1919: Eight Myths Out

I started researching down "the B-Sox trail" in September 2002 with the question, "Who deserves the credit for bringing 'the Black Sox scandal' to light?" While Woodward and Bernstein became household names for their role in uncovering the Watergate scandal, whoever dug up the truth about October 1919 remained tough trivia, even for SABR-level baseball fans. Historian Jules Tygiel gave me my starting point: Hugh Fullerton.

After I presented on my research at the NINE conference in Tucson, it was Jules Tygiel who asked me what in Eight Men Out I had found to be inaccurate or not well grounded in the evidence we have today. I responded with a list of ten items, which I have shortened to eight. It could easily be lengthened by adding omissions such as the investigation by gambling paper Collyer's Eye before the scandal broke or the memoir by Hugh Fullerton that suggests baseball authorities knew of the Fix even before Game 1 started.

But I selected the eight "problems" below because by wrestling with them, we can learn more about how one version of "what really happened" can be a disservice to the facts. In a sense, all tellings of this story rely on Eight Men Out, because without that book, there would be no film, and few people today would have any knowledge at all about the tampering of the 1919 World Series.

Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out was first published in 1963. In 1988 John Sayles turned Eight Men Out into a film. Asinof's (and Sayles's) version has become accepted as definitive even though Asinof's account reads like a novel. And although Eight Men Out is based on research and interviews, his book can be frustrating for its lack of documentation. Asinof never revised the 1963 book; he sold the rights.

Since 1963 excerpts from a diary kept by Sox owner Charles Comiskey's secretary have been published in The Hustler's Handbook, by Bill Veeck and Ed Linn), so has the grand jury testimony of Joe Jackson. Transcripts and other material from a 1924 trial in which Jackson sued Comiskey became available, along with a treasure trove of material from the office of Ban Johnson. And thanks to the Internet, today's electronic research tools, and good old-fashioned detective work in microfilm and libraries—a small avalanche of information from publications probably never seen by Eliot Asinof—we are now able to look back at his version and ask what Asinof would need to revise if he wrote Eight Men Out today?

I suspect that he would probably have the "cover-up" of the Fix as a main theme. In 1963 that word was not as common as it became after the Watergate scandal. (Asinof has noted how that event stirred up interest in his book.) But based on what we can find out about the scandal today, here are other things that would probably be presented differently in the book and the film alike.

1. The Legend of the Cicotte Bonus

Asinof maintains that Comiskey promised Eddie Cicotte a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games in 1917. In the book, Comiskey does not give it to him when Cicotte wins just 28 and is denied his shot at 30. John Sayles moves the denied promise to 1919. But is there any real evidence that the bonus was promised and that Cicotte was denied his shot at 30 wins?

The fact is that Cicotte had his chances to win 30 in both 1917 and 1919. Thanks to Internet resources such as Retrosheet, it is easy to look this up. We also have Cicotte's contract card on file with the American League, and there is no bonus listed for either year. So any bonus promised was verbal—nothing legal or in writing—and most of the bonuses Comiskey agreed to in those days were much smaller than $10,000—a figure that almost doubled Cicotte's annual salary.

Eight Men Out says that the withheld bonus was the main reason Eddie Cicotte decided to enter into the conspiracy to throw...