THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN

Commissioner Manfred did not deliver Pete Rose the holiday gift he had hoped for. Rose is still officially banned from having any role in major league baseball, other than appearing at certain events. Although Manfred made clear there was a distinction between Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame, for all intents and purposes Rose's continued banishment from the game means he will continue to be banished from consideration of being honored with a plaque in Cooperstown. Notwithstanding his great career, the sin of having bet on games—including betting on his team when he was manager—is too great to overcome. It is worth being reminded of why.

The Unforgivable Sin

Baseball, then indisputably America's national pastime, was dealt a devastating body blow in the closing days of the 1920 pennant races when the news broke that Chicago White Sox players had conspired with high-stakes professional gamblers to fix games in the 1919 World Series. They included three of Chicago's four starting infielders, two of the three starting outfielders—including the great Shoeless Joe Jackson—two  of the team's top three starting pitchers (and the third, Red Faber, was ailing and so unable to pitch in the Series), and a marginal bench player who, having heard about it, wanted in on the action.

Gambling, including wagering on the outcome of any kind of contest, was also an American pastime—one that was longstanding, although of course no one would say such a thing since gambling was decidedly less wholesome than baseball. Baseball as an institution was not at the time blind to at least the potential of players conspiring with gamblers to fix games, and probably should not be accused of having turned a blind eye to the problem. But baseball as an institution did not effectively grapple with players’ willful association with gamblers and allegations, often by teammates, of players being involved in not always playing “honest ball.”

The most notorious of the "dishonest" players—indeed, the player who defined corruption in the game—was Hal Chase, said to be a superb defensive first baseman and a charmer when it came to dealing with people, although one would have been advised to check one's wallet and count one's fingers after being in his presence. When he starred for the Highlanders (before they adopted "Yankees" as a nickname) from 1905 to 1912, Chase was said to "lay down" on his teammates and tried to entice a few to play along. Nothing could be proven, however, and American League President Ban Johnson took no action against him. 

When he played for the Cincinnati Reds—with whom he won a batting title in 1916—allegations of his playing to lose some games caused his manager, the esteemed paragon of morality Christy Mathewson, to suspend him in 1918 and National League President John Heydler to convene a hearing. With Matty off to serve his country in World War I and so unable to present his case, there was only hearsay testimony about his corruption, a few glowing testimonials on what a great fellow he was, and Chase got off scot free. But not for long. Heydler banned Chase from ever again playing in the National League in 1919 based on evidence he was able to obtain of Prince Hal's perfidy from a Boston gambler.

The Black Sox scandal forced major league baseball to do something about the betrayal of the public's trust in the national pastime. Fans trust that the games are not fixed. Betting on baseball by its participants—whether players or managers—compromises the integrity of the game precisely because they can effect the outcome of games. 

Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was named Commissioner in the midst of the scandal playing out in a court of law and who demanded absolute authority in overseeing the integrity of the game, made it his mission to restore the public's trust in professional baseball; as a federal judge, he had once called the game a "national institution." He acted quickly and decisively in permanently banning the eight Chicago players for their role in conspiring to throw World Series games on behalf of big-time gambling interests. It did not matter to him that all eight were acquitted at their trial:

• Even if the trial jury chose to ignore or dismiss the grand jury confessions of Shoeless Joe and pitching aces Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams and the evidence against the others—which was particularly weak in the case of third baseman Buck Weaver, who like Jackson played well in the Series—the new Commissioner did not.
• It mattered little to Landis whether or not they really played to lose, which they all denied doing. In fact, that issue was irrelevant as far as the former federal judge was concerned. 
• The grand jury confessions and evidence spoke to their agreeing to conspire with high-rolling gamblers to lose World Series games, or knowing about the plot, and that was all that mattered to Landis.
• Even had they not affected the outcome of any game by their play on the field, their agreement to compromise the integrity of games for a payout, whether or not they received any money, was to defraud major league baseball's interests—and fan expectations—that games are played honestly and championships honestly earned. And that was unacceptable.

"Just keep in mind," concluded the Commissioner in his statement announcing his decision, "regardless of the verdict of juries, baseball is entirely competent to protect itself against crooks, both inside and outside the game."

Ever since, organized baseball's edict against betting on baseball has been fiercely uncompromising. It has to be, because the integrity of the game depends on it. The sin of betting on baseball is irredeemable for anyone involved in baseball. 

That said, baseball is a game that honors its past. The sinner may be forever banished from further participation in the great game of baseball, but his name is not erased from the record books, nor his achievements airbrushed out of the game's history. 

Pete Rose, with his record ten 200-hit seasons and record 4,256 hits, and Shoeless Joe Jackson, with his .356 lifetime average (third highest in history), are indisputably two of the greatest players to take the field and will always be remembered as such despite their fall from grace. And while neither is likely to ever be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, in that great museum in Cooperstown, NY, can nonetheless be learned what they did on the diamond when they were among the best of their time.

Three Schools of Thought on the 1919 Black Sox

My previous post on the 1916 New York Giants concluded by noting that their loss the following year to the Chicago White Sox in the 1917 World Series set the stage for one of baseball history's most compelling dramas--the 1919 Black Sox scandal.  Much has been made of how good--or even great--that disgraced Chicago team was.  This Baseball Historical Insight addresses the question:  just how good were the White Sox-turned-Black Sox in the greater sweep of the best teams in history.

