Eight Men Out

On October 1, 1919, fans packed Redland Park in Cincinnati for the first game of the World Series, a best-of-nine contest between the Cincinnati Reds and the heavily favored Chicago White Sox. The White Sox boasted one of the most talented rosters in baseball, led by star pitcher Eddie Cicotte, catcher Ray Schalk, third baseman Buck Weaver, and left fielder Shoeless Joe Jackson. Yet eight members of this dominant team had secretly agreed to lose the Series.

The conspiracy originated with first baseman Chick Gandil, a tough, self-made player who had cultivated a years-long relationship with Joseph "Sport" Sullivan, a Boston bookmaker. Three weeks before the Series, Gandil proposed the fix, asking for $80,000 to guarantee enough players' participation to ensure a White Sox defeat. Eliot Asinof traces the deep roots of such corruption, showing that gambling and baseball had been intertwined since the sport's earliest days. By 1919, gamblers openly boasted they could control games, and team owners, terrified that exposure would damage revenues, suppressed every investigation.

Gandil's first recruit was Cicotte, who at 35 earned less than $6,000 despite compiling a 29-7 record. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was notorious for paying players far below market rate and reneging on promised bonuses. The reserve clause bound each player to his club indefinitely, leaving the players powerless to negotiate elsewhere. After weeks of resistance, Cicotte agreed, demanding $10,000 in cash before the Series. Gandil then recruited shortstop Swede Risberg, pitcher Lefty Williams, and utility infielder Fred McMullin, who overheard the plotters' conversation. He also enlisted outfielders Jackson and Happy Felsch and third baseman Weaver. The eight men comprised one of the team's two rival cliques, united by resentment of Comiskey and alienation from the higher-paid, college-educated captain, second baseman Eddie Collins.

A parallel scheme developed independently. Former pitcher William "Sleepy Bill" Burns, now an oil speculator, learned of the fix from Cicotte and enlisted ex-boxer Billy Maharg as his partner. They approached Arnold Rothstein, the preeminent New York gambler known as "The Big Bankroll," who initially declined. However, Rothstein's associate Abe Attell, a former featherweight boxing champion, falsely told Burns that Rothstein had agreed to back the fix with $100,000. Separately, Sullivan contacted Rothstein directly, and Rothstein decided to participate. He provided $40,000 to Sullivan for the players and personally wagered roughly $270,000 on Cincinnati.

Sullivan immediately betrayed the players, keeping $30,000 for his own bets and delivering only $10,000 to Gandil. All of it went to Cicotte, who found the bills under his pillow. None of the other players received money before the Series began. As odds shifted dramatically from 8-5 favoring Chicago to even money, sportswriter Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago Herald and Examiner wired newspapers warning against betting on the Series and arranged to sit in the press box with former manager Christy Mathewson, circling every suspicious play on his scorecard.

In Game One, Cicotte hit the leadoff batter with his second pitch, the prearranged signal confirming the fix was on. He pitched competently for three innings before engineering a collapse in the fourth that allowed five runs in a 9-1 loss. In Game Two, Williams pitched brilliantly for three innings before giving up two walks, a sacrifice bunt, and a key triple in the fourth. The Reds won 4-2 despite being outhit 10-4. Schalk, furious that Williams had repeatedly ignored his signals, physically attacked the pitcher under the grandstand.

After Game Two, Burns demanded $40,000 for the players from Attell, who handed over only $10,000. In Game Three, rookie pitcher Dickie Kerr, who was not part of the conspiracy, threw a masterful shutout while the angry, unpaid players made no effort to undermine him. Burns and Maharg, who had bet everything on Cincinnati, lost it all and abandoned the scheme.

Sullivan wired $20,000 to keep the fix alive before Game Four. Gandil distributed $5,000 each to Felsch, Williams, and Jackson. Cicotte pitched superbly but deliberately committed two fielding errors, gifting the Reds two unearned runs in a 2-0 loss. In Game Five, Williams gave up four runs in the sixth, aided by an embarrassing dropped fly ball by Felsch, and the Reds won 5-0.

When Sullivan failed to deliver further promised payments before Game Six, the furious players decided to play to win. They won Games Six and Seven, narrowing the Series to four games to three. Rothstein summoned Sullivan and demanded the Series end in the next game. Sullivan arranged for an intimidator to threaten Williams and his wife the evening before Game Eight, ordering Williams to lose in the first inning. Williams threw nothing but fastballs; four hits and three runs scored before manager Kid Gleason pulled him after 15 pitches. The Reds won 10-5, claiming the Series five games to three.

The aftermath unfolded as a prolonged cover-up. Comiskey's attorney, Alfred Austrian, advised that exposure would destroy the ball club. Comiskey publicly offered a reward for evidence of corruption while privately burying a detective report and ignoring a letter from Jackson offering to reveal what he knew. Fullerton published articles in the New York Evening World challenging baseball's leadership to investigate, but the baseball establishment vilified him and the National Commission, the sport's governing body, took no action.

Seven of the eight players returned for the 1920 season; Gandil retired to California. When a separate scandal involving a suspicious Cubs-Phillies game triggered public outrage in August 1920, a Cook County Grand Jury convened, initially investigating that game but quickly expanding to the 1919 Series. American League President Ban Johnson, Comiskey's bitter rival, provided investigators with names and leads. After the Philadelphia North American published Maharg's full account of the fix, the dam broke. Cicotte, emotionally shattered, was brought to Austrian's office, where he signed a waiver of immunity without counsel and confessed in tears before the Grand Jury. Jackson, intoxicated and frightened, also signed a waiver without understanding it and testified. Comiskey suspended all eight players, and the White Sox finished two games behind Cleveland for the pennant.

The signed confessions and immunity waivers were stolen from the State's Attorney's files during an administration transition. Rothstein, coached by attorney William J. Fallon, testified voluntarily before the Grand Jury, blamed Attell, and emerged unindicted. In November 1920, Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed baseball's first sole Commissioner.

The trial opened in June 1921. The players repudiated their confessions. Burns, testifying as the State's star witness in exchange for immunity, described the conspiracy in detail. Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams testified privately that Austrian had made them vague promises of protection before they signed their waivers. The defense, secretly funded by Comiskey through Austrian, asked Gleason and Schalk whether the defendants had played to the best of their abilities; the prosecution objected and the judge sustained, preventing the honest players from voicing their suspicions. Judge Hugo Friend instructed the jury that the State must prove the players intended to defraud the public, not merely to throw games. After less than three hours, the jury acquitted all defendants.

Within hours, Landis issued a statement banning all eight players for life, declaring that anyone who throws a game, promises to throw a game, or sits in on such a meeting without reporting it will never play professional baseball. Weaver spent decades seeking reinstatement, but every appeal was denied; he died of a heart attack on a Chicago sidewalk in 1956 at 66. Jackson returned to Greenville, South Carolina, ran small businesses, and died of heart failure in 1951 at 63. The other players scattered into obscurity, maintaining decades of silence. Gleason, devastated by the betrayal, managed the declining White Sox through 1923 before dying of a heart attack in 1933. Rothstein was murdered in 1928 during a poker game; FBI examination of his files revealed affidavits documenting his payments to the players, which he had purchased for $53,000 to suppress.