Infamous America - BLACK SOX Ep. 7 | Jacob Pomrenke Interview

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

Jacob Pomrenke is the chairman of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research committee. He separates fact from fiction in an interview that dissects the most prominent myths of the Black Sox scandal. Special thanks to the SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee for assistance in this production. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Black Barrel Media, welcome to the first of two interview episodes about the Black Sox scandal as we wrap up season two of the infamous America podcast. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. You've heard the story, and now it's time to hear from two men who were critical to the production. Jacob Pomerinky of Sabre and Mike Nola, who knows as much about Shueless Joe Jackson as any person alive. This episode will feature Jacob, who is the director of editorial content at Sabre, and the chairman of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. He's the editor of the book that was the core of this story, Scandal on the South Side,

and he's the man who made sure I had my facts straight during the production of the show. In this interview, we'll break down the eight most prominent myths about the scandal and we'll dive into the discoveries that changed the story in the last 20 years. It's time to separate fact from fiction. Here's Jacob Pomerick. 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,

and then, of course, I have a brainstorm about something new. That lights the fire, and then I'm in real trouble. To calm my mind, the only things that have ever worked with any consistency are sleep gummies. Sleepy Time Advanced Gummies from Mood.com come in various combinations of THC, CBD and CBN. So you can get something that's very low in THC, but higher in CBD, which helps turn off the stress, and CBN, which is the thing that makes you sleepy. The brain shuts up, the racing thoughts stop,

and it's off to sleep. Mood is federally compliant. The gummies are legal and delivered right to your door. 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. Jacob, we finally did it. We're at the end of the line. The series is complete. The listeners have just heard the six-episode narrative story of the scandal, the Black Sox scandal. So now it's time to hear from you as the chairman of the Society for American Baseball Research Black Sox Scandal Research Committee.

Did I get all that correct? Yeah, you did. Oh my God. Okay, good. Good. I started saying the name, the spelled out version of Sabre, and I realized, I shouldn't have done that. I should just gone with Saber. But I just let it, I just roll with it. So that's probably a miracle that I was able to get all of those words correct in the right order. So as the chairman, thank you being so much for being the guiding force behind this project. You and I spoke about this. I think probably seven months ago for the first time, and it's been a long road and we're finally at the end of it. So thank you for being a part of it. Well, thanks for having me on. Chris. It's been a great project and a lot of fun to be part of.

So what we want to do today, three things. First, we have to acknowledge the committee. I want you to tell me about the committee who's been researching this for a long time. And then we're going to get into the myths, the top eight myths associated with this scandal. And then we're also going to hear about the discoveries that led to the debunking of some of those myths. So right off the bat, who are the members of the Black Sox scandal research committee within Sabre? So our Black Sox Research Committee is one of dozens of research committees in Sabre that are focused on, specific topic, specific subject matter. And ours happens to be the 1919 World Series because

this is a story that we continue to learn more about. This is a story that we always find very fascinating. You know, we say the Black Sox scandal is a cold case, not a closed case, because we're continuing to learn more and new sources of information are coming to light and, you know, shedding just new light on what happened back in 1919. So the Black Sox Research Committee consists of about 200 people who are really dedicated in learning. more about the Black Sox scandal and all the associated aspects. This is a story that, you know, has ramifications in the 21st century as Major League Baseball is getting back into gambling. And so this is a story that, again, it never seems to die. I think we'll be talking about this

for the next hundred years for sure. Yeah, no question. It was funny. That exact subject came up in another interview I did that, yes, we've almost come full circle now. Gambling was a big part of baseball. And then there was a massive effort to get it out of baseball. And now we're coming right back to gambling being associated with all major sports. You know, for anyone who's listened to the series, you know, you've seen kind of what the atmosphere was like in baseball in 1919. And one of the major, you know, aspects of baseball culture in 1919 was the gambling and the betting that was going on.

