Ban Johnson and Exposure of the Black Sox Scandal
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Black Sox Scandal Committee’s December 2023 newsletter.
Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, center left, and American League president Ban Johnson, center right, seen here in 1911, were friends and business partners when they founded the AL together at the turn of the 20th century. Two decades later, they were bitter enemies. While Comiskey was leading an insurrection to depose the league’s founder, Johnson used the AL treasury to investigate the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. (Library of Congress, Bain News Service)
As the 1920 season entered its final month, concern about the integrity of the previous year’s World Series had all but vanished from public view. Fans focused more of their attention on an exciting three-way race for the American League pennant and the unprecedented home run hitting of pitcher-turned-everyday-slugger Babe Ruth.
By the end of September, however, the landscape was altered as the nation’s sports pages were dominated by revelations that eight members of the Chicago White Sox had conspired with gamblers to fix the outcome of the 1919 fall classic. A criminal trial and the prospect of a state prison sentence upon conviction awaited the accused players.
More than anyone else, the person responsible for all of this was American League President Ban Johnson. In the aftermath of the 1919 Series, Johnson conducted a discreet investigation of fix rumors and concluded they had substance. Through his personal relationship with the presiding justice of the Cook County (Chicago) criminal courts, Johnson then instigated the grand jury probe that yielded indictments of players and gamblers. Thereafter, he largely directed and financed the government prosecution of the Black Sox and their cohorts. In short, but for Ban Johnson there would have been no searching inquiry into Series bona fides — and no Black Sox Scandal.
This article will endeavor to chronicle the relentless, if at times inappropriate, action taken by Johnson to expose and punish those who had corrupted the game’s ultimate competition. Incorporated into the narrative will be private Johnson correspondence and communications that have rarely been factored into scandal commentary.1 Among the revelations here is the extent to which Johnson’s efforts toward retribution were privately encouraged and assisted by Johnson-loyal American League club owners (particularly Frank Navin and Phil Ball), prominent sportswriters (including Joe Vila, James Isaminger, and Harry Neily), and a 19th century baseball star (Bill Lange). To present that story in context, the following background is offered.
A. The pre-scandal tenure of Ban Johnson as American League president
During the two decades that preceded eruption of the Black Sox Scandal, Byron Bancroft Johnson was major league baseball’s dominant executive. Johnson, a young sportswriter for the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, got his start in the winter of 1893-94, when he was elected president of a resurrected Western League. Within seven seasons, he transformed this high minor league into a competitive rival of the National League.
In 1901, Johnson claimed major league status for his circuit, now called the American League, embarking upon the bold action required to legitimatize that designation. Energetic, visionary, ruthless, and autocratic, Johnson replaced second-tier AL venues (like Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Buffalo) with established major league sites recently vacated by the National League (Washington and Baltimore) while forcing his circuit into others that retained an NL club (like Boston, Philadelphia, and thereafter St. Louis and New York). He also selected franchise owners and club managers, while financing — mostly with the money of Cleveland coal magnate Charles W. Somers — widespread raids on NL ballplaying talent that quickly achieved on-field parity with the NL and success at the turnstiles for the fledgling major league.2
A January 1903 conference that established peace between the National and American Leagues only enhanced Johnson’s power. Ban became the AL representative on the National Commission, the newly created three-member governing body of Organized Baseball.3 In the ensuing years, Johnson’s influence over National Commission chairman Garry Herrmann resulted in many inter-league disputes being settled in AL favor. But in time the perception that Johnson controlled the Commission also helped sow the seed of challenge to his command of American League affairs. That challenge, however, was years in the making. For the first 15 seasons of its existence, Johnson’s pronouncements were law in the American League.
In the years just prior to American entry into World War I, AL franchises were acquired by men of financial means unbeholden to the league president. They soon chaffed under his ukase. Particularly restive were Jacob Ruppert and Til Huston, new owners of the New York Yankees, and Harry Frazee, boss of the Boston Red Sox. In time, they joined an AL club owner insurrection against Johnson rule. Ban’s principal adversary, however, was not these newcomers. It was his oldest friend in baseball: Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey.
