Reluctant or Ringleader? Eddie Cicotte’s Role in the 1919 World Series Fix

This article was originally published in the December 2020 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.

Eddie Cicotte expressed remorse later in life for his role in the 1919 World Series fix, but his words and actions at the time may indicate he was more of an instigator in the Black Sox Scandal than the reluctant go-along as he has been portrayed in popular media. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

There is no dispute that Chicago White Sox ace Eddie Cicotte was an active participant in the throwing of the 1919 World Series. When the scandal erupted in late September 1920, several other accused players named Cicotte as a co-conspirator, and Cicotte himself admitted that he had taken a $10,000 payoff in return for his agreement to join the fix.

In his grand jury testimony, Cicotte claimed to be a reluctant participant who went along with the plan in order to acquire some much-needed cash. Fix insider Sleepy Bill Burns, meanwhile, maintained that Cicotte was one of the instigators of the plot along with Chick Gandil. This essay analyzes the historical record to determine whether Cicotte was the half-hearted fix actor he claimed to be, a ringleader who was involved from the very beginning, or somewhere in between.

As the 1919 World Series drew near, 35-year-old Edward Victor Cicotte stood atop the pinnacle of an accomplished 14-year major league career. He had been a key member of Chicago’s 1917 World Series champions, and was just completing an exceptional season, leading American League hurlers in victories (29), winning percentage (.806), innings pitched (306 2/3), and complete games (30).

Much was expected of Cicotte in the upcoming best-of-nine World Series against the National League pennant-winning Cincinnati Reds, particularly given the unavailability of 1917 Series hero Red Faber, sidelined by injury and illness. About the only thing nagging White Sox supporters was fear that the heavy volume of work had overtaxed Cicotte, as sore-arm concerns required more judicious use of the staff mainstay in the final weeks of the 1919 campaign.

Unbeknownst to the faithful, Cicotte was among the White Sox players bent on throwing the Series in return for secret payoffs from gamblers. In Game One, an abrupt fourth-inning meltdown by Cicotte precipitated a landslide 9-1 Cincinnati triumph. The game-changing rally was triggered by the White Sox’ failure to complete what should have been an inning-ending double play involving three of the fixers: Cicotte, shortstop Swede Risberg, and first baseman Gandil.

In Game Four, Cicotte exhibited the pitching artistry expected of him, throwing a complete-game five-hitter. But two egregious fielding misplays by Cicotte himself spelled the difference in a 2-0 Reds victory. With the Sox down 4-0 late in Game Six and on the verge of elimination, slumbering middle-of-the-lineup bats – the American League’s best-hitting club had gone an astounding 26 innings without scoring previously – awoke and salvaged a 5-4, 10-inning reprieve. Cicotte then set the Reds down smartly in Game Seven, winning 4-1. But when Lefty Williams could not make it out of the first inning the next day, Sox hopes were doomed. A forlorn late-game rally made the final 10-5 score halfway respectable, but the Cincinnati Reds were now world champions.

In a widely syndicated column the following day, respected Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton placed the bona fides of the Series outcome in question. But aside from Collyer’s Eye, a lightly regarded racetrack sheet, and a handful of other journalists, few shared Fullerton’s suspicions. As the 1920 season opened, the insinuations of Series corruption were largely a dead letter – almost a complete year passed before the controversy returned to the front pages.

The events that refocused attention on the integrity of the 1919 World Series are beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that the simmering Black Sox Scandal exploded when fix insider Billy Maharg went public with an expose published in a Philadelphia newspaper on September 27, 1920. Maharg alleged that Game One, Game Two, and Game Eight of the 1919 World Series had been deliberately lost by White Sox players in return for a clandestine $100,000 payoff from gamblers.