This was something that was rampant in baseball culture. You know, you could go to Wrigley Field to Fenway Park and bet on games. What was happening on the field? You know, what was happening on the very next pitch? You could do that in 1990. and you may be able to do that again in 2019 and beyond. And so this is a story that continues to have relevance in the 21st century. No question. Yeah, I don't know if I went too deep into it in the series,

but it was one of the really interesting little nuggets that gamblers would just set up shop in the grandstands, in the in the bleachers, and conduct their betting operations right there in full view of everyone. And even though it was frowned upon, nobody did much about, nobody did really anything about it. There was very little effort made to kick them out of games or anything like that. So that was a really interesting nugget that. remember finding. Yeah, baseball had many, many opportunities to clean up the game from, from the gambling epidemic in the 1910s, and they chose to look the other way, usually, you know, being mindful of more profits and more attendance and more attention, more popularity. And so there were

many opportunities to clean up the game from all this gambling and some of the game fixing that was going on before the 1919 World Series. And so, you know, this was something that the 1919, World Series was not a scandal that happened out of thin air. This is not something that just came up and nobody knew what was coming. There were a lot of opportunities for baseball to do something about it, and they just chose not to. And a lot of that context, you know, we weren't able to get into too many of the incidents, but just one I'll highlight real quick is a gambler's riot at Fenway Park in 1917. You know, the gamblers at Fenway Park rioted on the field.

They came on the field during a Red Sox White Sox game, and, you know, they tried to get the game called so they wouldn't lose their money on the hometown Red Sox. So this was just one of many, many, many incidents involving gamblers in baseball. So there were a lot of opportunities that they had to clean up the game that they chose not to. Yes, I'm glad you brought that up. I remember reading about the Gambler's Riot, and that was one of those things. It was in an early draft of the scripts, and it just fell onto the cutting room floor, unfortunately, for time. But I thought that was another great one.

And there are tons of those. I read so many of them in my research process, which basically doubled up on the research you guys have been doing forever. I was shocked at how many of those I stumbled across. I just couldn't simply fit them all into the series. Yeah, all these incidents made news headlines and they were in the newspapers. And so, you know, this was not something that was a secret in baseball. And the Black Sox scandal was not a secret in baseball either. And so, you know, again, baseball had a lot of opportunities.

Hal Chase, who was mentioned in the series prominently, you know, he was the most corrupt player in baseball history and he was bribing his own teammates. He was bribing opponents. and, you know, this was something that baseball chose not to do anything or not to punish him. And so, you know, we believe now that this is one of the reasons why the Black Sox threw the World Series, not because they were underpaid and mistreated, but because this was a low risk. Nobody was going to punish them for throwing games because other players had thrown games before and nobody had done anything about it.

Yeah, they could potentially double or triple their salaries in the space of one week, and the likelihood of getting punished was very low. Yeah, you know, baseball officials knew all about this. And we'll get into this more with the eight myths out later in this interview. But, you know, baseball officials knew what was going on. Probably even before the World Series began, they knew about the fix. And so, again, this was just, you know, one of many, many opportunities that they had to do something about it. Right.

So let's set up the process of going through the top eight myths. And we're going to do that by having you tell me about the three major discoveries that have happened in the last 20 years. Can you walk me through those three major discoveries? So, you know, in the 21st century, we've been four. fortunate to have a lot of different sources of information that have come to light about the 1919 World Series and all the related incidents and the legal proceedings that have, you know, we're in Chicago. And so we've learned a lot more about what happened in 1919 through this source information. And one of those great sources was the salary cards, contract cards from each major

league team that MLB donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame back in 2002. And so we've had members of Saber who have gone up to Cooperstown to research the salary information. And so that has put a different spin on this old story of these underpaid White Sox. We know now that the White Sox were one of the highest paid teams in baseball, not one of the lowest paid teams in baseball. And so, you know, this is, again, one of many, many sources of information that has come to light. Another one is the Chicago History Museum collection in 2007. That museum acquired a treasure trove of documents related to the legal proceedings. The grand jury. the criminal trial and the civil lawsuits that the White Sox players filed.