Three Schools of Thought on the 1919 Black Sox

The outlines of the Black Sox scandal are well known, so no need to replay that here.  As if the damage to the integrity of the game was not enough, requiring the establishment of an all-powerful Commissioner and--enter from stage right field--the transformational presence of the homerific Babe to repair, the cautionary tale this story tells is dramatically bolstered by the idea that the White Sox were a great team that squandered their historical legacy by the avarice of their "eight men out."  Thus the mythology that the 1919 and 1920 Chicago White Sox were one of baseball's best teams ever, done in by greed.  This assessment was based on their 1917 championship, when the White Sox won the pennant in convincing fashion with 100 wins and a nine-game margin of victory over Boston before taking out the Giants in six games in the World Series; their  cruising to the AL pennant in 1919--(after a disastrous sixth-place finish the previous year mostly because many of the team's best players were lost to war industries during World War I)--with 88 victories in an abbreviated 140-game schedule that would have translated to 97 over a full 154-game season, only to fall prey in the World Series to gamblers (and the Reds, Cincinnati fans have every right to insist); their winning 96 games in 1920, battling the Indians and Yankees in a tight race all through September until their season came undone when news of the scandal broke at the end of the month; and, finally, a player roster starring Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Collins (possibly the greatest second baseman in history), Ray Schalk (a Hall of Fame catcher), Eddie Cicotte (one of the best pitchers of his era), and Red Faber (a Hall of Fame pitcher for whom 1919 was a lost season because of illness and injury).

Playing into this great team mythology, various accounts of the time from players and the press box suggest that the White Sox were only as good as they wanted to be, able to ramp up their level of effort when it counted but often merely just going through the motions to stay in a competitive holding pattern.  (The irony of this assessment, of course, is that underachievement is not typically thought to be a such good thing.)  When they had to win, they won.  In 1916, for example, they set the stage for their 1917 pennant by ending the season with 24 wins in their last 33 games to move from also-ran fourth-place status to finishing second, only two games behind the Red Sox.  The White Sox blew the 1917 pennant race open with an 18-1 surge that straddled the end of August and the first half of September.  The 1919 race was never as competitive as Chicago's final 3-1/2 game margin would suggest; the White Sox were in command after mid-July, but it was 12 wins in their first 16 games in September that secured their second American League title in three years (after which they closed the season by losing six of their last seven games--when nothing was anymore at stake).  And in 1920, the White Sox did not challenge for first place until August, getting down to business with the league's best record after trailing by five games in third place on August 7.  The 1920 White Sox went on a September surge, winning 18 of 26 games to stay in the middle of a hot three-team race before being derailed, only half-a-game out of first place at the time, by the scandalous revelations about the previous World Series.

There followed, however, the revisionist sentiment whose story line went:  while conspiring with gamblers was indisputably wrong, 'twas tightwad owner Charles Comiskey's miserliness made them do it, and Shoeless Joe was a naive pawn who got caught up in the fix, but did not personally participate in the fix.  Payroll ledgers recovered many years later by Bill Veeck when he owned the club suggested that, however tightfisted Comiskey may have been and however true it was that some of his players--most notably Jackson and Cicotte--were underpaid for their actual worth as ball players, the White Sox in general were paid fair market value for their talent and services.  And defenders of Shoeless Joe make much of how well he and fellow Black Sox third baseman Buck Weaver played in the World Series, particularly offensively; Jackson had 12 hits to tie the World Series record, batted .375, and had 6 RBI, while Weaver had 11 hits and hit .324.  Many subtle things, however, could have been done, and apparently were by both men, to affect the outcome of games--missing hit-and-run signs, for example, or overthrowing the cutoff man, or failing to take an extra base, or stupidly trying for an extra base and being thrown out--precisely the sort of things that would drive the baseball-savvy Eddie Collins to conniptions.  Such things were observed at the time, though not understood in context, by scribes in the press box and "clean" players in both dugouts.

And finally there is the revisionist history, currently in vogue and largely based on statistical analysis: that whoever played whatever part in the conspiracy, the 1917, 1919, and 1920 White Sox were a good team, but hardly a great team and certainly not one of the best teams in baseball history.  They had two of the greatest players in history still at the peak of their careers in Joe Jackson and Eddie Collins, and Eddie Cicotte--who was 28-12 in 1917, 29-7 in 1919, and 21-10 in 1920--was one of the best pitchers in the game at the time.  Center fielder Happy Felsch, third baseman Buck Weaver, and catcher Ray Schalk were three of the better players in the league, but were not the best at their positions; there were any number of better outfielders than Felsch, Larry Gardner was the league's best third baseman, and Wally Schang the best catcher.  The 1917-20 White Sox were not strong at every position.  First base (Chick Gandil), shortstop (Swede Risberg), and right field (a platoon involving the left-handed Nemo Liebold and the right-handed Shano Collins) were positions of weakness, not just on the team but relative to the league.  While pitching was a strength of the team, Lefty Williams, despite back-to-back 20-win seasons, was not one of the best at his craft in the league and was likely overrated, and Red Faber, who was 23-13 in 1920, was just coming into his own as one of the league's best pitchers.

On balance, I'm with the revisionist history school.  The 1917-20 Chicago White Sox were a very good team, but not a dominant team, and certainly not a great team.  That said, were it not for the contemptible machinations of their gang of eight, the White Sox might well have won the 1920 pennant; they were half-a-game behind and about to play the fair-to-middling St. Louis Browns for their final three games of the season when the scandal hit the news and the implicated players were banished by owner Comiskey.  And, had this team continued on with its best players and bolstered positions of weakness by integrating some of the players who joined the White Sox in the early 1920s--in particular first baseman Earl Sheely, outfielders Bibb Falk and Johnny Mostil, and third baseman Willie Kamm--they would have remained a competitive team and might have delayed the emergence of the Yankee dynasty.  That "what if" argument is made in a chapter on the 1916-20 White Sox and 1920-24 Yankees in my online manuscript, www.thebestbaseballteams.com, from which this article is adapted. The following is a link to the chapter:  http://www.thebestbaseballteams.com/pdf/al/1916-20_White_Sox_and_1920-24_Yankees.pdf