Within hours, Maharg’s charges had circulated nationwide and Cicotte was summoned by White Sox owner Charles Comiskey. On the morning of September 28, the unnerved pitcher was questioned about Series corruption in the law office of attorney Alfred S. Austrian, the team’s corporate counsel, while a mostly silent Comiskey sat nearby glowering at his star pitcher. Cicotte’s interrogation was memorialized by a shorthand reporter and an abridged transcript is among the scandal artifacts now viewable online.1

Austrian Interrogation

As reflected in available statement excerpts, Cicotte readily admitted fix complicity to Austrian, adding, “I don’t know why I did it … I must have been crazy!”2 He then asserted that “Risberg, Gandil, and [Fred] McMullin were at me for a week before the Series began. They wanted me to go crooked. I needed the money. I had the wife and the kids.”3

According to Cicotte, the plan to fix the Series originated with Chick Gandil, a product of his long acquaintance with “gamblers and low characters back in Arizona.” Thereafter, “eight of us got together in my room three or four days before the Series started. Gandil was master of ceremonies. We talked about it, and decided we could get away with it. We agreed to do it.”4

For his participation, Cicotte demanded $10,000 in cash, paid up front. Negotiation about the amount and timing of payment “went on for days … but I wanted that $10,000 and I got it.”5 The evening before the club left for the Series opener in Cincinnati, Cicotte found the $10,000 under his hotel room pillow, but maintained that he did not know who put it there.6 Once he had the cash “there in my fingers,” Cicotte went ahead and “threw the [opening Series] game.”7

Asked to explain how the games were thrown, Cicotte replied, “It’s easy. Just a slight hesitation on a player’s part will let a man get a base or make a run.”8 As for his own malfeasance, Eddie stated: “I did it by not putting a thing on the ball. You could have read the trademark on it the way I lobbed it over the plate. A baby could have hit ‘em.”9 He also acknowledged deliberately sabotaging the potential double play comebacker hit to him during the pivotal fourth inning of Game One.10

Cicotte did the same thing in Game Four, “deliberately” making a bad throw to first on a comebacker to put a runner aboard in a scoreless contest, and then “I intercepted a throw from the outfield and deliberately bobbled it, allowing a run to score. All the runs scored against me [in a 2-0 defeat] were due to my own deliberate errors.”11 In short, Cicotte “did not try to win” in Game One and Game Four.12

The Cicotte statement concludes with a lament: “I’ve lived a thousand years in the last twelve months. I would not have done that thing for a million dollars. Now I’ve lost everything, job, reputation, everything. … I’m through with baseball. I’m going to lose myself if I can and start life over again.”13

Grand Jury Testimony

After his interrogation of Cicotte was finished, Austrian whisked the pitcher to the Cook County Courthouse and presented him to Assistant State’s Attorney Hartley Replogle, the lead prosecutor in the ongoing grand jury probe of Series fix allegations.

Unlike the grand jury testimony of Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams, the transcript of the ensuing Cicotte testimony has not survived. Rather, what we know of its content derives from two sources: (1) a synopsis of the Cicotte testimony contemporaneously created by an unidentified prosecutor,14 and (2) those aspects of Cicotte’s testimony embedded in his January 14, 1924 deposition for the breach of contract civil lawsuit later filed by Joe Jackson.15

Cicotte’s grand jury appearance began with the witness’s formal waiver of his legal rights, including the protection against self-incrimination.16 Cicotte then proceeded to render an account of his involvement in the fix of the 1919 World Series – one significantly different from the events related to Alfred Austrian.

In this version, Cicotte traced the fix to a meeting of eight White Sox players – Chick Gandil, Joe Jackson, Lefty Williams, Buck Weaver, Swede Risberg, Happy Felsch, Fred McMullin, and himself – held at the Ansonia Hotel in New York in mid-September as the White Sox closed in on the pennant.17 Discussion of the fix was initiated by either Gandil or McMullin, who stated that “we could make a good thing (i.e., money) if we threw the world’s series to Cincinnati.” Asked his price to join the fix, Cicotte said “I would not do anything like that for less than $10,000,” to which they replied, “Well, we can get that together and fix it up.”18

Fix discussions resumed several days before the Series was to start in Cicotte’s room at the Warner Hotel in Chicago. Also attending the gathering were Gandil, Felsch, Weaver, and perhaps Williams and McMullin.19 Cicotte renewed his demand to be paid up front, and “wanted the money put in my hands before we started to Cincinnati.” Gandil assured him that would be done.