The friendship dated from the early 1890s when sportswriter Johnson and Cincinnati Reds manager Comiskey became off-field hunting companions and drinking buddies. Comiskey played an important role in securing Ban’s post as Western League president,4 and Johnson reciprocated with indispensable support for the relocation of Comiskey’s St. Paul Saints to Chicago for the 1900 season. Thereafter, the two worked in concert to secure success for the American League. Their relationship was not without tension but remained intact until splintered by a fateful decision by the league president in early 1919. Anxious to bolster his pitching staff, Comiskey was incensed when Johnson resolved competing claims to veteran right-hander Jack Quinn in favor of the Yankees rather than the White Sox.5
Later that year, Comiskey and other club owners aggrieved by Johnson decisions and intent upon reducing the league president’s powers gained control of the American League board of directors.6 In September 1919, they authorized a probe of Johnson’s finances, which was to be conducted by White Sox corporation counsel Afred S. Austrian.7 Simultaneously, support for restructuring major league governance and the appointment of federal district court judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis to succeed outgoing National Commission chairman Garry Herrmann surfaced.8 All of this, however, was put on hold by the playing of the soon-to-be-infamous 1919 World Series, won in eight games by the Cincinnati Reds.
Ban Johnson orchestrated the pivotal event of the Black Sox criminal trial: the retrieval of defendant Bill Burns from Texas and his transport to Chicago where he was persuaded to turn State’s evidence. (SABR-Rucker Archive)
B. Investigation of the 1919 World Series
A detailed accounting of the corruption of the 1919 fall classic can be found elsewhere and is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that syndicated sportswriter Hugh Fullerton was not the only observer to have reservations about the White Sox’s World Series play. Both Comiskey and Johnson had their suspicions and acted upon them, each instituting private inquiry into the rumor that Chicago players had dumped the Series in return for payoffs from in-the-know gamblers.
Given their positions, both Comiskey and Johnson had the right — indeed, the obligation — to investigate allegations that White Sox players had been corrupted. Nothing less than maintenance of public confidence in the integrity of the game was at stake. But neither man’s motives were snow white. For Comiskey, the question ultimately devolved to whether star members of his championship ball club remained employable. For Johnson, an investigation provided the vindictive league president the means to strike back at the club owner spearheading opposition to his continued authority.
Word that White Sox players had agreed to a fix of the Series outcome first reached Comiskey via Chicago gambling kingpin Mont Tennes early on the morning of Game Two.9 But Comiskey’s attempts to get National Commission members to intervene were repulsed, or so he later claimed.10 The internal investigation ordered by Comiskey began only days after the Series ended, with White Sox manager Kid Gleason and front office functionary Norris O’Neill traveling to St. Louis to query local theater owner and disaffected Sox Series bettor Harry Redmon about fix rumors. According to Redmon, various unnamed Chicago players had deliberately lost the World Series in return for a gambler payoff. St. Louis gamblers Carl Zork and Ben Franklin were identified as fix beneficiaries. Redmon and St. Louis pool hall operator/bookmaker Joe Pesch subsequently repeated this charge to Comiskey’s face during a late December meeting conducted at the Austrian law office in Chicago.11 As a result, a local detective agency led by J.R. Hunter was engaged to shadow Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, and several other targeted Sox players to determine if evidence of such payoffs could be uncovered, but to no avail.12 A $10,000 reward offered by the club for credible evidence of White Sox player wrongdoing also came up empty.13
Unable to uncover evidence supporting the Series fix allegations and with a February 28, 1920 deadline for the offering of new player contracts fast approaching,14 Comiskey adopted the advice of corporate counsel Austrian and tendered contracts for the 1920 season (and sometimes beyond) to Eddie Cicotte, Joe Jackson, Happy Felsch, Lefty Williams, and others suspected of Series perfidy.15
Meanwhile and unbeknownst to Comiskey, AL President Ban Johnson had initiated his own quiet inquiry into 1919 World Series fix rumors. Like Comiskey, the starting point for Johnson’s investigation was St. Louis – perhaps because Johnson’s meeting with informants Harry Redmon and Joe Pesch had been publicized16 or perhaps because Johnson gave credence to the report that Kid Becker, a recently murdered St. Louis gangster, had tried unsuccessfully to rig the 1918 World Series.17 Like Comiskey’s agents, Johnson uncovered only “hearsay and circumstantial” evidence of Series wrongdoing during his trip to the Mound City.18
As the calendar turned to September 1920, the modern-day heroes of the Black Sox saga — sportswriter Hugh Fullerton, Chicago’s Clean Sox players, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis — were silent or engaged with other matters. The only one then with the 1919 World Series on his mind was Ban Johnson.
