Blame the Cubs
The irony of the Black Sox Scandal begins—or should that be ends—with the fact that it did not explode into a national issue until 1920. And the wick to that powder keg was lit not by a member of the White Sox or even anyone connected with the scandal, but rather to a player on that other Chicago team. It was a trial involving Cubs player Lee Magee on a completely unrelated case of game fixing that transformed the scandal from its shadow existence into full-scale public awareness.
How Not to Fix a Sporting Event
The idea of “fixing” an athletic event is that the outcome is a foregone conclusion, but since that it is not entirely possible one-hundred percent of the time, the next best strategy is incentive. Incentive basically comes in two different forms in this case: payment before the fact or threats of violence after the fact. One of the greatest ironies of the “throwing” of the World Series in 1919 is that only seven of the player kicked out of the game forever as punished actually received full payment for the fact. As a result, every single game was played conditionally by those who had agreed to cheat. The psychological result being, of course, that those players could neither be fully committed to the fix nor fully committed to the win.
Eight (Not Guilty) Men Out
The title of the book is a play on words, of course, that creates a double meaning out of being tagged out in the game and the fact that eight White Sox players were out of baseball forever after having been banned from the sport. The irony is that though the so-called Black Sox players incriminated in the cheating scandal had their careers ruined for having taken part in a scheme to “fix” the World Series, none were actually found guilty of committing a crime. In fact, they were legally exonerated in a court of law.
Winners and Losers
Tallying up the list of winners and losers from the 1919 World Series is easy. The losers were the eight players who chose to take part in the fix, did not receive payment as promised, had their careers and legacies ruined and spent the rest of their lives in infamy. The winners were, ironically, absolutely everybody else including those who helped fix the games, those who bet on the Reds to win, the Reds and, most ironic of all, Charles Comiskey and baseball.
Mythic Irony
The legacy of the cheating scandal, of course, is that the 1919 Chicago White Sox, considered one of the most dominant teams of its era, has gone down in history with the tainted nickname Black Sox. One of the motivations behind the scandal for the gamblers were the long odds against anyone beating them; it was a foregone conclusion that the team would reclaim their status as World Series Champs which they gained in 1917. The inherent assumption was that the White Sox were already on their way to a possible repeat in 1920. The historical reality is mythically ironic: in what almost seems to be cosmic punishment, the White Sox would pursue their next championship in vain throughout the rest of the 20th century. The drought would not end until 2006.
