Ben and Lou Levi

While volumes have been written on Arnold Rothstein — who was NOT indicted — and on the Eastern-based gamblers involved in the 1919 World Series fix, historians have largely ignored the Midwestern-based gamblers who WERE indicted.

Early reports on the Black Sox grand jury findings included the names of brothers Benjamin and Louis Levi, who bet heavily on the Cincinnati Reds. Although not charged in the original indictments, the duo were included in the second indictment (in March 1921.) American League President Ban Johnson targeted the Levis, but in the end, the case against them failed, and the charges were dropped.

Benjamin Levi was born in Indianapolis on January 21, 1882, and Louis Levi was born in Peru, Indiana, on September 14, 1886. The sons of Peru scrap iron/junk/hides dealer, Russian-born Samuel Levi, and his wife, Sara Ringolski, they grew up in Peru and Kokomo, with their seven brothers and sisters.1 The local newspaper found the father “a gentleman highly esteemed by all who know him as an honorable, upright private citizen and merchant.”2 The two sons, Ben in particular, would not follow their father’s footsteps.

In 1905, 1908, and 1910, Ben and Louis worked for their father in the family junk business.3

In the years 1912-14, Ben Levi appeared often in the newspapers. In 1911 he and some associates stole some $600 worth of clover seed from a nearby railroad. The next year Levi and the others stood trial for the theft, the first trial ending in a hung jury, the second with a conviction. The conviction was appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court, where Ben got off on a technicality. Tired of spending money on the case, the local authorities declined to re-try the case.4

By 1916 Ben and older brother Abe had taken over their late father’s scrap business.5 By 1918 Ben had moved to Chicago, where he lived with his mother and sisters.6 Later in 1920, Ben and Louis moved to Los Angeles, along with David Zelcer.7 Allegedly, around this time they briefly lived in Des Moines, and became “prominent members of the local sporting fraternity,” although the evidence for this is mostly hearsay.8 While some contemporary accounts say that David Zelcer was the Levis’ brother-in-law, no evidence of that relationship exists.9

Author Susan Dellinger states that in the summer of 1919, the Midwestern group assigned Ben Levi to scout the Reds, to see if any players could be bribed. Evidence for this Zelcer-Levi plot is thin at best.

What is certain is that the Levis’ childhood friend, Cincinnati lumber baron and Reds Booster Club stalwart Fred Mowbray, knew all the players and loved to bet. That summer Ben Levi traveled to Cincinnati to visit his old friend, and used the well-liked, well-known Mowbray as his “in” to meet the players. A well-known private detective viewed Ben talking with several of the players, actions that in retrospect seem suspicious, but that at the time seemed just another routine instance of bettors talking to ballplayers.

In the days before the World Series, Ben Levi tipped Mowbray off about the fix. It seems likely that the Levis heard about it from Abe Attell, Zelcer or some other gambling acquaintance — as Attell later claimed, the players “peddled it [the Fix] around like a sack of popcorn.”10 Reds loyalist Mowbray thereupon wagered heavily on the Reds and won.

No stranger to large-scale wagers, Mowbray was also mentioned in the investigation of a fix of an August 31, 1920, Cubs-Phillies game, with Mowbray allegedly financing Cincinnati-New Orleans gambler Remy Dorr’s bets against the Cubs. This 1920 fix allegation sparked the grand jury investigation that finally broke the 1919 Scandal. Dorr, who knew Arnold Rothstein well, is known to have bet heavily on the Reds in the 1919 Series, and may have been the “big gambler … known at New Orleans tracks” who handled the betting end of Hal Chase’s part of the Fix.11

Perhaps another angle to the Cincinnati connection can be found in the grand jury testimony of pitcher Rube Benton, who testified that after the Series, a close friend, Cincinnatian Phil Hahn, told him about the fix, and named five of the players. Former ballplayer Hahn, a nationally known “betting commissioner,” denied telling Benton this. However, Hahn knew the gamblers involved in the fix, especially Mowbray, a fellow “Loyal Red Rooter.” And Benton had no reason to lie about what Hahn had told him.12