When Judge Charles A. McDonald, presiding justice of the Cook County criminal courts, convened a grand jury to probe the allegation that a recent Chicago Cubs-Philadelphia Phillies game had been rigged by gamblers, Johnson saw his chance. Two features of this grand jury investigation are of peculiar interest to scandal researchers: (1) verbatim newspaper publication of McDonald’s instructions to the grand jurors set precedent for the extraordinary and unlawful public revelation19 of secret grand jury proceedings that pervaded the Black Sox case; and (2) no mention was made by McDonald of the 1919 World Series.
Rather, the designated grand jury targets were those who gambled on the Cubs-Phillies game and Chicago’s lucrative but illegal baseball pool selling rackets. Yet while he focused on these two specific problems, McDonald, an avid baseball fan, also informed the panel, “You have been called together to consider baseball gambling in all its ramifications. A stain has been placed on the great national American game and you and the public will want to know all about it.”20
Apart from a brief appearance by Chicago Cubs club president William L. Veeck Sr. on September 8, the grand jury entertained no baseball-connected witnesses until a substantive session was conducted almost two weeks later. But in the interim, the pivotal event of the Black Sox saga quietly took place off-stage: a private meeting between Judge McDonald and American League President Johnson. The two men were longtime acquaintances. Indeed, Johnson had recently floated veteran jurist McDonald as a potential successor for National Commission chairman Garry Herrmann.21
The particulars of the Johnson-McDonald meeting — date, place, etc. — remain uncertain.22 Its consequences, however, are unmistakable. When the grand jury reconvened, the Cubs-Phillies game and baseball pool operations became inquiry sidelights. The investigation now concentrated on allegations of game-fixing in major league baseball, especially those pertaining to the 1919 World Series.
Although Johnson was the instigator of the grand jury probe into Series corruption, he was, ironically, of little real use in uncovering persuasive evidence of same. For the time being, the AL president remained fixated on his suspicions of a St. Louis origin for the fix. But in late September, the true contours of the Black Sox Scandal were revealed in the law office of White Sox corporation attorney Austrian, the chambers of Judge McDonald, and inside the grand jury room where Eddie Cicotte, Joe Jackson, and Lefty Williams admitted to complicity in the Series fix. Before the month was out, the eight Chicago players now branded the Black Sox and Eastern gamblers Joseph “Sport” Sullivan and Rachael Brown stood publicly accused by the grand jury.
While the grand jury was making headway at the courthouse, Johnson remained busy. Although disappointed by the declination of the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency to take up the investigation,23 other Johnson operatives, including the Cal Crim Detective Agency of Cincinnati, supplied him with intelligence on peripheral scandal figures like Cincinnati lumberman Fred Mowbray, local betting commissioner Phil Hahn, and small-time gamblers like Ben and Lou Levi.24 Johnson conveyed much of this scuttlebutt to the lead grand jury prosecutor, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Hartley Replogle,25 but to little practical effect. Neither Mowbray, the Levi brothers, nor any St. Louis villains were among the 13 defendants ultimately indicted by the grand jury.26
C. Johnson Involvement in the Criminal Prosecution of the Black Sox Defendants
The wholesale changing of the guard at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) following a Republican Party landslide in the elections of November 1920 obliged Johnson to ingratiate himself with a new cadre of prosecuting attorneys. To that end, Johnson continued his personal quest to uncover incriminating evidence that prosecutors might find helpful.