And you can go up to the Chicago History Museum today and search through all these documents. There's thousands of pages related to the Black Sox scandal that, you know, when Elliot Asinoff was writing the book, Eight Men Out in the 1960s, he had no access to any of this. And so we've been able to put together, you know, a more comprehensive story about the Black Sox scandal thanks to this source information. And the other one that I like to highlight is the film footage that came out. There was a Chicago filmmaker by the name of Bill Morrison who discovered an old newsreel of the 1990 World Series. And you can actually go on YouTube now and watch film footage of games one and three of the 1990 World Series.

Unless you were sitting in the stands at Crosley Field or Comiskey Park during the 1990 World Series, you were not going to be able to watch these plays until this film footage came to light. So it's a lot of cool information and new sources that we've been able to help piece together a little bit of a little bit of a more complete story to tell what happened with the Black Sox scandal. And so with all that information, now we're going to talk about how that affected the scandal itself. So like you said, prior to the discovery of all this information, Elliot Asanoff's 1963 book, Eight Men Out, was considered more or less the definitive story. I guess I'm going to use the word definitive. It probably was up until a lot of this new information came out. At the very least, that was the

story that most people believed. So we're going to walk through some of the myths that were probably unintentionally created by that story. Now we know the truth because of these discoveries. So we've got these discoveries. So let's go through the top eight myths, which was actually part of an article published by Saber a few months before this podcast series began. So if you want to read all these things and a ton of other stuff, definitely go to Saber's website. You can find a whole slew of articles related to the scandal. So here's, let's start with number one. The one, probably the top one that everybody knows about. It listed as Kamiski as Scrooge, the Black Sox players through the 1919 World Series because they were so underpaid.

That's the myth. What's the reality? So the reality is, you know, baseball was under this reserve clause system. And so salaries were suppressed all the way until free agency in the 1970s. But during the era, Charles Kamiski, the White Sox owner, actually paid his White Sox players as much or more than just about any other team in baseball. The 1919 White Sox on opening day had the third highest payroll in baseball behind the Yankees and the Red Sox.

because, of course, some things never change. But the White Sox were very well paid in comparison to their peers, and they were actually making about seven times more than the average American worker at this time. And so, you know, the idea that the White Sox were underpaid, and that this is the reason why they threw the World Series doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all. And the salary information that we have from these Hall of Fame contract cards, you know, shows us just how much the players were making. And if you read the book Eight Men Out, you know,

it throws out some outlandish claims about what some of the players were making. It says some of the Reds pitchers were making double what Eddie Seacott, the White Sox Ace was making. And that's not true at all. And we have salary information, you know, salary cards that show exactly what the players were paid. And so, you know, Eddie Seacott turns out to be the second highest paid pitcher in all of baseball behind Walter Johnson, the great Hall of Famer for the Washington Senators. And, you know, so the idea that the White Sox threw the World Series because of Charles Kamisky is just an idea that, again, does not hold up.

You know, we have a lot of new information that shows that Comisky paid his players as well or better than just about anybody, any other owner in the major leagues. And so the idea that this was the reason why they threw the World Series, again, just, you know, doesn't stand up. And also connected to Comisky, though, is myth number two, the Seacot bonus, that Charles Kamiski ordered his star pitcher Eddie Seacot to get benched toward the end of the season so that Eddie would not win 30 games. and therefore qualify for a 30-game bonus. That's the myth. What's the reality? Yeah, this myth kind of has two parts. The bonus story is probably the most famous part of this.

And one of the scenes, one of the most dramatic scenes in the film, eight men out, is when Eddie Seacott goes to Kamiski's office and demands his $10,000 bonus for winning 30 games. And, of course, Charles Kamiski comes back and says, 29 is not 30. He ended up with 29 wins during that season. And again, there's just no basis in fact for this story. And both the book, Eight Men Out and the film Eight Men Out, kind of changed the details on when this happened. Some said 1917 when the White Sox won the World Series and some said it happened in 1919.

