In 1878 a triple play by Providence’s Paul Hines didn’t attract any extraordinary attention other than the excitement of a triple play that saved the day for Providence. The Hines play gained notoriety in baseball folklore when it was labeled by some as the first unassisted triple play in National League history. The rules of the time, recorded stats, and likely events of the game itself are detailed by Richard Hershberger elsewhere in this journal. I began my own analysis by comparing and reviewing prominent articles about the play and discovered troubling discrepancies in the later accounts which fatally undermine their credibility.

Not surprisingly, the Providence newspapers had the most detailed coverage of the game. The following comes from the Providence Morning Star dated Thursday Morning, May 9, 1878.

The score now stood Providence 3, Bostons 0. O’Rourke got his base on called balls. Manning sent a little grounder between first and second, which Sweasy hastily picked up and threw wild over Murnan’s head, O’Rourke scoring on this unfortunate error and Manning taking third. Sutton got first on a muffed ball by Murnan. Burdock then struck what everybody considered was a clean base hit, about two rods back of short stop’s position, the men on bases having confidence enough to come home. Here a phenomenal and surprising play was made; Hines made a difficult and brilliant running catch of the ball, putting out the striker; the momentum acquired carried him near to third base, which he stepped on, thus forcing out Manning; Sweasy then signalled for the ball, which Hines threw to him, putting out Sutton. This triple play, saving two and perhaps more runs, created tempestuous enthusiasm, the crowd rising en masse, cheering and waving hats.1

Word for word the same coverage is found in the Providence Evening Press dated Thursday Evening, May 9, 1878.2 The Providence Journal—as published in the New York Clipper— reported the game as follows:

O’Rourke obtained his first on called balls. Manning batted a slowly rolling grounder between first and second bases, which Sweasy picked up and hastily tossed to Murnan. It was tossed over his head, and O’Rourke ran like a deer around the bases and scored a run while Manning succeeded in reaching third—a most distressing error to the Providence spectators. Murnan muffed Sutton’s fly, and then Burdock struck the ball, lifting it over Carey’s head sufficiently far to warrant the base runners, and even the anxious crowd, in prophesying that it was a base hit, Manning and Sutton speeded to the home plate, while fear and trembling possessed the hearts of the breathless spectators. But Hines, meantime, had espied the ball, and running at the top of his speed from far centrefield, captured it ere it touched the ground, ceased not his running until he had touched third, thus, unassisted, putting out both Burdock and Manning, and threw swiftly to Sweasy, retiring Sutton, and completing a brilliant triple play, amid the wildest shouts and demonstrations of delight imaginable.3

Boston newspapers tended to be not as detailed. The Boston Evening Transcript dated Thursday Morning, May 9, 1878 published:

In the eighth inning there was great excitement, when, through errors of the Providence club, O’Rourke scored and Manning and Sutton were on bases. Burdock struck a fly—just beyond Carey—which Hines caught after a long run, ran to third base and put out Manning and threw to second, putting out Sutton and making a triple play.4

The Boston Herald—as published in The New York Clipper read:

The game was a very exciting one, particularly in the eighth inning, when by errors of Providence alone O’Rourke scored and Manning and Sutton were on bases. Burdock struck a fly just back of short stop, which Hines seized after a long run, ran to third, put out Manning, and then threw to second in time to put out Sutton, making a triple play amid the utmost excitement.5

The New York Clipper itself ran the following:

In the eighth inning O’Rourke made the first run for the visitors off errors, leaving Manning and Sutton on bases. Burdock’s fly back of short was captured by Hines after a sharp run, he putting out Manning at third, and throwing to second in time to put out Sutton.6

Nineteen months later, the triple play gained attention via a secondary mention, in a December 1879 biographical sidebar about Paul Hines in the New York Clipper:

As an outfielder he has but few if any equals, and the wonderful and brilliant running-catches made by him are too numerous to mention in detail, and we can only cite the following instance, culled at random: In the Providence-Boston game, at Providence, R. I., on May 8, 1878, the Bostons wanted one [sic] run to tie the score, and had men on the third and second bases, with none out, and Burdock at the bat. He made a seemingly safe hit just over short-stop’s head, which was captured on the fly close to the ground by Hines, after running at terrific speed for more than fifty yards, and, keeping straight on, he touched third base and threw the ball to second before the respective occupants could return, thus making one of the most brilliant of the few triple-plays yet chronicled.7

This article was the first mention of the Boston runners being on second and third at the time of Burdock’s hit. According to the Clipper, the trailing runner (whom we know to be Ezra Sutton) was at second, not first.

Almost a decade later, in fall 1888, chronicler Tim Murnane, who had played in that Boston-Providence game, alluded to the play being unassisted, and by spring 1889 Hines himself was making the claim. Sutton disputed Hines in a Clipper article dated June 29, 1889:

It is now a question of veracity between Paul Hines and Ezra Sutton as to whether the former is to be credited with making a triple play unassisted. Hines claims that in a game between the Boston and Providence teams, May 8, 1878, in Providence, he accomplished the feat. Manning and Sutton were on third and second bases respectively in this game, when Burdock hit an apparently safe fly ball, but Hines, after a desperate run, caught the ball, and continued on to third, which he touched, and now he claims that as Manning and Sutton had both passed that base, he should be credited with making a triple unassisted. Hines says he can prove the feat by everyone present at the game. As Sutton was one of the base runners, we will give his version as follows: “Hines is wrong; for at the time I had not reached third base, as he claims, but was fully twenty feet away from that point when the ball was caught.” Thus by touching third base Hines only made a double play, but by throwing the ball to Sweasy at second base, he completed a triple play, and this and Sutton’s statement agree exactly with the account of the game as it appears in the files of THE CLIPPER.8

A Clipper article dated March 23, 1901, took issue with Murnane’s assertion as well:

This stood unimpeached until the Fall of 1888, when Tim Murnan made the astonishing assertion that the records were all wrong and that Hines completed the triple play alone. It is singular that he should have waited so long before making such an absurd statement.9

The 1901 article also quoted Alfred H. Wright, who wrote the 1879 Hines bio sidebar in the Clipper:

It was Hines who told me about him running at terrific speed for more than fifty yards, he seeming particularly anxious about having the distance specified.” Then why did not Hines also tell Mr. Wright that he had completed the play unassisted and have it inserted in his sketch, so it would have been an undisputed fact, and not have waited until he had been coached by Murnan [sic] in the Spring of 1889 before making the claim to that performance?10

Two months later The Sporting News published an article entitled “That Fake Triple Play” on the subject, quoting numerous players:

Jim O’Rourke, the Boston center fielder:

It is with pleasure I give you my recollections of this phenomenal catch by Paul Hines. I won’t attempt in language to particularly describe the impressions made upon us by this catch. Its effect was electric. You can imagine enough. Why, the circumstances of that catch are as fresh in my mind today as if it happened but yesterday. I can picture Hines coming down the little slope from center field toward third base like a deer, reaching at full length, catching the ball within an inch of the ground, and not stopping until he landed on third base, from which he returned the ball to second base, thereby completing a triple play, the brilliancy of which I never since recalled. My dear friend, Tim Murnan, must be under a misapprehension when he says Hines completed the triple play unassisted.11

Charlie Sweasy:

In answer to your query I would state that I assisted Hines in making the triple play mentioned, viz.: The ball was struck by Burdock to short left field. Hines started for it on the dead run, and succeeded in catching it, but nearly stumbled. Regaining his feet he kept on running to third base, reaching it before Manning succeeded in returning, thereby putting Manning out. Sutton, who had reached third base, seeing Hines coming with the ball, started back to second base. Hines, after touching third base, started to catch Sutton, but Sutton, being a good swift runner as well as Hines, he saw that could not catch him and threw the ball to me at second base in time to put Sutton out. This is my recollection of the play.12

Sweasy’s comments imply Ezra Sutton was likely on first base, rather than second, if Sutton had only reached the area of third shortly before Hines. If Hines ran about fifty yards to make the catch and then traveled to third, and with thirty yards between bases, Hines and Sutton traveled about the same distance. Therefore a sprinting Sutton would have gone first to third. Had he been on second base, it is highly probable he would have rounded third base before Hines’s arrival.

Tommy Bond, the Boston pitcher, provided a short response saying that the events of the triple play were as stated in the Providence Journal. Bond’s short comment was followed by Sutton’s:

Would say to reply that my letter published in the Clipper in June 1889 in reference to the triple play is correct in every detail. I reproduce it here: “I notice that Paul Hines, in writing the Boston Globe, says; ‘Sutton was near the home plate when I touched third base, putting out both Manning and Sutton, and completing a triple play.’ Hines is wrong, for at the time I had not reached third base, as he claims, but was fully twenty feet away from that point when the ball was caught. Hines touched third base, putting out Manning, and then threw the ball to Sweasy at second base, putting me out. The two men made the triple play.

Jack Manning, the Boston right fielder, added:

As I remember the triple play you refer to, it happened just as the papers stated at the time. With two men on base, one on second and the other on third, Burdock hit a fly over the shortstop’s head, which everybody thought was safe, and both men started for home. Hines, after a hard run, caught the ball close to the ground and kept on running to third base, putting out the man who had occupied that base before he could return. He [Hines] started for Sutton, who was trying to get back to second base, when somebody shouted to him to throw the ball and he threw to Sweasy, who was playing second base at the time, thereby completing the triple play, which was a dandy, giving Hines two put outs and an assist.

Last was Doug Allison, the Providence catcher: “All I can say is Hines put out only two men unassisted and threw the ball to Sweasy at second base, this getting an assist.”

The following year, The New York Times published an article when Harry O’Hagan managed an unassisted triple play that included a statement from Sweasy:

Charles J. Sweasy, who covered second base for the Providence team during the game, made a statement showing conclusively that Hines did not make the play unassisted, Sweasy said:

I assisted Hines in making the triple play mentioned so largely in the public prints. The ball was struck by Burdock to short left field. Hines started for it on a dead run, and succeeded in catching it, but nearly stumbled. Regaining his feet, however, he kept on running to third base, reaching that station before Manning could return, thereby putting Manning out.

Sutton, who had reached third, seeing Hines coming with the ball, started back to second. Hines touched third and started to catch Sutton, but, Sutton being a good sprinter, Hines saw that he could not catch him, and threw the ball to me at second base in time to catch Sutton before he reached it.

This statement of Second Baseman Sweasy, who assisted in the play, disposes of Hines’s [sic] claim to have accomplished a triple play unassisted.13

Sweasy’s comments in that 1902 Times article effectively replicate his previous comments in The Sporting News.

By then Tim Murnane was President of the New England League and edited the first guide of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, published by Spalding. The guide included not only not only the stats, rules, schedules, and a catalog of Spalding sporting products section, but a few sections of general interest, one of which was titled “Hines’ Great Triple Play.”14 Three players involved in the game, George Wright, Jack (John) Manning, and Murnane himself, were quoted. The article opens, “On June 8, 1878, at Providence, R.I., Paul Hines accomplished a triple play unaided.” Of course, what Murnane meant to say was May, not June.

George Wright, who was the captain of the Boston club, said:

I was coaching back of third base at the time. The score was 2 to 1 in favor of Providence, and I was anxious to get in two runs, as it practically meant the game. Burdock hit the ball and my whole attention was turned to the runner coming from second, as it looked like a perfectly safe drive. As the runner came to third I coached him home, never dreaming of a catch. When I saw that Hines had actually reached the ball and was still running towards me I commenced to realize that both men were out. As Manning never looked to the right or left, but was headed for home until the boys stood up and waved him back, it was too late, and I remember as if it was but yesterday how Hines ran up and stood on third base with the ball still in his hand, completing a triple play.15

Wright’s comments are riddled with inaccuracies. The score was 3–0 going into the bottom of the eighth inning, not 2–1, and became 3–1 once Jim O’Rourke scored. The second issue is twofold: a) a runner on second base and b) the implication of it being Manning on second base. It was impossible for the runner on second base to be Manning given Boston’s batting order. And Wright’s account of Hines standing on third base holding the ball contravenes all the many descriptions of the throw to Sweasy.

The next player to comment was Jack (John) Manning:

I was taking a big lead off second base. As Sutton was on third, I felt sure that my run would win the game. When Burdock hit a low liner to the left of second I took my cue from the coacher at third and turned for home, figuring that I must beat out a throw. I was over half way home when I noticed the Boston players on the bench jumping about and yelling for me to go back. There was a mix-up. Hines was standing on third base with the ball, while his own players were yelling for him to throw it to second.16

Again, Manning could not have been on second base while Sutton was on third since Sutton batted after him. A second matter is the description of Burdock’s hit being a “low liner.” A low liner to the left of second base would not have allowed Hines enough time to run under it to catch it, and contradicts accounts that described the hit as “over the head” of the short stop. The other critical point about the Manning comments is that they were night and day different in every regard—who was on second, who was on third, the type of hit that Burdock made, and where the runners were when Hines reached third—from his comments in The Sporting News.

Lastly, Tim Murnane:

The writer was playing first base in that game for Providence, and was in a perfect place to see the play and here is how he saw it: With Sutton on third, Manning at second and Burdock at the bat. Hines made a move to play a deep field, and then edged in, as Burdock was placing the ball very cleverly at the time, and a safe hit meant mischief to Providence, as there was no one out and the score was 2 to 1, with the game about over. Thinking that Hines was well out, Burdock chopped one to short left center that looked like a 50 to 1 shot, and away went Sutton and Manning. At third base George Wright, with cap in hand, waved Manning in. When the ball was hit Hines was under a full head of steam like a flash, and being a remarkably quick starter he saw there was a dying chance to save the day. It was a bit down grade from center field where he was playing, the ground bare of grass and quite hard. The players speed was unusually fast. With a long reach the ball was taken six inches from the ground about fifteen yards back of second base, five yards to the left of the base. This angle headed Hines towards third base, and never fully regaining his feet until he struck the base line, while keeping his eye on the runners, he ran down the line with the ball raised to throw, and Hague was standing at third for the ball but finding that both of the runners were close to the home plate he jogged to the base and stood there fully fifteen seconds while the crowd howled like mad and the players were lost in the excitement. As Hines stood at third Sweasy was at second calling for the ball, wanting to make sure thing of it, as Manning had started back, Hines walked down the baseline about five yards and tossed the ball to Sweasy, who called for an out at second, wholly unnecessary, but yet in a way to mystify the scorers of that time, and the result was that the play was never accurately reported.17

The Murnane article is a wonder because all three of the players made two identical errors— reporting the score as 2–1, that Sutton was on third and Manning at second—easily disproved by a glance at the boxscore. It was as if they had agreed to report in a coordinated fashion yet the three of them didn’t even have the basic facts straight. In the final paragraph Murnane states, “I have taken a great deal of time and trouble to see that justice has been done Mr. Hines.”

In 1915 George Wright again presented his version of the play, this time in Sporting Life:

I was on the Boston team at the time and we came down to Providence to play. At the time the triple play was made by Hines there were Boston men on second and third bases. The batter hit a Texas Leaguer and it was obvious to the coacher on third base that it was going over the head of the shortstop. Consequently the coach signaled wildly for the two runners to go home. Hines came in with a burst of speed from center field, made a remarkable scooping catch of the ball just as it was about to touch the ground, and ran all the way to third base. The man on third was home and the man who had been on second had crossed third and was nearly half way home. So by touching the third bag Hines forced out two. The coacher on third was dumbfounded. He never thought for a second that Hines would try for the play, in fact he did not realize what happened until it was all over. I know—because I was the coacher on third.18

Interestingly Wright did not mention the score at the time nor the names of the runners. One can only speculate he had become aware of the errors he made in the Murnane article.

The Hines triple play was also recounted in Baseball Magazine in 1913.19 Smith D. Fry was writing in Washington and therefore consulted baseball people from the Washington, DC area, including Paul Hines himself, as well as Nick Young, Charlie Snyder, Doug Allison, and umpire Charlie Daniels. Fry also mentions Senator Nelson W. Aldrich who actually saw the game and was a resident of Washington at the time the article was being researched.

The first person Fry consulted was “Uncle Nick Young” who was Secretary of the National League at the time the play was made. “Everybody in the baseball world knew that Hines made that triple play unassisted,” Young declared. “No baseball authority ever denied it.” Although Young was a resident of Washington and his prominent history with the league should have lent credibility to his words, it appears that Young did not actually witness the play.

Fry spoke with both catchers from the game, Doug Allison for Providence and Pop Synder for Boston. “I certainly saw Paul Hines make his great triple play, unassisted,” said Snyder.

Paul Hines swept like a whirlwind from deep center into short left field, and he caught that ball. I should say about knee high or lower. The ball was going like a rifle shot, but Paul gripped it, held it as one man out of a thousand could have done, and ran on to third base. Both of our runners had gone past third base and were congratulating themselves on having made runs. It was a triple play, unassisted, and was so declared by the umpire.

The most glaring aspect about Snyder’s comments has to do with position of the base runners at the time when Burdock came to bat and the fact that the base runner on first made it all the way around to score, meaning he covered two hundred and seventy feet. It simply isn’t probable that a base runner would cover ninety yards in the same time that it took Hines to cover some sixty yards or so to reach third base. That would imply that the base runner, not running in a straight line and having to touch second and third bases, was able to cover a third more distance than Hines, who was running in a relatively straight line, in the same amount of time.

Doug Allison provided the following:

Yes, I was catcher for the Providence Grays that year. I was behind the bat when Burdock came to the plate. Boston’s second baseman, Sutton, made a single to begin the inning. Then Manning, who was Boston’s pitcher and also center fielder, was the next batter, and he also made a single. That put Sutton on second and Manning on first. Burdock was a dangerous batter. When he came up I signaled Paul to get out into deep field for him, and he did so. But I noticed that Paul was shifting toward left, guessing the batter well. Well, Burdock hit the second ball that was pitched, and he smashed it out into left field. It looked to like a sure enough home run, clearing the bases. But as I saw Burdock rushing around the paths I also saw Paul Hines come tearing in from deep center to short left. He speared it about knee high in short left, back of third. He stumbled and almost fell, but kept on running and veering around, he kept on until he reached third base. There he halted and held up the ball. We only had one umpire in those days, and Charley Daniels, one of the best, was umpiring that day. He saw what Paul was up to, ran out toward him, and was not more than ten feet away when Paul perched on third base with the ball aloft in his hand. Daniels called out his decision: ‘Three out, Side out.’  And that crowd went wild.

Then, as I remember it, Carey, our shortstop, took the ball and threw it to Sweeney [sic], our second baseman, and he touched second base as they both shouted to the crowd: “Just for good measure.”

Allison has Sutton batting before Manning and also stated the umpire was Charlie Daniels when it wasn’t, it was John A. Cross. Lastly Allison mentioned “Carey, our shortstop, took the ball and threw it to Sweeney” which contradicts his own comments in The Sporting News. The mention of Carey was a first, and was the mention of “Sweeney” simply a slip from “Sweasy?”

Paul Hines himself said:

“It was at Providence, Rhode Island, May 15 [sic], 1878. I knew that Burdock was a dangerous batter. I knew also that he was inclined to pull ’em [sic] out into left field. Believing that any long knock into left field would be gathered in by our left fielder, I figured that Burdock might knock one into the field too short for the left fielder and too far out for either the third baseman or the shortstop. While I was guessing the batter and moving toward left field (as ‘Doug’ Allison told you he saw me), Burdock got his hit. I was on the move in a dog trot while our pitcher, Corey, was winding up. When ball and bat cracked I was under way instantly; and instantly I saw where the ball was going. I barely got there in time to grip the ball somewhere between my knee and ankle. It was so near my ankle that I almost fell and broke my neck. Although I came near falling, I managed to keep my balance by keeping up the momentum until I could swerve about toward third base. As soon as stepped on the base I held up the ball. Umpire Charley Daniels was quite near. The umpire called so that he could be heard all over the field; ‘Three out, Side out.’ Somebody motioned me to go to second base. You know, my hearing is deficient, and I depended largely on signs in those days. Well, I ran down and touched second. Then Carey, our shortstop, and Sweeney, our second baseman, took the ball, and danced around with it, cutting up monkey shines.”20

The Hines recollection was vastly different than that presented in the New York Clipper dated December 6, 1879.21 Hines mentioned Charlie Daniels as the umpire, Carey, and Sweeney as the second baseman as Allison had done, implying there was a degree of collusion in their recollections.

How about Charlie Daniels, the apparent umpire according to Hines and Allison? He told Fry:

Well, well, well, so they are still trying to deny dear old Paul that famous triple play unassisted. I was the umpire on that occasion and was connected with the National League, and the American Association many years afterward, and in active association with the game between twenty-five and thirty years; most of the time I was umpiring.

On the occasion of the famous play by Paul Hines, Ezra Sutton was on second base and someone else was on first base. Burdock, at the bat, hit a fly which travelled rainbow fashion to left field. There was a light wind blowing, and carrying the ball a little toward second base, but back of it. When the second baseman saw Paul tearing in after the ball, he wisely got out of the way.

Sutton made home, from second base, and the other man was near the home plate, when Hines caught the ball about a foot from the ground, almost turned a somersault, and rushed to third base, where he stood and held up the ball. Of course I did my duty then and made the decision; “Three out. Side out.”

According to the published boxscores for the May 8, 1878, game the umpire was John A. Cross. Retrosheet lists what individual games each man umpired during a given season. Cross is listed as having umpired the May 8, 1878, game while Daniels is not.22,23 I am at a loss to explain why Daniels would claim credit for being the umpire in a game for which he was not.

The final paragraph of the Baseball Magazine article states: “These statements of fact, told without rhetorical effort or other display, but merely with historic intent, should settle for all time the right of Paul Hines to the fame of making the first and greatest triple play, unassisted, ever made in the national game. Every true sportsman likes to give ‘honor to whom honor is due.’”24

Knowing that the article is filled with contradictory and incorrect statements, coupled with apparent collusion much like the Murnane article of 1902, one cannot take the final paragraph at face value. According to Murnane, his article of 1902 was supposed to settle for all time that Paul Hines made the first “unassisted” triple play in in National League history. To Mr. Fry and Mr. Murnane, I say, “So gentlemen, which is it? Who has the true story?” It’s a rhetorical question because the answer is neither of them. Why, because the play wasn’t unassisted at all; it was assisted and both Murnane and Fry, who tried to use the players, and others, as a means to gain perceived credibility, in a coordinated effort to make their story appear factual in the eyes of the baseball community. In the end both Fry and Murnane not only stumbled over themselves but lost any credibility they might have gained from using the players, and others, to begin with. After analyzing all the information to write this paper it is evident to this writer that the triple play from the game played on May 8, 1878, involving Paul Hines, was an assisted triple play and not an unassisted triple play.

BRIAN MARSHALL is an Electrical Engineering Technologist living in Barrie, Ontario, Canada and a long time researcher in various fields including entomology, power electronic engineering, NFL, Canadian Football and recently MLB. Brian has written many articles, winning awards for two of them. He has two baseball books on the way on the 1927 New York Yankees and the 1897 Baltimore Orioles. Brian is a long time member of the PFRA. While growing up, Brian played many sports. He aspired to be a professional football player but when that didn’t materialize he focused on Rugby Union and played off and on for 17 seasons.

Author’s Note

Team names and the spelling of player names, not from quoted material, was based on that as listed on baseball-reference.com.

Additional References

Kathy Torres, “Three in One?” in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (Phoenix, AZ: Society for American Baseball Research, Inc., 2013.) 108–09.

John Thorn. “Paul Hines and the Unassisted Triple Play,” MLB.com Blogs, Our Game, posted May 5, 2015.

Notes

1. “After That Pennant: Providence, 3; Boston, 2: Hines Saves Us By a Triple Play,” Providence Morning Star, Thursday Morning, May 9, 1878, 1.

2. “After That Pennant: Providence, 3; Bostons, 2: Hines Saves Us By a Triple Play,” Providence Evening Press, Thursday Evening, May 9, 1878, 1.

3. “Baseball: That Triple Play,” New York Clipper, March 23, 1901, 80.

4. “Base Ball,” Boston Evening Transcript, Thursday Evening, May 9, 1878, 5.

5. “Baseball: That Triple Play,” New York Clipper, March 23, 1901, 80.

6. “Baseball: Boston vs Providence,” New York Clipper, May 18, 1878, 59.

7. “Paul A. Hines, Centre-fielder,” New York Clipper, December 6, 1879, 293.

8. “Baseball: Stray Sparks From The Diamond,” New York Clipper, June 29, 1889, 261.

9. “Baseball: That Triple Play,” New York Clipper, March 23, 1901, 80.

10. “Baseball: That Triple Play,” New York Clipper, March 23, 1901, 80.

11. “That Fake Triple Play: Players Who Were in the Game Say Sweasy Helped Hines,” The Sporting News, Volume 31, Number 8, May 4, 1901, 7.