Cicotte then left the room to socialize with teammates Red Faber and Shano Collins “who were not in on this thing.” When he returned, he discovered $10,000 under his bed pillow. Cicotte took the money with him to Cincinnati, and later used it to pay off the $4,000 mortgage on his farm. The other $6,000 was spent “fixing up the place, buying stock, feed, etc.”20

Contrary to the admissions he made to Austrian, Cicotte told the grand jury that he “tried to win” Game One, having an instant change of heart once he inadvertently hit Reds leadoff hitter Morrie Rath.21 That evening after the one-sided Sox loss, a worried Cicotte spent a sleepless night, telling roommate Felsch, “Happy, it will never be done again.”22 As for the 4-2 Chicago defeat in Game Two, the only thing that struck Cicotte as suspicious was starter Lefty Williams’s “wildness.”23

Cicotte was hazy about a meeting of corrupted players held at the Sinton Hotel in Cincinnati, and was not pressed on the subject during his grand jury testimony. He was similarly vague about the financing of the fix but “supposed some gamblers made some money” via knowledge of prearranged game outcomes.24 Nor did he offer any insight into Game Three, won by Chicago, 3-0, behind the sterling pitching of uncorrupted hurler Dickey Kerr. But the victory did not overly concern Cicotte, as the Sox did not have to lose every game, just the Series itself.25

When it came to Game Four, however, Cicotte radically deviated from the account that he had offered attorney Austrian hours earlier. Now, Cicotte insisted that he had “tried to win. I didn’t care whether I got shot out there the next minute. I was going to win that game and the Series.”26 He insisted he “tried to make good” and that his two critical fielding errors had not been deliberate. If White Sox hitters had scored any runs for him, Cicotte would have won Game Four.27

Cicotte then doubled back to Game One, repudiating his previous admission that he had deliberately botched the potential inning-ending double play comebacker in the five-run Cincinnati fourth. Now, Cicotte maintained that he had been “absolutely honest” on that play and laid the blame on shortstop Risberg for stumbling over second base after taking Cicotte’s throw. The barrage of Reds basehits that he surrendered immediately thereafter, he said, were all “clean hits.”28

With the mandate of grand jury secrecy having been ignored throughout the proceedings, next-day press accounts of the Cicotte testimony were curious. Rather than recounting the actual Cicotte testimony, the Associated Press and its outlets published his far-more incriminating statement in the Austrian law office instead.29

Also widely reported was Joe Jackson’s grand jury admission that he had agreed to join the Series fix in return for a promised $20,000 payoff — of which, he complained to grand jury presiding Judge Charles A. McDonald, he only received $5,000.30 Lefty Williams’s inculpatory grand jury testimony the following day also received prominent newspaper space, while Happy Felsch’s private confession of fix involvement was a scoop published in the Chicago Evening American of September 30.

A month later, on October 29, 1920, the Cook County grand jury returned indictments charging Cicotte and seven other White Sox players with multiple counts of conspiracy to obtain money by means of false pretenses or via a confidence game. Five fix-connected gamblers, including ex-major league pitcher Bill Burns, were similarly charged.