But there's no evidence that it happened in either year. And the idea that Charles Kermisky would have paid a bonus that was double Eddie Seacott's $5,000 salary. You know, it just doesn't pass the smell test at all. So there's no evidence whatsoever that this happened. And of course, the other part of the myth is that Eddie Seacott did not have a chance to win his 30th game. And we know that he did. And when you can go up and look the box scores up to find out that he did have a chance to win his 30th game against the St. Louis Browns in late September. And he just didn't pitch well enough.

He gave up five runs and seven innings. And they yanked him from the game. And the White Sox came back to win the game on Shulis Joe Jackson's walkoff single. and that was the day they clinched the American League pennant. So if Eddie Seacott had pitched better in that game, he still would have won his 30th game. Yeah, bonus or not, he would have won the 30 games. And at the same time, maybe a smaller third part was that he was paid a bonus after the season. It just maybe wasn't associated with this particular set of circumstances.

Can you tell me about that bonus? Yes. So, you know, Charles Kamiski did pay out some bonuses in the contract cards at the Hall of Fame do show some of the details on this. And so there was this off-contract bonus that Eddie Seacott had agreed to in 1918, which was a year ravaged by World War I, and it was shortened because of the U.S. government's work or fight order. And so Eddie Seacott had agreed in 1918 to this bonus, a performance bonus. And he didn't pitch well enough, and the World War I kind of changed everything around. But in 1919, he was the best pitcher in the American League.

And so Charles Skimiski, we believe, paid him this bonus that was kind of this off-concounter. contract performance bonus to make up for the 1918 season. So Eddie Cicott did end up getting a bonus after all. Exactly. Yeah. And so number three, this is one, this is I think one that was probably closest to my heart here as having everything I knew about this story came from the book, Aet Man Out and the movie. I'm probably like a lot of people. I saw the movie. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I loved the movie. And I'd read the book. So this was about basically the entirety of what I thought I knew about the story. I think like most people, you assume when something gambling related is involved, it began with the gamblers. So one of the myth number three is that the gamblers initiated

the fix. Hopefully if everyone has heard the series, they know now that is not true. What is the reality? You know, the truth is the players had the idea, and it was Chick Gandal and Eddie Seacott who approached the gamblers first. And, you know, it wasn't their original idea. People had been talking about fixing world series for years. And just about every world series in the deadball era in the early 20th century had rumors associated with it that it was being fixed in some way or another. And so 1919 was just, you know, kind of this this long, you know, culmination of all these corruption, all this corruption in the deadball era. And, you know, so the idea that the players were these innocent figures that, you know, didn't know what they were doing. They, you know,

they were underpaid and they were mistreated and that they were kind of seduced by the big city gamblers. Again, none of that holds up. We know a lot more about, you know, what the player said. We've got interviews and their trial testimony, their grand jury testimony, I mean, in which, you know, they talked about their motivations and how they came up with this plot. And so, again, the idea that the gamblers were the ones that came up with its idea is just totally false. The players themselves approached the gamblers. They were the ones that approached different sets of gamblers to try to get as much money as they could during the World Series. Yeah, I think it, as a I said previously in other interviews as well, as I keep referencing that, I

assumed, I think like a lot of people, when you hear that a person, a criminal kingpin, like Arnold Rothstein is involved in something like this, you naturally assume he began it. He said, I want to fix the World Series. He sent his minions out to do his bidding and work with the players and get the whole thing connected. In fact, it was the opposite. It started with the players and worked its way toward Arnold Rothstein and then worked its way back toward the players after he became involved, whichever one has now heard about in the narrative. So that wasn't always fascinated me. Arnold Rosting, you know, is obviously one of the more famous figures involved in the in the Black Sox scandal. And he was certainly going to make money