12. “That Fake Triple Play.”

13. “The Greatest Play Ever Made In Baseball: How O’Hagan Put Out Three Men Unassisted on Monday Last,” New York Times, Sunday, August 24, 1902, 23.

14. T. H. Murnane, Editor. “Hines’ Great Triple Play,” in Official Guide of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Leagues for Season of 1902. New York, NY: A. G. Spalding & Bros., 1902, 53–56.

15. Murnane, 53-56.

16. Murnane, 53-56.

17. Murnane, 53-56.

18. “A Real Old-Timers Talk of Early Days: The First Unassisted Triple Play,” Sporting Life, Volume 12, Number 20, November 20, 1915, 6.

19. “The Most Sensational Play in Baseball: How Neal Ball Became Famous in Day—A Greater Feat by an Old-Time Star—Paul Hines and His Wonderful Triple Play of 1878,” Baseball Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 6, October 1913, 69–72.

20. “The Most Sensational Play in Baseball.”

21. “Paul A. Hines, Centre-fielder,” New York Clipper, December 6, 1879, 293.

22. Retrosheet Web Page: Umpire John Cross, 1878. Accessed March 15, 2016: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/C/Pcrosj901.htm.

23. Retrosheet Web Page: Umpire Charles F. Daniels, 1878. Accessed March 15, 2016: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/D/Pdanic901.htm

24. “The Most Sensational Play in Baseball.”

The undisputed facts are as follows: Boston had two men on base, Ezra Sutton on second and Jack Manning on third. The batter, Jack Burdock, hit a soft line drive—probably what would later be called a Texas Leaguer—over the shortstop’s head. It was obvious that the shortstop wouldn’t catch the ball, so Sutton and Manning took off running. Hines charged in from center field, making a spectacular shoestring catch. His momentum carried him forward and he kept running to third base and stepped on the bag. Charlie Sweasy, the second baseman, then called for the ball. Hines threw the ball to Sweasy, who stepped on second base.

The running catch was the first out. There is agreement that Manning was at or near home plate when Hines tagged third base, making another out. The dispute is whether Hines’s tag of third also put out Sutton. There are two questions. In legal terms, there is a question of fact and a question of law.

The question of fact is on which side of third Sutton was when Hines tagged the base. Was he with Manning near home plate, or was he between second and third? If the latter, then the third out unquestionably was made by Sweasy tagging second, with Hines getting an assist.

The question of law arises if Sutton was past third base. Under the 1878 rules, did Hines’s tag of third base put him out, or was it Sweasy’s tag of second?

The Historical Debate

The contemporaneous accounts reached, as will be shown below, different conclusions, but there was little further discussion at the time. The historical debate began in earnest about ten years later, and dealt almost entirely on the question of fact. The main exponent of the play’s being unassisted was Tim Murnane. He had been the Providence first baseman in the game. After he retired from the playing field he became a sportswriter for the Boston Globe. He recounted the famous play, crediting Hines for making it unassisted.

This provoked a response from William Rankin, a veteran sportswriter with the New York Clipper. Rankin was cantankerous and contrarian. He delighted in debunking baseball myths. His typical technique was to use the Clipper files to correct others’ reminiscences.1 He approached the Hines triple play in his usual manner. He consulted the Clipper’s biographical sketch of Hines in the December 5, 1879, issue, which included a description of the play:

In the Providence-Boston game, at Providence, R.I., on May 8, 1878, the Bostons wanted one run to tie the score, and had men on second and third bases, with none out and Burdock at the bat. He made a seemingly safe hit just over the short stop’s head, which was captured on the fly close to the ground by Hines, after running at terrific speed, and, keeping straight on, he touched third base, and then completed a brilliant triple play by throwing the ball to second base before the respective occupants of the bases could return.2

Rankin reprinted this, pointing out that it showed that the triple play was not unassisted.3

Murnane responded with his own recollection:

The writer at the time played first base in the same game for Providence, and a short statement might convince The Clipper that the play was made. Manning and Sutton were on third and second respectively. There was one out [sic: should be “no one out”] and Burdock was at the bat. One run was needed to tie the score in the eighth inning. Burdock hit a short line fly that would have touched the ground about twenty feet back of second base. The base runners, seeing the impossibility of any one getting the hit, went for home. Sutton had touched third before Hines had the ball, which he got within a few inches of the ground. He had nearly lost his balance, and was past second base before he got straightened up. Hague stood on third base ready to take the ball when Hines sent it to him, but Sutton, who was near the home plate, saw there was no chance to get back, and Hines kept on running until he stood on third base. As the men were forced, all three were out. Every one seemed to be mixed up, and Hines walked down the line to second, touched the base and tossed the ball to Tommy Bond, the Boston pitcher. As the men never attempted to go back when Hines touched third base, he had accomplished a triple play.4

Rankin responded by referring to the Clipper’s original game account, in the May 18, 1878, issue, which confirmed the 1879 version, and concluded that Murnane was simply wrong.5 Murnane confirmed his version with Hines himself. This led to the final piece of the puzzle, so far as Rankin was concerned. This came the following summer, when Ezra Sutton, the runner from second, who was still playing professional ball, gave his version:

Hines is wrong; for at the time I had not reached third base, as he claims, but was fully twenty feet away from that point when the ball was caught.6

This set the terms of the dispute. Murnane, backed by Hines, claimed that Sutton was past third base when it was tagged. Rankin, backed by Sutton, claimed that he was not. Other participants in the game chimed in on either side. Most articles over the next few decades simply restated one position or the other, or left the conclusion open. Minor variants crept in, such as a claim that Hines, after tagging third, ran down and tagged Sutton.7 Another variation: Hines caught the ball, then tagged second before running to and tagging third base.8 The essential question remained the location of Sutton when Hines tagged third.

The argument for the unassisted version was gradually bolstered by interviews with other participants in the game. The most thorough of these was reported by Smith D. Fry in 1913 for Baseball Magazine. Fry began with Nicholas Young, the former president of the National League, who had in 1878 been the league secretary. Young claimed that he had never heard of any doubt expressed about the play being unassisted, which if true suggests he hadn’t been paying attention. In any case the source of his authority is unclear. There has never been any suggestion that he was present at the game. Next, Fry interviewed Charley Snyder and Doug Allison, the two catchers in the game, then Hines himself, and finally he corresponded with umpire Charley Daniels. They all agreed that Sutton had been past third base. Daniels added that he called out, “Three out. Side out,” before Hines threw the ball to Sweasy. Allison has the variant that Tom Carey, the shortstop, took the ball from Hines and threw it to Sweasy, and as Sweasy tagged second base he and Carey shouted to the crowd, “Just for good measure.”9

This is how the debate has remained to this day. A recent example is an essay “Three in One?” by Kathy Torres in the SABR publication Inventing Baseball.10 Another is a post entitled “Paul Hines and the Unassisted Triple Play” by John Thorn on his blog Our Game.11 Torres is noncommital, while Thorn (now the official historian of Major League Baseball) affirms his belief that the play was unassisted. MLB.com, on the other hand, does not include the play from its list of unassisted triple plays, implicitly rejecting the claim.12

The Contemporaneous Accounts

What did the newspaper accounts at the time say about the play? A review was made of eleven accounts (two of which are duplicated, appearing in identical form in two additional newspapers). Six are from Boston newspapers: the Daily Advertiser, Globe, Herald, Journal, Post, and Evening Transcript. Two are from Providence papers: the Journal (duplicated in the Providence Bulletin) and the Press (duplicated in the Providence Star). Two are from Cincinnati papers, the Commercial and the Enquirer. These were all published the day after the game. The last is from the weekly New York Clipper, the closest thing to a baseball newspaper of record at this time, from the issue of May 18, 1878.

The accounts that reach the necessary level of detail agree that Sutton was past third. Several are silent on the question, but none suggest that he was between second and third. The Globe unequivocally wrote “…Hines kept on to third, which both Manning and Sutton had passed running home on the fly…” The Daily Advertiser stated that Manning and Sutton “started for home, and never looked behind them until they reached there” while the Commercial said of them “both of whom had reached home plate.” In no account is there any suggestion that Sutton loitered between second and third or that he made an attempt to return after he as passed third.

The question would seem to be answered. The evidence is overwhelming that Sutton was indeed past third base. In retrospect, the competing version with Sutton between second and third never made much sense. This was a slow-developing play, with Hines running in from center field all the way to third base, then throwing to second. If Sutton had been cautiously lingering midway between second and third he would have had ample time to get back to the bag. If he had passed third base and was scrambling to return to second he would have had to run past Hines on his way back. This scenario would require special pleading such that the play was even more remarkable than as reported.

The Contemporaneous Interpretations

With the facts of the play established, the next question is was this considered an unassisted play? The Boston Globe clearly states that it was: “Hines kept on to third, which both Manning and Sutton had passed running home on the fly, and there stopping, made a triple play with no assistance.” But at the same time the account in the Providence Journal expressly states that the throw to second is what retired the last run and completed the triple play: “[Hines] touched third, thus, unassisted, putting out both Burdock and Manning, and then threw swiftly to Sweasey, retiring Sutton, and completing a brilliant triple play…”

The opinion that the play was assisted was the more widely held. Of the eleven accounts, seven unambiguously indicate that the throw to second completed the play. Three of the four that count the triple play as unassisted were Boston papers: the Globe, Journal, and Post, with the Cincinnati Enquirer the one other paper holding this position. These positions are often stated in the narrative descriptions of the game, and are reflected in the box scores. Figure 1 shows the box score from the Providence Journal. Note that Hines is credited with fielding four outs and one assist and Sweasey has one out and two assists, and that the summary assigns credit for the triple play to Hines and Sweasey. Compare this with Figure 2, showing the box score from the Boston Globe. Hines here has five outs and zero assists while Sweasey has zero outs and three assists.

Figure 1: The box score from the Providence Journal of May 9, 1878. Hines is credited with four outs and one assist, while Sweasy is credited with one out. The summary credits the triple play to both. The box scores from the Press and Star of Providence, the Boston Daily Advertiser, the Cincinnati Commercial, and the New York Clipper are similar.

Figure 2: The box score from the Boston Post of May 9, 1878. Hines is credited with five outs and zero assists, while Sweasy is credited with zero outs. The box score from the Boston Journal is similar.

There also were two near-contemporaneous discussions of the matter. The New York Clipper and the Chicago Tribune at this time included weekly question-and-answer sections. Some unnamed persons in Providence made a bet on whether or not the triple play was unassisted. They appealed to a “local authority” who ruled that “the ball must be thrown to second.” The loser in this decision then appealed to the Clipper, appearing in the May 18, 1878, issue:

[Question:] A player is on 3d and another on 2d, no one out. The batsman strikes a high ball towards centre-field, on which the men on bases run home. Centre field catches the ball on fly, and runs to third base, both of the runners having run home. Are not both of them out by the catcher of the fly-ball touching third base before they returned to that base without his throwing the ball to second base? [Answer:] Certainly they are.13

This in turn provoked an appeal to the Tribune, appearing in the May 19, 1878, issue:

[Question:] …Now will you please pass on the matter, and quote the rule, if there be one, to cover the matter? Answer—The thing is simple enough. Sec. 12 of Rule 5 reads: “Any player running the bases on fair or foul balls caught before touching the ground must return to the base he occupied when the ball was struck, and retouch such base before attempting to make another or score a run, and said player shall be liable to be put out in so returning, as in the case of running to first base when a fair ball is hit and not caught flying.” The man who was on second base must return to that base, it being the one he occupied “when the ball was struck,” and he can be put out by holding the ball on that base (not some other base) before he gets back. So far as putting the man out is concerned, the ball might as well be held on the manager’s nose as on the third base. It would affect as much one way as the other.14

The Rules Question

The question of fact turns out to be a garden path. Sutton certainly was past third. There was no disagreement at the time. Where opinions differed was how to score the play. Was Sutton out at third, or at second? Here we turn to the rules. The relevant rule in 1878, as the Tribune noted, was Rule V Section 12:

Any player running the bases on fair or foul balls caught before touching the ground must return to the base he occupied when the ball was struck, and retouch such base before attempting to make another or score a run, and said player shall be liable to be put out in so returning, as in the case of running to first base when a fair ball is hit and not caught flying [i.e. a fielder with the ball need only tag the base, not the player].15

Can the runner be put out only from his original base, or can he be put out the same way at an intermediate base he has passed? The rule does not explicitly say.16 There is room to interpret it both ways, hence the disagreement between newspaper accounts.17

What was the official ruling in 1878? Unfortunately, we don’t know for sure. The home club’s official scorer would send a score sheet to the NL secretary. Should a rules interpretation be necessary, the league secretary would be the next step up, followed by the league president, board of directors, and ultimately the annual league convention.

No interpretation above the club scorer was believed necessary at the time. Baseball had not yet reach a stage in its development where people felt questions such as this needed necessarily be authoritatively answered. There was no question but that it had been a triple play, so neither club had any argument to appeal to a higher authority. The score sheet was not disputed and would therefore be the operative document. Sheets from this era, however, do not survive.

It would be typical for the official scorer to also be a local baseball reporter. Lewis Meacham of the Chicago Tribune, for example, was the Chicago Club’s official scorer. The Tribune’s box scores can stand in as a proxy for the official score sheet for games played in Chicago. But this only works if the identity of the official scorer is known, and what paper he wrote for. This is not the case here. The Providence Club has received comparatively little attention from modern researchers, so it is possible that this information could be uncovered in the future. What is known at this point is that the Providence papers examined here all agreed that the triple play was only completed when the ball was thrown to Sweasy.18

Interpreting the Later Debate

How can a debate that has gone on for so long have been so beside the point? This is not hard to understand. Murnane, writing for the Boston Globe, had access to the Globe’s archives, one of the papers that reported the play as unassisted. It is likely that Murnane didn’t even realize that there had been any other interpretation. Rankin, working from the Clipper’s archives, knew that it had reported the play as being completed by the throw to second. He too most likely did not know that it had been reported any other way. They were talking past each other. Rankin resolved this by accepting the implicit assumption about the rules interpretation, and recasting the dispute as being about the fact of where Sutton was. This was only possible because the Clipper’s account was ambiguous on this point. By casting the argument this way Rankin and Murnane were no longer talking past each other: they were merely disagreeing about what happened, with neither realizing that this was not the right question.

There also is the issue of incentives. The later debate was an extended exercise in chewing the fat: a topic for mid-winter discussion once discussion of the previous season had been exhausted but before there was much to talk about for next season. The incentive is to tell a good story. An unassisted triple play is a better story than a more conventional play.

An illustrative example is an interview of George Wright from 1915 in The Sporting Life. Wright had been with the Boston Club in 1878. The interview rambles, with Wright telling old war stories. When he gets to the Hines play he tells how when Burdock hit the ball “it was obvious to the coacher on third base that it was going over the head of the shortstop. Consequently the coach signaled wildly for the two runners to go home.” Then when Hines makes the catch the coach “was dumbfounded. He never thought for a second that Hines would try for the play, in fact he did not realize what had happened until it was all over. Then comes the denouement: “I know—because I was the coacher on third.”19 Wright had nothing to prove to anyone, so he was happy to turn this into a story he told on himself: a story which is much better if in relation to an epic play.

Another example is the account by the umpire, Charlie Daniels. The 1915 Baseball Magazine article was not the first time he had told this story. A similar version appeared four years earlier.20 His contribution became part of the standard version. The problem is that Daniels was not, as he would recall it, the umpire at this game. That was John A. Cross. It is entirely possible that Daniels was present. The National League at that time maintained a list of approved umpires, with the names submitted by the various clubs. Daniels was based out of Boston, and Cross out of Providence. He might well have made the short journey to Providence to watch the game. Daniels also had a much longer umpiring career, extending through the 1880s, while Cross’s career was brief and unremarkable. Daniels was part of the baseball community, telling and retelling the story of this memorable play he had witnessed. It was natural for his hearers to assume he had been the umpire. After enough retellings, he came to remember it that way, too. We need not take Daniels to have been a conscious liar, but neither should we take at face value the details of his version, with his instantaneous call of three outs while the ball was still seemingly in play.

There were only two people with an incentive to tell the story differently. The standard version has Sutton making a base running blunder. It is natural that he would favor a different version, where he was put out presumably through no fault of his own. Then there was Rankin, the driving force behind skepticism about the play. Rankin was a natural contrarian, so for him the incentive was to debunk the generally favored version.

The incentives also favored an argument about a concrete fact rather than an abstract rules debate. It is easy to make and to understand an argument about where the runner was. It is much harder to make and the understand an argument about rules interpretation.

As much as anything, the lesson to be taken away is that not only do stories improve in the telling, but people forget what the issues were at the time of the events described.

Conclusion

The conclusion here is sadly unsatisfying. The best story would be to show conclusively that Hines had indeed made an unassisted triple play. We could remove the asterisk from the record, and tell the young ones the story of Hines’s amazing play. The next best story would be to show conclusively that Hines had in fact not made an unassisted triple play. This would tidy up the record, and Rankin was not entirely wrong about the pleasures of contrarianism. What we have here is perhaps the worst outcome. The available evidence shows that the most common opinion at the time was that the play was not unassisted; that the official scorer most likely shared this opinion; but the evidence is not conclusive. The only hope for a final resolution is if the official scorer of the Providence Club should be identified, and should he be a newspaper reporter, and should his account be available. Until then, the asterisk must remain.

RICHARD HERSHBERGER writes on early baseball history. He has published in various SABR publications, and in “Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game.” He is a paralegal in Maryland.

• Related link: Click here to view the SABR Triple Plays Database, a comprehensive listing of all MLB triple plays since 1876

Notes

“Under current generally accepted accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss, and I can get every national accounting firm to agree with me.”1

—Paul Beeston, President of the Toronto Blue Jays

Major professional sports are big businesses. And owners of sports teams generally run them accordingly, seeking to strike a balance between costs — including taxes — and revenues which maximizes profits. As Paul Beeston’s words show, sports franchises are even more profitable than leagues and owners like to admit. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig testified before Congress in 2001 that baseball teams were losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year.2 The Congressional committee was skeptical, as was Forbes.com, which concluded that MLB teams likely had an operating profit of around $75 million.3

But if Paul Beeston can turn profits into losses under basic accounting principles, then perhaps Selig and Forbes were both technically “right.” How can this be? One way is tax breaks. Taxing sports franchises is a challenge because the business model and profitability depend heavily upon intangible assets: things that create value but cannot be physically touched, such as television and trademark rights.4 The issues and regulations regarding valuation of franchises are so complex that sports analysts often fail to fully understand them.5 This article discusses one such tax issue: the Roster Depreciation Allowance. The topic has been discussed in simple terms in the popular press, as in this quotation from Time: “owners get to deduct player salaries twice over, as an actual expense (since they’re actually paying them) and as a depreciating asset (like GM would for a factory or FedEx a jet).”6 It has also been discussed in the academic field with in-depth mathematical and economic language and analysis.7 This article presents a middle ground, delving into the history of the Roster Depreciation Allowance and presenting an understanding of the application and consequences of the Roster Depreciation Allowance that is more nuanced than the popular press but accessible to those without a strong background in mathematics or economics.

The Roster Depreciation Allowance (RDA) is a tax law that allows a purchaser to depreciate (or, more accurately, to amortize) almost the entire purchase price of a sports franchise. Depreciation is when a company takes the decrease in value of a tangible asset over a certain period of time as an economic loss in its accounting. If a landscaping company buys a riding mower, the company will take a certain percentage of that mower’s cost each year for a certain number of years as a loss, which counts against the company’s profits. The loss is economic because the company isn’t actually losing any money on the mower, but because the mower is worth less than it was when the company bought it, companies are allowed to count that loss against their revenues for accounting purposes. By lowering the revenues and subsequently the profits of the company, depreciation lowers the company’s taxable income.

The accounting principles behind depreciation are fairly simple. For every transaction, one account must increase, and one must decrease, both by the same dollar amount. When a company spends $1,500 on a riding lawn mower, assuming they pay in cash or an equivalent rather than with a loan, the company’s bank account decreases by $1,500. But now the company owns a mower worth $1,500, so its asset account — the value of the stuff and money it owns — must go up by the same $1,500. That part is simple enough. But after the company uses the mower for several years the mower’s value will be reduced to zero.8 When the mower’s value hits zero, the company’s asset account would have essentially been reduced by $1,500 because they have $1,500 less stuff. But to keep their books balanced, there must be an equal increase somewhere else. That increase comes in the “depreciation expenses” category, which increases a company’s expenses (the money a business spends conducting its business) just as if the company had paid money to an employee. The concept of depreciation simply allows the company to make those adjustments in smaller increments, say 10% per year for 10 years, instead of all at once.

The IRS puts out several rules and regulations which determine the percentage of the purchase price of any given item that is depreciable, over how many years the depreciation is spread, and what methods of depreciation are allowed. Amortization, as used here, is simply depreciation for intangible assets.9 If a company buys an intangible asset, like a patent, it is amortized rather than depreciated, but the same basic process applies. To avoid confusion the rest of this paper will refer to the amortization that takes place under the RDA as depreciation.

The RDA is one of several “gymnastic bookkeeping techniques” businesses and sports franchises use to minimize tax liabilities.10 The RDA is a depreciation of almost the entire purchase price of a sports franchise over 15 years. This means that each year for 15 years, the purchaser (or purchasers) of a professional sports franchise can take a tax deduction based on the purchase price of the franchise. The current RDA allows sports franchise purchasers to depreciate almost 100 percent of the purchase price over the first 15 years after the purchase; a tax deduction of about 6.67 percent of the purchase price per year.11

The RDA is not exactly unique because many businesses depreciate the costs of both tangible (physical, like lawn mowers) and intangible (not physical but still profitable, like patents) assets. But it is unique in that it deals with sports franchises. Unlike riding lawn mowers or patents, which are essentially worthless at some point in time, the value of sports franchises continue to increase. While depreciation generally allows companies to count the loss of value of their assets as costs of operation, the RDA allows companies to count losses on an asset whose value continues to rise.

The current RDA is fairly straightforward, but has not always been that way. Before the first RDA became law in 1976, nobody — not owners, lawyers, accountants, courts, or the IRS — could accurately depreciate the sports franchise as an asset with any consistency.12 Because high barriers to entry meant that buying a sports franchise was and still is a relatively uncommon event, it took lawmakers a while to figure out what to do.

Before moving into the history of the RDA, it is important to understand a few key concepts. The first is the concept of franchise rights. Franchise rights refer to the full panoply of rights associated with being a franchise in a major sports league, such as rights to revenue sharing, rights to trademarks, trade names, licenses, and other intellectual property, rights to regional exclusivity, and all the other rights that come from being a member of the league. The second concept is the distinction between player contracts and player contract rights. Player contracts state how much a player will make over how many years, and will set out what the player has to do to earn that money. In short, player contracts are about a player’s salary. Player contract rights refers to the ownership of the right to enforce the contract and the duty to abide by it. So even though a player may have a $3 million per year salary, if he brings in $4 million in revenue, a person may only pay $500,000 for the contract rights, because he will pay the salary and the price of the contract rights for a total of $3.5 million in exchange for $4 million in revenue. But if the same $3 million player brings in $10 million in revenue a year, then someone may pay $5 million for his contract rights, for a total salary plus purchase price of $8 million in order to gain that $10 million in revenue. In an example that will be examined later, when Bud Selig bought the Seattle Pilots in 1970, he said that he paid $10.2 million to buy the player contract rights of the entire roster, even though the roster’s total salaries were only $607,400.13

Two key court cases came about in the late 1920s which dealt with how baseball teams treat the costs of player contracts. The case of Chicago Nat’l League Ball Club v. Commissioner14 dealt with the Chicago Cubs’ 1927 and 1928 corporate tax returns and the case Commissioner v. Pittsburgh Athletic Co.15 dealt with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 1928-1930 corporate tax returns. Until 1928, the Pirates had been taking a tax deduction for the difference between all the player contracts they bought and all the player contract they sold in a given year. But now both teams, the Cubs starting in 1927 and the Pirates starting in 1928, had begun taking the entire amount played for player contracts16 in a given year as tax deductions in a that same year.

The reserve clause played a key role in these decisions because it essentially created a perpetual team option contract. Both teams argued that since all player contracts were technically only one-year contracts, they had useful lives of one year and thus the full amount was depreciable in the year in which they were purchased. The IRS argued that the amounts paid for player contracts should be deducted over a period of at least three years because the reserve clause essentially gave the contracts a useful life equal to a player’s entire career. In both cases, the court relied on non-baseball precedent to say that even though a contract has an option to extend its duration, the life of the contract itself was not necessarily changed by the option. So in both cases, the team won.

