Fred McMullin: A Puzzling Inclusion in the Black Sox Scandal

This article was originally published in the December 2025 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.

One of the unsolved puzzles of the Black Sox Scandal is the inclusion of substitute infielder Fred McMullin in the plot to throw the 1919 World Series. Given that there was little prospect that McMullin, a bench warmer who had seen only as-needed playing time during the regular season, would have a chance to influence the outcome of the Series, the rationale for including him in the fix conspiracy is not an obvious one.

This essay explores explanations offered by various Black Sox commentators before offering a simple, if unverifiable, thesis of its own: Fred McMullin was included in the fix because he was a clubhouse ally of fix ringleader Chick Gandil as well as a good friend of co-conspirator Swede Risberg. Preceding analysis of the issue is exposition intended to place this deduction in context.

Background

As the playing of the 1919 World Series approached, Fred McMullin was a soon-to-be-28-year-old utility infielder wrapping up his fourth season with the American League champion Chicago White Sox. Born in Kansas but raised in California, McMullin was a 1910 graduate of Los Angeles High School1 and of the city’s amateur and semipro baseball circuits.2

He entered the professional ranks in late 1910, making a one-game appearance for the Sacramento Sacts of the Class AA Pacific Coast League. After a summer back in the LA area playing semipro ball, McMullin spent the 1912 through 1914 seasons in the Class B Northwestern League, flunking a one-game major league audition with the Detroit Tigers in August 1914.3

In 1915, McMullin returned to the Pacific Coast League where adversaries of his Los Angeles Angels club included future White Sox teammates Swede Risberg (Vernon Tigers) and Lefty Williams (Salt Lake City Bees). Although the two soon became competitors for a starting berth with the Sox, McMullin and Risberg also became good friends. The two even shared an October 13 birthday, although McMullin was three years older than Risberg.

In 1916, McMullin and Williams became members of the juggernaut that club boss Charles Comiskey was assembling in Chicago, joining a White Sox team that already featured future Hall of Famers Eddie Collins, Red Faber, and Ray Schalk; established stars Shoeless Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte; and rising talents Buck Weaver and Happy Felsch. Deployed around the infield, McMullin batted a respectable .257 in 68 appearances and solidified his place on the roster.

The next spring, Risberg joined the White Sox, beating out McMullin for the everyday shortstop post. Fred, however, provided useful service as a fill-in for Risberg and third baseman Weaver during the regular season for a Chicago club that finished 100-54-2 and won its first AL pennant in 11 years. When Risberg’s injury necessitated moving Weaver over to shortstop for the 1917 World Series, McMullin became the starting third baseman against the NL champion New York Giants.

Playing every game in the World Series, McMullin batted a meager .125 (3-for-24) but supplied flawless defense in 16 chances as Chicago prevailed in six games and assumed the mantel of world champions.

Despite their success on the field, the White Sox were not a happy bunch, the clubhouse riven by factions. McMullin aligned himself with the clique headed by veteran first baseman Chick Gandil, a hardscrabble crew that also included his pal Risberg, staff ace Eddie Cicotte, Buck Weaver, and Happy Felsch — united by disdain of college-educated, socially superior, and highly-paid team captain Eddie Collins. Most of them disliked White Sox owner Comiskey, as well.

America’s entry into World War I wreaked havoc on the White Sox’ 1918 campaign. Pitcher Jim Scott had enlisted earlier and in mid-season Eddie Collins and Red Faber left the club to join the military, actions heartily endorsed by patriotic employer Comiskey. Meanwhile, Joe Jackson, Happy Felsch, and Lefty Williams avoided service by taking defense industry jobs, moves that drew harsh public rebukes from Comiskey.

McMullin and Risberg presumably remained in the club boss’s good graces, as both entered the military in early August. Thereafter, the club floundered to a sixth-place finish in the final AL standings and manager Pants Rowland got the axe. Kid Gleason became Chicago’s new field leader.

The 1919 Season

With the club’s military veteran and slacker contingents reunited for the 1919 season, the White Sox returned to prominence on the diamond and malcontent in the clubhouse. Having batted a solid .277 in 70 games the previous year, McMullin was a spring contract holdout but eventually signed for $2,750. He then lost the annual competition with Risberg for the shortstop job and assumed the familiar role of utility player.

