship. The PCL was a AA minor league, the highest level in the minors at that time.

There was no postseason series in the PCL, so the team that was at the top of the standings at the end of the year was declared the winner. As the 1919 season wound down, three teams were fighting for the top spot, the Salt Lake City Bs, the Vernon Tigers of Los Angeles, and the LA Angels. Vernon finished the season number one, but the Angels shouted accusations that the Salt Lake team had conspired with Vernon to lose several games, thereby positioning Vernon to win the league. Now, one year later in 1920, the same thing seemed to happen again. There were allegations that players on Salt Lake and Vernon were working with gamblers to lose games, and neck-deep in the conspiracy was our old, friend Hal Chase.

Hal Chase had been a great major league first baseman when he wanted to be, but he was also as corrupt as the day is long. He had been with the New York Giants in 1919, and he had been caught bribing players yet again. After the season, Giants manager John McGrath released Chase, and Chase never played in the majors again. But before he left, his parting gift to the major leagues was to connect Sleepy Bill Burns and Billy Mahard to Abe Attell so they could fix the 1919 World Series.

When Chase was basically kicked out of the majors, he returned to his home in California. He was one of the main organizers of the scandal that erupted in the Pacific Coast League in August 1920. It would be the first domino to fall in the White Sox scandal. When the LA press exposed evidence of game fixing between Salt Lake City and Vernon, It immediately resurrected claims made by the LA Angels that those two teams had done similar things a year ago, and it had led to Vernon winning the title. William Rigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, had his eye on the LA Angels. A year from now, he would buy the team,

and at the moment he was irate that the Angels might have been cheated out of a PCL championship. At the same time all this was happening in L.A., Riggily also heard that his Cubs might have lost to the Philadelphia Phillies in another gambling scheme. Rigley was getting hit from two sides. Two possible scandals had come to light just weeks apart, so he ordered Cubs President Bill Vec Sr. to cooperate with any investigation. He wanted transparency. Little did he know, the allegations against his Cubs were about to be completely overwhelmed

by the allegations against his cross-town rival, the White Sox. In September 1920, the month after the PCL scandals and the Cubs-Filly situation exploded, the Chief Justice of the Chicago Criminal Court system impaneled a grand jury to investigate the Cubs-Fillies rumors. The judge was an old friend of AL President Ban Johnson. Johnson and others started to urge the judge to shift to the focus of the grand jury from investigating the Cubs-Fillies games to investigating the 1919 World Series. Band Johnson had once been close friends with White Sox owner Charlie Kamiski. Kamisky helped Johnson get his first job in baseball as the president of the Western League,

which later became the American League. But over the last 20 years, their friendship had disintegrated. Now they were outright enemies, and Johnson saw a chance to ruin his former friend. It was the last month of the season, and the White Sox, the Indians, and the Yankees were locked in a three-way race for the American League pennant. Chicago was in the lead by a half game over Cleveland and a full game over New York. But the fragile balance between the two factions on Chicago's roster was starting to rupture. The players who participated in the fix rarely associated with the players who hadn't.

The clubhouse was dysfunctional, but they held it together just enough to stay in the lead. Joe Jackson felt increasingly alienated from his teammates. He wasn't really part of the group that had pulled off the fix, and he definitely wasn't part of the other side. More and more, he hung out by himself, or with his best friend on the team, Lefty Williams. In spite of the turmoil, Joe was having a great season. He had a 382 batting average and led the league in triples with 20,

but it wouldn't last much longer. By the time the grand jury began uncovering its first significant findings on September 22nd, 1920, the season was down to its final week. The White Sox and the Indians were neck-in-neck for the AL title, and then Chicago's world turned upside down. The grand jury had all but forgotten the Cubs. Its focus was squarely on the socks, and three of Chicago's star players were about to confirm the rumors

that had infected baseball for the past year. Eddie Seacott, Lefty Williams, and shoeless Joe Jackson were about to admit their roles in the conspiracy for the first time. The first big session of the grand jury was on September 22, 1920. Five days later, Billy Mahargue blew the thing wide open. He gave an explosive interview to the Philadelphia North American, where he said games one, two, and eight of the 1919 World Series had been rigged. The interview detailed the entire fix, as he understood.

stood it. Billy said Eddie Seacott approached Bill Burns about the fix. The price was $100,000 for eight players. Burns brought in Billy. The two men went to gamblers in Philadelphia, but they were rebuffed. Then they went to Arnold Rothstein, and Rothstein turned them down. Then Burns went to Abe Attell, and Atel told him Rothstein had reconsidered and now agreed to finance the fix, through his old pal Abe. So they were all in business. In Cincinnati, the White Sox players wanted all the money up front, but Attel convinced them to accept $20,000 after each game they lost,

and then he double-crossed them. According to Billy, Abe Attell gave the players $10,000 total and kept the other 90 to place on bets. Billy was wiped out by Chicago's win in game three. He went home to Philadelphia, and that's where his participation ended. But he said he heard a group of gamblers in St. Louis resurrected the fix for game eight.