An early version of the RDA was enacted just over a decade later. When sports entrepreneur Bill Veeck bought the Cleveland Indians in 1946, he persuaded Congress and the IRS to act. Veeck argued that the amount of the purchase price that went towards buying the rights to the player contracts should be treated as a depreciable asset.17 Sports teams could then “double dip” by taking the RDA depreciation for the purchase price of the contracts, how much the new owners paid to old owners for the ability to enforce the contracts, and then deducting the salaries actually paid each year to players as labor costs. Moreover, unlike most assets which can only be depreciated once, the RDA applies anew each time a franchise is purchased.18 This new, clear version of the rules increased the value of franchises, and Veeck quickly capitalized by selling the Indians in 1949.19

With the purchase price of player contracts now a depreciable asset, team buyers began doing what the Chicago court could not: determining how much of the purchase price was for the franchise rights (league membership, regional exclusivity, revenue sharing and licensing rights, etc.) and how much was for the player contracts. The IRS’s stated position was that the price of the franchise rights was not depreciable because it did not have a determinable life (the NFL, NBA, or MLB and their franchises could potentially live on and be profitable forever), but the price of the player contracts was depreciable because they had a determinable life (the contract was only valuable for however many years the player was bound to the club).20 While the franchise rights are the more valuable part of team ownership, buyers wanted to make as much of the purchase price depreciable as possible.21 So buyers began allocating huge percentages of the purchase price to the player contracts and away from the franchise rights.

The NFL granted an expansion franchise in 1965 which became the Atlanta Falcons.22 The new owners tried to depreciate both the cost of the contracts of the 42 players acquired via the expansion draft and the cost of the Falcons’ franchise right to a share of the NFL television revenues.23 The IRS asserted deficiencies, arguing that the owners allocated too much of the purchase price to the player contracts and not enough to the franchise rights.24 The IRS also argued that the “mass asset rule” should apply to prevent the Falcons from dividing the purchase price between the franchise rights and the player contracts. The “mass asset rule” prevents depreciation of intangible assets of indeterminate life (such as rights to television revenue) if they are inseparable from intangible assets of determinable life (such as player contracts). The IRS argued that it was impossible to separate the costs of becoming an NFL franchise and the costs expended to acquire the players on its roster, and that therefore the “mass asset rule” should apply.

The court disagreed. It held that the “mass asset rule” did not apply because the player contracts 1) had their own value separate from the franchise rights, and 2) had a limited useful life which could be ascertained with reasonable accuracy.25So the court allowed the Falcons to separate and depreciate the cost of player contracts from the rest of the intangibles.26 The court also held that the television rights bundle could not be depreciated because it was of indeterminable length, running as long as the franchise is part of the NFL.27 Thus, franchise owners benefitted the most when they attributed more of the purchase price to player contracts instead of to the franchise rights, so that’s exactly what they started doing.

Former MLB commissioner Bud Selig took the practice of allocating costs towards player contracts in order to maximize depreciation deductions to new heights when he bought the Seattle Pilots in 1970. Selig bought the Pilots for $10.8 million.28 He allocated 94 percent of the purchase price (or about $10.2 million) to the purchase of player contracts, even though the contracts themselves were only for $607,400 worth of salaries, according to Baseball-Almanac.com.29,30 The remaining purchase price was allocated to the equipment and supplies ($100,000) and the value of the franchise ($500,000).31 The court upheld this allocation.32

In response to Selig’s allocation (but before the decision upholding it came down) the IRS and Congress acted to prevent such allocations in the future. Congress enacted Section 1056, which regulated the tax treatment of player contracts. Subsections (a)-(c) dealt with the “basis” of player contracts.33 “Basis” is a tax term describing the amount of money “put into” an asset — minus any depreciation deductions taken — by the owner. This determines the amount of taxable profit/loss the owner will realize on a subsequent sale of the asset.34 Subsection (d) creates a presumption that no more than 50 percent of the purchase price of a sports franchise could be allocated to player contracts, unless the purchaser establishes to the IRS that a higher percentage is proper. This amount could then be depreciated over a five-year period (rather than over the lives of the individual contracts). This law created the 50/5 rule: 50 percent of the total purchase price of the franchise could be depreciated over five years.

The 50/5 rule streamlined sports franchise bookkeeping by making all the purchased contract rights one large, depreciable asset. This may have been an attempt to get courts to stop evaluating the reasonableness of the contract rights purchase price first and allocating the remainder to franchise rights second.35 However, since it created only a presumption and not a rule, the IRS continued to struggle against franchise buyers who argued that more than 50% of the purchase price was for the player contracts.36

Around the turn of the century, Congress drastically changed the RDA. In 1993, Congress had passed a tax law called Section 197, which gave all businesses the ability to depreciate the purchase price of intangible assets, but specifically excluded sports franchises.37,38 So the 50/5 rule in Section 1056 continued to apply to professional sports franchises. Then Congress passed the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. As part of this Act, Section 1056 was repealed, and the purchase price of sports franchises became subject to the 15-year depreciation rules applicable to other intangible assets under Section 197.39 “Section 197 allows an amortized deduction for the capitalized costs of [things listed in Section 197].”40 These intangibles include “workforce in place” (player contract rights), as well as “any franchise, trademark, or trade name.”41,42 Thus, the specific exclusion of sports franchises from intangible assets was ended.43 Under this new 100/15 rule, almost the full purchase price of a franchise is depreciable over 15 years.44

The RDA is perhaps best understood through hypotheticals. An analysis of the 2004 rule gives the following example:

Buyer (B) pays Seller (S) $350 million for an MLB franchise. $40 million represents the costs of all tangible assets (uniforms, bats, balls, mascot costumes, etc.) and the intangible assets which are not the franchise itself or the player contracts (such as a stadium lease). The remaining $310 million is a depreciable asset, just as if B had bought a factory or patent.45

As this example illustrates, not all intangible assets are depreciable under the RDA, such as the stadium lease46 mentioned above. This leaves room for the old-fashioned disputes about allocation, but the amount of money in contention is much smaller.

For an example of the difference between the old and new incarnations of the RDA, consider the following: Assume that an investor, or a group of investors, purchased a sports franchise for $150 million total. Under the old 50/5 rule, the franchise would be able to depreciate $75 million (50 percent) over five years, or $15 million dollars per year. That means that $15 million worth of revenues are not taxed. Assuming a tax rate of 35 percent, that $15 million in revenue would have generated income tax of $5.25 million.47 Multiplied by five years means $26.25 millionin tax savings for the franchise.

Now, let’s use the same hypothetical for the current RDA. A purchaser or group of purchasers buys a sports franchise for $150 million, with $100 million of that being for the franchise and player contract rights.48 Under the 100/15 rule, the franchise can depreciate $100 million over fifteen years, or about $6.67 million per year. That means that $6.67 million of revenues per year are not taxed. Assuming a tax rate of 35 percent, the franchise owners gain approximately $2.33 million in taxes, which they would have had to pay the IRS without the RDA. Multiplied by fifteen years, that equals about $35 million in tax savings.

These examples have two caveats. One is that, in the examples above, if an owner buys a team for $150 million he will almost certainly allocate far more than $100 million to the franchise and player rights ($100 million is only 67 percent of $150 million, but remember Bud Selig allocated 94 percent to player rights alone). Thus, the tax advantages to the owners under the current rules would be even greater than the example illustrates. The last ten times a major sports franchise (NHL, NFL, NBA, or MLB) was sold, the prices ranged from $170 million to $2.15 billion, with five of those ten between $200 and $600 million.49 So, if a team were purchased for $400 million and the owners allocated $376 million to player rights and other depreciable intangibles ($376 million is 94% of the purchase price, which Bud Selig got away with), they could depreciate just under $25.1 million per year, which at a 35 percent tax rate would be savings of $8.77 million per year to the owners.

The second caveat is that nothing in this paper discusses changes to the depreciable amount. Theoretically, a franchise would acquire and sell the rights of individual players and would thus have to realize gains or losses on each sale, and likely apply the RDA to each new player contract it acquires, depending on how it does its accounting. Since these examples are illustrative only, we are only dealing with the initial purchase of the all player contracts the franchise owns at the time of the sale.

This is a good point to provide greater context for the numbers we’ve been discussing to see the real impact of the RDA and the 2004 changes. As discussed earlier, the RDA creates tax savings for owners. But these breaks are only temporary. We have to remember the concepts of depreciation and basis discussed above. When you depreciate an asset, your basis in that asset decreases. If you sell that asset, you are taxed on the portion of that income which exceeds your basis. Remember that lawn mower from our landscaping company from before? Let’s say the company buys a lawn mower for $1,500. Its basis in the lawn mower is $1,500. The company then depreciates $150 (10%) per year for six years, for a total depreciation of $900. The company’s basis in the lawn mower is decreased by that $900 of depreciation, so that the company’s basis is now $600. So after owning the lawn mower for six years, the company now sells it to someone else for $750. The company will have to pay tax on the difference between the $750 it received for the lawn mower and its $600 basis in the lawn mower, which is $150 of taxable income.

The same is true of sports franchises under the RDA. For every dollar a franchise takes as depreciation, they will have to pay taxes on another dollar of profit from the sale of the franchise. So the RDA itself does not really affect the dollar amount of taxes paid by a franchise. But it does do two other things. First, because the amount of the depreciation allowed was increased from 50% of the purchase price to almost 100% of the purchase price, it allows more revenue to go untaxed (see Table 1). Second, by using the RDA and other perfectly legitimate accounting methods, franchises make revenue disappear from the profit line. As stated, this untaxed revenue will eventually be paid back.

(Click image to enlarge.)

These tax breaks create a type of deferred-tax situation – a situation where companies can use accounting to delay paying current taxes due until a later date – because they allow the franchise owners to keep more money now and make up for taxes due later. Because every $1 of depreciation decreases basis by $1, at a 35% tax rate the owners are saving $.35 now, but will have to pay that $.35 back later if they sell the franchise. Of course, these savings the owners get are going to be generating more income for them while the total they owe the IRS will stay the same, effectively acting as an interest-free loan from the government to the owners.50 This article is not trying to decry some perceived injustice in the existence of the RDA – but it is something sports fans should be aware of when they are considering financial numbers put out by both the media and the teams themselves.

Congress placed sports franchises under the general law for intangible asset depreciation in 2004 for several reasons. First, it made the rules more uniform across industries. Second, the clearer rules were meant to minimize disputes regarding proper allocation, and in turn to reduce the IRS’s administrative and enforcement costs.51 Finally, supporters argued that it would increase tax payments by about $381 million over ten years.52 While the deductible amount doubled, the amortization time period tripled, which would increase tax bills in the short term. As the above hypotheticals show, while the amortizable amount increased from 50 to almost 100 percent, the dollar amount amortized each year decreased; meaning that in the early years the teams would have more taxable income. While the 50/5 example above allowed an annual deduction of $5.25 million, the 100/15 example only allowed an annual deduction of $2.33 million, increasing the team’s taxable income for the first five years. Of course, after those five years, as the depreciation continued to apply, the increased percentage meant that even more money was safe from taxation than before.

By doubling the amount of tax deductions a team could take — provided, of course, that the new owners hang on to the team for the full 15 years — the new RDA increased franchise values. Higher depreciation totals meant more tax deductions and more untaxed profits for owners in the long run. Experts in the field theorized that the average values of sports franchises would increase by five percent.53 One economic report argued that average value would in fact increase by 11.6 percent.54

Further, for many teams, even the lower depreciation amounts exceed taxable income for each of the 15 years, allowing the owners to pass the paper losses on to their personal income tax liability.55 For example, a Los Angeles group of investors bought the Dodgers for $2.15 billion in 2012.56 Thus, it can take over $143 million per year as a deduction, which is a tax savings of just over $50 million per year for the owners, again assuming a 35 percent tax rate.57 The elongated time frame means that the Dodgers’ new owners can extend the tax benefits to their private income taxes as business losses for ten years longer than under the old rules, but more importantly the extended coverage of the new RDA , from 50% to almost 100% of purchase price, allows them to almost double the total deductible about.58 If Paul Beeston could turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss, just imagine how much profit the Dodgers’ owners could turn into losses with $143 million in deductions.

There have been several examples in recent sports history that illustrate the effects of the RDA on the business of sports. In 1974, before the modern rules, only 5 of 27 professional basketball teams reported a profit.59 This history of paper losses has continued under the new rules. In 2011, with the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and players expiring, the NBA stated that 22 of its 30 teams were losing money.60 As a lockout loomed, NBA players argued that the “losses” suffered by teams were paper rather than real.61 As a former director of the MLB Players Association once said, if “[y]ou go through The Sporting News of the last 100 years, and you will find two things are always true. You never have enough pitchers, and nobody ever made money.”62

Forbes reported in August 2013 that the Houston Astros, who had finished with the worst record in Major League Baseball each year from 2011 through 2013, were on pace to make $99 million in profit in 2013 — the most of any team in baseball history.63 The Astros responded that their numbers were not near that amount. The difference is because the Astros, unlike Forbes, included non-cash losses, such as the RDA, in its calculation.64 Current Astros owner Jim Crane bought the team in 2011. Between then and 2013, he cut player salaries from $77 million to $13 million.65 According to the Sports Business Journal, Crane paid about $700 million for the team.66 This means that the Astros would get about $46.7 million per year in paper losses associated with acquiring player contracts, despite paying actual salary amounts as low as $13 million. If you multiply the $46.7 million per year deduction by 35 percent, the RDA allows the team to keep about $16.3 million dollars per year which it would have had to pay in taxes. That’s more than enough to double the salary of the entire 2013 roster. So, with the help of the RDA, the Astros are taking a large paper loss as well as decreasing labor expenses, greately increasing their profit margin. If you subtract the $46.7 million in depreciation losses from the Forbes projection of $99 million in profits, it’s easy to see why the Astros claimed the numbers were so far off. It’s also easy to see how such vastly profitable businesses as sports franchises can say they are not making money with a straight face.

If you were to get on the public address system at any ballpark in America during a baseball game and ask for a show of hands on how many people are interested in how their teams account for depreciation of intangible assets, among the sea of boos you would probably find no hands up. But the people who run the teams are very interested in limiting their tax liability. It allows them to either pocket more money in profits or to pay better players to win more games. And as fans and society continue to take an increasingly academic look at professional sports, the Roster Depreciation Allowance is a crucial consideration to pay attention to in the economics of professional sports. The next time you see an article about the financial condition of your favorite team, you’ll know that there is much more going on in the books than meets the eye.

STEPHEN R. KEENEY is a lifelong Reds fan and a new SABR member. He graduated from Miami University in 2010 with degrees in History and International Studies, and from Northern Kentucky University’s Chase College of Law in 2013. After passing the bar exam he moved from Cincinnati to Dayton, where he works as a union staff representative and lives with his wife, Christine.

Notes

In the immediate aftermath of the exciting Game Seven between the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants in 2014, the baseball world fixated on one question: should Alex Gordon have been sent home with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning as his hit was being botched and booted somewhere near the left-center field wall? Indeed, no less a numbers guru than Nate Silver tweeted that — regardless of the outcome on that potential play-at-the-plate — it would have been one of the five greatest moments in baseball history. However, what happened immediately after that play (with Gordon on third and Madison Bumgarner pitching to Salvador Perez) is far more remarkable, and this paper presents data to support that claim.

The six pitches Bumgarner threw to Perez had the ability to win the World Series for either team. That is, each of those six pitches could have produced a World Series championship for the Royals (had Perez hit a home run) or the Giants (had Perez grounded out to shortstop, flown out to right field, or, as he did, fouled out to the third baseman).

This is an occurrence so incredibly rare that it has only happened seven times since the 1903 World Series: 1912, 1926, 1962, 1972, 1997, 2001, and 2014. Only on these seven occasions have single pitches been thrown that simultaneously held the potential to win a World Series for either team. (Editor’s note: Soon after this article was published, this occurred again in the 2016 World Series.)

THE GOLDEN PITCH: A DEFINITION

For lack of a better phrase, and for ease of conversation, I will refer to these pitches as “Golden Pitches,” borrowing perhaps from the concept of a Golden Goal in sudden death overtime of a soccer or hockey game. By definition, under the current best-of-seven World Series format, a Golden Pitch can only be thrown in Game Seven of the World Series and only in the bottom of the ninth inning when the road team has the lead (or in the bottom of an extra inning, if the road team scores in the top, as was the case in Game Seven of the 1912 World Series, the first time a Golden Pitch was thrown.)1 Indeed, in no other situation could either team win the World Series on a given pitch.

Some of the greatest and most dramatic moments in World Series history did not involve Golden Pitches. Carlton Fisk’s epic home run came in Game Six of the 1975 World Series; only the Reds could have won the Series that night. For that matter, Fisk’s home run came with the score tied in the bottom of the twelfth inning; only the Red Sox could have won the game on that pitch.

A similar point can be made about Joe Carter’s Series-winning home run in 1993: it happened in Game Six, so only the Blue Jays — not the Phillies — could have won the title that night. In the 2011 World Series, the Rangers came within one strike of winning the championship on two separate occasions, but both came in Game Six (in the bottom of the ninth and tenth innings). As dramatic as that game was, only the Rangers — not the Cardinals — could have won the World Series that night.

The pitch Ralph Terry threw to Bill Mazeroski in 1960 comes close to meeting the criteria of a Golden Pitch because it was the bottom of the ninth inning of a Game Seven, but the game was tied when the pitch was made. Only the Pirates could have won the World Series on that pitch. The best the Yankees could hope for was that the game would make it to extra innings.

Game Seven of the 1991 World Series is ranked by some historians as the greatest baseball game ever played, and yet no Golden Pitches were thrown. Several pitches were thrown in the bottoms of the ninth and tenth that could have produced a victory for the Twins (including the one thrown to Gene Larkin that eventually did win the World Series for Minnesota), but not a single pitch thrown in that game could have won it for Atlanta. The exact same can be said about the longest World Series Game Seven ever played (in 1924) — since only the home-team Nationals could have won the World Series during at bats in a tied game in the bottoms of the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth innings. Since the visiting Giants never took the lead in any of those innings, there were no Golden Pitches thrown.

SOME NEAR-MISSES

A handful of the 37 Game Sevens that have been played were so one-sided that there was no possibility of a Golden Pitch being thrown.2 Other Game Sevens were close, but since the visiting teams lost, the home teams never had to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning, and thus by definition, no Golden Pitches were thrown.3 However, several other Game Sevens came close to meeting the criteria for a Golden Pitch, but fell just short.

• 1924: As discussed previously.
• 1952: The visiting Yankees took a 4–2 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning at Ebbets Field. Had the Dodgers put at least two runners on base (creating the potential of a Series-winning three-run home run), a Golden Pitch could have been thrown. Instead, Bob Kuzava retired the side in order, retiring Pee Wee Reese on a fly ball to left field to end the game.4
• 1955: The visiting Dodgers took a 2–0 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium. Had two runners reached base (creating the potential of a Series-winning three-run home run), a Golden Pitch could have been thrown. But Johnny Podres retired the side in order.
• 1957: The visiting Milwaukee Braves led 5–0 in the bottom of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium. The game ended when Lew Burdette got Bill Skowron to ground into a force out at third base with the bases loaded and two outs. Two more batters would have had to reach for a Golden Pitch to be thrown.
• 1958: The visiting Yankees took a 6–2 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning against the Milwaukee Braves. The game ended when Red Schoendienst lined out to center field with runners on first and second. Two more batters would have had to reach base for a Golden Pitch to be thrown.
• 1960: As discussed previously.
• 1965: With the Dodgers leading the Twins 2–0 in the bottom of the ninth inning, Harmon Killebrew singled off Sandy Koufax with one out. Had one more batter reached base, Koufax would have thrown at least one Golden Pitch, since a double play (with two on and one out) could have won the Series for the Dodgers and a three-run home run could have won it for the Twins. Instead, Koufax struck out Earl Battey and Bob Allison to end the game.
• 1968: The visiting Tigers took a 4–0 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning in St. Louis. With two outs, Mike Shannon hit a solo home run to cut the Tigers’ lead to 4–1. Had the Cardinals then loaded the bases, thus creating the possibility of a Series-winning grand slam, at least one Golden Pitch would have been thrown. As it was, Mickey Lolich retired Tim McCarver on a foul pop to catcher to end the game.
• 1971: The visiting Pirates took a 2–1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning in Baltimore, but Steve Blass retired the Orioles in order, and so no Golden Pitches were thrown. Since no one reached base, no pitch Blass threw in the bottom of the ninth could have won the Series for Baltimore.
• 1975: After Joe Morgan’s go-ahead RBI with two outs in the top of the ninth inning, the Reds took a 4–3 lead into the bottom of the inning. The Red Sox were retired in order, and so no Golden Pitches were thrown. Carl Yastrzemski made the final out, but the best he could have done during his at-bat was tie the game (with a solo home run), not win it, for Boston.
• 1979: The visiting Pirates took a 4–1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning in Baltimore. Had the Orioles loaded the bases, thus creating the possibility of a Series-winning grand slam, at least one Golden Pitch would have been thrown. As it was, Kent Tekulve retired the side in order.
• 1991: As discussed previously.

THE SEVEN TIMES GOLDEN PITCHES WERE THROWN

To gain a full appreciation of just how rare a Golden Pitch is, and to put in perspective how incredibly consequential the Bumgarner-to-Perez sequence was in 2014, I investigated how many (how few) Golden Pitches have been thrown in baseball history. Using Baseball-Reference.com, which charts pitch counts for games beginning in 1974, I was able to definitively calculate the number of Golden Pitches thrown in 1997, 2001 and 2014. Various newspaper accounts were helpful in calculating the number of Golden Pitches that were thrown on the first four occasions in 1912, 1926, 1962, and 1972. In fact, using both Baseball-Reference.com and newspaper accounts of the games in question, we know for certain how many Golden Pitches were thrown to 10 of the 12 batters who have faced such pitches. For only two batters — Bob Meusel in 1926 and Chuck Hiller in 1962 — is there ambiguity regarding precisely how many Golden Pitches they faced.

(Click image to enlarge.)

A review of the available data as detailed below leads me to estimate 40 Golden Pitches have been thrown since 1903 — with a minimum of 36 — and we were lucky enough to see six of them in the 2014 World Series. In detail, here are the seven times pitches were thrown that had the unique ability to win a World Series for either team:

1912: Boston Red Sox 3, New York Giants 2 (10 innings)
Fenway Park in Boston

With the game tied 1–1, the visiting Giants scored a run in the top of the tenth inning on an RBI single to center field by Fred Merkle. Working with a 2–1 lead in the bottom of the tenth inning, Christy Mathewson faced Clyde Engle to lead off the inning. Engle reached second base on an error by center fielder Fred Snodgrass, which brought up Harry Hooper. The pitch (or pitches) Mathewson threw to Hooper were not Golden Pitches, since the Giants could not win the World Series during that at-bat. (Only the Red Sox could have won it at that point, had Hooper hit a two-run home run.)

However, when Hooper flew out to Snodgrass (with Engle advancing to third base on the play), for the first time in baseball history the next several pitches all had the ability to win the World Series for either team.

Steve Yerkes was the next batter, and now with a runner at third base and one out, each pitch Mathewson threw to him was a Golden Pitch. Yerkes could have hit a two-run home run (which would have won the World Series for the Red Sox), or he could have hit into an unconventional double play (which would have won the World Series for the Giants).

According to the New York Times, Yerkes walked on five pitches, which brought Tris Speaker to the plate with runners on first and third and one out. Once again, every pitch Mathewson threw to Speaker was a Golden Pitch: a triple or two-run double would have won the World Series for the Red Sox, while a double play (including a conventional 6–4–3, 4–6–3, or 5–4–3 double play) would have won the World Series for the Giants.

According to the Boston Globe, on the second pitch Speaker singled to right to tie the game, 2–2, and at that point, no other pitch Mathewson threw that inning was a Golden Pitch. From that point on, since the game was tied, every pitch thrown in the bottom of the tenth inning could only win the World Series for the Red Sox. (Indeed, that is what eventually happened, two batters later, when Mathewson gave up a sacrifice fly to Larry Gardner.)

So, the only Golden Pitches thrown by Mathewson were the five he threw to Yerkes and the two he threw to Speaker. Therefore, Mathewson threw a total of seven Golden Pitches.

1926: St. Louis Cardinals 3, New York Yankees 2
Yankee Stadium in New York

The visiting Cardinals took a 3–2 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning. Pete Alexander retired the first two batters before facing Babe Ruth. The pitches Alexander threw to Ruth were not Golden Pitches, since the best Ruth could do in that at-bat was hit a solo home run and tie the game. Instead Ruth walked, which meant that any pitch Alexander threw to Bob Meusel would be a Golden Pitch. Sources differ on whether Alexander threw one or two pitches to Meusel, but Ruth was caught stealing to end the game. Alexander, therefore, threw either one or two Golden Pitches.