In late March 1921, superseding indictments charged all of the previously accused plus four more gamblers with substantive fraud-related offenses in addition to unlawful conspiracy. The trial of seven of the indicted players, by now dubbed the Black Sox, and gambler defendants David Zelcer, Carl Zork, and brothers Ben and Lou Levi commenced in late June 1921.31

Criminal Trial Revelations

An entirely different light was cast on Cicotte by the trial testimony of the prosecution’s star witness, Bill Burns. As Burns told it, the plot to fix the 1919 World Series had not originated with gamblers. Rather, it was Eddie Cicotte who approached old acquaintance Burns with the fix proposition in September 1919. Later, Burns met with Cicotte and Gandil at the Ansonia Hotel where he was informed that the players wanted a $100,00 payoff in return for losing the Series.32 To punctuate his commitment to the plot, Cicotte told Burns that he would lose Game One “if he had to throw the ball out of the park.”33

Subsequently, Burns’s testimony was corroborated by his fix sidekick, unindicted co-conspirator Billy Maharg. He, too, identified Cicotte as instigator of the Series plot, and named him and Gandil as joint overseers of the player end of the scheme.34 The prosecution also presented the Cicotte (and Jackson and Williams) grand jury testimony, read into the record at length before the jury.

Aside from testifying at a mid-trial motion to prohibit prosecution use of his grand jury testimony – the application was denied by the court – Cicotte kept silent during trial. Nor was any exculpatory evidence offered by the Cicotte defense. Notwithstanding the unrebutted nature of the charges against him, Cicotte, as well as the other accused, was swiftly acquitted by the jury.35 Less than 24 hours later, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis issued his famous edict permanently banning Cicotte and the seven other Black Sox from Organized Baseball.

Postscript

Although Cicotte was not among the expelled players who subsequently sued the White Sox for unpaid salary — Cicotte told a private investigator retained by the club that Comiskey “paid every nickel that I was entitled to … and I have no ill feelings against him”36 — he could not avoid being ensnared in the litigation. Uncooperative and evasive at a deposition session conducted in January 1924, Cicotte would not repeat his grand jury testimony, but reluctantly acknowledged the truth of whatever he had said in that testimony. But Cicotte refused to expand upon his grand jury recitals.37 Even the threat of being held in contempt could not get him to talk about those who had financed the Series fix.38

Unlike other scandal actors, Cicotte was closed-mouthed about the Series fix for the remainder of his days. In a late-life interview, however, he acknowledged his complicity in the Series fix: “I admit I did wrong,” Cicotte said, but hastened to add that “I’ve paid for it for the past 46 years. … I’ve tried to make up for it by living as clean a life as I could.”39

Cicotte’s remorse seemed genuine, and subsequent portrayals of his role in the Black Sox affair tended to be sympathetic, particularly John Sayles’s 1988 film version of Eight Men Out which cast Cicotte as a victim of club boss Comiskey’s tightfistedness and a most reluctant fix enlistee. Does the historical record support that viewpoint?

Analysis and Conclusions

Far less disposed to talk than teammates like Shoeless Joe Jackson,40 Eddie Cicotte told very different stories about his participation in the debasement of the 1919 World Series. In the Austrian law office, Cicotte said he did whatever he could to ensure Chicago losses in two of the games that he pitched. Hours later before the Cook County grand jury, Eddie maintained that he abandoned the conspiracy in the first inning of Game One and thereafter endeavored to win.

Common to both of these irreconcilable accounts, however, is one constant: Cicotte’s portrayal of himself as a hesitant, half-hearted fix enlistee who went along with a scheme foisted upon him by Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, and Fred McMullin in return for $10,000 cash, paid in advance.

An altogether different picture of Cicotte’s involvement in the Series corruption was painted by fix insider Bill Burns and corroborated by sidekick Billy Maharg. They identified Cicotte as no less than the instigator of the Series fix.

Although the issue is not susceptible to definitive resolution, the historical record and reason most readily support the view that (1) the engine of the plot to throw the 1919 World Series was Chick Gandil and/or Boston gambler Sport Sullivan, not Cicotte; (2) that Gandil quickly recruited Cicotte, an indispensable prerequisite to the fix’s viability, to the cause and that Cicotte thereafter assumed the position of assistant player ringleader of the Series conspiracy; and (3) that Cicotte deliberately lost both Game One and Game Four in furtherance of the fix.