As before, McMullin proved a handy backup, providing competent defense when called upon to play second or third base. He also did good work with the stick, batting a career-high .294 in 60 appearances for the pennant-bound White Sox. Yet for reasons unclear, McMullin’s name disappeared from box scores between a pinch-hitting appearance on August 25 and taking over for Collins at second base on September 24 — a 23-game stretch during which Fred saw no game action.

For at least some of this period, McMullin was away from the club, scouting the Cincinnati Reds, the likely opponent in the upcoming World Series. On September 18, White Sox beat reporter Irving Sanborn reported, “Fred McMullin returned from a brief visit to Cincinnati, during which he watched the Reds play Boston and New York. He was closeted with Manager Gleason for a couple of hours,” presumably discussing the strategies required to defeat the Reds.4 By this time, however, and unbeknownst to Gleason, the plot to throw the World Series was already afoot.

More than a century after the fact, the precise origins of 1919 World Series corruption remain indistinct. The writer’s suspicion that the fix was the brainchild of Chick Gandil and/or Boston bookmaker Sport Sullivan is sketched out in an essay published in the June 2025 newsletter.5 Some evidence suggests that throwing the Series was being ruminated as early as mid-August.6 As the plotting became more concrete, Cicotte, scheduled to make multiple starts in the elongated best-of-nine Series, was recruited for the fix by Gandil and Sullivan.

In The Betrayal, author Charles Fountain asserts it is “quite certain that Swede Risberg and Fred McMullin, Gandil’s running mates, were involved from the beginning.”7 That may be slightly overstated but it seems plain that Risberg and McMullin enlisted in the fix early. Both men were in attendance at the initial mid-September players-only fix meeting conducted at the Ansonia Hotel in New York City. Eddie Cicotte later alleged, implausibly, that he was a reluctant conspirator hectored by McMullin to commit to throwing the Series during that conclave.8

By all accounts, McMullin was not present when Gandil, Cicotte, Williams, Weaver, and Felsch met with Sullivan and “Brown,” likely agents of underworld financier and fix banker Arnold Rothstein, at the Warner Hotel in Chicago to cement arrangements shortly before the White Sox left town for the Series opener. But McMullin was among the Black Sox who entertained a second and distinct fix proposition from Sleepy Bill Burns and Abe Attell at the Sinton Hotel in Cincinnati on the day before Game One.9

In light of these activities, author Don Zminda places McMullin in the top level of the corruption echelon, “actively engaged in planning and carrying out the [Series] fix” with Gandil, Cicotte, and Risberg.10

The 1919 World Series

Although a late surge of money on the Reds made Cincinnati a slight betting favorite, baseball cognoscenti as well as most of the sporting press predicted a White Sox victory in the World Series. But a fourth-inning meltdown by Cicotte left the Sox in a deep hole in Game One. With Chicago hopelessly trailing 8-1 to begin the eighth inning, McMullin pinch hit for reliever Roy Wilkinson and stroked a single to center. Three straight outs followed, leaving Fred stranded on first. Final score: Cincinnati 9, Chicago 1.

McMullin was afforded a real chance to affect the game’s outcome the following afternoon. With Chicago behind 4-2 with two out in the ninth and Ray Schalk on base, Fred pinch hit for starting pitcher Lefty Williams. Given the opportunity to keep Sox victory hopes alive, McMullin doused them with a meek groundout to second.

After the Game Two loss, McMullin was among the corrupted players awaiting an expected $40,000 payout at the Sinton Hotel. Instead, Bill Burns delivered them just $10,000, counted out in a hotel room bathroom by Risberg and McMullin. This brought Black Sox collusion with the Burns-Attell cartel to an abrupt end.11 Although it turned out that the competition had six more games to run, McMullin saw no further action on the field, remaining glued to the bench as the Reds secured World Series laurels with a one-sided victory in Game Eight.

Developments in 1920

Although there was some sportswriter grumbling about the bona fides of the Reds triumph, most of the baseball world accepted the unexpected World Series outcome with good grace. Comiskey, however, was unsettled by insinuations about his club’s performance and quietly engaged a private detective agency, Hunter’s Secret Service, to investigate.