1962: New York Yankees 1, San Francisco Giants 0
Candlestick Park in San Francisco

The Yankees’ Ralph Terry took a 1–0 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning and gave up a leadoff bunt single to Matty Alou. He faced Felipe Alou next, but since the pitches he threw to Felipe Alou only had the ability to win the World Series for the Giants (had Alou hit a two-run home run) and not the Yankees (since the best Terry could hope for during that at-bat was a double play that would still have left New York one out shy of victory), they were not Golden Pitches.

Terry struck out Felipe Alou, which meant that he did throw Golden Pitches to the next batter, Chuck Hiller, since a double play at that point would have produced a World Series victory for the Yankees.

There are no reliable accounts of Hiller’s at bat, but since we know he also struck out, at least three Golden Pitches must have been thrown. Fortunately, newspaper accounts do make clear what happened next. After Hiller struck out, Terry threw three Golden Pitches to the next batter, Willie Mays, who doubled down the right field line on a 2–0 pitch to put runners and second and third with two outs. Willie McCovey then fouled off the first pitch before lining out to the second baseman on Terry’s final Golden Pitch, thereby ending the game.

The pitches Terry threw to Hiller, Mays, and McCovey were all Golden. Since Hiller struck out, we know he faced at least three Golden Pitches, but it is reasonable to assume he may have faced a few more. We know for certain that Mays faced three Golden Pitches and McCovey faced two. Therefore, Terry threw at least eight Golden Pitches, and probably a few more, giving him the distinction of having thrown more Golden Pitches than any other pitcher.

[Author’s note: A television broadcast of the ninth inning has surfaced since this article was published, showing the Hiller at-bat lasted seven pitches (1. foul ball, 2. foul ball on an attempted bunt, 3. foul ball, 4. foul ball, 5. foul ball, 6. ball in the dirt, 7. swinging strike.) Adding the 3 pitches to Mays and the 2 to McCovey gives Terry a total of 12 golden pitches in this ninth inning.]

1972: Oakland A’s 3, Cincinnati Reds 2
Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati

Working with a one-run lead entering the bottom of the ninth inning, the A’s Rollie Fingers retired the first two batters before hitting Darrel Chaney with a pitch. With a runner at first and two outs, every pitch Fingers threw to the next batter, Pete Rose, was a Golden Pitch. Rose could have hit a two-run home run to win the World Series for the Reds, or he could have made an out (as he did, flying out to left fielder Joe Rudi), thereby giving the championship to the A’s. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that Rose hit the first pitch to Rudi, so we know that Fingers threw one Golden Pitch.

1997: Florida Marlins 3, Cleveland Indians 2 (11 innings)
Pro Player Stadium in Miami

With the Indians holding a 2–1 lead, Jose Mesa gave up a single to Moises Alou to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning. Mesa next faced Bobby Bonilla, but the pitches he threw were not Golden Pitches, since they only had the ability to win the World Series for the Marlins. (A two-run home run by Bonilla would have won the World Series for the Marlins, but the best Mesa could hope for in that at-bat — a double play — would still have left the Indians one out short of victory.)

Bonilla struck out, which brought Charles Johnson to the plate with a runner at first and one out. The four pitches Mesa threw to Johnson were Golden Pitches, since now a potential double play would have won the World Series for the Indians.

Johnson singled to right field on a 1–2 pitch, which put runners at first and third with still only one out. The three pitches Mesa then threw to Craig Counsell were also Golden Pitches, since every pitch could have won the World Series for either the Marlins (had Counsell hit a two-run double or three-run home run) or the Indians (had Counsell, for example, hit into a 6–4–3 double play).

Counsell hit a sacrifice fly to Manny Ramirez in right field on a 1–1 pitch to tie the game 2–2. Mesa would go on to throw 21 more pitches before he was relieved by Charles Nagy with two outs in the tenth inning, but none of those 21 were Golden Pitches. Once the Marlins tied the game, the pitches thrown in the bottom of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh innings only had the ability to win the World Series for the Marlins.

Because Baseball-Reference.com provides pitch counts for this World Series, we know that Mesa threw a total of seven Golden Pitches — four to Johnson and three to Counsell.

2001: Arizona Diamondbacks 3, New York Yankees 2
Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix

The Yankees took a 2–1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning and had Mariano Rivera on the mound. Mark Grace led off with a single, and Damian Miller reached on a fielder’s choice while attempting to bunt pinch runner David Dellucci over to second base. Dellucci reached second on an error, which put runners on first and second with nobody out.

The two pitches Rivera threw to Miller were not Golden Pitches, since only the Diamondbacks could have won the World Series on those pitches (had Miller hit a two-run home run). The best Rivera could hope for in Miller’s at bat was a double play, which would have left the Yankees one out short of victory.

However, once two runners reached base with nobody out, the conditions for a Golden Pitch were present, since the next batter (Jay Bell) could have either hit a two-run double or three-run home run (which would have won the World Series for the Diamondbacks), or at least theoretically, could have hit into a game-ending triple play (which would have won the World Series for the Yankees).

Rivera threw one Golden Pitch to Bell, who bunted into a force out at third base, which put runners at first and second with one out. Tony Womack then faced five Golden Pitches from Rivera — each pitch could have produced a two-run double or three-run home run (which would have won the World Series for the Diamondbacks) or a double play (which would have won the World Series for the Yankees).

On a 2–2 pitch, Womack lined an RBI double down the right field line, which scored pinch runner Midre Cummings (who had run for Miller) to tie the game 2–2. Rivera then hit Craig Counsell with a non-Golden pitch to load the bases before giving up the Series-winning RBI single to Luis Gonzalez. None of the pitches Rivera threw to Counsell or Gonzalez were Golden Pitches. Rivera, then, threw a total of six Golden Pitches: one to Bell and five to Womack.

2014: San Francisco Giants 3, Kansas City Royals 2
Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City

As was discussed briefly above, Bumgarner and the Giants took a 3–2 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning. Had he retired the side in order, Bumgarner would not have thrown any Golden Pitches, since no pitch would have had the ability to win the World Series for the Royals. But once Gordon singled and reached third base on the two-base error, every pitch Bumgarner threw to the next batter, Perez, had the ability to win the World Series for either team.

On Bumgarner’s sixth and final Golden Pitch, Perez fouled out to third base to end the game and the Series.

THE STATISTICAL RARITY OF THE GOLDEN PITCH

We know definitively that Mathewson (7), Fingers (1), Mesa (7), Rivera (6) and Bumgarner (6) threw a total of 27 Golden Pitches. We know that Alexander threw one or two Golden Pitches and Terry threw at least eight. Therefore, while we know at least 36 Golden Pitches have been thrown, it is safe to estimate that the number of Golden Pitches thrown since 1903 is roughly 40.5

For all the talk following Game Seven of the 2014 World Series about whether Gordon should have tried to score, there does not seem to be much appreciation of how consequential it was to see Bumgarner throw six pitches to Perez, each with the awesome power of being able to deliver a World Series title to either team.

Since we know there have been roughly 40 Golden Pitches thrown since 1903, I thought it might be illustrative to estimate how many pitches have been thrown in World Series history, playoff history, or even in baseball history.

There have been 111 World Series played since the one in 1903 between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston Americans for a total of 643 games. Assuming 130 pitches per game per team, that means a total of roughly 260. That would yield 167,180 pitches.

That means that only .02% of all pitches thrown in the World Series have been Golden Pitches.

Beginning with the 1969 season, the playoffs were expanded to include two league championship series. Since then, 230 games have been played in the ALCS and 239 in the NLCS. In 1995, the playoffs were expanded to include two division series for each league. Including the strike-caused division series of 1981, there have been 179 ALDS games and 172 NLDS games. Finally, after another expansion of baseball’s playoff format, eight one-game wild card games have been played since 2012.

Including the World Series starting in 1903, then 1,471 postseason games have been played. Again assuming roughly 260 pitches per game, that yields 382,460 postseason pitches.

That means that only .01% of all pitches thrown in the postseason since 1903 have been Golden Pitches. Estimating the number of pitches thrown in regular-season games since 1903 would have been an extraordinarily difficult endeavor without the assistance of Baseball-Reference.com. Fortunately, that site has calculated that 186,579 regular season games have been played since 1903. Again assuming 260 pitches per game, I estimate that 48.5 million pitches have been thrown in the regular season since 1903. Adding the estimated 382,460 pitches that have been thrown in the playoffs and World Series, that brings the total number of pitches thrown since 1903 to roughly 48.9 million.

That means that only .00008% of all pitches thrown since the beginning of the 1903 season (regular and postseason) have been Golden Pitches.

CONCLUSION

Golden Pitches have only been thrown by seven pitchers, on seven different occasions, to 12 different batters, over the course of the 113 years since our current World Series format came into existence. Roughly 40 Golden Pitches have been thrown out of the roughly 48.9 million total pitches thrown during that time. The throwing of a Golden Pitch is so incredibly rare, and so potentially consequential, that I found it worthy of note.

Consider this final point. The 2015 postseason consisted of 36 games (two wild card games, 19 games in the ALDS and NLDS, 10 games in the ALCS and NLCS, and five games in the World Series). There were exactly 10,538 pitches thrown.6 None were Golden Pitches. Roughly 631,800 pitches were thrown during the 2015 regular season.7 This means that, excluding the 2015 exhibition season, roughly 642,000 pitches have been thrown in major league baseball games since Bumgarner ended the 2014 World Series by throwing six Golden Pitches to Perez. None have been Golden Pitches since.

This is precisely the point of highlighting the existence of the Golden Pitch. How many pitches does a baseball fan see during one season, following the game on television or in person? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many does he or she see over the course of five years? Hundreds of thousands? How many does he or she see over the course of a lifetime? Millions?

The pitch is so elemental to the game of baseball, and it also enjoys a unique place in the fabric of our shared heritage. A parent plays catch with a child in the backyard. The President tosses out the so-called first “pitch” of the season. We’ve all participated in so many pitches in our lives — one way or another — but how may Golden Pitches have we seen? And when, we may wonder, will we ever see one again?

Because fate frowned upon him, WADE KAPSZUKIEWICZ is a lifelong fan of the Cleveland Indians. While watching Jose Mesa blow the save in Game Seven of the 1997 World Series, he began thinking about Golden Pitches — and whether fans of any other teams had their hearts similarly broken by them.

Acknowledgments

The author is deeply indebted to Clifford Blau for his work in getting this essay ready for publication. His knowledge of the game and attention to detail leave little doubt as to why he has been described as “the gold standard” for fact-checkers at the Baseball Research Journal.

Notes

1 The final game of the 1912 World Series was actually Game Eight, since Game Two ended in a 6–6 tie after 11 innings due to darkness. For purposes of this discussion, it shall hereafter be referred to as Game Seven, since it was the seventh and final game of that World Series in which a winner was declared.

2 This was the case for Game Seven of the World Series in 1909, 1934, 1945, 1956, 1967 and 1985.

3 This was the case for Game Seven of the World Series in 1925, 1931, 1940, 1946, 1947, 1964, 1973, 1982, 1986, 1987, 2002 and 2011.

4 This sequence was re-created from information contained at Baseball-Reference.com, which was also used for game data contained elsewhere in this discussion (unless otherwise noted).

5 Three of the seven pitchers to have thrown a Golden Pitch had their teams eventually lose the World Series — Christy Mathewson (1912), Jose Mesa (1997), and Mariano Rivera (2001) — almost certainly the only time Mesa’s name will ever be mentioned in the same breath as the two Hall of Famers.

6 MLB.com.

7 30 teams playing 162 games means a total of 2,430 games are played during the regular season. The total pitch count for the season assumes 260 pitches, on average, are thrown during a game.

RUSSELL ORMISTON is an assistant professor of economics at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He studies sports economics, labor economics and human resource management and can be contacted at rormisto@allegheny.edu.

References

Beckman, E.M., Cai, W., Esrock, R.M., & Lemke, R.J. (2011). “Explaining Game-to-Game Ticket Sales for Major League Baseball Games Over Time,” Journal of Sports Economics, online only.

Berri, D.J., & Schmidt, M.B. (2006). “On the Road With the National Basketball Association’s Superstar Externality,” Journal of Sports Economics, 7, 347–58.

Bruggink, T.H., & Eaton, J.W. (1996). “Rebuilding Attendance in Major League Baseball: The Demand for Individual Games” in L. Hadley & E. Gustafson (Eds.), Baseball Economics: Current Research. Praeger Press.

Butler, M.R. (2002). “Interleague Play and Baseball Attendance,” Journal of Sports Economics, 3, 320–34.

Gittar, S.R., & Rhoads, T.A. (2011). “Top Prospects and Minor League Baseball Attendance,” Journal of Sports Economics, 12, 341–51.

Hill, J.R., Madura, J., & Zuber, R.A. (1982). “The Short-Run Demand for Major League Baseball,” Atlantic Economic Journal, 10, 31–35.

Lemke, R.J., Leonard, M., & Tlhokwane, K. (2010). “Estimating Attendance at Major League Baseball Games for the 2007 Season,” Journal of Sports Economics, 11, 316–48.

McDonald, M., & Rascher, D. (2000). “Does Bat Day Make Cents? The Effect of Promotions on the Demand for Major League Baseball,” Journal of Sport Management, 14, 8–27.

Meehan, Jr., J.W., Nelson, R.A., & Richardson, T.V. (2007). “Competitive Balance and Game Attendance in Major League Baseball,” Journal of Sports Economics, 8, 563–80.

Ormiston, R. (2014a). “Do Fans Prefer Homegrown Players? An Analysis of MLB Attendance, 1976-2012,” Baseball Research Journal, Volume 43, Issue 1, 108–17.

Ormiston, R. (2014b). “Attendance Effects of Star Pitchers in Major League Baseball,” Journal of Sports Economics, 15, 338–64.

Rascher, D.A. (1999). “A Test of the Optimal Positive Production Network Externality in Major League Baseball” in J. Fizel, E. Gustafson, & L. Hadley (Eds.), Sports Economics: Current Research (27–45). Westport, CT: Praeger.

Notes

1. This attendance effect may be offset at the minor-league level if a prospect is only expected to play for a particular minor-league team for a limited duration, thereby drawing crowds hopeful to see the player before he is promoted to another team.

2. The Retrosheet game-by-game database can be found at www.retrosheet.org/gamelogs/index.html.

3. These special cases involve games moved to neutral sites due to inclement weather, temporary stadium construction, or other reasons (e.g., games played outside the US and Canada). This also excludes the “home games” played by the Montreal Expos in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

4. Analyses examining the attendance effects of each game’s starting pitchers are generally unencumbered by endogeneity concerns given that the names of the starting hurlers are announced to the public, often a few days ahead of time, such that fans can ascertain ahead of time whether a particular pitcher will—or will not—be playing in a given game.

5. Team-based variable pricing initiatives are not included due to a lack of data availability.

6. Consistent with the standards employed by Baseball America, this paper defines a rookie pitcher as a hurler with no more than 50 career innings pitched or 30 career games played prior to the season in question.

7. The overall top 100 prospect lists can be found at www.baseballamerica. com/ today/prospects/rankings/top-100-prospects/all-time. The top 10 prospect lists by organization were gathered from www.baseballamerica. com/majors/top-10-prospect-rankings-archives (1983-2000) and from the annual publication Baseball America Prospect Handbook (2001-2013).

8. The 13 pitchers who were number one overall picks and started at least one game in the majors are David Clyde, Floyd Bannister, Mike Moore, Tim Belcher, Andy Benes, Ben McDonald, Paul Wilson, Kris Benson, Bryan Bullington, Luke Hochevar, David Price, Stephen Strasburg and Gerrit Cole. Another pitcher, Matt Anderson, was the number one pick in the 1997 draft, but made all 257 of his MLB appearances in relief. Two other number one overall picks—Brien Taylor (1991) and Mark Appel (2013)—had not appeared in an MLB game during the time period studied.

9. In more detail, the numerator of the star power variable equals the linear sum of the number of times a pitcher has been named to the All-Star Game, the number of Cy Young awards won, the number of Most Value Player awards won, the number of no-hitters started, the number of All-Star Game MVP awards, the number of post-season MVP awards, whether the pitcher won the Rookie of the Year and whether the pitcher had won 300 games. The denominator equals a pitcher’s age (as of July 1st of the given year) minus 17.

10. To compute the star and wins above replacement data, information on award winners and WAR were drawn from Baseball-Reference.com. Data on no-hitters were located on Retrosheet.org. All-Star Game information was drawn from MLB.com.

11. As an example of how this estimate meets expectations, note that this system rates Dwight Gooden, Fernando Valenzuela, and Tom Seaver as reaching the highest level of star power between 1969-2013, a reasonable outcome.

12. As an example, the average game-time winning percentage of a team starting a rookie hurler (.480) is significantly lower than that of a team starting a non-rookie pitcher (.503).

13. Demonstrating the sensitivity of the results to individual players, removing Mark Fidrych’s rookie-season starts from the model reduces the home team coefficient on these celebrated hurlers from 0.2910 to 0.1550, representing a 47 percent decline; the visiting team coefficient falls from 0.1827 to 0.1261, a 31-percent decline. Both effects, however, remain statistically significant at a 95 percent confidence level.

This essay will explore the subject of racial and economic integration during the period of approximately 1945 through 1965 by studying the subject of Negro League baseball and the African American community of Kansas City, Missouri, as a vehicle for discussing the broader economic and social impact of desegregation. Of special import here is the economic effect desegregation had on medium and large-scale Black-owned businesses during the post-war period, with the Negro Leagues and their franchises serving as prime examples of Black-owned businesses that were expansive in size, profitable, publicly visible, and culturally relevant to the community. Specifically, what we are concerned with here is whether the manner in which desegregation occurred did in fact provide for increased economic and political freedoms for African Americans, and what social, fiscal, and communal assets may have been lost in the exchange.

The Kansas City Monarchs baseball club and the Kansas City African American community serve as a focal point for a number of reasons, including access to sources, the stature of the Monarchs as a preeminent team, the position of Jackie Robinson as the first openly Black player to cross the color barrier in the modern period, and the vibrancy of the Kansas City Black community. Also, Kansas City is unique in that it was the westernmost major metropolis in a border state, straddling the line between North and South and taking on aspects of both.1 However, in most respects the setting for this essay could have been any urban Black area in the United States in this period, with Kansas City being quite representative of the time. St. Louis or Chicago, Newark or Pittsburgh, across the country a general theme emerges of increased political and economic freedoms for African Americans, at least within segregated communities that in many ways were lost after increased contact and competition with White-owned businesses.2 All of these communities would in this period struggle with the ramifications of “White Flight,” decapitalization of urban areas, prejudicial hiring and housing policies, and increased economic competition.3 The story of Black enterprise in America follows a close parallel to what happened to the Negro Leagues.

AUGUST 28, 1945; 18TH & VINE, KANSAS CITY, MO

The headlines of the Kansas City Call, the local Black newspaper, were still filled with post-war optimism but also with trepidation over continuing economic and civic issues in the months following the end of the war. From the Friday, August 31, 1945, edition we find that the S & D Process Company, an all-Black mail order distribution house, had been abruptly closed, laying off its last 60 workers, most of whom were women. At the height of the war the firm had employed some 245 Black workers.4 In the same issue it was announced that the local office of the Federal Employment Practices Commission (which sought to provide more fair hiring and employment standards for minorities, especially in heavy industry and manufacturing) had been closed and was being incorporated in the St. Louis office.5 The writer had some concerns for what this meant for the Black workers in the area.

Perhaps the most troubling news item from this issue was the case of Seaman First Class Junius Bobb, a Black sailor arrested for allegedly starting an altercation with a White Marine at Union Station rail depot. At press time the Navy would not disclose details, saying only that the incident was under investigation and that Seaman Bobb would stand trial for assault at Great Lakes Naval Training Center outside of Chicago. According to eyewitnesses, the Marine began the exchange by verbally and physically assaulting Seaman Bobb. The Shore Patrol arrived shortly thereafter and several military policemen began to beat Seaman Bobb with batons in full view of the public. The Marine in question was not arrested. Seaman Bobb’s condition was unknown and he was being held incommunicado. The NAACP had announced that they would be providing legal counsel if Seaman Bobb did not prefer a Navy lawyer.6

On the whole, however, the general tone of the paper was upbeat and optimistic. While issues involving economic and legal inequality dominated the front page, there were many more stories celebrating success stories from the Black community. Local girl Yolanda Meek had been awarded a $5,000 scholarship by the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.7 Op-ed columnist Lucia Mallory wrote about the importance of continuing to support the government by buying bonds even after the war had ended, and appealed to her readers to donate clothes and other supplies to the relief effort for victims of war-torn Europe.8 Even though the local office was being closed, the FEPC was scheduled to hold a meeting October 14 at Municipal Auditorium called “An Industrial Job for all who Qualify,” focusing on retaining Black employment in the industrial sector after shifting to a peace-time economy.9

Many of the same sentiments were echoed in another local Black newsletter, which on the front page expressed concern about the unemployment rate of the African American community and what postwar demobilization would mean for the Black worker. While employment rates among Black workers had doubled between 1940 and 1943, there had already been numerous layoffs in the various wartime industries, where Black workers faced a “last hired, first fired” mentality.10 Companies such as Remington Arms, North American Aircraft, Aluminum Company of America, and Pratt and Whitney Aircraft had increased their employment of Black workers by some 200% during the war, 30% of whom were women.11 What would become of these jobs in peacetime was a major concern. However, the inside fold of the circular contained stories of decorated Black service members from the area, making special note of how many of them had been commissioned officers. These consistent themes of concern over civil liberties and economic opportunities intermixed with a sense of community pride and optimism seem to have been pervasive at this time.

This same general pathos is reflected in The Call’s sports pages. No fewer than four articles were dedicated to the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro National League and one of the most storied Black teams in baseball history. After dutifully reporting game summaries giving details of two lost games in a doubleheader to the Chicago American Giants by scores of 15–1 and 2–1, the writer moved on to more pleasant aspects of the club. There was a small writeup about the antics of legendary pitcher and showman Satchel Paige, who was equally famous both for his abilities as a player and for his on-field theatrics that dazzled the crowd and added to his already mythic persona. Another item advertised for the upcoming Labor Day doubleheader against the Memphis Red Sox in which ace pitcher and future Hall of Famer Hilton Smith was scheduled to pitch.12 Somewhat surprisingly, there was no mention of star rookie shortstop Jackie Robinson, who was having one of the finest seasons of any player in the league.13 While the official announcement would not be made until October, this was the first issue of the Monarchs’ local paper following the historic signing of Robinson by Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 25, becoming the first Black player in the twentieth century to have signed with a major league team.14

In the immediate wake of World War II, economic prosperity was permeating all levels of society (though admittedly distributed unequally) and Kansas City’s African American community was no exception. Having weathered the Great Depression with unemployment and business failure rates much higher than their White counterparts, businesses were booming in the early postwar period. More than half of all businesses in Kansas City’s Black section were owned and operated by African American proprietors. While most of these were small-scale service sector operations, there were also banks, insurance agencies, doctors’ offices, and law firms. More than 200 local Black-owned businesses provided hundreds of jobs and an average weekly salary of $23.81, which was still below the national median, but much improved from just a few years prior.15 Returning veterans were taking advantage of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 and other benefits to open new businesses and purchase their own homes.16 Employment opportunities for African American women had improved in this area to such an extent that there was a shortage of domestic workers available to work for wealthy White households.17

Increased economic opportunities and a sense of empowerment from wartime achievements (combined to a smaller degree with new government programs) fostered a zeitgeist of activism more commonly ascribed to the Civil Rights Movement of a decade later. Instead of maintaining the status quo, there were numerous new groups organized to push for expanded rights in the fields of healthcare, housing, employment, and access to advanced education and other public amenities. Organizations such as the Urban League were becoming increasingly vocal and insistent upon equal opportunity as well as instilling a sense of civic pride in the accomplishments of local African Americans.18

The epicenter of the African American community was located around 18th Street between Vine and The Paseo. Businesses of all types, from barber and shoe repair shops to doctors’ and lawyers’ offices were found in this neighborhood. This section of town was perhaps best known for its night life, with patrons packing clubs with colorful names such as the Cherry Blossom, the Chez Paree, Lucille’s Paradise, and the Ol’ Kentuck’ Bar-B-Q.19 Kansas City was a regular tour stop for many of the biggest names in blues and jazz from this period. Count Basie and his orchestra, Cab Calloway, Billie Holliday, and Louis Armstrong, among many others, could frequently be found playing the many venues in this district.20

And of course, there were the Monarchs, arguably the greatest team of the Negro League era and perhaps one of the finest clubs in baseball history. With perennially winning teams built around future Hall of Famers like Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, and Jackie Robinson, as well as Buck O’Neil, whose bronze image stands near the Cooperstown shrine’s entrance, the Monarchs were consistently one of the top drawing teams in baseball (Black or White) and nearly always in championship contention. Established shortly after the turn of the century as a barnstorming team, they had been a central element of the Black community for years before the establishment of the Negro National League in 1920, and would go on to dominate that circuit for several years before playing as an independent club for a number of seasons and then becoming a charter member of the Negro American League in 1937.21

Besides fielding a consistently competitive team, playing in one of the newest and nicest ballparks in the Negro Leagues also helped attract fans. Muehlebach Field, which opened in 1923 and would go through a number of name changes before settling on Municipal Stadium in 1955, was shared by the Monarchs and the Kansas City Blues, the top minor league club in the Yankees farm system. Located on Brooklyn Avenue a few blocks south of 18th Street, the stadium straddled the dividing line between the Black and White sections of town and attracted spectators from both. Being as the Monarchs were nearly always in contention for the pennant, Municipal Stadium would host several Negro League World Series, beginning with the first one in 1924. By the 1940s shifting demographics placed Municipal Stadium squarely in the African American area of town and would remain the home of the Monarchs for the rest of their tenure in Kansas City.22

The question becomes why, then, if social and economic conditions were improving exponentially in the African American community some ten years before what is nominally considered the beginning of the Civil Rights Era, were circumstances at the culmination of this period (and to an extent, today) practically unchanged, if not worse? The answer lies in how integration occurred, with White-owned businesses able to expand their market share at the expense of Black-owned businesses, while at the same time cherry-picking the best-educated and most-qualified Black workers and controlling the methods, timing, and public perception of desegregation.