on this fix if it was happening. But yeah, even if Arnold Rosting was not involved, there were still many, many other people involved that would have made this fix happen in some way or another. So again, Arnold Rosting did have a role, but he was certainly not the mastermind that we've grown up believing that he was in this fix. He was just one part of a very complex plot to fix the world series. Yeah, he was he was the money man basically a lot of other people did a lot more work than it seems like he did to promote this whole thing. So let's move on. Myth number four, Harry F. Another another great moment from the, from the movie, from the from the book that was generated from the book, Aitman Out. So the story that most of us grew up hearing was that

some sort of hitman or what's the word I'm looking for here, some kind of enforcement of some kind for the mob, for these gangsters or mobsters, threatened Lefty Williams before game eight. And that's why Lefty pitched so poorly in the final game of the series. That's the myth that someone, a hitman or an enforcer of some kind, threatened Lefty Williams life before game eight. What's the reality? Unfortunately, this is one of the more embarrassing mistakes in Eight Men Out. And the reason is because Elliot Asenov admitted years later that he invented a fictional character, this hitman, this assassin, that he called Harry F. And he did it for copyright reasons on the advice of a lawyer or his publisher so that if anyone

used the name Harry F in a future work on the Black Sox scandal, Elliot Asanoff might have a case because that was a detail that he invented. And many, many people, writers, historians, filmmakers, used Harry F as a character, as a real-life character. But the reality is he did not exist at all. And the only evidence we have that Lefty Williams may have been threatened comes from a story that was told decades later by someone who was a neighbor when he was a small child of the Williams in Chicago. And, you know, he told this story that Lefty had been threatened, that his wife told him this story that Gamblers had approached him before the final game, that he had to lose in the first inning. And that's really the only source for this story.

It was an article in the New Yorker after Lefty Williams died in the 1950s. And so, you know, it's easy to believe that Lefty Williams might have been threatened by, you know, Chicago gangsters. This was a time of Al Capone and the mob, you know, going into the roaring 20s. So it's easy to believe this myth. But there's no evidence whatsoever that this actually happened. And, you know, Lefty Williams, like most of the players, probably got nervous and just pitched poorly, I think, is what really happened in game eight. Yeah, it seems like it probably makes much more sense than a mysterious hitman that nobody's ever been able to account for. So let's move on to midway.

Number five. The next one is that this story, the Black Sox scandal, was an isolated event. It's, of course, it's the most prominent, but that's the myth that this is this one time only isolated gambling conspiracy. That's the myth. What's the reality?

The reality is that the Black Sox scandal is one of many, many game fixing incidents and gambling incidents that happened in baseball, you know, and going back through the early 20th century and even into the late 19th century, you know, the first fixed. baseball game that we're aware of happened in 1865, the final year of the Civil War, long before the National League was even created. So, you know, fixed games had been going on really as long as

baseball had been around. And so this idea that the 1919 World Series scandal came out of nowhere is the story that baseball, I think, would like you to believe that this was a loss of innocence, that it was kind of the myth of baseball's single sin in the words of David Voigt, baseball historian. You know, this is something that, you know, had been going on for many years. And again, baseball had a lot of opportunities to clean up the game from gambling. And I think it's impossible to understand what happened in 1919 without knowing more about the gambling culture and the betting culture. I mean, gamblers were all over the ballparks. They were in the hotels. You know, players were associated with them. They could find them at the bars and the saloons and the pool halls.

you know, and so there were a lot of opportunities. And I think the ease of opportunity to bet on a baseball game is something that really doesn't get talked about a whole lot. And, you know, that was something that, again, players were betting on their own games. This was an accepted part of baseball culture at the time. And so this idea that the Black Sox scandal came out of nowhere is just, you know, again, you have to ignore all of baseball history up to that point to believe that. Right. And following up, though, is leading right.