Cicotte was a well-compensated star — the second-highest paid pitcher in major league baseball for the 1918-19 seasons41 – and an affable, generally well-liked man. But he was not an over-large personality or particularly driven. What most concerned the 35-year-old was the approaching end of his playing days, supporting his growing family thereafter, and the need to finance his debt and other personal obligations.

Gandil was altogether different. An everyday first baseman but mostly a journeyman, Gandil had never drawn a star player’s salary, nor had he enjoyed much public acclaim or job security. Temperamentally, Gandil was a much tougher guy than Cicotte, a hardened ex-mining town prizefighter and not especially likeable, but aggressive, strong-willed, self-confident, and forceful — a natural leader. More important, Gandil’s hardscrabble background placed him in contact with all sorts of unsavory characters, including gamblers. He had long been on friendly terms with Joseph “Sport” Sullivan, perhaps Boston’s biggest bookmaker who was long suspected of trying to rig sporting events.

Various scandal sleuths trace the origin of the World Series fix to a meeting between Gandil and Sullivan at the Buckminster Hotel in Boston in late August 1919.42 According to the self-serving and unreliable interview that Gandil gave to Sports Illustrated decades later, the fix was Sullivan’s idea.43 Whoever proposed the idea, it was hardly an original one, as rumor that previous World Series had been corrupted (including the Boston Red Sox-Chicago Cubs clash of 1918)44 was widespread. Whether Sullivan’s proposition or his own, Gandil — not Cicotte — was the Sox player with the gambler contacts. Likewise, Gandil was the one chummy with Sport Sullivan, and it was Gandil who was present at ground zero of the Black Sox conspiracy. In culinary terms, Gandil was the fix’s player-chef, Cicotte no more than the stew’s main ingredient.

That said, for the Series fix to have any prospect for success, the enlistment of staff ace Eddie Cicotte was indispensable. Indeed, the fix could not get off the drawing board without Cicotte’s involvement, a reality likely driven home to Gandil by teammate Red Faber’s three victories for the White Sox in the 1917 World Series. Corrupting Cicotte was, therefore, the necessary starting point and, indeed, the linchpin of the fix conspiracy, particularly given the fact that the 1919 Series had been expanded to the best-of-nine games. If the championship match went the limit, Cicotte might be handed the ball four times. In fact, the potential length of the Series necessitated Gandil’s subsequent recruitment of a second Sox starter, the talented but malleable Lefty Williams.45

Black Sox scholar Bruce Allardice and others place Cicotte with Gandil at a follow-up fix meeting with Sullivan conducted at the Hotel Lenox in Boston.46 Thereafter, Gandil was the conspiracy’s primary agent, privately recruiting star outfielder Shoeless Joe Jackson and 23-game winner Williams.47 But Cicotte also played a leadership role, co-hosting the initial fix player meeting at the Ansonia Hotel in New York and lending his room to the player-gambler gathering at the Warner Hotel in Chicago.

It was Cicotte who approached former American League pitcher-turned-gambler Bill Burns about financing a World Series fix. Cicotte also was present in Cincinnati’s Sinton Hotel on the eve of Game One when the corrupted players finalized their arrangements with a second group of fix backers promising them yet another $100,000 payoff: the Abe Attell/David Zelcer/Bill Burns cartel.

In short, Cicotte was far from a reluctant fix participant. His $10,000 in hand payoff (with the expectation of more from Attell/Zelcer/Burns) was most welcome, allowing him to discharge the mortgage on his recently purchased farm, to lay in supplies, and to generally renovate the premises.

Like others, Cicotte was well aware of reputed payoffs to players in previous World Series.48 But nothing had ever happened, and official disinclination to investigate, much less punish, major league game-fixing had only been reinforced in players’ minds by the National League’s recent exoneration of the notoriously corrupt Hal Chase. Given that, Cicotte had every reason to perceive the throwing of the Series as a low risk/high reward proposition. Joining the Series fix, moreover, held an additional attraction: the promise of more secret paydays from gamblers in the future.