ROLE OF BASEBALL AND BLACK BUSINESSES AS COMMUNITY TOUCHSTONE

One point that has been fairly well developed in the literature is the concept of baseball as community focus. While this model does not apply to African Americans exclusively, one of the most recurring points made in the various histories of the Negro Leagues in particular and Black baseball generally was how these teams served a communal purpose. Baseball functioned as a critical component in the separate economy catering to Black consumers in the urban centers of both the North and South. While most Black businesses struggled to survive from year to year, professional baseball teams and leagues operated for decades, representing a major achievement in Black enterprise and institution building.

Kansas City in this period was known not only for its ball club, but also as a hotbed of the jazz scene, and of course for its world famous barbeque. All of these elements merged in the Kansas City Black community, centered in the inner-city area of 18th and Vine. According to Monarchs manager and first baseman Buck O’Neil, this was an exciting time and place to be a part of.

[P]laying for the Monarchs in the late thirties and early forties, staying in the Streets Hotel at 18th and Paseo, and coming down to the dining room where Cab Calloway and Billie Holiday and Bojangles Robinson often ate. ‘Course, some of them were having supper while we were having breakfast and vice-versa. ‘Good morning, Count,’ I’d say. ‘Good evening, Buck,’ Mr. Basie would say. As somebody once put it, ‘People are afraid to go to sleep in Kansas City because they might miss something.’

Nowadays that downtown neighborhood is kind of sleepy, though we have some plans to wake up the ghosts. But we could never bring it back to its glory days.23

While Kansas City may have been somewhat unusual in the variety of activities available and the prominence of its Black celebrities, these themes can be found in urban Black communities throughout the North during this period. As desegregation gained momentum throughout the postwar era, many Black owned businesses were unable to effectively compete with White-owned firms who were now serving, and in some cases employing, African Americans. During the 1950s and 1960s, “White Flight” to the suburbs would continue to draw capital away from urban centers where Black communities tended to congregate, leading to large-scale vacancy, plummeting property values, and blighted areas where crime became more frequent. As O’Neil notes, there have been many plans for urban renewal to help reinvigorate these areas. In the case of the 18th and Vine district in Kansas City, these efforts have been largely successful; however, other cities have met with more limited success.

In Jack Etkin’s Innings Ago: Recollections by Kansas City Ballplayers of their Days in the Game, O’Neil discusses how Black teams provided a community focus for groups of African Americans living outside of cities with Negro League teams and in rural areas with small Black populations.24 According to O’Neil, when a team such as the Kansas City Monarchs barnstormed through small towns in the South and Midwest, often the entire Black population in the area would turn out, wearing their Sunday best. For these fans, the attraction was perhaps not so much the game itself, but rather the expression of African Americans being treated with something like equality (as in playing on equal terms against White teams) and often demonstrating their ability to compete successfully. For many, these exhibitions were a highlight of the yearly social calendar.25

Baseball was of course not the only type of business to serve as a communal focal point. Many businesses, most notably barber shops, beauty parlors, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, night clubs and restaurants also filled this role. The financial stability these businesses provided, in conjunction with a safe and separate space, led to business owners (and beauticians in particular) being leaders and activists in the Black community with these shops being at the center, like a base of operations for these activities.26 With increased competition from businesses outside the Black community coupled with decapitalization of inner-city areas, the importance of African American owned and operated businesses as a unique space for organization and communal fellowship began to erode.

ECONOMIC IMPACT OF BLACK BASEBALL

By the early 1920s, with a booming economy generally, and a fast growing and racially aware Black population in Northern and Midwestern urban centers, the stage was set for professional African American baseball leagues to successfully develop, and this was certainly the case in the Kansas City community. Between the 1920s and 1950s there would be ten professional Black leagues, though the most successful were the Negro National League (NNL) which operated between 1920 and 1931 and then from 1933 through 1948 and the Negro American League (NAL) from 1937 to 1960.27 It is hardly coincidental that successful organized Black baseball began in this period. Black populations in Northern cities boomed during the 1910s with the Great Migration from the South and relatively plentiful job opportunities in defense industries during World War I. This was also the period of Garveyism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the first wave of Black Nationalism. This combination of expendable income, leisure time, and racial awareness all helped to make Negro League baseball popular within the African American community and for the first time profitable for its proprietors. Throughout the 1920s Black teams continued to make money, and while paid substantially less than their White counterparts, African American players earned about twice the national median income.28

However, by the end of the decade Black baseball was in steep decline. The reason for this reversal of fortunes was primarily economic. While national unemployment rates during the Great Depression would peak at about 25% and White baseball saw substantial decreases in attendance, the jobless rate among African Americans was considerably higher.29 With deteriorating economic conditions, fans attended far fewer games, and teams and leagues began to fail. It was during this period that illegal money, particularly from gambling interests, began to be a major influence in the Negro Leagues. At least two teams were financed entirely by illegal gaming, though it is believed that several other teams may have also been involved.30

What the true intentions of the gamblers were remains a source of debate. While it is undoubtable that some teams, such as the Newark Eagles owned by Abe and Effa Manley and Gus Greenlee’s Pittsburgh Crawfords, served as fronts for laundering money, these owners also claimed to have had a genuine desire to keep their teams afloat and to continue to serve as a community focal point. There is some evidence to support these claims as these owners were well known within the Black community and were frequent donors to charities and social causes.31

Whatever the intent, it is unlikely that the Negro Leagues could have survived the Depression without this influx of capital. Also, the sources of capital and intentions of White owners of major and minor league teams were likely not always completely pure. Several teams were owned by beer barons, and there is much speculation that some of these teams were used as a means of washing monies.32 While Black owners were criticized (sometimes fairly) for being connected with illegal gaming and numbers-running, there were major league owners during the same period who actually owned casinos and horse tracks.33

This trend in Black baseball was mirrored in African American owned businesses more broadly. In 1932, there were 103,872 Black owned businesses in the United States. While most of these were small “mom and pop shops,” there had also been growth during the 1920s in larger-scale operations such as insurance companies, publishing houses, and banks. However, even with diversification of business types owned by African Americans, these businesses continued to depend almost exclusively on Black customers. With widespread unemployment during the Great Depression (made worse in the African American community due to prejudicial hiring practices), there was less disposable income for Black customers to spend. Predictably, Black-owned firms began to fail and by 1940 the number of Black-owned businesses had declined by 16% to 87,475.34

The situation in Kansas City was different and unique in the league, as the Monarchs had a White owner, J.L. Wilkinson, who had long sponsored integrated (both by race and sex) barnstorming teams based out of Kansas City. He became one of the charter owners of the Negro National League. While this was a source of conflict for some of the owners, including league founder Rube Foster, Wilkinson’s reputation for fairness (plus the fact that he held the lease on the one suitable ballpark) persuaded the owners to accept him into the fold.35

After narrowly surviving the 1930s, the Negro Leagues were in resurgence during the first half of the 1940s. Nearly full employment due to the war effort once again gave many African Americans disposable income. For the first time in more than a decade, teams consistently made money, and attendance was at an all-time high. Some teams were assessed as being as valuable as major-league franchises.36 As the postwar period of economic prosperity set in and all sectors of the population saw rising income levels and standards of living, indications were Black businesses, including the Negro Leagues, were finally about to fulfill their potential. This was not to be.

Somewhat paradoxically, for many Negro League teams the years between 1947 and 1950 would be their most financially successful, but this was due almost exclusively to selling the contract rights of their players to White-owned teams in both the major and minor leagues.37 Whereas the postwar period began very promising for the Negro Leagues with growing attendance, within just a few years most Black fans had taken to following their favorite players in the major leagues, and ticket sales fell off precipitously.

To complicate matters further, a number of White teams refused to honor the contracts of the Negro Leagues and pirated the players outright without compensating the team owners.38 At other times owners sold the rights to players at below-market prices, finding it better to get some return rather than risk having the player signed outright. By 1948 only the NAL was still in operation, and it was relegated to minor league status. In the early 1960s there were only a few teams left and the league disbanded, though some clubs—like the Monarchs—continued to barnstorm. The Indianapolis Clowns were the last Negro League team in business and played their final game in 1988.39

WHITE FLIGHT, DECAPITALIZATION, AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY

Another important element during this period concerns the decapitalization of urban areas (and especially parts of cities where African Americans tended to congregate) and migration of White families to suburban communities from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Again, Kansas City serves as a model, with several large industries leaving the center-city area in the 1950s and relocating to suburban areas where most White workers continued to be employed while laying off most of the Black workforce. The change began in earnest in the early 1950s with the decline of the railroad industry, chiefly due to competition from automobile and air travel. Union Station, which had been the second busiest rail terminal in America after Chicago and employed large numbers of African Americans in various capacities, declined rapidly and fell into disrepair.

Another blow to the economy came with the Great Flood of 1951 which destroyed much of the stockyards located in the West Bottoms section. The stockyards, which were also second nationally to Chicago in size, never fully recovered as the cattle industry moved away from urban centers. With both of these industries went many comparatively well-paid and often unionized jobs.

As in baseball, in many middle- and large-scale industries, Black-owned firms were unable to compete with their White counterparts after racial integration. Many skilled Black workers were lured away to work at better-paying and more prestigious White-owned businesses. This clearly happened in baseball, where the very best Black and Latino players went to the major leagues, forcing the Negro Leagues to try to compete with less talented players.

This was again the case in Kansas City. In 1955 the Philadelphia Athletics moved into Municipal Stadium, where the Monarchs played, and though they were always near the bottom of the American League standings and moved on to Oakland after a number of seasons, this increased competition for entertainment dollars and use of public facilities forced the Monarchs out. In the mid-fifties the Monarchs were sold, and while they retained the name “Kansas City Monarchs,” this was a device used as a draw at the gate. The team was headquartered out of Flint, Michigan, until it finally folded in the mid-sixties, only occasionally playing in Kansas City.40

“White flight” also affected baseball as new stadiums for almost every major-league team during the 1960s and 1970s were nearly always located away from inner-city areas whereas previous stadiums had been almost exclusively located in downtown areas. This would happen in Kansas City, where the aging Municipal Stadium was abandoned and the Truman Sports Complex—with stadiums for both the new Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL)—was built near the interstate many miles away from the city’s downtown area and much closer to the then predominately White suburbs.

ECONOMIC COSTS OF DESEGREGATION ON NEGRO LEAGUE BASEBALL

While the integration of professional baseball is often seen as a benchmark in the history of civil rights, this did not come without great cost—financial and otherwise—to Black baseball and the African American community broadly. Again, this is in keeping with what happened in other large-scale Black-owned businesses such as banks, newspapers, and insurance companies.41 As events unfolded, the best Black players were cherry-picked by major-league clubs, leaving the Negro Leagues to try to compete for fan dollars with fewer quality players and less cultural significance.

Of the 73 players who would jump from the Negro Leagues to the majors, eight would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Between 1947 and 1959, former Negro Leaguers would supply six Rookies of the Year and nine Most Valuable Player winners.42 Black baseball, like many other African American-owned businesses, now had to compete against White-owned businesses for Black clientele and with less talent, capital, and cultural privilege than their White counterparts. The result would be the collapse of the Negro Leagues (and many other Black-owned enterprises) which in conjunction with White Flight left many urban areas much less economically viable and with fewer opportunities for capitalization. From the middle 1950s through the 1970s most major-league teams left their inner-city ballparks for new stadiums closer to the predominately White suburbs, which further removed Black fans from the game.43

Making matters worse for the Black-owned teams was the practice of pirating Black players without compensating their former teams. Citing a lack of proper contracts (which is to say, contracts that had been approved for use in the White major and minor leagues), teams simply ignored the vested interests of Black clubs and signed the many of the best players outright without any financial consideration of Negro League owners.44 Denouncing Black-owned businesses as being illegitimate and therefore ethical to deal with in an inequitable manner had long been a common practice among White business owners. This view was both obviously exploitative and paternalistic, harkening to the 19th-century stereotypes of Black people being unsophisticated and childlike and their efforts being seen as cargo cult-like mimicry of Whites rather than legitimate expressions of capitalism.

It is also important to remember that the failure of the Negro Leagues economically impacted many more people than the players on the field. An entire support staff of front-office personnel, groundskeepers, concessionaires, ticket-takers, bus drivers, and so forth were all necessary to put a game on the field. These workers in turn then patronized local businesses. When the teams began to struggle and finally collapsed, many people besides the players also lost their livelihoods. Similarly, as African Americans lost market share of industrial and manufacturing jobs, the service sector also suffered as their regular clientele had increasingly less disposable income. Coupled with increased competition with White-owned businesses, many Black-owned urban enterprises began to go under.

ALTERNATIVE PATHS TO INTEGRATION

The manner in which integration in baseball—and in American businesses generally—occurred was not the only model which was possible. It was likely not even the best approach available, but rather served the needs of those in already privileged positions who were able to control not only the manner in which desegregation occurred, but the public perception of it as well in order to exploit the situation for financial gain. Indeed, the very word integration may not be the most applicable in this context because what actually transpired was not so much the fair and equitable combination of two subcultures into one equal and more homogenous group, but rather the reluctant allowance—under certain preconditions—for African Americans to be assimilated into White society.

Another negative aspect of the manner in which baseball was integrated was the unofficial, but common, practice of using racial quotas. Beginning with Rickey’s Dodgers, most major league teams—with a few notable exceptions such as Bill Veeck’s Cleveland Indians, who became a powerhouse behind several Black stars—kept roster spots for African American players to a minimum. Black players were nearly always signed in even numbers, so that their White teammates would not have to share rooms with them on the road.45 It was not at all unusual to see a Black player traded or sent to the minors if there were “too many” Black players on the squad.46 Additionally, while Black players often made more money than their White colleagues, this was mostly because almost every Black player of the 1940s and 1950s was a star. Slots for journeymen and utility players were the exclusive territory of White players. The message was clear; produce more than the average White player or leave.

After Jackie Robinson broke the color line, executives and owners from the Negro Leagues met with their counterparts from the major leagues and proposed a number of options for mergers and cooperation. At first it was suggested that the better clubs with large fan bases from the Negro Leagues, such as the Monarchs and Crawfords, be allowed in as expansion franchises.47 Several of these teams operated in cities without major league teams to compete with, already had large followings and the logistical infrastructure in place, and were perfectly positioned to help the major leagues take advantage of post-war prosperity and newly expendable income. The proposal was unanimously voted down. When this was rejected, the possibility of the Negro Leagues becoming a AAA circuit was raised. This too was summarily dismissed.48 White owners had no interest in cooperating with their Black counterparts, and instead of engaging in a business enterprise which would have most likely proved beneficial for all parties, the major leagues made a deliberate choice to put the Negro Leagues out of business after obtaining their best players and wooing away much of their fan base.

SEPTEMBER 1965; 18TH & VINE, KANSAS CITY

Twenty years later the tone was considerably more pessimistic. The headlines of The Call still carried stories about violence and inequality within the Black community but gone was the sense of optimism or increasing opportunity. The lead story from the September 1965 issue (at this point, The Call had become a monthly rather than weekly publication) led with a story titled, “Vicious Attack on Farmer: Admits Cutting Man’s Tongue Out,” in which a young Black man killed an elderly Black farmer while attempting to keep him from being able to testify against him regarding a crime the older man had witnessed by removing his tongue.49 Other headlines include, “Three Whites Arrested in Brewster Killing,” “Slain Priest Buried in Home Town,” “2,200 Still in Jail from L.A. Rioting,” and “NAACP Official Injured in Bombing.”50

The paper also ran a two-page summary of a study analyzing the underlying causes of racial violence. The story, titled “New Study Tells Why Riots Occur,” examined fifty years of data and concluded that riots occur when Whites feel economically threatened and local authorities, particularly the police, are not adequately trained to properly handle the situation.51 Clearly, racially related violence had by the middle 1960s become a pervasive issue, and other concerns seemed secondary. There are no mentions of scholarships being awarded, mass meetings for employment opportunities, or patriotic calls for donations and privation here.

The sports page is no less bleak. There is no mention of the hapless Kansas City Athletics who were stumbling to another disappointing finish. The only mention of baseball at all was an incident on August 22 when Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants beat L.A. Dodgers catcher Johnny Roseboro repeatedly in the head with a baseball bat, leading to a fine and suspension by the National League.52 Even in baseball, violence seemed to permeate. There was also no mention of the Monarchs, long a source of civic pride, who probably played their last game about this time.53

A return visit to what had been the heart of the Black community reiterates this theme. Whereas 20 years before, 18th Street was a vibrant center for art and commerce, it had by this time become little more than a ghost town with nearly all the buildings abandoned and left to deteriorate. The first blow came under the guise of reform, when a number of new “blue laws” made it increasingly difficult for the night clubs to operate profitably. Similarly to many other inner-city areas, urban renewal projects that were intended (at least in theory) to help revitalize the area had the exact opposite effect. In the middle 1950s five acres of historic buildings were razed in order to make room for new building projects. However, due to poor financing this area sat vacant for many years and became known as a dangerous place to walk through.

With new public accommodation laws came increased competition with other businesses outside of the traditional Black section of the city, and many African American owned shops—which generally had less access to capital, and prohibitive conditions attached when it could be found—were in most cases no longer able to operate profitably.54 By 1964, only two large buildings anchored the area, with the Kansas City Call still operating in the same space since 1922 on the east end, and the Lincoln Building housing several professional offices to the west. The corridor between the two comprised a few bars and a handful of shops, with nearly all of the storefronts boarded up in disuse and disrepair.55

Municipal Stadium would continue to be used on and off by various teams and for different events until the early 1970s, but little effort or funding was put into maintaining the structure. The primary reason given for moving the Athletics to Oakland was Kansas City’s lack of commitment to building a new ballpark.56 According to owner Charles O. Finley, the neighborhood had become too dangerous for night games, and he blamed the aging and inadequate facility for low attendance numbers (though one might argue that the club being at the bottom of the standings for more than a dozen years contributed more to low turnout). The promise of a new publicly financed stadium helped secure Kansas City an expansion team, the Royals, in 1969 and Municipal Stadium was finally abandoned after the 1972 baseball season.57 It sat unused and dilapidated until 1976 when it was demolished for being a danger to public safety.58 Professional baseball had left Kansas City’s African American community for the last time.

This seeming trend of negativism within the Black community at this time would seem paradoxical, at least in the traditional framework of American history. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had been signed into law on August 6 of that year, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination based on race, sex, or religion and segregation of public accommodations, was barely a year old. Why then, at a time of such apparent progress, does the record suggest such unfavorable conditions for many in the African American community? One would argue that despite the legal gains made during this period, which were substantial and should not be dismissed, the larger issue was access to economic opportunities. Indeed, the evidence reveals that levels of education and income in the early 1960s were essentially unchanged since World War II.59

These stagnant levels of earnings and upward are all the more telling being as this period witnessed some of the fastest and most widespread economic growth in American history. Increased competition, lack of capital, and the withdrawal of industry from inner-city areas all contributed to a rather bleak social and economic prognosis that no legislation could mitigate and which is still with us today.60

CONCLUSION

In many ways the story of Negro League baseball in general and the Kansas City Black community and ball club in particular provide an excellent example of the economic and social changes occurring in urban African American communities during the post-war era. While on the one hand the end (at least officially) of legal segregation and prejudicial hiring policies was clearly a victory for the cause of progress and many people have undoubtedly been able to succeed and have had opportunities that would not have otherwise been afforded them, it must be remembered that this came at a cost, and many of the long-term issues that have plagued inner-city areas are residual damage caused in large part by the manner in which integration occurred.

The reality is that much of the African American community was largely unaffected economically by the successes of the Civil Rights Era. Black workers lacking higher education and job skills, mostly due to an inadequate and unequal education system, remained trapped in low-paying jobs and neighborhoods with increasingly few amenities.61 While there was growth in this period among the Black middle class, these new jobs were almost exclusively in White-owned firms. Large-scale Black-owned businesses, unable to find new clients, sources of revenue, and at a competitive disadvantage for the patronage of their traditional customers, failed.

This is not to imply that segregation, economic or otherwise, was in any way beneficial to the African American community. The current face of American society would have been almost unimaginable at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. The fact remains, however, that in spite of discrimination and disadvantage, many Black entrepreneurs were able to find a niche market and achieve financial success. In the end desegregation happened on what were essentially the terms of the White majority, which in many ways benefited economically from the new arrangement, rather than honest assimilation combining the best qualities of both communities and building a more just and equal society.

JAPHETH KNOPP received a B.S. degree in Religious Studies and M.A. in American History from Missouri State University and is currently enrolled in the History Ph.D. program at the University of Missouri. He lives with his wife, Rebecca Wilkinson, and their son Ryphath. He can be contacted at Japheth.knopp@gmail.com.

Notes

1 Urban League of Kansas City. “The ‘Northern City with a Southern Exposure,’” Matter of Fact: Newsletter of the Urban League of Kansas City, Missouri. Vol. I; No. 1, July, 1945, 1.

2 Robert H. Kinzer and Edward Sagrin, The Negro in American Business: The Conflict Between Separatism and Integration (New York: Greenburg, 1950), 100–1.

3 Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008), 177–79.

4 “All-Black Company Closes Suddenly,” Kansas City Call. Vol. 27; No. 16, August 31, 1945, 1.

5 “Kansas City FEPC Office Closed,” Kansas City Call. Vol. 27; No. 16, August 31, 1945, 1.

6 I subsequently did some research on the matter, but was unable to discover the outcome of the trial or what became of Seaman First Class Bobb.

7 “Local Girl Awarded Scholarship,” Kansas City Call. Vol. 27; No. 16, August 31, 1945, 3.

8 Lucia Mallory, “Keep Buying War Bonds!” Kansas City Call. Vol. 27; No. 16, August 31, 1945, 4.

9 “FEPC to Hold Meeting,” The Kansas City Call. Vol. 27; No. 16, August 31, 1945, 5.

10 Urban League of Kansas City. Matter of Fact: Newsletter of the Urban League of Kansas City, Missouri. July, 1945, 1.

11 Census Bureau. 1950 United States Census of Population Report; Kansas City, Missouri (U.S. Govt. Printing Office; Washington, 1952), 17–19.

12 “Smith to Start Labor Day Double-Header,” Kansas City Call. Vol. 27; No. 16, August 31, 1945, 9.

13 Statistics for Negro League players are notoriously difficult to find exact figures for. Baseball-Reference.com, usually considered to be authoritative, lists Robinson as having a .414 batting average in 63 games that season, though this is probably incomplete.

14 Frank Foster, The Forgotten League: A History of the Negro League Baseball (BookCaps; No city given, 2012), 55.

15 Urban League of Kansas City. “Local Survey Made,” Matter of Fact: Newsletter of the Urban League of Kansas City, Missouri. Vol. I; No. 6, April–May, 1946, 2

16 Urban League of Kansas City. “Clinic for Small Business Draws Much Interest,” Matter of Fact: Newsletter of the Urban League of Kansas City, Missouri. Vol. I; No. 6, April 1946, 2–3.

17 Urban League of Kansas City. “’You Just Can’t Find Good Help Anymore,’” Matter of Fact: Newsletter of the Urban League of Kansas City, Missouri. Vol. II; No. 1, August, 1946, 2.

