James: What you have wrong about the Black Sox Scandal
From Brant James at Bookies.com on June 27, 2019, with SABR member Jacob Pomrenke:
The Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to allow the Cincinnati Reds to win the 1919 World Series. This is fact. But much else surrounding the most notorious game-fixing scandal in American sports history – the space between the White Sox and the “Black Sox” moniker that has immortalized them in infamous perpetuity – is a subtle gray.
Why they did it. Who did it, and to what degree. Myths legends and misinformation stirred by nostalgia and pop culture, much of it emanating from Eliot Asinof’s “Eight Men Out” and the popular movie it begat. There weren’t any heroes. But there were also likely fewer villains than many believe.
In a comprehensive interview with the Badder Beats podcast, Jacob Pomrenke, the chairman of the Black Sox Scandal Committee at the Society for American Baseball Research, offers an unvarnished interpretation of the century-old scandal based on new research. The Black Sox story remains particularly pertinent today, 100 years later, as legal sports betting spreads across the nation and is embraced, remarkably, by Major League Baseball.
Listen to the full interview here: https://bookies.com/news/black-sox-scholar-on-what-you-have-wrong-about-scandal
Originally published: July 9, 2019. Last Updated: July 9, 2019.