The lure of game-fixing rewards in 1920 and beyond is an often-overlooked aspect of the scandal, one that ties back into Cicotte’s performance during the 1919 World Series. While other players may have been upset at the gamblers shortchanging them, Cicotte had been paid in full by the agents of New York underworld financier Arnold Rothstein, the original underwriter of the World Series fix. The same night that the players received Rothstein emissaries Sport Sullivan and Nat Evans (aka “Rachael Brown”) at the Warner Hotel in Chicago, Cicotte received the $10,000 cash that he had demanded in advance. Having taken Rothstein’s money, there was no way Cicotte was not going to fulfill his end of the deal. As promised, he lost the Series opener.

Because Rothstein was only betting on the outcome of the World Series, not individual Series games, the Black Sox plan was to lose the first three contests, but to win Game Four for Cicotte’s benefit in upcoming contract negotiations with club boss Comiskey. Overweening Black Sox confidence in their own superiority and their disdain of the Reds was palpable. Gandil, Cicotte, and company blithely presumed that the Sox could win or lose Series games as they chose. The fix blueprint was upset, however, in Game Three by their own side when the shutout pitching of uncorrupted “busher” Dickey Kerr yielded an unscripted Sox victory. Later, Joe Jackson informed the press that “the eight of us did our best to kick it but little Dick Kerr won the game by his pitching.”49

To get the fix back on schedule, Cicotte almost singlehandedly engineered the Chicago loss in Game Four, deliberately sabotaging a standout pitching effort with the two pivotal defensive miscues needed to ensure a Sox defeat. Although his fielding was not notably strong, Eddie’s wild heave over first base on a fifth-inning tapper to the mound by slow-footed Pat Duncan was not accidental. Nor was Cicotte’s otherwise inexplicable attempt to cut off an outfield throw home and deflection of the ball out of play, allowing a scoreless tie to be broken. Cicotte’s subsequent claims of good-faith effort to the grand jury notwithstanding, the more reasonable construction of events suggests those errors were deliberate — as Cicotte had admitted to Alfred Austrian — and committed in fulfillment of a pledge to lose made to an underworld figure not lightly double-crossed.

When the scandal exploded in late September 1920, Cicotte was understandably unnerved. His breakdown under questioning by attorney Austrian is unremarkable and his confession of fix participation has the ring of truth, particularly when it came to explaining how skilled ballplayers can disguise crooked play, a point reiterated some 40 years later by coconspirator Happy Felsch.50 But several hours later, Cicotte had collected enough of his wits to minimize his culpability, offering the grand jury an implausible story of an on-the-mound conversion after throwing two pitches in Game One and recanting the admissions of Game Four crookedness revealed earlier the same date to Austrian and club boss Comiskey. Between the two accounts, Cicotte’s statement to Austrian is far more credible than his subsequent grand jury testimony. And far more revelatory about his Series misconduct.

Bruce Allardice has made a persuasive case that Cicotte and the other Black Sox continued throwing games during the 1920 regular season.51 The reaction of Clean Sox players to the perfidy of their teammates is collected in Allardice’s essays and need not be re-printed here. But representative of those sentiments were the post-1920 season remarks of embittered team captain Eddie Collins, who declared, “If gamblers didn’t have Weaver and Cicotte in their pocket, then I don’t know anything about baseball.”52

By throwing games in 1920, Cicotte and the other corrupted players demonstrated the hollowness of assertions that the Black Sox abandoned the Series fix after Game Two or after Game Five, etc. The events of the very next season demonstrate they did no such thing. Rather, the corrupted players won just enough times (three, including Cicotte’s coveted contract negotiating-chip victory in Game Seven) to give the outcome of the 1919 Series a veneer of respectability, while not jeopardizing their access to gambler payoffs during the coming 1920 campaign.

That Eddie Cicotte was a likeable fellow, or that his eventual remorse for having joined the fix was genuine, misses the point. From its inception, the throwing of the 1919 World Series was dependent upon the unwavering fix participation of the White Sox staff ace. A reasonable reading of the historical record confirms that Cicotte did not let down those depending on him.