18 Urban League of Kansas City. “It’s a Matter-of-Fact that:” Matter of Fact: Newsletter of the Urban League of Kansas City, Missouri. Vol. 1; No. 1, July, 1945, 2.

19 Chuck Haddix, “18th & Vine: Street of Dreams,” in Artlog. Missouri Arts Council. Vol. XIII; No. 1, January –February, 1992, 3.

20 Ibid, 4

21 Janet Bruce, The Kansas City Monarchs: Champions of Black Baseball (University of Kansas Press; Lawrence, 1985), 117.

22 Ibid, 126

23 Buck O’Neil, I Was Right on Time: My Journey from the Negro Leagues to the Majors (Simon & Schuster; New York, 1996), 75–76

24. 24. Jack Etkin, Innings Ago: Recollections by Kansas City Ballplayers of their Days in the Game (Walsworth Publishing; Marceline, MO, 1987), 18.

25 Ibid, 19.

26 Tiffany Gill, Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry (University of Illinois Press; Chicago, 2010), 2.

27 Leslie Heaphy, The Negro Leagues, 1869–1960 (McFarland & Co; Jefferson, North Carolina, 2003), 224.

28 Rob Ruck, Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game (Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2011), 101.

29 William Sundstrom, “Last Hired, First Fired? Unemployment and Urban Black Workers during the Great Depression” in The Journal of Economic History (Vol. 52, No. 2, June, 1992), 485.

30 Bob Luke, The Most Famous Woman in Baseball: Effa Manley and the Negro Leagues (Potomac Books; Dulles, Virginia, 2011), 11.

31 Ibid, 45.

32 Peter Golenbock, The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns (HarperCollins; New York, 2000), 352.

33 Bill Veeck, Veeck–As in Wreck (University of Chicago Press; Chicago, 1962), 246-247.

34 Michael Woodward, Black Entrepreneurs in America: Stories of Struggle and Success (Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, NJ, 1997), 18.

35 O’Neil, 77–78.

36 Ruck, 78.

37 Bruce, 118–19.

38 Veeck, 176.

39 Heaphy, 227.

40 Bruce, 126.

41 Robert E Weems Jr., Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago Mutual Assurance Company, 1925–1985. (Indiana University Press; Indianapolis, 1996), xv.

42 Ruck, 104–105

43 Lanctot, 395–96.

44 Mitchell Nathanson, A People’s History of Baseball (University of Illinois Press; Urbana, IL, 2012), 86–87.

45 Nathanson, 99.

46 Ibid, 103–104.

47 Ruck, 115

48 Ibid, 116

49 “Vicious Attack on Farmer: Admits Cutting Man’s Tongue Out,” The Kansas City Call, Vol. 46; No. 22, September 3, 1965, 1.

50 “NAACP Official Injured in Bombing,” The Kansas City Call, Vol. 46; No. 22, September 3, 1965, 1.

51 “New Study Tells Why Riots Occur,” The Kansas City Call, Vol. 46; No. 22, September 3, 1965, 1.

52 Bill James, New Historical Baseball Abstract (Simon & Schuster; New York, 2001), 253.

53 The exact date has proven impossible to track down after extensive research. By this point the team had been playing out of Flint, Michigan for several seasons, only keeping the name as a source of revenue. It is known that the team played most of the 1965 season and folded near the end of the year. September is a reasonable guess. It is also worth noting that the final game of one of the most storied franchises in the history of baseball may well be lost to us now. Just another example of how quickly and precipitously Black baseball fell out of the public eye.

54 Woodward, 26

55 Haddix, 5.

56 Herbert Michelson, Charlie O: Charles Oscar Finley vs. the Baseball Establishment (Bobbs-Merrill; New York, 1975), 125, 127–28.

57 Mark Stallard, Legacy of Blue: 45 Years of Kansas City Royals History & Trivia (Kaw Valley Books; Overland Park, KS, 2013), 6.

58 Lawrence Ritter, Lost Ballparks: A Celebration of Baseball’s Legendary Fields (Penguin; New York, 1994), 136.

59 United States Department of Labor. Home, Education, and Unemployment in Neighborhoods; Kansas City, Missouri, January 1963.

60 Andrew Brimmer, “Small Business and Economic Development in the Negro Community,” in Black Americans and White Business, Edwin Epstein and David Hampton, ed., (Dickinson Publishing, Encino, CA., 1971).

61 Woodward, 30–31.

Rumors of fixed games surrounded the Sox after the 1919 World Series, and the allegations of crooked play continued through 1920.2 Yet in all the oceans of ink spilled in discussing the 1919 Series, surprisingly little has been written on the possibility that the Sox threw the 1920 pennant as well. This article presents credible evidence, in testimony and in statistics, that the same players who threw the 1919 Series also threw games (and the pennant) in 1920. At one time or another every “Clean Sox” regular accused their “Black Sox” teammates of throwing games in 1920, and the statistical records back up these accusations.

THE SUSPECT BOSTON SERIES

It is an axiom of law enforcement that criminals exhibit a pattern of conduct — that they repeat their actions until caught. Viewed in this light, it should come as no surprise that the same players who threw a World Series would throw regular season games as well.

After defeating New York 16–4 on August 26, 1920, the red-hot White Sox had a 3 1/2-game lead over Cleveland, with New York four back, and to many observers it appeared that the Sox had the 1920 pennant cinched. Yet they promptly lost seven in a row, including two road games to the third-place Yankees, three straight to fifth-place Boston, and two home games against fourth-place St. Louis. The evidence suggests that the gamblers may have put pressure on the Sox to blow that lead. In 1919 and 1920, the Sox never lost more than four straight, except for this one stretch against mostly sub-.500 teams, and since the Sox were basically injury-free at that point, it’s hard to explain this slide.

Eddie Cicotte’s wildness and lack of clutch hitting cost the Sox the second New York game, while in the third, misplays by Swede Risberg and Buck Weaver let in all the Yankees runs. Regarding this game, Chicago Tribune sports reporter I.E. Sanborn sourly observed, “Risberg and Weaver were the best players New York had today,” while Joe Jackson, thrown out twice on the bases, “ran … like a high school boy.” The St. Louis losses featured a lack of clutch hitting, and Cicotte being knocked around.3

Clean Sox players repeatedly cited the White Sox series with Boston — August 30–September 1, 1920, during that seven-game slide — as the set of games that the crooked players clearly tossed.

The White Sox certainly stunk in those three games at Boston. They lost to the below-.500 Red Sox, 4–0, 7–3, and 6–2, with Lefty Williams, Cicotte, and Dickey Kerr pitching. All contemporary newspaper accounts noted their poor play. In the opener, the Sox managed only five hits (three by Eddie Collins) off Boston’s Sam Jones. In the second game, Cicotte got pounded, and Risberg muffed two plays that cost the Sox three runs. In the final game, Kerr was done in by three errors (all by the Clean Sox, although Eddie Collins asserted that the error given to Kerr should have been given to Buck Weaver) and lack of clutch hitting. In all, the Sox committed four errors in the three games, and scored only five runs.

• Learn more: Click here to view SABR’s Eight Myths Out project on common misconceptions about the Black Sox Scandal

Teams — even great teams — are capable of losing three in a row, without any suspicion of foul play. That’s baseball. Chicago Tribune sportswriter I.E. Sanborn admitted that “there was no accounting for their slump in New York and Boston on any rational basis,” but attributed the losses to an ordinary, run-of-the-mill stretch.4 The Boston newspapers were more critical. The Herald noted that “the Chicago club…did not look like a pennant-gaited combination.” James O’Leary of the Globe reported “some loose work on the part of the White Sox on a couple of occasions, decidedly out of harmony with their usual smooth-running game.” But neither newspaper hinted at foul play. In fact, as the Boston Globe admitted a month later, while the White Sox made numerous errors and misplays in this series, “the games…did not create any great stir.”5

A three-game series provides too small a statistical sample to draw any definitive conclusions. However, the middle-of-the-order White Sox RBI men (Black Sox Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, and Happy Felsch) went 8 for 34 in the series (.235) and drove in only one run with those eight hits. The same three players combined to average two RBIs per game that year, and in those three games they had plenty of opportunities to drive in runs — Eddie Collins, batting in front of them, had seven hits in the series. This would appear to justify comments made by Clean Sox players later in the season that the Black Sox hitters deliberately failed in the clutch in that series. What is more curious — in no other three-game series in 1920 did the White Sox score as few as five runs — less than two runs per game.

After the scandal broke, Boston sportswriter Jim O’Leary charged that Sox ace Eddie Cicotte threw the second game of the Boston series, under orders from gamblers.6 Modern Black Sox scholarship points to Cicotte and Chick Gandil as the ringleaders of the 1919 Series fix, conspiring with Boston gambler Sport Sullivan.7 Cicotte and Sullivan had become friends years earlier when Cicotte pitched for the Boston Red Sox. If he chose, Sullivan could give direct testimony of Cicotte’s involvement in the 1919 fix. Thus, more than any other Sox player, Cicotte would be vulnerable if Sullivan exposed the 1919 fix. In addition, if Sullivan pressured Cicotte et al. to throw games, Sullivan could place large wagers on Chicago-Boston games more readily than he could Chicago’s games against non-Boston clubs.

Given this conjunction of player vulnerability and betting ease, Cicotte’s 1920 pitching record against Boston is particularly revealing. In six starts against fifth-place Boston, he went 1–4 and gave up 29 earned runs in 48 innings, for an ERA of 5.44. Against the rest of the league, Cicotte was 20-6 with an ERA of 2.85. Against Boston, his ERA, walk ratio, strikeouts and hits per inning were all far worse than when pitching to the rest of the league.8 The White Sox had a winning record against the Red Sox that year in the other seventeen games. And since the Sox only lost the pennant by two games, Cicotte’s four losses against Boston may, by themselves, have cost the Chicago the pennant.

THE SEPTEMBER SLIDE

This Boston series remains part of a pattern of suspicious conduct by the White Sox in late August and early September. After their August 26 win against New York, they’d played 121 games and only been shut out three times. Yet in the next 19 games, they were shut out five times — more than in the first 121. The big three RBI men batted a combined 13 for 58 (.224) in those five games The pitchers who shut out the Sox during that stretch (Bob Shawkey, Sam Jones, Dutch Leonard, Harry Courtney, and Jose Acosta — not exactly a Hall of Fame set, though Shawkey led the league in ERA that year) had a combined record of 40–54 prior to those games, with three of the four teams being sub-.500. So it wasn’t as if the Sox lost to Lefty Grove or the 1927 Yankees.

Eddie Collins and Byrd Lynn later charged that the Black Sox players “tracked” Cleveland during (and after) the Boston series, winning only when Cleveland was winning, and losing when Cleveland lost, so as to not overtake the Tribe. The record bears this out. After the end of the Boston series (September 1), thru September 27, and excluding the three games Cleveland and Chicago played each other, the two teams played on 18 common days. Fifteen of those 18 days, both teams did the same, winning or losing in tandem. This could be some rare coincidence, or it could prove that Collins and Lynn were correct.9

Several September games raised some eyebrows. In a September 11 game against Boston, Chicago committed six errors (three by Buck Weaver and Risberg) behind Dickey Kerr, losing a game immediately after Cleveland had lost a game. The Chicago Tribune excoriated the Sox play: “”Kerr… was the victim of vile support by some of his teammates… the infield made enough errors… to have lost a world’s series…” [Emphasis added.] With perhaps unconscious irony, the same day the Tribune also ran an article urging baseball to take action against gamblers and clean up the game.10 Shutout losses (at home) to the lowly Washington Nationals on September 12 and 14 raised further eyebrows. Lefty Williams was “wild and ineffective” in the former game, while in the latter game Washington’s runs were “outright gifts” due to three Sox errors. The Washington Star noted something more ominous: “The morale of the White Sox is not what it should be. … It is significant that after returning from the east, where they had lost seven straight games, they were speculating on how much money [they could make in a post-season city series with the Cubs, possible only if they lost the pennant].”11

OTHER FIXED REGULAR SEASON GAMES?

Various sources have cited other games that the White Sox might have thrown in 1920. David Fleitz, in his book Shoeless, notes a July 25 game in which the Indians defeated the White Sox 7–2, largely due to several botched plays by “Black” Sox enforcer Swede Risberg.12 Eliot Asinof, author of Eight Men Out, points to two earlier losses to Cleveland, on April 27 and May 9.13 In the former game, a 3–2 loss, Risberg’s late inning throwing error allowed the tying run to score. In the latter game, a 4–3 loss, errors by Risberg and Eddie Cicotte helped let in three runs, while lack of clutch hitting foiled their offense. The Chicago Tribune sourly commented that the Sox lost the game due to “comical fielding,” while the Cleveland Plain Dealer added that the Sox were “not at all particular about making their [11] hits produce something.”14

There are even charges that Chicago threw regular season games in 1919. Later in his life, World Series hero Dickey Kerr charged that his teammates “didn’t wait until they got in the [1919] Series to throw games….They threw ’em during the season whenever they got their price.”15 A modern study attempts, with mixed success, to prove a St. Louis-based 1919 regular season fix via statistical analysis, citing Lefty Williams as the prime 1919 game fixer.16

TESTIMONY REGARDING THE 1920 FIX

What the players (and others) said — both at the time and later — pointed to a 1920 Fix. Every Clean Sox regular, as well as Black Soxers Happy Felsch and Eddie Cicotte, agreed that the Sox threw games in 1920.

1. Team star and future Hall of Famer Eddie Collins, on September 2, 1920, told Sox owner Charles Comiskey that pitcher Eddie Cicotte “wasn’t trying” and suggested Comiskey talk to the troubled hurler. To well-connected sportswriter Otto Floto of the Denver Post, Collins expanded on this, asserting he told Comiskey after the Boston series that “he was thru (sic) with [the] game if [the] crooks weren’t fired.”17 Wrote Floto, “At Boston, Collins noticed for the first time that the scoreboard was the barometer by which the contest was waged. He noticed two outfielders [obviously, Jackson and Felsch] watch every inning and when Cleveland won the Sox would also win. When Cleveland lost the Sox would obligingly lose, for the crooked eight [actually, seven] of the Sox had entered into a combine with the gamblers not to win the pennant for Chicago.”

After the scandal broke, Collins said: “We’ve known something was wrong for a long time, but we felt that we had to keep silent because we were fighting for the pennant.”

A few days after the 1920 season ended, Collins charged that the Sox lost the pennant because “two players failed to put forth their best efforts,” and added that the two were among the seven indicted.18 In October, Collins told Collyer’s Eye that games in 1920 were fixed, and “if gamblers didn’t have Weaver and Cicotte in their pocket, then I don’t know anything about baseball.”19

In a 1949 article, Collins was much more specific: “It was in Boston the incident happened that cost us the 1920 pennant. Some gamblers got panicky that we’d win again and they must have got to the players they had under their thumb and ordered the rest of the games thrown…We [the Clean Sox] knew something was wrong but we couldn’t put a finger on it.”20

Collins also told sportswriter Joe Williams that the Black Sox “threw a dozen games in 1920, or tried to.” Williams wrote elsewhere that Collins seemed more bitter over the 1920 fix than the 1919 World Series, and that the 1920 team was so good that, even though “they practically lived with the gamblers,” they often won despite themselves.21

2. In the Washington Times, September 30, 1920, ace pitcher Red Faber complained: “The playing of the Sox on the Eastern trip [i.e., the end of the August 14–September 1 road trip, where Chicago lost five in a row to New York and Boston] made some of the others believe that something was crooked. It looks like we were double-crossed in the World Series last year and in the pennant race this year…”22

Many years later, Faber told Asinof that in 1920 he never knew when some disaster might ruin one of his games. “The hoodlums had some of the boys in their pocket all through the 1920 season, too, throwing ball games right up to the last week of the pennant. I could feel it out there when I pitched — Risberg letting an easy ground ball go by, or Happy Felsch letting a runner take an extra base. You want to scream at them but you don’t because you can see how scared they are.”23

3. In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 29, 1920, John “Shano” Collins said: “We suspected some of them in the World Series, and we suspected them again because of the way of the play on the last eastern trip. Some of them not only didn’t try, but really acted as though they didn’t want to win.”24

He expanded on this in the Boston Post: “We fought a losing battle all this year. We had a fine team and we seldom were defeated by any wide margin. We had the strength to stay up there to win if everything had been right, and yet at the critical moment something would always happen. …

“You may remember our last visit this year to Boston. Just before we came there the Red Sox had started a spurt and were beating all comers.25 This allowed us to creep up to the top, or very near it, for we had been fattening at Cleveland’s and New York’s expense. And we reached the Hub with a splendid chance to go away out in front.

“Well, we lost all three games; Cicotte was batted out of the box. Our men were hopeless at the bat. The big stickers fell down miserably. I have heard a lot about certain players watching the score board while playing in the Hub and not trying as hard as they might. Well, I’m not going to discuss that. I only know that we lost three straight to the Red Sox, that our defeat put the Indians in first place and that we left Boston with every hope blasted.”26

4. As recalled later by Eddie Collins, during that crucial Boston series, 1919 World Series hero Dickey Kerr blew up after an error by Buck Weaver, and a botched fly ball that fell between Felsch and Jackson. “When the inning was over Kerr scaled his glove across the diamond. He looks at Weaver and Risberg, who are standing together, and says ‘If you told me you wanted to lose this game, I could have done it a lot easier.’ There is almost a riot on the bench. Kid Gleason breaks up two fights. That was the end. We lose three or four more games the same way.”27

5. Outfielder Eddie Murphy later said that during the 1920 season he suspected that the gamblers still held sway over the Black Sox, as the team “lost often enough, suspiciously, to cost us the flag.” “We knew something was wrong for a long time.”28

6. Backup catcher Byrd Lynn, in October 1920, got specific: “We lost the pennant because certain players — they are among the eight indicted by the Cook Grand jury — didn’t want us to win. … We soon noticed how carefully they studied the scoreboard — more than even the average player does in a pennant race — and that they always made errors which lost us the game when Cleveland and New York were losing. If Cleveland won — we won. If Cleveland lost — we lost. The idea was to keep up the betting odds, but not to let us win the pennant.”29

7. Utility infielder Hervey McClellan, in October 1920, charged that certain players (unnamed) threw the three-game series in Boston, and added, “Several of the players noticed how the score board affected the others, and we felt all along that these men were regulating their play according to the play of other teams.”30

8. In public, outfielder Nemo Leibold professed ignorance of the 1920 fix. He was quoted in 1921 as saying: “I roomed with Buck [Weaver] throughout the 1919 and 1920 seasons and never had an inkling there was anything wrong.” However, during the 1920 season, Leibold told his friend, New York shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh, that something was wrong. As Peckinpaugh later recalled, the clearly upset Leibold told him “Something screwy is going on here. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something screwy, all right. You guys bear down and you ought to take all four games.”31

9. When interviewed by investigators after the 1920 season, Buck Weaver said “Black” Sox infielder Fred McMullin offered him a $500 bribe to “lay down” in a game in August of 1920, an offer Weaver refused but did not report to management at the time.32

10. Many years later, outfielder Happy Felsch, another of the 1919 fixers, admitted throwing games in 1920 as well, with the colorful observation “Playing rotten, it ain’t that hard to do…”33

11. Also years later, Red Sox pitcher Joe Wood recalled his friend Eddie Cicotte telling Wood, during the 1920 season, that “We don’t dare win” the 1920 pennant.34

12. Catcher Ray Schalk usually kept silent about the 1919 fix, but the Chicago Tribune on September 26, 1920, alleges Schalk “entertained doubts as to the honesty of two pitchers [obviously Cicotte and Williams] — especially during the last two months [of 1920].”35

13. Unidentified Clean Sox player, September 29, 1920, while celebrating the Black Sox grand jury confessions, told a reporter: “No one will ever know what we put up with all this summer. I don’t know how we ever got along.”36

14. Sox manager Kid Gleason, on September 29, 1920, the day after the Black Sox confessions, admitted, “I have felt for a long time that some of my players were not going at the speed they should be going.” A puzzled Gleason, suspecting another fix but not having proof, brought the players (one being Eddie Cicotte, whom Gleason benched in early September) in for extra workouts.37

15. Unidentified Sox players, to Collyer’s Eye, September 18, 1920 (prior to the confessions), say they’re “fed up” with their teammates’ “listless efforts.”38

16. Unidentified Sox player to The Sporting News, October 7, 1920, about the 1920 season: “When we started on our last trip east we had every reason to believe we were on the way to win a pennant…. Then Cicotte and Williams seemed to go bad without reason; Jackson, Felsch and Risberg began dumping the ball to the infield every time we had a chance to score runs. Some of us always had believed we were sold out in the [1919] World Series. When the [crooked] players showed they meant to beat us out of getting in on this one we decided to act. Cicotte was told that he would have to win a certain game or he would be mobbed on the field by the honest players on the team — he won it… Between double crossing his gambler partners and taking a licking from his team mates he decided, naturally, to double cross.”39

17. Unidentified Sox players, per The Sporting News, October 7, 1920: “Honest players on the White Sox team are practically unanimous in saying that the cheaters continued to throw down the team all this season. ‘We would have won the pennant in a walk,’ they say, ‘if those fellows had played fair.’”40

18. In the Washington Times, September 30, 1920, umpire Brick Owens “charged that Eddie Cicotte laid down in the series with Boston [that Owens umpired] a month ago… Cicotte would put lots of stuff on the ball up to the third strike … then he would send over a grooved fast ball without a thing on it. His work could scarcely be detected from the stands, but there was a lot of comment among the players.”41

Manager Kid Gleason benched Cicotte for 10 days following this Boston start, and another poor performance. The reason the Sox gave for this extraordinary move — benching your ace starter during a hot pennant race — was that Cicotte needed to rest and regroup. However, it is likely Gleason saw the same pattern Owens did. Whatever the reason for the slump (blackmail, bribery, worry, fear that the gamblers would murder him, or just a tired arm), Cicotte won all three of his starts after returning to the rotation.

19. In the same newspaper, another umpire, who refused to be named, charged that the Sox threw a game in Cleveland “last week” that Duster Mails pitched. “Mails pitched for Cleveland,” this umpire said, “and he didn’t have a thing. But the Sox players didn’t hit him, and the Indians won the game.”42

20. On October 1, 1920, Boston Globe sportswriter Jim O’Leary reported on “stories” circulating around Boston that “gamblers who had something on Cicotte” ordered Cicotte to lose the second game of the notorious Boston series, threatening to “break with him and show him up.” During that game, O’Leary blurted out: “Why, they’re playing just like they did in the World Series!” Chicago sportswriter Oscar Reichow responded: “That’s so.” O’Leary notes that at the time neither suspected any fix.43

21. Roger Peckinpaugh, veteran Yankees shortstop: “You never knew when the White Sox were going to go out there and beat your brains out or roll over and play dead. Somebody was betting on those games [in 1920], that’s a cinch.”44

22. American League president Ban Johnson, in September 1920, admitted that he had “heard statements that the White Sox would not dare to win the 1920 pennant because the managers of a gambling syndicate, alleged to have certain players in their power, had forbidden it.” In 1929 Johnson was even more specific: “The Sox would have walked into the 1920 pennant had they played ball, but they were at the mercy of the gamblers.”45

In sum, every Clean Sox regular (Schalk, Shano Collins, Eddie Collins, Leibold, Murphy, Kerr, and Faber), at the time, or later, accused their teammates of laying down in 1920. Known fixer Hap Felsch later admitted as much. Add to that list of accusers two Clean Sox backups (Lynn and McClellan), the Sox’s manager (Kid Gleason), umpires, sportswriters, and American League president Ban Johnson, throw in the McMullin bribe attempt and Cicotte’s admission, and it becomes clear that once again the fix was in. The accusations focused on the same players that we now know threw the 1919 Series.

MOTIVES OF THE PLAYERS

It is likely the same motives that led to the 1919 scandal (money) also operated in 1920. Famed sportswriter Joe Williams, an intimate friend of Eddie Collins, offered an interesting take on the 1920 fix. He speculated that the Black Sox, shortchanged by the gamblers in 1919, “set out to clip the game for all they could before the inevitable [exposure].”46

In 1918 the notorious Hal Chase was accused of trying to bribe his Cincinnati teammates. Despite testimony of the players at a hearing conducted by the National League, Chase got off scot free. Two months after the Black Sox Scandal blew open, Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton summed up what the crooked Chicago players thought: “The Chase case gave many players the idea that they could play dishonestly and not be discovered, or if discovered or suspected, would be cleared.”47

CONCLUSIONS

The overwhelming testimony of Clean Sox, Black Sox, and neutral observers, is that the Sox threw games — at a minimum three, and perhaps as many as a dozen — in 1920. The statistics support this conclusion. Money was the primary motive, just as it was in 1919. Since they’d dumped the 1919 Series without suffering serious (any?) consequences, there was no reason not to cash in on 1920 as well. Considerable gambler money must have been involved, as low-paid backup Fred McMullin could toss around $500 bribe offers like popcorn. Fear of the gamblers exposing them likely also played a part.