Contacted by J.R. Hunter at home in Los Angeles, McMullin professed his innocence and agreed to assist the inquiry, vowing to “do anything to develop the true facts, as baseball would be a dead issue if anything [like a World Series fix] could be put over.”12 Although aware of rumors and innuendo, McMullin claimed he had no personal knowledge of a fix and later proved unable to elicit anything about it from his friend Chick Gandil, or so McMullin said.13 Sometime thereafter, Comiskey concluded that fix rumors could not be substantiated and offered his suspected players new contracts, lest they become free agents.14 Like several other Black Sox, McMullin received a handsome boost for 1920, one that raised his salary to $3,600.15

With the privations of World War I now receding and baseball resurgent, the 1920 season was eagerly awaited. It did not disappoint, with fans enthralled by a season-long three-way battle for the American League crown involving Chicago, Cleveland, and New York, and by the prodigious home run hitting of Babe Ruth. The Yankees slugger hit 54 round-trippers to shatter his own major league record of 29, set one year earlier, and instituted a revolution in the way the game was played. Meanwhile, various major league clubs, including the Chicago White Sox, set new ballpark attendance records in 1920.

McMullin’s performance did little to justify his increased salary. Again relegated to backup infield duty, Fred supplied his customarily reliable defense (only three errors in 90 chances, mostly at third base) but was ineffectual with the bat, posting a career-worst .197 batting average in 46 games. Meanwhile, his Black Sox compatriots were busy covertly tossing selected contests. Illuminating dissection of the Sox’ 1920 game-throwing is provided in incisive articles by Bruce Allardice16 and a comprehensive book by Don Zminda.17 McMullin, however, lacked the playing opportunities necessary to contribute much to the on-field skullduggery.

Allardice does not mention McMullin in his analyses of the Sox’ 1920 game performance. And Zminda does not cite suspicious play by Fred in his examination of the club’s season. But other Black Sox commentators assign an off-field game-fixing role to McMullin, naming him Gandil’s successor as conduit between the corrupted players and gambling interests.18

The accusation has a certain logic, as McMullin was the best-educated Black Sox and likely the smartest, as well. More important, McMullin had already demonstrated his comfort with wrongdoing, having exhibited no reluctance about joining the plot to rig the 1919 Series outcome. And he was likely trusted by his game-fixing teammates. The overriding problem with naming McMullin overseer of 1920 game-fixing is the absence of concrete evidence supporting the charge. Simply put, there is no proof of McMullin’s involvement, only suspicion of it.

Unhappily for McMullin, an allegation that contained far more substance emerged as the 1920 season was drawing to an end — the blockbuster public charge that McMullin and seven other White Sox players had conspired to deliberately lose the World Series for the benefit of in-the-know gamblers.

Exposure of the World Series Fix and Criminal Prosecution

The events which led to the probe of the 1919 World Series by a Cook County (Chicago) grand jury are amply recounted elsewhere. As for McMullin, despite having barely participated in the Series, his name was quickly linked to the burgeoning scandal.

On September 24, 1920, it was publicly revealed that Charles Comiskey was so suspicious of his team’s play in the previous year’s fall classic that he had withheld the losers’ share checks from certain players, including McMullin.19 The next day, the Chicago Tribune identified McMullin by name as one of eight Sox players targeted by the grand jury for indictment as a fix participant.20 A follow-up Page One Tribune exposé, complete with photo of Fred McMullin, then accused him of delivering a “mystery package” presumed to include a fix payoff to the residence of Buck Weaver.21

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, disaffected fix insider Billy Maharg was giving an interview that blew the cover off the rigging of the World Series. According to Maharg, eight White Sox players had agreed to dump the Series in return for a $100,000 payoff from gamblers.22 Shortly thereafter, Eddie Cicotte, Joe Jackson, and Lefty Williams testified to the grand jury that they had agreed to join the plot and received payment for that agreement. Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams each identified Fred McMullin as a fellow fix conspirator. As a result, McMullin was among those criminally charged in conspiracy/fraud-based indictments publicly announced by grand jury foreman Henry Brigham on the afternoon of September 28.23

In response to the charges, McMullin declared his innocence, joining codefendants Buck Weaver and Swede Risberg at a joint press conference wherein the trio announced their intention to fight the charges.24 McMullin maintained a stance of innocence throughout the ensuing legal proceedings and, at least publicly, for the remainder of his life.

McMullin was re-charged in the superseding Black Sox indictments returned by a new grand jury in March 1921,25 but remained at liberty on bail back home in Los Angeles throughout the pretrial period. Strapped for train fare, he did not arrive in Chicago until after the jury selection process had already begun. As a result, the charges against McMullin were severed from the trial of his codefendants. He would be tried at some later date. A secondary defendant to begin with and now absent from the courtroom, McMullin was a wispy presence during the ensuing proceedings, his name only mentioned in passing during the testimony of star prosecution witness Bill Burns.26 Otherwise, McMullin was a nonentity during the trial.