In furtherance of that effort, the AL Board of Directors, now back under Johnson control, authorized the expenditure of $10,000 to be disbursed entirely at Johnson’s discretion. Enlisted at no cost in the evidence collection campaign was sportswriter Harry Neily who surveilled the activities of out-on-bail West Coast defendants Chick Gandil and Fred McMullin. Among other things, Neily reported that Gandil was angry with Eddie Cicotte.27 On another front, Johnson assured loyal St. Louis Browns owner Phil Ball that “Judge McDonald will lend all the assistance in his power to secure a conviction of the White Sox players [under] indictment.”28
Unhappily for Johnson, a seemingly routine prosecution motion for an adjournment of the criminal trial was assigned to Judge William A. Dever, a jurist with an entirely different mindset. In mid-March 1921, Dever backhanded the arguments of George F. Barrett, the retired Chicago judge recently retained by Johnson to represent American League interests in the proceedings, and set a May 2 deadline for prosecutors to begin trial of their case.29 New Cook County State’s Attorney Robert E. Crowe responded to this surprising decision with a surprise of his own: administrative dismissal of the Black Sox indictments coupled with announcement that the charges would promptly be re-presented to a new grand jury for superseding indictments.
Ban Johnson was among the handful of live witnesses appearing before the second Black Sox grand jury, as the proofs were largely confined to reading previous grand jury testimony into the record.30 But Johnson’s influence upon the proceedings was manifest, reflected in the inclusion of Ben and Lou Levi, Des Moines gambler David Zelcer, and St. Louis hustlers Carl Zork and Ben Franklin – all anathema to the American League president – in the superseding indictments returned on March 26, 1921.31 In time, however, the inclusion of these Midwestern tinhorns would backfire, complicating, if not rendering completely incomprehensible, a prosecution trial scenario which had the World Series fix underwritten by New York underworld kingpin Arnold Rothstein and supervised by trusted Rothstein associates.
Those strategic complications would come home to roost in the future. In the meantime, Johnson upped his involvement in the prosecution’s trial preparations. Via communications with Detroit Tigers club owner Frank Navin, Johnson resumed efforts to procure the cooperation of Eddie Cicotte, but ultimately without success.32 Johnson’s efforts to assist in locating elusive gambler defendant Sport Sullivan were also fruitless.33
Johnson had much better luck finding Bill Burns, a defendant who, if persuaded to turn State’s evidence, could supply prosecutors with the fix insider testimony so desperately needed to prove the case against the non-confessing accused. Crucial to the effort to enlist Burns in the prosecution cause were Philadelphia sportswriter James Isaminger and Burns sidekick Billy Maharg, both recruited by Johnson.34 The ensuing Maharg mission to the Texas/Mexico border to retrieve Burns and return him to Chicago was financed entirely by American League funds disbursed by Ban.35
Thuggish missives to detective Cal Crim reveal the depths to which Johnson was prepared to descend in order to convict the Levi brothers. They also suggest his power over criminal charging decisions. Regarding evasive lumberman Fred Mowbray, Ban told Crim, “It seems to me that you could exact further particulars from this man. On the information before us, it is my judgment that we could have him indicted by the present grand jury. … Don’t you think it possible to give this individual the third degree, and make him tell us all he knows?”36
Mowbray’s trip to Arizona temporarily placed him beyond Crim’s clutches.37 Still, Johnson persisted, informing Crim, “We want to convict the Levi brothers, and if Mowbray won’t come through clean, then it may be necessary for us to indict him. You can ‘hand’ him this and it may serve as good leverage in dragging out the information we want. It is my thought that you should ‘treat him rough.’”38
Perhaps nowhere in the Black Sox case was Johnson more vigorously involved in back-stage maneuvers than during the attempt to extradite gambler defendant Abe Attell, taken into custody in New York City. Rather than Cook County prosecutors, it was Johnson who did the legwork necessary to supply the Manhattan DA with the witnesses needed to procure the uncooperative Attell’s removal to Illinois. Working with Johnson to secure this end were New York Sun sportswriter Joe Vila, syndicated columnist Frank G. Menke, and J.G. Taylor Spink, editor of The Sporting News.39
Daily monitoring of extradition proceedings, elongated by the antics of Attell defense counsel William J. Fallon, was provided to Johnson by courtroom observer James M. Price. As reflected in increasingly concerned communiques from Price, prospects for obtaining Attell’s extradition diminished by the day.40 Following numerous adjournments, the extradition effort finally collapsed and Abe Attell became the second Black Sox defendant — Hal Chase was the first — to defeat prosecutorial application to get him inside the Cook County Courthouse, the best efforts of Ban Johnson going for naught.41