BRUCE S. ALLARDICE is a Professor of History at South Suburban College, near Chicago, and has authored numerous articles on the Black Sox, along with biographies of the Black Sox gamblers for the SABR BioProject. His article on “The Spread of Baseball in the South Prior to 1870” received the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award in 2013.

Notes

1 See Bruce Allardice, “How Great were the 1919 White Sox?” SABR Black Sox Research Committee Newsletter (December 2015), 3-5, for a compilation of the preseason predictions for 1920. The betting odds also favored Cleveland.

2 For example, “Start Quiz to Save Baseball from Gamblers,” Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1920, which notes a “rumor … that three White Sox are under suspicion, yet are playing in the game regularly.”

3 I. E. Sanborn, “Ruth-less Yankees Mop Up Sox, 3-0, for Record Mob,” Chicago Tribune, August 29, 1920. See the Tribune’s August 28-September 5th coverage of the Sox for game descriptions.

4 I.E. Sanborn, “Sox Back, Glum but Grim for Final Flag Dash,” Chicago Tribune, September 3, 1920.

5 Ed Cunningham, “Red Sox Topple Chicago Hose from League Peak,” Boston Herald, September 2, 1920; James O’Leary, “Red Sox Topple the White Sox from Top,” Boston Globe, September 2, 1920; “White Sox Made Six Errors in Boston Games Which Two Players Say Were Thrown,” Boston Globe, October 4, 1920. Cf. Rick Huhn, Eddie Collins: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 171-172. Gary Webster, Tris Speaker and the 1920 Indians: Tragedy to Glory (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), discusses at some length the charge that the White Sox threw this series, and other games.

6 James C. O’Leary, “Recall Defeat Handed Cicotte on Last Visit. Story Circulated in Boston Says Gamblers Brought Pressure of White Sox Hurler to Lose Game to Red Sox in Fenway Park,” Boston Globe, October 1, 1920.

7 For more on “Sport” Sullivan and the Sullivan-Gandil connection, see Bruce Allardice, “Out of the Shadows: Joseph ‘Sport’ Sullivan,” SABR Black Sox Research Committee Newsletter (June 2014), 9-14.

8 All the statistics cited are from www.baseball-reference.com. Cicotte’s 1920 breakdown is as follows: Season: 21-10, 3.26 ERA; vs. Boston, 1-4, 5.43 ERA; vs. other teams, 20-6, 2.85 ERA. By team, Cicotte’s won-loss breakdown was: Boston 1-4, Cleveland 0-2, New York 2-2, St. Louis 3-1, Washington 5-1, Detroit 5-0, and Philadelphia 5-0.

9 Cleveland went 17-6 during this stretch, Chicago 18-7.

10 I. E. Sanborn, “Gambling Blot Smirches Game as Moguls Dally,” Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1920.

11 I. E. Sanborn, “Tale of the Lost Home Run and Sox Defeat, 5-0,” Chicago Tribune, September 13, 1920. I. E. Sanborn, “Gift Tallies of Sox Hand Cinch to Griffs, 7-0,” Chicago Tribune, September 15, 1920. Denman Thompson, “Defeats of White Sox Make Griffs Chesty,” Washington Star, September 15, 1920.

12 David L. Fleitz, Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), 213.

13 Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out (New York, Henry Holt, 1963), 145.

14 Irving Vaughan, “Sox Lose First Game of Season to Speakers, 3-2,” Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1920; Irving Vaughan, “Risberg Spiked as Careless Sox Drop 4-3 Clash,” Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1920. Irving Vaughan, “Tribe Trims White Sox 4-3 and Takes Undisputed Possession of First Place,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 10, 1920.

15 Joe Williams, “Yanks Have Won Enough Games to Take Pennant,” El Paso Herald-Post, September 29, 1949.

16 Timothy Newman and Bruce Stuckman, “They Were Black Sox Long Before the 1919 World Series,” Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game 6 (Spring 2012): 75-85.

17 At the 1924 trial, Comiskey placed this Collins warning not on September 2, but rather the week after the indictments. See William Lamb, Black Sox in the Courtroom (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 157.

18 Huhn, Eddie Collins, 172. Otto Floto, “Collins Told Comiskey He was Thru With Game If Crooks Weren’t Fired,” Denver Post, October 15, 1920.

19 “Collins Charges 1920 Games Fixed,” Collyer’s Eye, October 30, 1920.

20 Gerry Hern, “The Tipoff on the Black Sox,” Baseball Digest (June, 1949), 11-12.

21 Joe Williams, “by Joe Williams,” Panama (FL) American, March 30, 1951. Seamheads website (www.seamheads.com), # 356.

22 “Umps Say Sox Threw 1920 Pennant,” Washington Times, September 30, 1920.

23 Eliot Asinof, Bleeding Between the Lines (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979), 93.

24 “Sox Traitors Accused of Not Trying to Win ’20 Flag,” Canton Repository, September 29, 1920.

25 Not exactly true, if Collins is quoted correctly. While Boston had taken 4 of 5 from Cleveland early in the week, they’d lost 3 in a row to the Browns immediately prior to the White Sox series, and lost 2 of 3 to New York after the Sox left town. That quotation would better fit the White Sox.

26 Paul H. Shannon, “Collins Shows Crooks Fooled Fellow Players,” Boston Post, November 27, 1920.

27 Huhn, Eddie Collins, 172.

28 Paul Browne, “A Grandfather’s Tale: Interviewing Eddie Murphy III,” SABR Black Sox Research Committee Newsletter (June 2015), 13. John Heeg, “Eddie Murphy,” in Jacob Pomrenke (ed.), Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox (Phoenix, Society of American Baseball Research, 2015).

29 Quoted widely. Cf “Sox Players Charge Mates Threw Games,” Idaho Statesman, October 4, 1920; “White Sox Players Accuse Teammates,” New York Times, October 4, 1920.

30 “Sox Players Charge Mates Threw Games,” Idaho Statesman, October 4, 1920.

31 Pomrenke, Scandal on the South Side, 107. Donald Honig, The Man in the Dugout (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 216. The White Sox played two 4-game series with New York that year — June 16-19, and August 1-4.

32 Gene Carney, Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006), 332.

33 Asinof, Bleeding Between the Lines, 117. Asinof Papers, Chicago History Museum, Box 4, Folder 2. In 1920 Felsch angrily denied throwing 1920 games, calling the charges “bunk.”

34 Lawrence Ritter, The Glory of Their Times, audio version.

35 “First Evidence of Money Paid to Sox Bared,” Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1920.

36 “Shadow Lifted, ‘Square Guys’ of Sox Celebrate,” Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1920.

37 “Gleason Welcomes Wreck of Team for Good of Baseball,” Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1920.

38 “Sox Reveal Inside of Big Scandal?” Collyer’s Eye, September 18, 1920.

39 “When Baseball Gets Before the Grand Jury,” The Sporting News, October 7, 1920. See also “Believe Pennant Has Been Thrown,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 30, 1920. The game where the Clean Sox told Cicotte to win — or else be “mobbed’ — presumably occurred in September, after the Boston series. Of the three games he pitched and won that month, the September 19 game appears the most likely, given the timing of the testimony and the state of the pennant race. See “Pitcher Names Bribe Gamblers,” New Orleans States, September 29, 1920, for an earlier version of the “mobbed” story, which specifies that September 19 game.

40 “When Baseball Gets Before the Grand Jury,” The Sporting News, October 7, 1920.

41 “Umps Say Sox Threw 1920 Pennant,” Washington Times, September 30, 1920. Brick Owens and Ollie Chill umpired this series, and the later Cleveland-Sox series. None of this talk of throwing games surprised the newspaper. The next day the Times explained further: “Joining the Washington ball club last year, we found it common talk among the Griffmen that some of the Sox had thrown the Series of the year before. On occasion, some of the Chicago players were named as being in on the deal.” Louis Dougher, “Looking ‘Em Over,” Washington Times October 1, 1920.

42 “Umps Say Sox Threw 1920 Pennant,” Washington Times, September 30, 1920. “Jury Refuses to Halt Baseball Probe,” Denver Post, September 30, 1920. This undoubtedly refers to the September 24, 1920, game where Duster Mails of Cleveland blanked the White Sox 2-0. The White Sox managed only 3 hits (by Eddie Collins, Felsch and Jackson) off the brash southpaw, though Mails walked five. From the box score, it appears the Clean Sox also had trouble hitting Mails that day. Brick Owens and Ollie Chill umpired this game.

43 James C. O’Leary, “Recall Defeat Handed Cicotte on Last Visit. Story Circulated in Boston Says Gamblers Brought Pressure of White Sox Hurler to Lose Game to Red Sox in Fenway Park,” Boston Globe, October 1, 1920.

44 Honig, The Man in the Dugout, 216.

45 “Plan Probe of Cohan-Tennes Losses on Sox,” Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1920; Ban Johnson, “Thirty-Four Years in Baseball — The Story of Ban Johnson’s Life,” Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1929.

46 Seamheads website, #356.

47 Hugh Fullerton, “Baseball on Trial,” The New Republic, October 20, 1920.

When legendary sportswriter Furman Bisher died in 2012, his obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution repeated a claim that had been casually tossed around for many years — including by Bisher himself:

One of the biggest “scoops” of his career occurred in 1949, when “Shoeless” Joe Jackson gave Bisher and Sport Magazine his only interview since 1919, the year Jackson was ousted from baseball in the “Black Sox” scandal.1 [Emphasis added.]

The interview between Bisher and Jackson, conducted at the latter’s home in Greenville, South Carolina, appeared in Sport’s October 1949 edition with the headline “This is the Truth!” Jackson’s first-person account of the 1919 World Series fix and his subsequent banishment from baseball is, in the words of author Gene Carney, “one of the documents that nobody curious about Jackson can pass up.”2 Thankfully, BlackBetsy.com now makes a copy of the article available online.3 But even the Internet’s most comprehensive Joe Jackson website has erroneously claimed that it is “the only interview Joe Jackson ever gave concerning the infamous World Series.”4

That couldn’t be further from the truth. In the three decades between Jackson’s final major-league game in 1920 and his death in 1951, nearly a dozen interviews with Shoeless Joe appeared in such widely read publications as The Sporting News, Washington Post, and syndicated wire-service articles that ran in newspapers all over the country. Closer to home, Jackson maintained a friendly rapport with veteran South Carolina sports writers Jim Anderson and Carter “Scoop” Latimer, who kept readers updated on Jackson in numerous columns for the Greenville News during the 1930s and 1940s.5

• Related link: Click here for a list of all known interviews with 1919 World Series participants
• Learn more: Click here to view SABR’s Eight Myths Out project on common misconceptions about the Black Sox Scandal

Jackson wasn’t the only Black Sox player to talk to the press in the years following the scandal. In the fall of 1956, Chick Gandil sat down with Los Angeles-based sportswriter Melvin Durslag for a tell-all exposé about the 1919 World Series fix that appeared in Sports Illustrated.6 Gandil’s rambling, self-serving interview made national headlines and shined a new spotlight on the old scandal. After the SI article was published, the Chicago Tribune called Eddie Cicotte and Happy Felsch for their reactions. Hearing of Gandil’s assertions, Felsch said, “They’re all wrong.” Cicotte added, “I took my medicine and I’ve forgotten about it.”7

Cicotte and Felsch had more to say about the scandal — and so did many other players involved in the 1919 World Series.

“A Solid Front of Silence”

It’s easy to believe the Black Sox had no interest in “talking about the past,” as another embattled ballplayer (Mark McGwire) famously told Congress during an investigation into baseball’s recent performance-enhancing drug scandal. Ever since the Black Sox were banned in 1921, finger-wagging sportswriters have perpetuated the idea that the Chicago players disappeared from the public eye and lived out the rest of their lives with their heads hung in shame.8

When Eight Men Out author Eliot Asinof went looking for the surviving Black Sox in the early 1960s, he encountered resistance from almost every ballplayer he found. Happy Felsch was a notable exception, and the old ballplayer finally loosened his lips after Asinof showed up at his door with a bottle of Scotch.9 Felsch became one of Asinof’s primary sources for the book — the author was so appreciative that he dedicated another book, Bleeding Between the Lines, to the former star outfielder. But Asinof’s attempts to interview Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, and Eddie Cicotte didn’t go so well. Even the “Clean Sox” like Red Faber, Ray Schalk, and Dickey Kerr didn’t have much to say to Asinof.

Asinof attributed their reluctance to talk to the stigma that everyone involved — even the innocent players — supposedly felt about the 1919 World Series. As he wrote in Eight Men Out:

“Though [the Black Sox] had almost no contact with each other over the decades that followed, they maintained a solid front of silence to the world. It was as if a pact existed between them and the forces that had brought them to it. It was a silence of shame and sorrow and futility. It was also a silence of fear, for the threats hanging over them made talking a doubly difficult adventure. But mostly, it was a story rooted in the bitterness and frustration of their lives. There seemed to be no way to talk of it that made sense to them, no way that would give some measure of understanding and, perhaps, vindication to their actions.”10

Asinof’s own experiences talking to the ballplayers seemed to back up that claim: The scandal was a subject best left alone. Hall of Fame pitcher Red Faber expressed a similar sentiment when Asinof met with him in Chicago in the early 1960s:

“It’s tough to talk about it. I see some of the boys — like Schalk, for instance — and though he was as straight as an arrow, he won’t even mention the Series. They were scared, I guess. Scared of the gamblers.”11

If a prepared and skilled interviewer like Asinof could not get these players to talk, after doing more homework on the scandal than anyone before him, what chance did any other writer have? Based on his own dealings with the players, Asinof may have gotten the impression that the “solid front of silence” was more widespread than it was. Decades later, Asinof repeated the idea that had become ingrained as part of the mythology of the scandal: “There’s a lingering impact on all of baseball. You don’t talk about this thing,” he told Sports Collectors Digest in 1988. “Even sympathetic ballplayers who did not involve themselves in the fix refused to talk.”12

As Asinof was writing Eight Men Out, he was well aware of Joe Jackson’s Sport interview and Chick Gandil’s Sports Illustrated account. He also knew that Westbrook Pegler, the Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist, followed up on the SI article in 1956 by visiting Cicotte in Detroit, and Felsch in Milwaukee, and talking on the phone with Risberg.13,14,15 In Pegler’s five-part series on the Black Sox Scandal, which was distributed to hundreds of newspapers by the King Features Syndicate, Cicotte and Felsch expressed some regret for their roles while Risberg remained publicly defiant, as he would for the rest of his life.

These were by far the most prominent Black Sox interviews discovered by Asinof in the course of his research.16 But in an era long before text-searchable online archives, many other interviews were lost to obscurity, including those buried in small local newspapers near-impossible to discover prior to digitization. Other writers had been successful in getting not only the White Sox, but also the victorious Cincinnati Reds to talk about the tainted 1919 World Series.

More than 20 White Sox and Reds players spoke on the record about the scandal afterward, in at least 85 separate interviews. The players weren’t all forthcoming and their memories weren’t always accurate. Their words were sometimes embellished by reporters and, invariably, the players contradicted themselves or each other. There are no “smoking guns,” no special insights that help to clear up any of the longstanding mysteries surrounding the scandal. More often, there are claims of innocence or ignorance that don’t ring true given what is known now about the 1919 World Series. But like many common myths about the scandal, the idea that the Big Fix was too shameful or too dangerous for anyone to talk about doesn’t seem to hold up to scrutiny.

Black Sox Interviews

The Black Sox players were not that difficult to find in their years of exile. While it was sometimes reported they had “dropped out of sight” or “quietly vanished,” some writers did their due diligence to look them up.17,18

After he was banned by baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1921, Joe Jackson settled first in Savannah, Georgia, then moved back home to South Carolina. He played some semipro ball and was a successful businessman in both states, operating a liquor store, a barbeque restaurant, and a dry-cleaners, where he was occasionally visited by curious reporters. In 1927, Harry Grayson of the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) wire service spoke with Jackson about his punishment: “I don’t like being called an outlawed player because I fail to see where I am one,” Jackson said. “I was never convicted of any charge in any court.”19 It was a refrain he repeated to anyone who asked.

He also told Grayson he didn’t “care a whoop” about having his name cleared, but a few years later, a reinstatement effort was led on his behalf by Greenville mayor John Mauldin in 1933. By then, Jackson’s stance had softened. “About all I want now is a minor-league connection,” he told the Associated Press. “That’ll make me happy.”20

Judge Landis, predictably, ignored the appeal and Jackson soon stopped asking. But he never failed to take a shot at the baseball commissioner whenever the subject came up. “Sure, I’d love to be in the game,” he told the NEA’s Richard McCann in 1937. “But I’d rather be out than to be in and bossed by a czar.”21 In 1941, Shirley Povich of the Washington Post spent an afternoon with Jackson when the Washington Nationals played a spring training exhibition game in Greenville. Jackson said he was “not bitter toward baseball … [but] I don’t care for Judge Landis.”22

Other than proclaiming his innocence, Jackson rarely offered details in interviews about the 1919 World Series, preferring to let his .375 batting average and Series-high 12 hits stand as his primary defense. One notable exception was in 1932 when he opened up to the NEA’s William Braucher about a key detail that he had never revealed publicly: “[I] asked to be suspended before the World Series,” Jackson said. “I didn’t want to play hard after I heard what was going on. But I had to play and I did play.”23

Near the end of his life, Jackson repeated this story in 1949 to Furman Bisher and in 1951 to John Carmichael, both writing for Sport magazine.24 But his claim went virtually unnoticed at the time, despite the serious implication that Jackson had tried to inform White Sox officials of the fix before the Series began and they had ignored him. In his groundbreaking book Burying the Black Sox, author Gene Carney devoted most of a chapter to Jackson’s request, suggesting that this incident, if verified, would have been the start of a cover-up engineered by White Sox owner Charles Comiskey to sweep the scandal under the rug.25

But did it ever happen? The reliability of Jackson’s claim is still heavily disputed. He had two chances to tell this story under oath — during his grand jury testimony in 1920 and his civil-trial deposition in 1923 — but never said a word about asking to be taken out of the lineup. He also didn’t mention it in a long feature profile that appeared in The Sporting News in 1942, written by his old friend Scoop Latimer of Greenville.26 The Furman Bisher interview from 1949 contains a number of details that are inaccurate, such as Jackson misremembering how many outfield assists he had during the World Series, or other anecdotes that cannot be corroborated. In the end, only these vague quotations from Jackson’s interviews remain — a tantalizing piece to the puzzle that may never be connected for sure.

Buck Weaver was even more vocal about the 1919 World Series than Jackson. He continued to play semipro and outlaw baseball for more than a decade after his banishment in 1921, and then made his home in Chicago, where he regularly could be found at old-timers’ banquets with baseball friends like former teammates Red Faber and Ray Schalk. Weaver was outspoken about the injustice of his lifetime ban and often lobbied to have his name cleared.

In January 1922 — five months after he was banned — Weaver made his first public plea for reinstatement, telling reporters that he had recently met with Judge Landis to make his case in person. He acknowledged that he was aware of the fix rumors during the World Series: “The only doubt in my mind was whether I should keep quiet about it or tell Mr. Comiskey. I was not certain just what men, if any, had accepted propositions, or whether they accepted. I couldn’t bring myself to tell on them, even had I known for certain. I decided to keep quiet and play my best.”27 After the season, Landis denied Weaver’s request on the grounds that he had never adequately explained why he had attended the pre-Series fix meetings with the other players. Landis ominously declared, “Birds of a feather flock together.”28

Weaver continued to appeal to the judge over the years and used every opportunity to plead for reinstatement. After Landis’ death in 1944, Weaver stepped up his efforts, thinking a new commissioner might be more sympathetic to his cause. He appeared on WGN Radio and was interviewed by broadcaster Jack Brickhouse in 1947.29 He also wrote a letter to commissioner Ford Frick in 1953. In the fall of 1954, Weaver was visited by author James T. Farrell at the Morrison Hotel in Chicago. Buck was still unclear about what he had done to deserve such a harsh punishment: “A murderer even serves his sentence and is let out. I got life. … Landis wanted me to tell him something that I didn’t know. I can’t accuse you and it comes back on you and I am… a goof. That makes no sense. I had no evidence.”30

Chick Gandil gave an explosive interview that appeared in Sports Illustrated on September 17, 1956.

Weaver’s death in 1956, followed shortly thereafter by Chick Gandil’s sensational exposé in Sports Illustrated, launched another round of attention on the Black Sox Scandal. The syndicated political columnist Westbrook Pegler, who had covered the 1919 World Series early in his career, went to the homes of Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, and Swede Risberg that summer to ask them more about the tainted Series. Cicotte and Felsch looked back with regrets. “We done wrong and we deserved to get punished,” the 72-year-old Cicotte said from Detroit. “But not a life sentence. That was too rough. I could have earned a living coaching later but they wouldn’t let me.”31 Felsch, then 65, said he had to give up his tavern in Milwaukee because he “had so much trouble with argumentative drinkers about the 1919 Series.”32 Risberg, at age 61, continued to insist he had done nothing wrong to earn his punishment; instead, he steered the conversation with Pegler more toward his observations on the modern game and about his son Gerald, who was then playing ball at Chico State College in California.33

No interviews have turned up yet for the remaining two Black Sox players, pitcher Lefty Williams and infielder Fred McMullin, who both lived quiet lives in California for decades after the scandal. After Gandil’s Sports Illustrated article appeared in 1956, Williams’ wife Lyria wrote a letter to her good friend Katie Jackson, Shoeless Joe’s widow, in which she expressed displeasure at the old scandal being brought up: “You sure have trouble with the newspaper men in the South. … I am glad they do not know where we are. We would send them chasing if they came here.”34 McMullin may not have talked to any reporters, but according to family lore, he once wrote up his version of the scandal in a file that was to be revealed after all the Black Sox players had died — and his wife Delia destroyed the letter.35 McMullin might have played a much larger role in the scandal than is commonly believed, but without his own words, that may never be known for sure.36

The last surviving Black Sox, Swede Risberg, remained defiant over the years and he occasionally took to the press to proclaim his innocence. In 1931, while playing semipro ball in South Dakota, he complained to a reporter for the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader about how much money he had lost because of the lifetime ban, which he estimated to be about $150,000 or $200,000. “That’s a terrible penalty for a man who believes himself the victim of circumstantial evidence. … [Risberg] still swears he was innocent of any conniving with gamblers or that he was promised or received any of the money which was accepted by other members of the team.”37

A few years later, as the Great Depression wiped out his savings and times were tough for an outlaw ballplayer, Risberg moved back home to San Francisco and made a public plea to be reinstated. “If I had held up a bank, I would have paid the penalty by this time and would be out of jail and able to earn a living,” he said in 1934.38 There is no record that Judge Landis ever responded to the Swede, who went on to rebound from his struggles and open a successful nightclub near the California-Oregon border by the time Pegler visited him two decades later.

Risberg spent his final years living with his son Robert in Red Bluff, California. In 1970 he was asked to preview the upcoming World Series as a guest columnist for the local newspaper. Swede’s columns were short and amiable, and no mention was made of his sordid past. But anyone who knew his history might have raised an eyebrow at the irony of his prediction: he picked the Cincinnati Reds to win.39

Swede Risberg picked the Cincinnati Reds to win the 1970 World Series in the Red Bluff (California) Daily News.

