CHICAGO (AP) If Chicago has been willing to believe that a cow caused the truly amazing Chicago Fire, maybe it is going to buy this one: The White Sox got the reasoning to throw the 1919 World Series following your Cubs did the same thing 12 months earlier.
That's the suggestion more of the hint, really from Eddie Cicotte, one of the infamous Black Sox banned from baseball after their tainted World Series against Cincinnati.
Inside of a 1920 court deposition the Chicago History Museum recently place on its website, Cicotte said "the boys about the club" talked about how a Cub or a wide variety of Cubs were offered $10,000 to toss the 1918 Series they lost 4-2 for the Boston Red Sox.
Cicotte is as vague as vague may be, failing to name any names or provide any specifics about how the players might have done it or even if he believes the Cubs threw the Series. However, if what he suggests does work it means that when it located fixing ball games in the early 20th century, Chicago was nobody's Second City.In this city, people are very like the
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"It is interesting to me as a Cubs fan and a historian of Chicago that both teams could possibly be involved in back-to-back years," said Peter Alter, an archivist at the museum who examined the document and also other artifacts that the museum paid $100,000 for at auction.People are very like the wholesale nhl jerseys
If Cicotte's deposition lacks specifics, it can do offer a glimpse into the lifetime of a player when their lives were a lot more like the working stiffs who rooted for them than the wealthy owners they played for.
Players commonly groused about being underpaid and there wasn't anyone in the majors who didn't hear rumors about fixes. That it was impossible not to see the gamblers at the games, the lobbies of the hotels where they stayed maybe in the taverns where they drank.
Plus they talked about such rumors all the time, including, Cicotte said, on a long train ride from Chicago to the East Coast.
"The ball players were referring to somebody trying to fix the National League ball players or something that is," Cicotte is quoted as saying inside deposition.
"Well anyway there was some discuss them offering $10,000 as well to throw the Cubs within the Boston Series," he was quoted saying. "Somebody made a crack about getting money, as we got into the Series, to tennis ball so the Series."
Cicotte apparently likes the noise of $10,000 because that is what he said somebody left in his accommodation for his role within the fix of the 1919 Series. He died in 1969.
Whether any one of this is true is unknown, but a writer who wrote about the 1918 Series after examining the deposition along with material said not only was this type of fix possible, it was understandable.
"They didn't make much money," said Sean Deveney, a reporter with The Sporting News whose book, "The Original Curse," said a fix by the Cubs was likely. "They had the incentive to behave like that."Many kids are very interested in the
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Both the Cubs as well as the Red Sox were upset the teams' owners were not paying their great amount of the World Series receipts, Deveney said. Before one Series game in Boston, the 2 main squads refused to come on the field through to the owners paid them what we were promised.
"The owners said no," Deveney said.
Deveney said the gamers quickly understood that they cannot win a public relations battle by refusing to relax and play a game during World War I, not in a very ball park filled with soldiers. So that they played.
So did the Cubs throw the Series? No great hitter suddenly forgot tips on how to hit, and the Cubs pitchers were terrific, finishing the Series with the astonishing 1.04 ERA.
Still, "there were definitely some suspicious plays," Deveney said, and the majority of of them involved outfielder Max Flack.
From the fourth game, Flack was picked off not once, but twice. Flack turned a catchable fly ball while in the sixth and final game into an oversight that allowed two runs gain in the Red Sox's 2-1 win.
And there was plenty of time Babe Ruth came to the plate with the Red Sox a pitcher at the time, but appearing to be one of the game's best hitters and the Cubs' pitcher, Lefty Tyler, saw that Flack hasn't been playing deep enough in right field.
"He waved him back and Flack just stood there," Deveney said. "Sure enough, Babe hit one over his head" for your triple that scored two runs.
Later amongst gamers, Cubs pitcher Phil Douglas came in the adventure long enough to field a grounder and tennis ball so the ball over the first baseman's head, allowing the decisive cost score in the Red Sox's 3-2 win.
Some three years later, Douglas was banned from baseball for which the papers called "treachery" after proposing that another team inside pennant race pay him to depart the team and "go fishing."
All six games in the 1918 Cubs-Red Sox Series were close Boston never won a game title by more than a run and may well only take a dropped ball here or perhaps a badly thrown ball there to show victory into defeat.People in nfl jersey authentic are very crazy.
"It didn't take much to throw an activity," Deveney said. "It really didn't."
When there is a record of a baseball official asking Cicotte 1 question about the 1918 World Series, Deveney doesn't be aware of it.
"Baseball didn't want to investigate," he said. "They wanted to make it all about the Black Sox and say, 'OK, gambling's gone.'"
And what happens if the Cubs a team that hasn't won a global Series in 103 years, blaming the curse of any goat and the glove of a fan named Steve Bartman en route had actually beaten Boston back 1918?
"It would have bumped the curse up ten years," joked Alter. "We could be investigating a century (without winning a global Series) seven years from now."