On miscellaneous fronts, Johnson, for reasons unknown, asked retired star Bill Lange, now a San Francisco insurance broker, to do some West Coast snooping on veteran Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Gavvy Cravath.42 Shortly thereafter, Johnson penned a confidential letter to Philadelphia North American editor John C. Eckel asking him to shelve an unflattering news article on prospective star prosecution witness Bill Burns.43 Almost simultaneously, Ban sent a soothing note to Billy Maharg, commiserating with him about extradition proceeding inconveniences.44 Johnson was also back in touch with James Price, urging him to squeeze more info about a reported Series fix meeting held at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago from Browns second baseman (and Swede Risberg’s friend) Joe Gedeon.45
As the mid-June 1921 date for criminal trial approached, Johnson swung into overdrive. It was the AL President, rather than Cook County prosecutors, who kept government witnesses abreast of in-court developments and helped adjust their travel schedules to cope with delays occasioned by unduly prolonged jury selection. It was also Johnson who arranged for prosecution witness lodging in Chicago (and Milwaukee where Bill Burns and Billy Maharg were stashed prior to their courtroom appearances). And it was Johnson who covered most costs incurred by the prosecution in bringing the case against the Black Sox defendants to trial.46 These expenses ran from a nominal $39.11 reimbursement to National Commission secretary John E. Bruce47 to $1,500 expended to secure the attendance at trial of former grand jury prosecutor Hartley Replogle, now a Pennsylvania business executive.48
When it finally got started, the prosecution case began promisingly, with star witness Bill Burns proving an able and quick-witted witness, coolly dispatching ineffectual attacks on his credibility by defense lawyers.49 However, prosecutors paid the price for over-indicting the case, losing momentum when the proceedings segued to testimony about the “penny ante gamblers from Des Moines and St. Louis … brought here to be the goats in the case” instead of the absent Arnold Rothstein, Sport Sullivan, and Abe Attell – the observant summation complaint of Carl Zork’s defense counsel, A. Morgan Frumberg.50 Seeking to recapture the initiative, the prosecution promptly jettisoned Ban Johnson and other scheduled witnesses and ended its case on a high note with effective testimony from unindicted fix conspirator Billy Maharg.
It made no difference. Despite the presentation of a facially overwhelming and unrefuted case against defendants Eddie Cicotte, Joe Jackson, and Lefty Williams — and strong, if more circumstantial, proof of fix complicity proffered against Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, and gambler David Zelcer — the jury swiftly returned universal not-guilty verdicts.51 Less than 24 hours later, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis deployed his own version of jury nullification, imposing the punishment of lifetime banishment from Organized Baseball upon the Black Sox, their courtroom exonerations notwithstanding.
Dismayed but undaunted by the trial’s outcome, American League President Ban Johnson expressed his sentiments in a post-trial letter to Hartley Replogle: “The fact that the outfit was freed by the Cook County jury does not alter the conditions one iota, or minimize the magnitude of the offense. The players are as odious to a clean, right-thinking public as the crooks and thieves they dealt with. … Failure to secure convictions is disappointing but a lesson has been taught.”52
D. Coda
Although the honor is customarily accorded to Hugh Fullerton or Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the pivotal character in the Black Sox saga is Ban Johnson. However suspect his motives or questionable his methods, Johnson was the linchpin of exposure of 1919 World Series skullduggery. But for Johnson, there would not have been any real investigation into the integrity of Series play. And without that inquiry, today the Series fix would remain, at most, an ancient rumor — with Shoeless Joe Jackson and perhaps other corrupted White Sox players having long ago been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
As noted at the outset, suspicions about the 1919 Series were old news by September 1920. Ban Johnson changed that, his intercession with Judge McDonald about using a newly empaneled grand jury to probe World Series bona fides (and McDonald’s agreement to it) being the turning point of the scandal. Without that grand jury inquiry, the admissions of fix complicity by Eddie Cicotte, Joe Jackson, and Lefty Williams (plus Happy Felsch53) would never have been generated. And without such illuminating testimony, no criminal charges would have been handed down against the World Series conspirators.