into that is baseball's cover up. Myth number six is that league officials and owners heard rumors about this potential conspiracy. There might have been some kind of fix, but they didn't really do anything about it. And it wasn't until the grand jury investigation a year later that anyone took action on this. And then we actually found out that, okay, yes, there was a conspiracy. That's the myth. What's the reality? You know, as we talked about in the podcast series, you know, Charles Kamiski knew pretty early on, and a lot of other baseball owners did, too, that the World Series was being fixed. And, of course, we've learned about the detectives that Kamisky hired after the World Series to go spy on his players. You know, so, you know, he learned a lot of different details, and he threw up his hands saying he didn't know enough or he didn't have hard proof.

And the only thing that baseball officials didn't really have about the Black Sox scandal was the players' confessions themselves. But they had just about every other piece of evidence and information that they needed to know to act and do something about the fix and the gambling rumors. So the idea that baseball had no idea, baseball officials had no idea what was going on. And they had no proof until Eddie Seacott went to the grand jury in September of 1920 is totally false. And Kamiski himself admitted years later in an interview that he knew before game one about the fix. And so, you know, he really didn't do much about that. Ban Johnson, the American League president, had a lot of opportunities to do something about it. And he chose not to do anything until, you know, he was getting involved with the grand jury establishment in 1920.

So there were a lot of different opportunities for baseball officials. And they knew all they needed to know to stop this if they wanted to. Right. Kamiski investigated all of his players. And of course, all the players denied having any involvement in the fix. So it allowed Kamiski to say, well, look, they all said, no, I don't really have any small. smoking gun proof that says absolutely there was. My players deny it. So therefore, I guess I can just go along with business as usual. Yeah, it was very convenient for Charles Skimisky to throw up his hands and say, oh, I don't have enough proof. He had offered a $10,000 Republic reward

for anyone that had information about the World Series fix. And of course, many people did come to him, including some of the gamblers who were involved in the fix to say, yes, the World Series was fixed. But he chose not to pay out that reward because that wasn't the intention. He never intended to actually reward anybody for knowledge because he had all the knowledge that he needed about the fix, again, as early as game one. Right. And you just mentioned it in there until the grand jury investigation, that seemed to be the prompting issue that everyone, they were able to finally move forward and say, okay, we have to do something about this now. Those grand jury confessions given by Eddie Seacott, Lefty Williams, and Shulis Joe Jackson

were lost. And so everyone, the assumption has been, the myth has been that the transcripts of their grand jury confessions were stolen and therefore they were not able to be used during the trial to try to convict these players. That's part of the reason there was an acquittal because these grand jury confessions were just mysteriously gone. That's the myth. What's the reality? Well, this is, again, one of the most dramatic scenes in the eight men out film. The prosecutors, you know, hold up their files and say, you know, we don't have the confessions of the players and the, you know, the myth is that this ruined the state's case against the White Sox players during their criminal trial for conspiracy. And there was a theft.

So there is a small grain of truth here to this myth. There was a theft of the original transcripts from the state's attorney's office. But this was discovered well in advance, months before the trial actually started. And during the trial itself, the court synographers from the grand jury proceedings read their notes back into the record, just as they had done to create the original transcripts. And so Eddie Seacott and Shulis Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams, the three White Sox players who testified before the grand jury, their testimony was read right back into the record, and it was used at trial, just as it would have been if the original transcripts had not been stolen. And the theft itself was by kind of this low-level prosecutor's office employee.

This was part of some political shenanigans in Chicago. There was a, a heavily contested election in the fall of 1920, a presidential year. And so this was, you know, all part of the outgoing and the incoming state's attorney's office switching parties. So there was a little bit of a theft, but it had absolutely no bearing on the Black Sox trial at all. Right. The trial just moved ahead as if the confessions were, the original transcripts were there.