Fred was not a beneficiary of the not-guilty verdicts returned by the jury. Rather, the charges against McMullin and several fugitive gambler defendants were administratively dismissed by the State’s Attorney following the acquittal of the other Black Sox.27 Notwithstanding their courthouse exoneration, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis acted swiftly and severely, permanently banishing the eight acquitted players, including Fred McMullin, from professional baseball.28

Banishment Aftermath

Although McMullin was not one of the Black Sox airing post-banishment grievances (or saying much at all about the scandal, actually),29 he quietly maintained his innocence. Decades after McMullin’s death, a ballplaying acquaintance related that “Fred was awfully quiet, and when I’d ask him about the White Sox thing, he would sort of shake his head and say he didn’t do a thing.”30 According to author Warren Brown, McMullin threatened “to punch anybody in the nose who dared to suggest he was in on any [fix-related] wrongdoing.”31

But otherwise, McMullin was silent about the Series fix. In the mid-1980s, it was reported that McMullin had penned a letter — to be opened only after the last Black Sox had died — in which he allegedly acknowledged reluctant participation in the 1919 Series fix, “throwing in the towel when it became apparent that everybody and his brother was going” to join the fix conspiracy.32 Swede Risberg, the last surviving Black Sox, died in October 1975 but the destruction of this fix missive by McMullin’s wife reduces the evidence of its existence to hearsay supplied by an ex-daughter-in-law.

Previously Proffered Reasons for the Inclusion of McMullin in the Series Fix

Like much else in Black Sox mythology, the long-accepted explanation for the unlikely inclusion of a substitute player like McMullin in the World Series fix can be attributed to Eliot Asinof. In 1963, Eight Men Out readers were informed that Chick Gandil approached Swede Risberg about joining the plot to throw the upcoming World Series. “They discussed it briefly in the locker room, not knowing that another player was lying on a bench behind a set of lockers,” wrote Asinof. “Utility infielder Fred McMullin, a friend of Risberg’s, overheard and wanted in. There was no way to exclude him.”33

But while Asinof popularized the perception, he is not the progenitor of the “overheard conversation” explanation for McMullin’s admission into the fix conspiracy. The story predates 8MO, but its genesis is unclear.

As previously noted, McMullin was barely mentioned during the Black Sox criminal proceedings of 1921. Three years later, he was again a near-cipher when the trial of Joe Jackson’s breach of contract action against the White Sox was conducted in Milwaukee; in a 652-page civil trial record, McMullin’s name appears a mere three times.34 By that time, the public had largely moved on, and the few newspaper and magazine articles that touched on the scandal in the ensuing three decades paid scant attention to McMullin.

The first discovered newsprint account revealing purported insight into McMullin’s admission into the fix appeared in a wire service article by Joe Reichler published in early 1947. Reichler’s article observed that “there has always been some mystery why Fred McMullin, a utility player was taken in. McMullin was not originally in on the ‘deal’ but he said he overheard a conversation among some of the plotters and declared himself in.”35 This tale, however, could not have come from McMullin, as there is utterly no evidence that he ever said any such thing. The source of Reichler’s account is untraceable. Nevertheless, if it had not previously, the notion that an overheard conversation had provided McMullin entry into the fix conspiracy now had a foothold in the Black Sox saga.

Variations of the wire service yarn were published after McMullin’s passing in November 1952. A Montana sportswriter alleged that McMullin “overheard other players talking of the sellout to the gamblers, [and] announced that he was ‘in’ or he would talk out loud, and they told him what the deal was, [and] split with him.”36

Further imaginative detail appeared in McMullin’s obituary in The Sporting News: “McMullin, according to the story told, was soaking an injured ankle when he overheard two of his players discussing the details of how they were going to clean up on the Series. He is said to have demanded to be let in on it, otherwise he threatened to ‘kick over the bucket.’ They explained the arrangements.”37 Conspicuous by its absence from the TSN narrative is anything resembling a source for “the story told.” The obvious question: Told by whom?