Notes

1 Among other places, the Cicotte interview transcript is posted on the invaluable BlackBetsy.com website. Readers should note, however, that the Eddie Cicotte Transcripts hereafter ECT] provide an abridged, eight paragraph version of the full Austrian-Cicotte interview. The effect that editing may have on assessment of Cicotte’s involvement in the fix is unknowable without the full text of the interrogation available for comparison purposes.

2 ECT, para.1, line 1; elisions as in published document.

3 ECT, para.1, lines 1-3. Cicotte further related that he used his fix payoff to satisfy a $4,000 mortgage on a farm that he had recently purchased.

4 ECT, para. 2, lines 1-4.

5 ECT, para. 3, lines 2-6 and para. 4, lines 4-5.

6 ECT, para. 5, lines 1-3.

7 ECT, para. 5, lines 4-5.

8 ECT, para.6, lines 1-2.

9 ECT, para. 6, lines 2-3.

10 ECT, para. 6, lines 5-8.

11 ECT, para. 7, lines 1-3.

12 ECT, para. 7, lines 4-5.

13 ECT, para. 8, lines 1-4.

14 The typed “Synopsis of Testimony of Edward V. Cicotte” is among the artifacts contained the Black Sox Scandal collection maintained by the Chicago History Museum. In all probability, the 24-paragraph synopsis was created by Replogle or fellow Black Sox grand jury prosecutor Ota P. Lightfoot.

15 The Cicotte deposition is memorialized in part on pages 1206 to 1302 of the transcript of the Jackson v. Chicago White Sox breach of contract proceedings. The rare and difficult-to-access civil case record was reviewed by the writer at the Chicago Baseball Museum over a three-day period in May 2010.

16 Synopsis, para. 1. The original Cicotte waiver has been lost, but a facsimile of same is contained in the Black Sox scandal documents maintained at the CHM.

17 Synopsis, para. 3.

18 Synopsis, para. 4.

19 During the season, Cicotte and Felsch resided at the Warner. Lefty Williams later testified that he attended the Warner Hotel fix meeting.

20 Synopsis, para. 8.

21 Synopsis, para. 10. Cicotte maintained that he had been trying to walk Rath and hit him by accident. See also, Cicotte deposition of January 14, 1924, as embedded in the Jackson civil trial transcript [hereinafter JTT] 1245 to JTT 1247.

22 Synopsis, para. 11.

23 Synopsis, para. 12 and 13. Walks issued by the normally strike-throwing Williams figured in all four of the runs scored by Cincinnati.

24 Synopsis, para. 14 to para. 16.

25 Cicotte deposition, JTT 1274.

26 JTT, 1274, et seq.

27 JTT, 1274, et seq.

28 Approximately JTT 1276 to JTT 1290.

29 “Gandil Was Master of Ceremonies, Cicotte Says,” Charlotte (North Carolina) News, September 29, 1920: 1; “Confess Throwing 1919 World Series,” Fall River (Massachusetts) Globe, September 29, 1920: 7; “‘I Played Crooked and Lost,’ Cicotte Confesses in Tears,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 29, 1920: 1.

30 Later that date, Jackson repeated his fix shortchange complaint to the press, as reported in the Chicago Journal, Chicago Tribune, and newspapers nationwide September 29-30, 1920. Cicotte had scolded Jackson as “a God damn fool” for not getting his full fix payoff up front like he had.

31 The charges against late-arriving player-defendant Fred McMullin were severed for separate trial at a subsequent date, while gambler-defendants Hal Chase and Abe Attell defeated attempts to extradite them to Illinois. Gambler defendant Benjamin Franklin, meanwhile, was excused from trial because of ill health.

32 “Cicotte Hatched Plot to ‘Throw’ Series, Says Burns,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 22, 1921: 2; “Hatching of Plot Laid to Players,” (Portland) Oregonian, July 22, 1921: 12: “Cicotte Arch Plotter,” Seattle Times, July 22, 1921: 14, and newspapers nationwide.

