Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball's Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded (review)

Whatever we know about the "Big Fix," author Gene Carney instructs us to leave at the door as we enter his treatment of this tragic baseball event. Having read numerous books and articles on the topic, I found this difficult to do. The instruction, however, has merit.

Through his extensive research, Carney has determined that the Black Sox scandal of 1919 was far more complicated than we have traditionally believed. The title of Eliot Asinof's 1963 book, Eight Men Out, is really a misnomer. True, eight members of the Chicago White Sox were banned from baseball for life by newly appointed commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis for throwing the 1919 World Series, but the fingers of guilt extended far beyond these eight ballplayers. Carney states,

If baseball reflects America, then in this story we see corporate America, reflected in the White Sox and Major League Baseball, silencing whistle-blowers, keeping real investigators off the trail, controlling the damage and the spin, and finally, when the lid is blown, keeping the focus on eight employees, as if they alone had "guilty knowledge."

(xv)

This seems to be supported by the fact that only select parts of the accused players' testimonies were reported in the papers, which, in turn, were controlled by the owners. Carney's perspective is that the lords of baseball knew what was going on during and after the fact, yet tried desperately to cover it up and retain public favor so baseball would not go the way of boxing and horse racing. Even Landis's attribution of equal guilt to all eight players may have served to cover the roles of the owners in this sordid mess.

The setting for the "Big Fix" was a different scene from today's. In 1919 baseball and gambling were strongly connected. It was not unusual to see Arnold Rothstein, a big-time New York City gambler, in the luxury box of Charles Stoneham, owner of the New York Giants. For years, baseball owners had closed their eyes to the gambling problems plaguing baseball. Carney states,

Baseball was in the stranglehold of gamblers, and had been for some time. Gambling and cheating in baseball were not isolated . . . nor were these activities indulged in only by players. The Black Sox scandal was more like the tip of an iceberg. But Major League Baseball could not let that become widely known, or the sport would collapse.

(237)

Carney's book raises more questions than it answers. He presents conflicting testimony, confessions and subsequent denials, and the "disappearance" of grand jury testimonies. Carney states,

There was too much monkey business—competing syndicates double-crossing each other, stiffing players, players stiffing players, players telling other players who's in and who's not, but lying, perhaps. Then there's the problem of the players who were in on the fix changing their minds—possibly at different times, maybe even during games.

(270)

Did some of the players who were initially in on the fix want out, but couldn't remove themselves for fear of reprisal from gamblers? And is it that obvious when a player isn't doing his best? Mistakes—errors and strikeouts, for instance—happen even when people are really trying.

Over the years, some have claimed that the idea of fixing the 1919 World Series came from one or more of the players on the White Sox. Others believe the plot was hatched by gamblers. Establishing exactly what happened more than eighty years after the fact is a very difficult, if not impossible, task. Carney quotes Louis Hegeman, an Illinois attorney, in a presentation on the case of Joe Jackson at the 1992 Convention of the Society for American Baseball Research: "No two historians have agreed on what occurred in the World Series of 1919 and its aftermath" (286). Rather than answering questions, Carney presents the evidence...