Also underappreciated is Johnson’s essential role in the ensuing prosecution of the accused. Here it is important to recognize that the passion of present-day Black Sox aficionados was not shared by Chicago law enforcement authorities of a century ago. When newly elected Cook County State’s Attorney Robert E. Crowe assumed office on December 1, 1920, he was confronted by Prohibition-fueled mobster violence, rampant street crime, racial unrest, and ever-present political corruption, all of which required the immediate attention of his office. However notorious, the fixing of a sporting event did not compare, presenting no danger to public order or to the wellbeing of Chicago citizens. Given that, the Black Sox indictments were viewed as a distraction, nuisance charges inherited from the prior administration.54
This perhaps explains why Crowe did little more than assign staff attorneys to the Black Sox case. The SAO performed no further investigation of the crime, conducted no witness interviews, collected no new evidence. Those chores were left entirely to Ban Johnson, who undertook them with relish and unflinching resort to the American League checkbook.
And as he had at the grand jury stage of the proceedings, it was Johnson who orchestrated the pivotal event of the Black Sox criminal trial: the retrieval of defendant Bill Burns from Texas and his transport to Chicago where Johnson himself and AL attorney George F. Barrett persuaded Burns to turn State’s evidence. Without Burns and his fix insider testimony, prosecutors would not have had a viable case at trial. And without Burns’s testimony, history would be deprived of his invaluable revelations about the Series fix.
In the final analysis, the only thing that separates the White Sox-Reds World Series from the wispy rumors of corruption once attached to the 1905, 1914, and 1918 fall classics is incontrovertible evidence that the 1919 Series was, indeed, fixed. But for Ban Johnson, that evidence would not have been uncovered. But for Johnson, there would be no Black Sox Scandal.
BILL LAMB spent more than 30 years as a state/county prosecutor in New Jersey, retiring in 2007. He served as editor of The Inside Game, the quarterly newsletter of the Deadball Era Committee, from 2012 to 2022, and has contributed articles to various SABR publications including the Baseball Research Journal, The National Pastime, and the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee newsletter. Bill is also the 2019 recipient of the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest honor. He lives with his wife Barbara in Meredith, New Hampshire, and can be contacted via wflamb12@yahoo.com.
Notes
1 Copies of Johnson correspondence file material was generously provided to the writer by Black Sox Scandal Research Committee colleague David J. Fletcher. Johnson’s correspondence held at the Giamatti Research Center was also consulted.
2 For a concise but informative bio of Ban Johnson, see his SABR BioProject profile by Joe Santry and Cindy Thomson. Accessed online December 5, 2023.
3 The National Commission consisted of the presidents of the two major leagues, with a third party agreeable to them to serve as Commission chairman. Throughout the life of the National Commission, its chairman was Garry Herrmann, the amiable president of the NL Cincinnati Reds and a friend of Johnson.
4 Although John T. Brush, principal owner of both the Cincinnati Reds and the Western League’s Indianapolis Hoosiers and a frequent target of newsprint criticism by sportswriter Johnson, had grave misgivings about Johnson’s candidacy for president of the Western League, Comiskey persuaded his boss not to block Johnson’s selection for that post. For Johnson’s late-life recollection of events, see John E. Wray and J. Roy Stockton, “Ban Johnson’s Story of His Baseball Career,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 10, 1929: 17.
5 Quinn had pitched for the White Sox late in the 1918 season, posting a 5-1 record. Prior to that, Quinn hurled for the Vernon Tigers of the Pacific Coast League before the circuit suspended operations in July. Thereafter, Quinn signed with Chicago but New York claimed him for 1919 pursuant to purchase of the pitcher’s contract from Vernon.
6 At the time, the five-member AL board of directors included three Johnson rule insurrectionists: Comiskey, Ruppert, and Frazee.
7 “Orders Investigation of Financial Affairs,” New York Times, September 17, 1919: 10; “American League Inquiry Ordered,” Indianapolis Star, September 17, 1919: 14; and newspapers nationwide.
8 Same as above.
9 Per Comiskey’s testimony at the 1921 criminal trial and the 1924 civil trial of Joe Jackson’s breach of contract lawsuit against the White Sox. Years later and well after Comiskey’s death, Hugh Fullerton claimed that he had confronted Comiskey (and AL President Ban Johnson and Pittsburgh Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss, too) with evidence that the Series had been rigged before the start of Game One. See Hugh Fullerton, “I Recall,” The Sporting News, October 17, 1935: 2. This assertion directly contradicted the sworn testimony that Fullerton gave at the Jackson civil trial and is not credible in the writer’s opinion.