33 “Cicotte Promised To Throw Ball Out of Yard,” Duluth (Minnesota) News-Tribune, July 20, 1921: 7; “Burns Tells Of Alleged Pact To Throw World Series Games in Trial of Former White Sox,” Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, July 21, 1921: 10; “Inside Story of Ball Scandal,” New York Daily News, July 20, 1921: 2.

34 “Maharg Testimony To Show That Cicotte Made Advances First To Throw Series Games,” Denver Post, July 25, 1921: 10; Maharg Tells Story of $100,000 Sell-Out,” Washington (DC) Evening Star, July 27, 1921: 25.

35 For the writer’s assessment of the verdict, see William Lamb, “Jury Nullification and the Not Guilty Verdicts in the Black Sox Case,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Fall 2015), 47-56.

36 Letter of John R. Hunter to Alfred S. Austrian, July 5, 1922, contained in the Black Sox collection at the CHM.

37 Cicotte deposition at JTT 1223.

38 Cicotte deposition at JTT 1263 to JTT 1272.

39 Joe Falls, “Cicotte 46 Years Later,” Baseball Digest, February 1966, 17.

40 For analysis of the irreconcilable scandal yarns told by Jackson, see Bill Lamb, “An Ever-Changing Story: Exposition and Analysis of Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Public Statements on the Black Sox Scandal,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring 2019), 37-48.

41 Bob Hoie, “Black Sox Salary Histories, Part II,” The Inside Game, Vol. XIII, No. 2 (May 2013), 22-25. Only the immortal Walter Johnson earned more than Cicotte those two seasons.

42 Bruce Allardice, “Out of the Shadows: Joseph J. ‘Sport’ Sullivan,” SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter, June 2014, 11; Daniel A. Nathan, Saying It’s So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 206), 114.

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

44 A wafer-thin case that the 1918 World Series was fixed is presented by Sean Deveney in The Original Curse: Did the Cubs Throw the 1918 World Series to Babe Ruth’s Red Sox and Incite the Black Sox Scandal? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010).

45 Williams’s advancement to the number two spot on the Chicago pitching staff was a result of the season-long illness and injury problems of Red Faber, who was declared unavailable for the 1919 World Series. In the view of this writer and others in the Black Sox Scandal research community, had the incorruptible Faber been healthy and available for Series pitching duty, the fix would likely have been seen as impracticable and never attempted.

46 Allardice, 11, citing a report published in the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Telegram, October 1, 1920.

47 According to the grand jury testimony of both Jackson and Williams.

48 Bribe money being offered to unnamed Chicago Cub players to throw the 1918 World Series is specifically mentioned in an unsigned affidavit drafted for Cicotte found among the scandal artifacts possessed by the CHM.

49 See again, Chicago Journal and Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1920.

50 Felsch told Eight Men Out author Eliot Asinof, “Playing rotten, it ain’t that hard to do once you get the hang of it. It ain’t hard to hit a pop-up while taking what looks like a good cut at the ball.” Eliot Asinof, Bleeding Between the Lines (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977), 117.

51 Bruce Allardice, “‘Playing Rotten, It Ain’t That Hard To Do’: How the Black Sox Lost the 1920 Pennant,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring 2016). See also, Allardice, “New Evidence That White Sox Threw More Games in 1920,” SABR Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter, June 2019. Note that Chick Gandil refused to sign his White Sox contract and was suspended for the 1920 season. Fred McMullin reputedly assumed Gandil’s place as liaison between gambler interests and Black Sox players.

52 “Collins Charges 1920 Games Fixed,” Collyer’s Eye, October 30, 1920. This author does not share the view that Buck Weaver went unpaid for his participation in throwing the 1919 World Series. But a dissertation on Weaver’s fix compensation is an essay for another issue of the newsletter. Suffice it to say that if Weaver was not paid for his efforts during the 1919 Series, he would have had no reason to do gamblers’ dirty work in 1920.