Sunday, October 30, 2005

A Case For The Black Sox

Well, the season is over but that doesn’t mean life stops for Spurious Baseball and with the ChiSox winning their first title since 1917 I thought I’d open the off-season with the seminal debate over what happened two years after that and the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal.

For the most part people will try to make the case that certain players were involved in the fix whilst certain others didn’t do anything to hurt their team but while a guy like Buck Weaver (a player Ty Cobb regarded as the best third baseman of his era) posted a good average and played good D, the reason the eight men were banned from the sport was as much about collusion and failure to inform anyone about the fix as much as the fix itself. So while the likes of Chick Gandil and Swede Risberg might have instigated the whole thing and tried the least and guys like Eddie Ciccotte (a certain Hall of Famer if not for his involvement) and Lefty Williams were the key figures in making the fix work, guys like Fred McMullen (a utility guy who was only in because he was Risberg’s friend), Happy Felsch, Weaver, and Joe Jackson knew about it and were therefore banned. I don’t have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the way people seem to focus on Joe Jackson and, more importantly, the viewing of his performance through rose tinted glasses and the romanticised depiction he received by D.B. Sweeney in the movie Eight Men Out. Most of the reports you hear from people who actually were there report that while he did have a statistically good series, he was very lackadaisical in his approach in the field and actually had most of his hits in at bats that didn’t really matter (his homerun came in the last game when it was already lost) so in essence this simple man from Carolina who was not smart enough to know better actually did a better job of faking it than anyone else.

Of course the problem most of us have is that there are few people still alive who actually saw those games and most of what we have left is hearsay, conjecture and what was etched into the box score so its hard to really make a qualitative argument to refute what has already been decided. While some people want to claim certain players were wrongfully drawn into the hall of shame, the fact of the matter is that they were all guilty of something so deal with it. What we can and maybe should be debating is how long we leave these guys in the doghouse?

Now a guy like Chick Gandil should be kept on the list of baseball’s big bastards and was never really good enough to even bother the Veterans Committee so we shouldn’t dwell. A guy like Buck Weaver however was certainly good enough to have garnered Hall of Fame consideration and who’s involvement in throwing the Series was often questioned. Ty Cobb was one of the most fearless competitors to ever step on a diamond and would never even hesitate to drop a bunt up the third base line for a base hit…except when Buck Weaver was down there (of course he would still challenge Weaver to make a play but he’d at least think about it first).

Weaver was a switch hitter with speed and a great glove with a reputation for his competitive edge and gamer mentality. He always wanted to make a case for himself rather than being convicted as part of the group but was never given the opportunity. I say we should at least give him the opportunity to be allowed into the hall.

My biggest issue with the way these guys have been treated comes with the idea of a ‘lifetime ban’ and I ask how long is that? Who’s lifetime are we measuring? The lives of Weaver and Jackson ended quite a while ago so does that mean their bans are up? The fact of the matter is that Jackson’s life was basically over after ‘21 when the ban actually came into effect. Its one of the most tragic stories I’ve ever heard the way Ty Cobb once walked into Joe Jackson’s liquor store and when Cobb asked Jackson if he recognised him Jackson responded by saying, “I didn’t think anyone up there wanted to know me anymore.” Being banned from baseball totally broke Jackson and that is one of the main reasons why I loathe Pete Rose in his almost celebratory ban where he revels in the notoriety his gambling gave him. Jackson’s transgression destroyed him and he suffered mightily for it. If ever there was a man who had served his time, its Joe Jackson. If we accept that he has served his punishment and rather than focussing on that one series in 1919 and looked instead at the rest of his career, then we might remember that Joe Jackson was one of the true great talents to ever play (I had him at fifth on my all time list a few years back).

The guy who really typified the 1919 ChiSox was probably Eddie Ciccotte. He was one of the best pitchers of his generation and would have won 30 games in 1919 if he weren’t forced to sit out half a dozen starts by team owner Charlie Comiskey who basically didn’t want to pay Ciccotte the $10,000 bonus for winning 30 games.

There were few owners who were more parsimonious than Comiskey who was a classic example of why the ‘Reserve Clause’ was so unfair to the players. The ChiSox had assembled a team filled with some of the best players in the league but few were earning what they were worth. They always said that only Hall of Fame second baseman Eddie Collins earned anywhere near what he was worth so it was unsurprising that he was one of the few so called ‘clean Sox’.

For a bonus for making the World Series Comiskey notoriously supplied the team he referred to as the best there ever was, with celebratory champagne that was flat. That’s how much he valued his players. So this was like tying a dog up in the yard for it to be taunted, starved and goaded for days and generally antagonised and then being surprised that it attacked you after being let off its leash. We almost shouldn’t have been surprised that the Series was thrown but we should have been surprised it hadn’t happened before (and who‘s to say it never did?).

In summary then, everyone who was banned was guilty of something (and some of those who weren’t banned too) but none of them have ever been looked at as individuals with certain roles within the make up of the fix. Is it fair that Buck Weaver, who merely knew about the fix but hardly played badly throughout the Series, should be treated the same way as Chick Gandil who instigated the fix and did all he could to make the fix work?

Someone needs to dig their head out of the sand and re-evaluate how baseball history wants to view these guys and ask themselves if the punishment they have served is worth their crime? I personally feel that Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver and possibly Eddie Ciccotte should be in the Hall of Fame but if someone were to look into their cases and be able to point at specific evidence for each individual that marks what exact rationale there is for them not to be in, then I would certainly listen and maybe re-evaluate my own views but for as long as we blame the forest for the actions of a few trees then people will constantly question how just MLB has been in the handling of this tragic unit and they will be that black mark on the history of baseball instead of just one of the games tragic and unfortunate tales. Is what they did worse than what all those owners and commissioners did to keep the likes of Josh Gibson and ‘Cool Papa’ Bell out of baseball? Some of them ARE in the Hall of Fame.

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