10 Per the Comiskey criminal and civil trial testimony. The informative transcript of the civil trial is now available to the public. See Jacob Pomrenke and David J. Fletcher, eds., Joe Jackson, Plaintiff, vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club, Defendant (Chicago: Eckhartz Press, 2023).
11 During his testimony at the Black Sox criminal trial, White Sox secretary Harry Grabiner defended the club’s failure to take immediate action, dismissing the Redmon-Pesch allegations as “the hard luck yarn of a [Series betting] loser.” See “Chicago Club Unaware Games Were Thrown,” Baltimore Sun, October 28, 1920: 11; “Sox Secretary Denies Knowledge of Series Fixing,” Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1920: 19.
12 For more, see Gene Carney, “Comiskey’s Detectives,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 37, Fall 2009.
13 As reported in “Comiskey’s Reward Stands Unclaimed,” Birmingham (Alabama) News, December 30, 1919: 3; “Comiskey Offers Reward of $10,000,” Fall River (Massachusetts) Globe, December 30, 1919: 11; and elsewhere.
14 Under American League rules, any 1919 White Sox player not tendered a contract by February 28, 1920, became an immediate free agent, able to sign with any other club in Organized Baseball.
15 As Comiskey and Austrian testified in 1924. Black Sox Scandal Research Committee founder Gene Carney and other modern researchers take the view (akin to that adopted by the Jackson civil trial jurors) that the Sox internal investigation uncovered more than ample evidence of player corruption but that Comiskey chose to sign those players to new contracts anyway in the hope that the World Series fix would not be exposed. See Gene Carney, Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006).
16 See again the newspaper articles cited in Endnote 13.
17 See John E. Wray and J. Roy Stockton, “Ban Johnson Tells of Minor Scandals Which Led Up to the Plot of 1919,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 14, 1929: 26.
18 As recounted in John E. Wray and J. Roy Stockton, “Ban Johnson Tells How Tip That Series Was ‘Fixed’ Went Astray,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 16, 1929: 7. During his St. Louis visit, Johnson’s principal informant was local bookmaker Thomas Kearney.
19 The text of Judge McDonald’s instructions to the grand jury was published complete and verbatim in the Chicago Daily Journal, Chicago Daily News, and Chicago Evening Post, September 7, 1920.
20 Same as above. The court’s exhortation reportedly elicited a cheer from the grand jurors, according to the Chicago Herald Examiner and Chicago Tribune, September 8, 1920.
21 Per the Washington Post, August 4, 1920. See also, Chicago Evening Post, September 7, 1920. Decades later, McDonald stated that Garry Herrmann once offered him “the job later given to Judge Landis,” but McDonald declined because “I initiated the Black Sox probe.” See James Doherty, “Judge M’Donald Recalls Events of Long Career,” Chicago Tribune, December 17, 1944: 15
22 Rothstein biographer David Pietrusza places the Johnson-McDonald meeting at Chicago’s Edgewater Golf Club. Black Sox Committee gambling authority Bruce Allardice suspects that the conclave was conducted at the nearby Edgewater Beach Hotel.
23 The Pinkerton refusal was conveyed to Johnson in a September 17, 1920 letter from agency honcho William E. Webster.
24 Such info is embodied in a September 23-24, 1920 report of Operative No. 1. A fuller account of the Cincinnati-based hearsay uncovered by the Crim Agency is provided in Susan Dellinger, Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series (Cincinnati: Emmis Books, 2006).
25 For example, info on the Levis’ World Series betting was conveyed in Johnson’s October 19, 1920 letter to Replogle.
26 The indictments formally returned by the grand jury on October 25, 1920 renamed the eight White Sox players previously accused, but expanded the roster of gambler defendants to include Bill Burns, Hal Chase, and Abe Attell.
27 Per letters of Neily to Johnson dated January 22 and February 2, 1921.
28 Letter of Johnson to Ball, dated March 7, 1921.
29 Barrett had been retained when the attorney originally designated as AL counsel, former Chicago prosecutor James C. O’Brien, abruptly switched sides and took up the defense of Chick Gandil.
30 The other live grand jury witnesses were White Sox groupie Sam Pass, St. Louis Browns infielder Joe Gedeon, Harry Redmon, and Joe Pesch.