When Eliot Asinof turned his attention to the Black Sox Scandal — originally intended as the subject for a television screenplay — in the early 1960s, exhaustive research was not on his agenda. It seems highly improbable that Asinof was acquainted with the then difficult-to-access news articles identified above. Yet somewhere along the line, he evidently absorbed the gist of these reports, and then embellished their scenario — placing the reputed incident in the team locker room, concealing McMullin behind a set of lockers, and identifying Gandil and Risberg as the overheard fix conspirators.

As Eight Men Out provides no sources, where Asinof got these new details is unknown. But they surely did not come from the only persons in a first-hand position to reveal them. Gandil and Risberg both refused to speak to Asinof, while McMullin was dead by then. Rather, the conclusion reached here is that the locker room anecdote is no more than another example of the artistic license that pervades Eight Men Out.38 Indeed, to paraphrase Charles Fountain, it is this gift for narrative invention that makes Eliot Asinof such an engaging storyteller but unreliable historian.

For more than 40 years after its publication, Asinof’s Eight Men Out was viewed as gospel rather than historical fiction. And along with most everything else on its pages, the book’s “overheard conversation” vignette was uncritically accepted as bona fide. For example, a 1988 essay arguing that McMullin’s role in the fix had been underestimated reiterated the Asinof telling. Regarding McMullin, “his inclusion in the conspiracy was pure happenstance — an overheard locker room conversation between Gandil and Risberg was his ticket to perfidy,” declared Mike Kopf.39

More than anyone else, SABR Black Sox Scandal committee founder Gene Carney stimulated the recent resurrection of scholarly interest in the story, challenging long-received truths of the 1919 saga. Yet even Carney acquiesced in the Asinof narrative, writing that “apparently Fred McMullin, who was close to Gandil and Risberg, eavesdropped his way into the fix, overhearing its mention in the locker room and insisting on a cut.”40 And today, Baseball-Reference’s wiki-style encyclopedia likewise presents the Asinof account as factual: “McMullin was in on the fix because he overheard a pre-Series conversation between Gandil and Risberg and demanded to be let in.”41

An Alternate Hypothesis

Like much else in Eight Men Out, the “overheard conversation” scenario is dubious. Yet it could have happened, despite the absence of historical evidence. That said, it does not ring true to this writer. Unhappily, definitive settlement of the question why Fred McMullin was admitted into the World Series fix conspiracy is not possible, shrouded by the passage of time and the long-ago death of those in the know.

Offered here is an alternative hypothesis, a best guess based on the present record of the Black Sox Scandal: Fred McMullin’s inclusion in the fix was nothing more than a byproduct of his membership in the Chick Gandil clique, as well as his friendship with fix strongman Swede Risberg.42

In his self-serving and often dishonest 1956 account of the scandal, Gandil placed McMullin among the teammates recruited for the fix by Cicotte and himself, and in no way differentiated McMullin from the other Black Sox.43 “Cicotte and I … tried to figure out which players might be interested [in joining the fix] … [and] finally decided on Jackson, Weaver, Risberg, Felsch, McMullin and Williams,” Gandil related.44

Enlightening here, by the way, is the plotter mindset. Neither Gandil nor Cicotte were master criminals, well versed in how to avoid detection. If they were, the World Series conspiracy would have been confined to themselves and indispensable helpmates like pitcher Lefty Williams and perhaps star batter Joe Jackson. The others were unneeded, and their inclusion in the fix only increased the risk of its exposure.

But there is little reason to believe that Gandil gave this much thought. To the contrary, he did not expect to get caught and was disposed to share the expected fix windfall with select friends. Revelatory on this point is an illuminating January 1927 Collyer’s Eye article recently brought to light by Bruce Allardice.45 The article describes how Gandil informed former teammate Joe Gedeon of the fix beforehand so Gedeon could bet the World Series accordingly. Gedeon ended up winning about $900 on his Series wagers.46

If Gandil’s largesse extended to the likes of Joe Gedeon of the St. Louis Browns, he was not likely to ignore White Sox clubhouse allies like Fred McMullin (or Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, and Happy Felsch.) Coconspirators Jackson and Williams may have been outsiders, but the other Black Sox were all members of a longstanding clique headed by Gandil and men of similar disposition toward team captain Collins and club boss Comiskey.

With Gandil anticipating a fix payoff approaching six figures, if not more, there would be enough money to include such compadres in the corruption gravy. On top of that, McMullin’s close friendship with Risberg also militated bringing him into the fix fold.

In the final analysis, there is no need, beyond a literary one, to have Fred McMullin’s inclusion in the World Series fix occasioned by locker room eavesdropping. A more plausible explanation is available: McMullin was admitted into the fix conspiracy because he was a teammate, friend, and clubhouse ally of its ringleader.

