The Friday Flashback: The Black Sox

Until the White Sox finally broke through in 2005, the running joke on them was that they threw a World Series since they last won one. Long after we're gone the 1919 Black Sox may still wind up being more popular than the '05 champs.

The eight players involved in the scandal %#151 first baseman Arnold "Chick Gandil, pitchers Eddie Cicotte and and Claude "Lefty" Williams, infielders Charles "Swede" Risberg, Buck Weaver and Fred McMullin, and outfielders Oscar "Happy" Felsch and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson — were all players and eventually suspended from baseball. Weaver was not an active participant, but was suspended anyway for knowing of the fix but not reporting it. The other seven were promised a combined $100,000 from New York mobster Arnold Rothstein.

The fallout from the Series (won by Cincinnati in eight games) led to the installation of Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis as baseball's first commissioner. Wikipedia has an excellent account of the fix on their 1919 World Series entry. Any baseball movie fan should watch "Eight Men Out" at least once before they die.