31 Since the original indictments were returned in late October 1920, the Crim Agency had succeeded in identifying Zelcer as Bennett, a fix partner of Abe Attell. Johnson then passed along this intelligence to prosecutors.
32 As embodied in Johnson letters to Navin marked “personal and confidential.” Detroit-area native Cicotte had broken in with the Tigers in 1905 and remained on friendly terms with club boss Navin.
33 As reflected in Johnson correspondence with D.T. Green, superintendent of the Pinkerton office in Boston.
34 The Johnson correspondence file is awash in communications to and from Isaminger and Maharg.
35 Expense payments complete with vouchers to be signed by Maharg are included in the Johnson correspondence file.
36 Letter of Johnson to Crim, April 9, 1921.
37 Letter of Crim to Johnson, April 11, 1921.
38 Letter of Johnson to Crim, April 22, 1921.
39 The Johnson correspondence file contains an assortment of telegrams to and from Vila, Menke, and Spink.
40 The Johnson correspondence file is replete with late April 1921 telegrams between Johnson and Price.
41 Prosecutorial incompetence had earlier frustrated the effort to extradite Chase from California. A more detailed account of Black Sox-related extradition proceedings is provided by the author in Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2013), 93-100.
42 Info about Cravath was provided in a letter of Lange to Johnson, dated May 26, 1921. Perhaps Johnson was seeking insight into the rumored fix of the August 31, 1920 Cubs-Phillies game that had prompted Judge McDonald to empanel the original Black Sox grand jury. Whatever the case, Lange had previously informed Johnson that his efforts to clean up baseball were supported by jazz singer Al Jolson.
43 Letter of Johnson to Eckel, dated May 28, 1921.
44 Letter of Johnson to Maharg, dated May 28, 1921, in which Johnson stated, “Had I been there [in court] last Wednesday, I am sure that I could have influenced the DA into putting you on the stand at the time that [Chicago Cubs club secretary John] Seys testified. … I appreciate immensely your splendid efforts to assist the prosecutor.”
45 Letter of Johnson to Price, dated May 31, 1921. Later, an eight-page handwritten letter from Price provided Johnson with a verbatim account of Price’s follow-up grilling of Gedeon, but Joe remained less than forthcoming about the Sherman Hotel fix meeting.
46 In a July 28, 1921 letter to Reds President Garry Herrmann about expenses, Johnson stated that “the American League is paying the bills for this trial.” A copy of the resolution adopted by the AL Board of Directors authorizing “the expenditure by the President of the league of whatever sum of money may be deemed necessary by him … in addition to the $10,000 authorized by the Board at the December 1920 meeting” is contained in the Johnson correspondence file.
47 Reflected in a July 19, 1921 letter of Bruce to Johnson subordinate Will Harridge.
48 Replogle itemized his expenses in an August 25, 1921 letter to attorney Charles V. Barrett, a Chicago Republican Party powerbroker who served as legal counsel for the American League. Charles was the younger brother of AL Black Sox trial counsel George F. Barrett.
49 Burns’s witness stand performance drew rave reviews in the press. Illustrative is the observation of the Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1921: 33: “The State’s chief witness … hurled excellent ball, permitting the defense few hits in the grilling cross-examination.”
50 As quoted in the Chicago Herald-Examiner, Washington Post, and elsewhere, August 2, 1921.
51 The jury was out for less than three hours. The writer’s analysis of the Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams acquittals is set forth in “Jury Nullification and the Not Guilty Verdicts in the Black Sox Case,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2, Fall 2015, 47-56. Note: The charges against the Levi brothers were dismissed by the court for lack of evidence and not submitted to the jury.
52 Letter of Johnson to Replogle, dated August 25, 1921.
53 After Cicotte’s grand jury testimony was published, Felsch confessed his own fix involvement to a Chicago newspaperman. See “I Got Mine — $5,000,” Chicago Evening American, September 30, 1920: 1.
54 Early in Crowe’s tenure, an anonymous SAO attorney spread word that the Black Sox case was to be dropped. See “Indicted Sox to Escape Court,” (New London, Connecticut) Evening Day, January 24, 1921: 3; “Indicted Sox May Never Be Forced to Face Trial,” New York Herald, January 24, 1921: 11. But adverse public reaction to the report as well as Crowe’s own chagrin over staff leaks kept the prosecution on track.