So the final myth. Let's get to the last one. Number eight, shamed into silence, that the White Sox players were notoriously reluctant to talk about the series, about the scandal, the series, any of the events, they, mum was the word, they stayed silent on all of it. That is the myth. That's what we believe previously. What is the reality? So when Elliot Asanoff, you know, went looking for the Black Sox players and some of the gamblers involved when he was doing his research for eight men out in the early 1960s, he encountered a lot of silence, a lot of people involved did not want to talk to him

for his book. But the reality is he was just one of many writers. that were trying to get these players to talk, and a lot of other writers did get these players to talk. And so we've discovered more than 100 interviews, I think over 125 interviews now, with players involved, both from the White Sox and the Reds in the 1919 World Series, in which they talked freely about the Black Sox scandal. So this idea that none of the players were willing to talk, that they were too embarrassed, they were too ashamed, or they were too afraid of retribution to talk about the Black Sox scandal, So again, you know, that was just one writer at one time, but many other writers got these players to talk and talk freely.

And so a lot of what we have learned about the Black Sox scandal in the last 100 years does come from some of these interviews. Right. I think you and I mentioned one of them in our seemingly endless discussions to produce this series. I was bringing up Ray Schalk and it sounded like he was notoriously silent, that he was one of the more stingy players. Now, of course, he wasn't involved in the fix. He was one of the so-called clean socks, if he want to name him that. But you correct me and said, no, Ray Schalk gave several interviews about this. He was not completely silent on this. He, in fact, gave a very damaging interview right after the world serial.

I shouldn't say right after, in December of 1919. So a couple months later, what was the substance and subtext of that interview? So Ray Schalk, his nickname was Cracker, and it wasn't because he was Southern. and it was because he was kind of a firecracker in temperament. And after the 1919 World Series, he gave an interview to a small gambling trade publication called Collier's Eye, in which he named seven of his teammates who were rumored to fix the World Series. Buck Weaver was the only person that he did not name because Buck's name was not part of the rumors at this time.

And Ray Shaw named all seven of his teammates that were involved in the fix and said they would not be allowed back on the White Sox team. in 1920. And he got in big trouble for this interview. Charles Kermiski called him in and admonished him and Chalk had to give a second interview to the sporting news in which he basically recanted everything he had said. And, you know, he basically, you know, said, oh, I never actually said this, or I was mistaken or I was misquoted. So he got in big trouble for naming all seven of his teammates that were involved in the Black Sox scandal. And this is one of the reasons that he did stay mostly silent in years later. You know, he picked and chose who he wanted to talk to about the Black Sox scandal.

But he did give several interviews. He gave a very extensive interview to Ed Burns of the Chicago Tribune in the 1940s. He gave many other interviews after he was elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1950s and 60s. And so, yeah, he, you know, he was pretty talkative when he wanted to be. He just didn't want to be to Elliot Asanoff. And so the story goes, he threw Asanoff out of his office at Purdue University, where he was assistant baseball coach when Assohnoff came to interview him in Indiana in the 1960s. And so, but he did talk to many other writers involved, you know, about the scandal.

Yeah, and several of the players had similar experiences. I wanted to bring that up because it was fresh in my mind and I thought it was interesting that he was, he was one of those guys who was, who was said to have been silent and he wasn't. And it seems like a lot of the guys were in the same boat. So that wraps it up. Those are the eight most prominent myths associated with the scandal, all. have been debunked by the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. We hope you enjoyed hearing about all of those during the course of the narration. I really wanted to highlight those in this interview

because all of them have been worked in to some extent or another, but some of them I hit more prominently than others. I wanted to make sure we got through all of those. So everyone who's seen the movie and read the book, Aitman Out, you now understand what we've been talking about this whole time. So thank you very much, Jacob. I appreciate everything with this story. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me on. And thanks for a great project, Chris. Next week, it's the final episode of the season. We'll end the series with stories of shoeless Joe Jackson. Mike Nola has plenty of them, and you won't want to miss it.

I guarantee you'll hear some things you've never heard before. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a 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.