Attell and the Midwesterners, Zelcer, Carl Zork, Ben Franklin, and the Levis, allegedly “met in a Chicago hotel where they made a final distribution of the ‘jack pot.’ Zork and Franklin were said to have ‘cleaned up’ between $70,000 and $80,000 by the manipulations” and “the two Levis and Zelcer … making almost as much.” A Kokomo Tribune article suggests the Levi brothers had made $60,000, a sum the St. Louis Globe Democrat upped to $80,000. Ben Levi won at least $15,000 on the first two games. Afraid to carry that much cash around, he traded his cash winnings to Fred Mowbray in exchange for Mowbray’s check.13

Chicago Cubs traveling secretary John O. Seys testified that Lou Levi was seen in Abe Attell’s company during the World Series, wagering heavily on the Reds, and that Seys held several of these bets as stakeholder. “First one would make bets [on the Reds], and then the other.” Seys had known Levi for about 10 years, and could make a positive identification of him.14

There’s some indication that Levi thought Attell had double-crossed him. Kansas City gambler Jake Feinberg told sportswriter Otto Floto that “Levy [sic] is awfully sore on Attell,” calling Abe “everything he could lay his tongue to” because Levi thought Attell’s reckless betting had “spoiled the betting for him.” According to this source, Levi told Attell about the Fix only so Attell could “win a couple thousand dollars for himself.”15

The Levis could hardly have denied knowledge of what was going on. The register of the Hotel Sinton in Cincinnati shows that during the Series “Ben and Lou Levi, Chicago” stayed at Room 660 along with Abe Attell and David Zelcer, with the room being one floor below where most of the White Sox were rooming.

For whatever reason, American League President Ban Johnson targeted the Levi brothers in his investigations of the fix, telling one of his private detectives, “We want to convict the Levi brothers.” He urged his detectives to “rough up” Fred Mowbray to get him to implicate Ben Levi.16 Johnson’s focus on the St. Louis/Midwestern end of the fix seems based on the fact that no hard evidence was forthcoming on the wilier New York/Boston gamblers, whereas gamblers who believed they were double-crossed by Zork and the Levis were happy to implicate them.

Johnson’s plan may have been to indict the smaller fry (the Levis, Zork, and Franklin) in the hopes that they would implicate Rothstein. In addition, the Eastern gamblers had indictment-avoiding assets Zork and the Levis didn’t — Rothstein’s ability to bribe witnesses, or if necessary steal confessions. As Rothstein associate “Curley” Bennett once bragged, “Rothstein … can get me out of anything.”17

Former prosecutor Bill Lamb, author of Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial, and Civil Litigation, infers that the prosecution in the 1921 Black Sox criminal trial made a tactical decision to speed up the trial by not calling witnesses like Joe Gedeon, who might have implicated the Levis. Since no direct evidence had been presented at trial to implicate Ben Levi, and little enough against Louis apart from his being seen betting alongside Abe Attell (Lamb terms the evidence “embarrassingly meager”18), the prosecution made no objection to defense counsel’s motion to dismiss the charges against them.

After the trial Ben split his time between Los Angeles, Kokomo, and Peru,19 managing the family scrap-iron business along with his brother Abe. Ben died in Los Angeles on July 19, 1953.20 Louis became a real-estate broker in Los Angeles, marrying in 1921.21 A cousin remembers Lou sitting in his kitchen in Los Angeles, three phones surrounding him, switching between them making bets. The cousin said, “He was always broke from betting.” He died at his Beverly Hills home on May 7, 1961, of a heart attack, and was buried in the family mausoleum in Home of Peace Memorial Park.22

 

Sources

In preparing this biography, the author relied primarily on major online newspaper databases, the Black Sox Scandal papers in the Hall of Fame Library, the Levi family, and the author’s article for the Black Sox Research Committee’s December 2014 newsletter.

 

Notes