Felber: Eight misconceptions about the Black Sox Scandal
From SABR member Bill Felber at Call to the Pen on March 20, 2019:
In the entirety of MLB and White Sox history, the 1919 Black Sox scandal remains the biggest and best-known stain on baseball’s reputation.
The story of how eight members of the Chicago White Sox – Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Happy Felsch, Buck Weaver and Fred McMullin -conspired with gamblers to fix the 1919 World Series has been detailed in numerous books, both fictional and non-fiction. It has also provided the backdrop for several of the best-known baseball-themed movies of all time, including John Sayles’ 1988 “Eight Men Out” and Phil Alden Robinson’s 1989 “Field of Dreams.”
Over the years, however, several mythologies have grown up around the scandal, many of them perpetuated either by print or in film. Now, researchers specializing in the era and affiliated with the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) have released a new study timed to coincide with the start of the scandal’s centennial season and designed to correct some of the scandal’s most enduring fallacies.
Titled, “Eight Myths Out,” the study can be viewed at the SABR website. The effort was coordinated by Jacob Pomrenke, who chairs the organization’s Black Sox Era committee, and involves work by dozens of researchers, many of whom are published authors of books or papers on the era.
Read the full article here: https://calltothepen.com/2019/03/20/white-sox-8-misconceptions-about-black-sox-scandal/
Originally published: March 20, 2019. Last Updated: March 20, 2019.