Fixing the World Series was a total “team” effort and the White Sox players did most of the heavy lifting.
Eddie Cicotte’s SABR biography, by Jim SandovalĪrnold Rothstein, known as “The Big Bankroll,” was credited as the mastermind of the plot by his henchman Abe Attell in a self-serving interview with Eliot Asinof years later, but it may have still gone through even without the involvement of the New York kingpin.September 24, 1919: White Sox walk off to the World Series, by Jacob Pomrenke.An examination of Black Sox player salary histories, by Bob Hoie.
How cheap was Charles Comiskey? Salaries and the Black Sox, by Michael Haupert. And if Cicotte had pitched better in the pennant clincher, he would have earned his 30th win regardless. In any event, Cicotte and Chick Gandil were already conspiring with gamblers to fix the World Series several weeks before Comiskey would have had the chance to renege on a bonus payment. For example, Lefty Williams was paid a $500 bonus for winning 20 games in 1919. Other White Sox players did have small performance bonuses in their contracts. (In the book, this story occurs in 1917 in the film, 1919.) The incident is seen as the catalyst for Cicotte’s involvement in the fix - but there is no basis of truth to the story. One of the most dramatic scenes in Eight Men Out is when White Sox ace Eddie Cicotte tries to collect a $10,000 bonus he says Charles Comiskey promised him if he won 30 games. Charles Comiskey’s SABR biography, by Irv Goldfarb. 1919 American League salaries and payrolls, by Jacob Pomrenke. 1919 Baseball Salaries and the Mythically Underpaid Chicago White Sox, by Bob Hoie (use password “McFarland” to open PDF). A summary of the Black Sox Scandal - what we know now, by Bill Lamb. The scandal was much more complex than disgruntled players trying to get back at the big, bad boss. If they did feel resentment at their salaries under the reserve-clause system, so did players from 15 other major-league teams. Newly available organizational contract cards at the National Baseball Hall of Fame show that the White Sox’s Opening Day payroll of $88,461 was more than $11,500 higher than that of the National League champion Reds, and several of the Black Sox players were among the highest-paid at their positions. But the players themselves rarely claimed, as Asinof did, that it was because of Comiskey’s low salaries or poor treatment - and we now have accurate salary information to back that up. We can’t climb into the heads of the Black Sox to know exactly why they threw the World Series. This is the central thesis of Eight Men Out: Charles Comiskey’s “ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst,” as Eliot Asinof wrote.
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