Acknowledgments

The writer is indebted to committee colleagues Bruce Allardice, Jacob Pomrenke, Leman Saunders, Richard Smiley, and Don Zminda for supplying direction to sources and insight during the research of this essay.

Notes

1 McMullin’s name appears among the Los Angeles High School graduates published in “Over 400 Boys and Girls Will Graduate from Los Angeles and Polytechnic High Schools,” Los Angeles Evening Record, June 8, 1910.

2 For a more thorough look at McMullin’s early baseball career, consult his SABR BioProject profile by Jacob Pomrenke.

3 McMullin struck out in his lone plate appearance and mishandled a fielding chance as a late-inning substitute for Tigers shortstop Donie Bush in a 9-2 loss to Boston.

4 I.E. Sanborn, “Notes,” Chicago Tribune, September 18, 1919: 23. Thanks to Don Zminda for directing the writer to this article.

5 See Bill Lamb, “The Financing of the Fix: An Educated Hypothesis,” SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter, Vol. 17, No. 1 (June 2025), 11.

6 See e.g., the grand jury testimony of former Chicago Cubs club owner Charles Weeghman as reported in “Weeghman Received Warning,” Boston Globe, September 26, 1920: 15; “Charges Series ‘Fixing’ Began in August,” New York Times, September 26, 1920: 23; and elsewhere.

7 Charles Fountain, The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 78.

8 Per the grand jury testimony of Eddie Cicotte on September 28, 1920. Aside from Joe Jackson, Cicotte is the least trustworthy Black Sox when it comes to speaking about his fix involvement. And this is one of Cicotte’s most transparently false statements, the notion that he needed browbeating to enter a conspiracy that Cicotte himself was pivotal to generating being risible.

9 Per the criminal trial testimony of Bill Burns as reported in the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and newspapers nationwide, July 20, 1921.

10 Don Zminda, Double Plays and Double Crosses: The Black Sox and Baseball in 1920 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

11 Recounted in the criminal trial testimony of Bill Burns and subsequently reiterated in the civil deposition that Burns gave for the breach of contract lawsuit instituted by Joe Jackson against the White Sox.

12 Gene Carney, “Comiskey’s Detectives,” SABR Baseball Research Journal (Fall 2009), quoting from correspondence by J.R. Hunter to White Sox corporation counsel Alfred S. Austrian, now reposed in the Black Sox Scandal collection at the Chicago History Museum.

13 Carney, “Comiskey’s Detectives.”

14 Under league rules, any player not offered a contract for the coming season by the end of February became a free agent.

15 The exception here was Chick Gandil, tendered the same $4,000 that he had played for in 1919. Gandil, whose secret fix take may have exceeded $40,000, rejected his 1920 contract offer, was thereafter suspended by Comiskey, and never played another major league game.

16 See Bruce Allardice, “New Evidence White Sox Threw More Games in 1920,” SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter, Vol. 11, No. 1 (June 2019), 5-6; and “‘Playing Rotten, It Ain’t That Hard to Do’: How the Black Sox Threw the 1920 Pennant,” SABR Baseball Research Journal (Spring 2016).

17 Zminda, Double Plays and Double Crosses.

18 See e.g., Rick Huhn, Eddie Collins: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2008), 151-152; Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (New York: Henry Holt, 1963), 145. The Baseball-Reference article on the Black Sox Scandal similarly accuses McMullin of being “the chief liaison between the players and gamblers in 1920 when other games were suspected of being thrown.”

19 As reported by James L. Kilgallen, “Ban Johnson Admits Hearing That Gamblers Have Grip on Sox Players,” Atlanta Constitution, September 24, 1920: 10; “Will the Sox Dare Win?” Kansas City Times, September 24, 1920: 1; and elsewhere.

20 See “Inside Story of Plot to Buy World Series,” Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1920: 1.

21 “First Evidence of Money Paid to Sox Bared,” Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1920: 1.

22 See James C. Isaminger, “Gamblers Promised White Sox $100,000 To Lose,” Philadelphia North American, September 28, 1920: 1. Within 24 hours, Maharg’s allegations were republished in newspapers coast-to-coast.

23 As reported in the Chicago Daily News, Chicago Evening Post, and in newspapers nationwide, September 28, 1920. The original Black Sox indictments were not formally returned in court for another month.