Chick Gandil opened up one more time after the SI article, in a two-part interview with Dwight Chapin of the Los Angeles Times in 1969, for the 50th anniversary of the tainted World Series. He was 82 years old and in poor health, but instantly regained his old fire at the mention of baseball’s first commissioner. “We were exonerated,” he said. “But that damned Judge Landis took more power than the courts and we were blacklisted for all time. … I just get tired of being made the goat in all this. I have taken an awful beating in this thing.”40 As he had done in 1956, Gandil again insisted that the World Series was never thrown, citing his own crucial RBI singles in Games Three and Six, and that he hadn’t received any money from gamblers. As Chapin wrapped up the interview, Gandil looked squarely at him and said, “I’m going to my grave with a clear conscience, you understand?”41

Eddie Cicotte offered a more penitent tone in his final interview, when Joe Falls of the Detroit Free Press came to visit his 5½-acre strawberry farm in 1965. “I admit I did wrong,” Cicotte said, “but I’ve paid for it the last 45 years. … I don’t know of anyone who ever went through life without making a mistake. I’ve tried to make up for it by living as clean a life as I could.”42 He offered no excuses for his involvement in the Black Sox Scandal and seemed genuinely at peace with his life. When Falls shook hands with the old pitcher and waved goodbye, he sized up Eddie’s plaid shirt, blue denim pants, and tan shoes. “But what I noticed for the first time were his socks,” Falls wrote. “They were white.”43

Clean Sox Interviews

When Hall of Fame catcher Ray Schalk learned of Eddie Cicotte’s death in 1969, he felt a pang of affection for his old, disgraced batterymate. “He made my work easy behind the plate,” Schalk told the Chicago Tribune. He also said the pitcher had “a great sense of humor and was a great storyteller.”44 But a few months later, when the Associated Press contacted him for a story on the 50th anniversary of the tainted series, Schalk clammed up. “You can ask me anything in the world except [that],” he said. “I have my personal feelings about it all. It’s one of the saddest things that ever happened.”45

Over the years, Schalk wavered back and forth on his willingness to talk publicly about the 1919 World Series. At times, he was candid and offered unique insight about the Series that only a participant could provide. On other occasions, he claimed to know nothing about the fix and “had no reason to suspect anything.”46 Eliot Asinof’s attempt to interview him at Purdue University, where Schalk was an assistant baseball coach, ended before it even started. Schalk threw the writer out of his office.47 Asinof later wrote of Schalk’s silence, “He could not bear the shame of the fix, for this was his team, these were the men he lived with, this was the game he played and loved.”48

But Schalk had been more open in the past. In fact, he had been the very first of the “Clean Sox” to open his mouth about the World Series fix rumors back in 1919 — and it got him in big trouble. Two months after the Series ended, Schalk spoke to an investigative reporter, Frank O. Klein, for a small Chicago-based gambling trade publication called Collyer’s Eye. He said seven of his teammates wouldn’t return to the White Sox roster in 1920 … and he even named them: Cicotte, Felsch, Gandil, Jackson, McMullin, Risberg, and Williams.49 (Everyone but Buck Weaver, whose name wasn’t being tossed around in the fix rumors then.) When The Sporting News picked up the story, Schalk was chastised by White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and he immediately retracted his comments.50

Schalk must have learned his lesson from this incident, because it took him more than twenty years before he spoke openly about the scandal again. In a 1940 profile for The Sporting News by veteran Chicago writer Ed Burns, Schalk said he had turned down “considerable sums” to tell the “inside story” of the 1919 Series and still had “confused emotions” about it all.51 He also denied reports that the Black Sox were disgruntled: “Whatever happened was not traceable to any general discontent.”

Eddie Collins was also quick to go on the record soon after the scandal was exposed. In an interview with Collyer’s Eye on October 30, 1920, he said “there wasn’t a single doubt in my mind” as early as the first inning of Game One that the games were being thrown. He added, “If the gamblers didn’t have Weaver and Cicotte in their pocket, then I don’t know a thing about baseball.”52

Collins’ accusation against Weaver was not the last time he pointed a finger in Buck’s direction. In 1943, the Hall of Fame infielder told Joe Williams of the New York World-Telegram that he “should have recognized the tip-off in the very first game” when Weaver missed a hit-and-run sign and Collins “was out by a yard at second.” Collins asked Buck if he “was asleep,” and Weaver snapped, “Quit trying to alibi and play ball.”53

Weaver’s reply could be damning evidence that he was more involved with the fix than is commonly believed, but it also could be just a reflection of his cool relationship with Collins, who wasn’t well liked in the White Sox’s dissension-riddled clubhouse. But Collins’ tone changed over the years and he began to back off from his comments that he had known much about the scandal. “I was to be a witness to the greatest tragedy in baseball’s history — and I didn’t know it at the time,” he told The Sporting News in 1950. “I didn’t for an instant believe at that time they would engage in anything as dastardly as a conspiracy to throw a ball game or a Series and let the rest of their teammates down.”54

Dickey Kerr, a rookie pitcher in 1919 who won two games in the World Series, also spoke publicly about his suspicions. In a 1937 interview with David Bloom of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, Kerr said, “We knew it all the time. A newspaperman tipped me off. But what could we do?”55 Reserve catcher Joe Jenkins told the Fresno Bee in 1962 that the fix rumors were openly discussed inside the clubhouse. He said he noticed Chick Gandil “betting heavily” on the World Series games, but “I didn’t think much of it as we used to get good odds and bet all the time.”56

Outfielder Eddie Murphy expressed similar sentiments in a 1959 interview with Chic Feldman of The Scrantonian in Pennsylvania. He said manager Kid Gleason held a team meeting early in the Series, declaring, “I hear $100,000 is to change hands if we lose.” But his threats to expose the fix weren’t enough to get his team back on track. Murphy also talked about rumors that the Black Sox had thrown games in 1920, too: “We knew something was wrong for a long time, but we felt we had to keep silent because we were fighting for a pennant. We went along and gritted our teeth and played ball. It was tough.”57

By and large, the “clean Sox” were no longer angry at their teammates for selling out. But they remained disappointed at what might have been: a White Sox baseball dynasty that could have challenged Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees for American League supremacy for years to come.

Hall of Fame pitcher Red Faber said, “Loss of those men ruined our club. If we had kept them, we would have gone on winning pennants, or fighting for them, for years.”58 Added Eddie Collins, “They were the best. There never was a ballclub like that one, in more ways than one.”59

Cincinnati Reds Interviews

To a man, the Reds players had one thing to say whenever they were asked about the tainted World Series: They all insisted they didn’t need any help to beat the powerhouse White Sox. “Sure, the 1919 White Sox were good. But the 1919 Cincinnati Reds were better,” Hall of Fame outfielder Edd Roush told Lawrence Ritter, author of The Glory of Their Times. “I’ll believe that till my dying day. … We could have beat them no matter what the circumstances!”60

Roush liked to point out that the Reds had a deeper pitching staff and a more well-rounded lineup, which matched up well against the White Sox in a best-of-nine series.61 “I still don’t see why the White Sox were supposed to be such favorites to beat us,” Reds third baseman Heinie Groh told Ritter. “I didn’t see anything that looked suspicious. I think we’d have beaten them either way; that’s what I thought then and I still think so today.”62

There is reason to believe the Reds were indeed the better team, and there is also some evidence that the conspiring Chicago players called off the fix early in the Series after failing to receive payment from the gamblers. At any rate, the Reds players said they didn’t seem to notice anything suspicious — at least on the field. Outfielder Greasy Neale, who went on to become a Hall of Fame football coach in the NFL, told writer Grantland Rice in 1945, “The fellows rumored as the crooks starred all thru the series. … I’ll admit, they had to be the greatest artists in baseball history to throw any game outside the first one, for those labeled as crooks looked and acted like great ballplayers. … How could we figure they were crooked?”63

Years later, pitchers Dutch Ruether and Slim Sallee said they had a hard time believing the fix was in. “No one ever dreamed there would be anything shady in a World’s Series,” Sallee told The Sporting News.64 Said Ruether: “In that first game, I got two triples, a single, and a base on balls — a record that’s never been beaten. And then I found out they were only foolin’.”65

By the end of the Series, the Reds could no longer claim to be surprised about rumors of a fix — because one of their own teammates was being offered a bribe to lose, at least according to Edd Roush. Before the decisive Game Eight, Roush said, manager Pat Moran confronted pitcher Hod Eller in the clubhouse. Eller confirmed that he had been approached by gamblers and offered $5,000, but he said he had run them off. Moran cautiously allowed Eller to pitch and the right-hander responded with a stellar performance as the Reds won the game and clinched the Series. Roush first told this story to a New York reporter in 1937 and then repeated it in print many times until his death more than a half-century later.66 His former teammate, Ray Fisher, corroborated the story in an interview with the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch years later.67 Like many of the interviews mentioned above, Roush’s story raises as many questions as it answers, adding a new layer of complexity to our ever-evolving collective knowledge of the Black Sox Scandal.

For decades, the “solid front of silence” was a key part of that story. In his classic history of the American League, published in 1962, historian Lee Allen noted that the “honest players on the team who still survive will not talk,” a phenomenon he found “passing strange.”68 Dr. Harold and Dorothy Seymour also claimed “the players, honest as well as accused, have maintained an almost unbroken silence.”69 Few writers or fans have seriously challenged that notion in the years since. But it’s clear the players involved in the 1919 World Series were often willing to talk about what happened. Thanks to the power of the Internet, their words are much easier to find today using searchable newspaper archives than they were when Eliot Asinof was writing Eight Men Out.

More interviews with White Sox and Reds players almost certainly are waiting to be discovered in the future. Many daily newspapers from Chicago and Cincinnati, let alone all the other places these players lived and worked, haven’t been digitized yet. But one thing can now be said for sure: When asked about the scandal, the participants often answered.

“I don’t know whether the whole truth of what went on there with the White Sox will ever come out,” Edd Roush told author Lawrence Ritter in 1964. “Even today, nobody really knows exactly what took place. Whatever it was, though, it was a dirty, rotten shame.”70

JACOB POMRENKE is SABR’s Director of Editorial Content, chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee, and editor of “Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox” (2015). He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his wife, Tracy Greer, and their cats, Nixey Callahan and Bones Ely.

Photo credits

Joe Jackson and Furman Bisher, 1949: Courtesy of Mike Nola/BlackBetsy.com

Chick Gandil, Sports Illustrated, 1956: Author’s collection

Swede Risberg, Red Bluff Daily News, 1970: Author’s collection

Notes

1 Alexis Stevens, “Sportswriter Furman Bisher dies at 93,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 19, 2012. Accessed online at http://www.ajc.com/news/sports/sportswriter-furman-bisher-dies-at-93-1/nQSJx/ on November 3, 2015. The author has added emphasis.

2 Gene Carney, Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006), 63-64.

3 http://www.blackbetsy.com/theTruth.html

4 Ibid.

5 Latimer is best known as the sportswriter who gave Shoeless Joe his iconic nickname during a minor-league game in 1908.

6 Arnold (Chick) Gandil, as told to Melvin Durslag, “This is My Story of the Black Sox Series,” Sports Illustrated, September 17, 1956.

7 “’Black Sox’ Blast Gandil ‘Confession’,” Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1956.

8 For one early example, see: Frank G. Menke, “Crooked Players Find Themselves Despised By All,” King Features Syndicate, Idaho Statesman, April 4, 1922. No meaningful effort is made to accurately report on the Black Sox players’ whereabouts. Lefty Williams is described as “loafing day after day,” Swede Risberg as “idle and seemingly broke.” Joe Jackson has “the years stretching before him, barren of baseball hope.” The others are described in similar, pathetic terms.

9 James Nitz, “Happy Felsch,” SABR BioProject, http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/cd61b579.

10 Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out (New York: Henry Holt, 1963), 284.

11 Eliot Asinof, Bleeding Between the Lines (New York: Henry Holt, 1979), 93.

12 Paul Green, “The Later Lives of the Banished Sox,” Sports Collectors Digest, April 22, 1988, 196-97.

13 Westbrook Pegler, “Control, a Little Riser, Were Cicotte’s Secrets,” Kansas City Star, September 28, 1956.

14 Westbrook Pegler, “Onus of Bad Series Finally Made Happy Felsch Sell His Business,” Butte (Montana) Standard, September 25, 1956.

15 Westbrook Pegler, “Swede Risberg Prospers But He Also Suffered; Son a Prospect,” Butte (Montana) Standard, September 26, 1956.

16 If Asinof discovered any other interviews, they are not part of his collection of research notes which is now available to researchers at the Chicago History Museum.

17 Bob Considine, “On the Line,” Waterloo (Iowa) Sunday Courier, January 12, 1947.

18 John Lardner, “Remember the Black Sox,” The Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1938.

19 “Shoeless Joe’ Jackson Star in Valet Loop Now,” Santa Ana (California) Register, April 7, 1927.

20 “Jackson Applies for Readmission to Pro Baseball,” Florence (South Carolina) News, December 19, 1933.

21 “Baseball Still is ‘First Love’ of Joe Jackson,” Blytheville (Arkansas) Courier News, March 10, 1937.

22 Shirley Povich, “Say It Ain’t So, Joe,” Washington Post, April 11, 1941.

23 “’Shoeless’ Joe Takes Time For Reminiscence,” Blytheville (Arkansas) Courier News, March 9, 1932.

24 As cited in Carney, Burying the Black Sox, 62.

25 There is other credible evidence that White Sox officials were aware of the fix as early as Game One and that Charles Comiskey attempted to inform the National Commission about it (only to be dismissed by American League president Ban Johnson with the famous retort, “That’s the whelp of a beaten cur!”) But Joe Jackson’s request to be benched would be the only known instance of a Black Sox player attempting to inform team officials about the fix during the Series. For a detailed analysis of this episode, see chapter 4 of Carney’s Burying the Black Sox.

26 Scoop Latimer, “Joe Jackson, Contented Carolinan at 54, Forgets Bitter Dose in His Cup and Glories in His 12 Hits in ’19 Series,” The Sporting News, September 24, 1942.

27 “Buck Weaver Asks For Reinstatement,” New York Times, January 14, 1922.

28 Ibid.

29 Jack Brickhouse, with Jack Rosenberg and Ned Colletti, Thanks For Listening! (South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, 1996), 213-14.

30 James T. Farrell, My Baseball Diary (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1957).

31 Pegler, “Control, a Little Riser, Were Cicotte’s Secrets.”

32 Pegler, “Onus of Bad Series Finally Made Happy Felsch Sell His Business.”

33 Pegler, “Swede Risberg Prospers But He Also Suffered; Son a Prospect.”

34 Lyria Williams letter to Katie Jackson, October 16, 1956, Legendary Auctions, Summer 2003 catalog.

35 Bob Hoie telephone interview with the author, July 16, 2012. According to Hoie, who spoke with Fred McMullin’s daughter-in-law twice in 2002, Fred had supposedly written an account of the scandal that was to be given to veteran Los Angeles sportswriter Matt Gallagher after all the Black Sox players were dead. Years later, when Fred’s son Billy asked his mother Delia for the document, she said she had destroyed it.

36 For further discussion on McMullin’s role in the scandal, see the author’s SABR BioProject biography of McMullin at http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/7d8be958.

37 “Risberg’s Silence Costs Him Fortune; Landis Locks Door; It’s Too Late Now,” Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, May 23, 1931.

38 “Diamond Outlaw Asks Baseball Heads to Lift Life-time Suspension,” Lincoln (Nebraska) Star, January 16, 1934.

39 “Reds Rooter Risberg Has Little Hope Now,” Red Bluff (California) Daily News, October 14, 1970.

40 Dwight Chapin, “The Black Sox Scandal: Torn Lives — 50 Years Later,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1969.

41 Dwight Chapin, “Gandil Continues to Claim His Innocence,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1969.

42 Joe Falls, “Eddie Cicotte — at 81, He’s Proud of Life He’s Led; Family Is, Too,” The Sporting News, December 6, 1965.

43 Ibid.

44 Edward Prell, “Cicotte Had Great Stuff — Schalk,” Chicago Tribune, May 9, 1969.

45 Associated Press, “Black Sox Scandal Skeleton Still Rattles,” The Oregonian, August 10, 1969.

46 New York World-Telegram and Sun, June 21, 1955. As cited in Brian E. Cooper, Ray Schalk: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2009).

47 Asinof, Bleeding Between the Lines, 95-97.

48 Ibid.

49 Frank O. Klein, “Catcher Ray Schalk in Huge World Series Exposé,” Collyer’s Eye, December 13, 1919. Schalk was echoing a similar claim made by reporter Hugh Fullerton the day after the World Series concluded. However, Fullerton’s column in the Chicago Herald-Examiner on October 10 did not name the seven White Sox players he claimed “would not be there when the gong sounds next Spring.” Schalk’s interview with Collyer’s Eye was the first to name them.

50 Oscar C. Reichow, “Ray Schalk Never Hinted At Anything Wrong in Series,” The Sporting News, January 8, 1920.

51 Ed Burns, “Unforgettable Memory Left With Schalk by Tears of Black Sox When Told by Comiskey of Banishment,” The Sporting News, November 28, 1940.

52 Rick Huhn, Eddie Collins: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2008), 179-83.

53 New York World-Telegram, July 10, 1943.

54 Jim Leonard, “From Sullivan to Collins,” The Sporting News, November 1, 1950.

55 David Bloom, “Dick Kerr, Breaking 17-Year Silence, Tells of ’19 Series,” The Sporting News, February 25, 1937.

56 Tom Meehan, “Hanford’s Jenkins, Black Sox Innocent, Talks of One Big Smirch On Baseball,” Fresno (California) Bee, May 13, 1962.

57 The Scrantonian (Pennsylvania), September 13, 1959.

58 United Press International, “Faber Recalls How Gamblers Were Ruination of White Sox,” Rockford (Illinois) Register-Republic, January 10, 1947.

59 John Lardner, “Remember the Black Sox?” Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1938.

60 Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1984), 222.

61 The World Series was played in an experimental best-of-nine format from 1919 to 1921.

62 Ritter, 301. For Glory, Ritter also interviewed a third member of the 1919 Reds, outfielder Rube Bressler, but they didn’t talk much about the 1919 World Series.

63 Grantland Rice, “Sportlight,” Nebraska State Journal, March 26, 1945.

64 “What’s Become of Sallee? Slim’s Still Tossing,” The Sporting News, April 13, 1944.

65 Earl Wilson, “It Happened Last Night,” Uniontown (Pennsylvania) Morning Herald, June 10, 1952.

66 Dan Daniel, New York World-Telegram, March 2, 1937. As cited in Susan Dellinger, Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series (Cincinnati: Emmis Books, 2006).

67 Dellinger, 326-27.

68 Lee Allen, The American League Story (New York: Hill & Wang, 1962), 100.

69 Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills, Baseball: The Golden Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 294.

70 Ritter, 222.

Alex Gordon was held at third instead of sent home with the potential tying run in Game Seven of the 2014 World Series. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

JEFFREY N. HOWARD is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Dr. Howard received his Ph.D. in Human Factors Psychology from Wichita State University. His research interests include music-cognition, decision-making, and cross-sensory modality investigations. He also holds master’s degrees in clinical and experimental psychology, as well as a bachelor’s degree in radio-television journalism.

Notes

1. Andrew Joseph, “Alex Gordon’s late start costs the Royals in 9th inning,” The Arizona Republic, October 30, 2014. Accessed October 30, 2014. http://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/heat-index/2014/10/30/alex-gordons-late-start-costs-the-royals-in-9th-inning/18176123.

2. Chris Chase, “Alex Gordon going for inside-the-park HR would’ve been the greatest end to the World Series.” USA Today, October 30, 2014. Accessed October 30, 2014. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/10/alex-gordon-triple-inside-the-park-home-run-score-could-world-series-game-7

3. Paul Dickson, The Hidden Language of Baseball, Walker Books, 2005, 6.

4. Wayne Patterson, “The Cryptology of Baseball,” Cryptologia 35, no. 2 (2011): 158, 156–163.

5. William R.Cheswick, “Johnny Can Obfuscate: Beyond Mother’s Maiden Name.” In Proceedings of the 1st USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security. 2006, 33.

6. Jason Turbow and Michael Duca, The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, Anchor, 2011, 81.

7. Jason Turbow, “Deking Propriety.” The Baseball Codes, April 28, 2010. Accessed February 1, 2015. http://thebaseballcodes.com/2010/ 04/28/deking-propriety.

8. William R. Cheswick, 2006, 33.

9. MLB.com. 2014. “Gordon takes third on error,” October 29, 2013. Accessed November 15. http://m.mlb.com/mia/video/topic/63106348/v36878067/ws2014-gm7-gordon-singles-takes-third-on-error

10. MLB.com. 2014. “Relay nabs Phillips,” June 26, 2014. Accessed February 4, 2015. http://m.mlb.com/video/v34074955/cinsf-relay-throw-cuts-down-phillips-at-the-plate/?c_id=mlb

11. Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo, “Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison.” International Journal of Criminology & Penology (1973), 90.

12. Julius Kuhl, and Jürgen Beckmann, eds. “Action control: From cognition to behavior.” Springer Science & Business Media, 2012, 22.

13. Robert Singer, Ronnie Lidor, and James H. Cauraugh, “To be aware or not aware? What to think about while learning and performing a motor skill.” Sport Psychologist 7 (1993): 21, 19–309.

14. Rob Neyer, “What if Alex Gordon had hustled?” FOXSports.com, Accessed February 4, 2015. http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/alex-gordon-world-series-game7-mike-jirschele-royals-third-base-coach-103114.

15. Eric Buckolz, Harry Prapavesis, and Jack Fairs, “Advance cues and their use in predicting tennis passing shots.” Canadian Journal of Sport Sciences; Journal Canadien des Sciences Dusport, 13, no. 1 (1988): 20, 20–30.

16. Mike Evans, “Outfield Fundamentals. Evans Pressure Baseball,” n.d. http://www.evanspressurebaseball.com/books-articles/outfield.php

17. David Krival, and Tito Landrum, “Tito Landrum on Outfield Play: Getting a Good Jump on the Ball,” Hardball Magazine, 1993 (Winter). http://www.msblnational.com/HardBall-Archives/Blog/Tito-Landrum-on-Outfield-Play-39-193.htm.

18. Andrew Joseph, October 30, 2014.

19. Rob Neyer, February 4, 2015.

20. MLB.com. “Gordon’s RBI triple,” April 5, 2013. Accessed January 10, 2015. http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/42930092/v26025851/kcphi-gordons-rbi-triple-puts-royals-in-the-lead/?query=alex%2Bgordon%2Btriple.

21. David Freed, “Should Alex Gordon Have Been Sent Home?” The Harvard Sports Analysis Collective (HSAC), October 31, 2014. http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2014/10/should-alex-gordon-have-been-sent-home.

22. MLB.com. 2014. Gordon.

23. David Freed, 2014.

24. Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo. 1973.

Vern Stephens was recruited to play in Mexico instead of for the Browns in 1946, but quickly returned to the team after seeing the conditions south of the border. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

ROGER A. GODIN has been a SABR member since 1977. He is the author of “The 1922 St. Louis Browns: Best of the American League’s Worst” and various BRJ articles. His principal research and writing is in the American aspect of hockey, about which he has written two books and a number of monographs. He serves as the NHL Minnesota Wild’s team curator and resides in St. Paul.

References

Books

Carmichael, John; Who’s Who in the Major Leagues, 15th Edition 1947 (Chicago: B. E. Callahan)

Kashatus, William C.; One Armed Wonder: Pete Gray, Wartime Baseball, and the American Dream (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995)

Rippel, Joel; Dick Siebert: A Life in Baseball (St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press, 2012)

Newspaper/Magazine Articles

L.A. McMaster, “Joe Agrees to Terms; Pirates Win Game,” St. Louis PostDispatch, March 4, 1946.

L.A. McMaster, “’My Record Doesn’t Call For a Cut,’ says Vern,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 6, 1946.

L.A. McMaster, “Browns Find New Hurling Prospect in John Pavlick,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 18, 1946.

L.A. McMaster, “Dewitt and Siebert in Salary Talk,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 16, 1946.

L.A. McMaster, “Siebert Quits Camp: Plans to Broadcast,” St. Louis PostDispatch, March 20, 1946.

L.A. McMaster, “Sewell Says Team is Ready,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 22, 1946.

“Stephens Quits Browns: Joins Mexican Nine,” Chicago Tribune, March 30, 1946 (No author cited).

L.A. McMaster, “Return of McQuinn or Equivalent Sought by Browns From Athletics,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 30, 1946.

“Browns Release Joe Medwick,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 8, 1946 (No author cited).

L.A. McMaster, “Batting Power, Better Reserves for the Browns,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 13, 1946.

“Browns ‘A’ Champs,” The Sporting News, April 18, 1946 (No author cited).

“Athletics Keep McQuinn,” The New York Times, April 20, 1946 (No author cited).

Notes

1. William C. Kashatus, One Armed Wonder: Pete Gray, Wartime Baseball, and the American Dream (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995) 116.

2. Kashatus; op.cit. 116.

3. Author’s conversation with Don Gutteridge, May 26, 1994.

4. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 5, 1946.

5. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 7, 1946.

6. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 19, 1946.

7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 17, 1946.

8. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 21, 1946.

9. Rippel, Joel; Dick Siebert: A Life in Baseball (St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press, 2012) 110.

10. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 23, 1946.

11. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 23, 1946.

12. Chicago Tribune, March 30, 1946.

13. Al Hirshberg, “Vern Stephens-Junior Red Socker,” Sport magazine, August 1949.

14. Hirshberg.

15. Hirshberg.

16. Hirshberg.

17. Hirshberg.

18. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 31, 1946.

19. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1946.

20. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1946.

21. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 14, 1946.

22. The Sporting News, April 18, 1946.

23. The New York Times, May 1, 1946.

24. The New York Times, April 20, 1946.