Lastly, he made it clear that Abe Attell should be the man sitting in front of the grand jury to answer for the conspiracy. He believed Attell was the mastermind, and he had lied about Arnold Rothstein being involved. The story was nationwide news. Charlie Kamiski sent a telegram to Billy asking him to come to Chicago

to tell his story to the grand jury. jury, but Billy refused. He never did testify in front of the grand jury, but his part in this play was far from over. The day after the story came out, Eddie Seacott sat down with Alfred Austrian, the lawyer for the Chicago White Sox. One year earlier, Austrian had hired Hunter's Secret Service to investigate some of the players about the rumors of a conspiracy. The investigation produced smoke, but no fire.

Now it was about to turn into an inferno. Eddie admitted everything to Austrian, and Austrian sent him to the Cook County Courthouse. Eddie confessed to the grand jury that he was involved in the scandal. He said he had accepted $10,000 before game one, and he had lost the game on purpose. But that night he felt so bad about it that he vowed to play to win for the rest of the series. Eddie's testimony set the tone for what was to come from the other players. It was a half-in, half-out situation. Yes, Eddie had accepted money, but no, he had not played to lose, at least after game one.

In addition, he didn't really know how the fix began or who financed it. After Eddie finished, Joe Jackson took the stand. His testimony was similar. He had taken money, but he had never intentionally made a bad play in the series. Since Joe had never attended any meetings, he had fewer details about the operation than Eddie. He didn't know how it got started or who put up the money. The next day, Lefty Williams sat with the grand jury. He repeated the same sentiments as Joe and Eddie.

He had accepted money, but never played to lose, even in that terrible game eight. But he also added a few new details. He confirmed the eight players who had been involved, which obviously now included Buck And he also listed two groups of gamblers, though he only knew a couple of the individuals by aliases. One group was comprised of Sleepy Bill Burns, A. Battelle, and a man Lefty knew only as Bennett. In the months to come, Bennett would be identified as David Zelser, a gambler from Des Moines, Iowa.

The second group named by Lefty was made up of two men, Sullivan and Brown. Sullivan was quickly determined to be Joseph Sport Sullivan, a big-time gambler from Boston. But the true identity of Mr. Brown remained a mystery for many years. Brown was initially thought to be a small-time crook from New York, but that theory was eventually dismissed. It took a long time for experts to believe that Mr. Brown was really Nat Evans, the right-hand man of Arnold Rothstein. Joe Jackson's appearance before the grand jury gave rise to one of the most enduring legends of the Black Sox story. It was dramatized in a memorable moment

in the movie Eight Men Out, and according to Joe, it never happened. After Joe's testimony in 1920, a reporter named Charlie Owens of the Chicago Daily News wrote a story that contained a poignant interaction.

The story claimed that a child ran up to Joe as Joe was exiting the courthouse. The child pleaded with the famous ball player, uttering the now-famous phrase, say it ain't so, Joe. Thirty years later, Joe described the scene in his own words. He said,

When I came out of the building, a deputy asked me where I was going, but nobody else said anything to me. It just didn't happen, that's all. Charlie Owens made up a good story, and he wrote it. The grand jury testimonies of the three players generated massive interest, as you'd expect. But in a way you might not. Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret by law, but the law was thrown out in this case.

Everyone talked, the foreman of the jury, the prosecuting attorney, and even the judge himself. As a result, the proceedings were replayed in the newspapers almost verbatim. And so, with the secret out, Happy Felch added his voice to the mix. He gave an interview to a newspaper where he followed the lead of his teammates. He had accepted money, but played to win.

He would not confirm the names of the other players who might have been in on it, and he didn't know where the money came from, but he thought the press reports mentioning Abe Attell sounded about right. The remaining players took the opposite approach. Chick Gandal, Swede Risberg, Fred McMullen, and Buck Weaver all said they were innocent. Buck was especially vocal in his protests. One month later, the grand jury handed down the first round of indict. The eight players were charged with five counts of conspiracy to obtain money under false pretenses and or via a confidence game.

In addition to the players, five gamblers were charged with the same thing. Bill Burns, Hal Chase, Abe Attell, Sport Sullivan, and the mysterious Mr. Brown. They were just the beginning. Down the road, five more would be indicted. Interestingly, none of them were named Billy Mahargh, and that was because Billy had turned state's evidence. In exchange for immunity, he agreed to be one of the star witnesses for the prosecution in the trial of the 1919 Chicago White Sox.

But like everything in this story, it wouldn't go easy or according to plan. It was a quagmire of starts and stops and missteps and complications. And that's next time. on the Infamous America podcast. Next time on the show, it's the end of the story. It's the trial of eight players and nearly a dozen gamblers. It's a court ruling that caused some to cheer and others to groan, and it's followed by a stunning announcement that changed baseball forever.

The trial, the banishments, and the aftermath are next week on Infamous America. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave our rating and a 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 about here, go to saber.org for a wealth of articles. That's SABR.org. And 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-Barrel Media on Twitter. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.