24 Chicago Herald-Examiner, October 2, 1920.

25 The original indictments were administratively dismissed for strategic reasons by the Cook County State’s Attorneys Office. The superseding indictments re-charged the eight White Sox players and five gamblers previously indicted and added five new gambler defendants.

26 McMullin was likely mentioned in Billy Maharg’s testimony about the pre-Game One meeting at the Sinton Hotel, as well. But with the criminal trial transcript unavailable, that is only educated surmise. McMullin’s name, and that of the other non-confessing defendants, was deleted from the Cicotte/Jackson/Williams grand jury testimony when it was introduced in evidence during the Black Sox criminal trial.

27 The dismissals were reported in the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere, August 4, 1921.

28 Landis’s edict was promulgated within hours of the jury’s verdict and made front-page headlines across the nation. See e.g., “Landis Bans ‘Black Sox’ from Game,” Bridgeport (Connecticut) Times, August 3, 1921: 1; “Landis Banishes Black Sox from Organized Ball,” Kansas City (Kansas) Kansan, August 3, 1921: 2; “Black Sox Are Banned,” Long Beach (California) Daily Telegram, August 3, 1921: 1.

29 See Jacob Pomrenke, “After the Fall: The Post-Black Sox Scandal Interviews,” SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter, Vol. 8, No. 1 (June 2016), 6-10, a comprehensive bibliography of statements relating to the World Series fix made by the banished players. There are no such statements attributed to Fred McMullin.

30 Shav Glick, “He’s a Rose by Another Name,” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 2004: 38.

31 Warren Brown, The Chicago White Sox (New York: Putnam, 1952), 99.

32 See David Zaslawsky, “Memories of Black Sox Scandal Recalled at World Series Time,” Palm Springs (California) Desert Sun, October 18, 1986. See also, Rick Davis, “Memories of 1919,” Palm Springs Desert Sun, August 26, 2001. The writer is indebted to committee colleague Leman Saunders for providing him with these intriguing news articles.

33 Asinof, Eight Men Out, 17. A quarter-century later, the screenplay authored by Asinof and director John Sayles for the film version of 8MO relocated the incident to a nightspot men’s room.

34 McMullin is mentioned twice in the deposition of Bill Burns, and once in Billy Maharg’s deposition. See Joe Jackson, Plaintiff vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club, Defendant, Jacob Pomrenke and David J. Fletcher, eds. (Chicago: Eckhartz Press, 2023): Burns, 276 and 278; Maharg, 296.

35 Joe Reichler, “Only $47,000 Changed Hands in ‘Black Sox’ Scandal of 1919,” Newark Star-Ledger, February 20, 1947: 38. Thanks to Bruce Allardice for directing the writer to this article.

36 Roy T. Rocene’s “Sport Jabs,” Missoula (Montana) Daily Missoulian, December 4, 1952: 9. Another thanks to Bruce Allardice for alerting me to this obscure column.

37 “Fred McMullin Dies at 61; Former Chisox Infielder,” The Sporting News, December 3, 1952: 38.

38 An accounting of the numerous examples of Asinof invention in the book and film versions of Eight Men Out is appended to the Eight Myths Out project, accessible at SABR.org/eight-myths-out.

39 Mike Kopf, “Fred McMullin: An Underrated Crook?” Baseball Analyst, October 1988, 11.

40 Gene Carney, Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006), 217.

41 Baseball-Reference Bullpen, “Black Sox Scandal: Banned Players,” accessed December 1, 2025.

42 Kopf’s essay argues that McMullin earned his way into the Series fix by tendering bogus scouting reports on the Cincinnati Reds. The obvious weakness in this argument is it gets things backwards. McMullin had no reason to mislead Manager Gleason and the Clean Sox about the Reds unless he was already in on the fix.

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

44 Gandil, Sports Illustrated.

45 Initially published under Frank O. Klein’s byline as “Judge Landis Busy as Ever Chasing the Baseball Spotlight,” Lincoln (Nebraska) Star, January 14, 1927: 18, and re-published the following day as “New Evidence Exposes Landis Baseball Farce,” Collyer’s Eye, January 15, 1927: 1. For analysis and commentary, see Bruce Allardice, “Gedeon Claim May Shed New Light on Scandal,” SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter, Vol. 16, No. 2 (December 2024), 11-12.

46 Klein, “Judge Landis Busy as Ever.”