NPR recently aired a commentary on the 100th anniversary of the
Black Sox scandal. In 1919, eight players on the Chicago White Sox, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, fixed the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds and were subsequently banned from baseball for life.
The text below examines the evolution of Joe Jackson's public statements on the
Black Sox scandal. A forensic examination of those statements follows.
And Jackson ended up caught in the
Black Sox Scandal for fixing 1919 World Series and Major League Baseball's first commissioner officially banned Jackson and seven other players from playing who were found guilty.
While not perfect by a long shot--the
Black Sox scandal will be 100 next year, the Major League Baseball strike of 1994 was a major letdown, and the performance-enhancing drug abuse of a few years ago is still a cloud--baseball, the game itself, can be transcendental.
Given the mountain of mythology, paired with the incomplete historical evidence and self-interested disinformation surrounding the
Black Sox Scandal, Charles Fountain's attempt to divine the truth of the fixing of the 1919 World Series in The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball is a daunting task.
63-66), which weighs in with nine, including two involving Babe Ruth and three concerning the
Black Sox scandal.
Three appendices give the reader a list of lawyers involved with baseball, a
Black Sox scandal chronology, and a selective Black Sox bibliography.
Public Library asking for books about the
Black Sox Scandal, begging the
Twenty years ago, baseball was in a trough more dangerous than the one into which it tumbled during the
Black Sox scandal, when some White Sox players colluded with gamblers to lose the 1919 World Series.
Two of baseball's elite hitters, Eddie Collins and Shoeless Joe Jackson, helped the White Sox to be consistently at or near the top of the league in runs, batting average, and slugging percentage between 1916 and 1920--the tarnished golden era in Chicago White Sox history--during which they finished second, two games shy in 1916; won the 1917 World Series; tanked the following year on account of key players serving in defense industries during World War I; won the 1919 American League pennant, only to have eight of their players conspire to lose the World Series; and might have won the 1920 pennant as well had not the
Black Sox scandal broken with just days left in the season.
The films Eight Men Out, Field of Dreams, and Ken Burns's Baseball have brought the story of the
Black Sox scandal to a wider audience of baseball fans, capturing the public imagination like few other chapters of baseball history.