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Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox
The Black Sox Scandal is a cold case, not a closed case.
When Eliot Asinof wrote his classic history about the fixing of the 1919 World Series, Eight Men Out, he told a dramatic story of undereducated and underpaid Chicago White Sox ballplayers, disgruntled by their low pay and poor treatment by team management, who fell prey to the wiles of double-crossing big-city gamblers offering them bribes to lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, Eddie Cicotte, and the other Black Sox players were all banned from organized baseball for life. But the real story is a lot more complex.
We now have access to crucial information that changes what we thought we knew about “baseball’s darkest hour” — including rare film footage from that fateful fall classic, legal documents from the criminal and civil court proceedings, and accurate salary information for major-league players and teams. All of these new pieces to the Black Sox puzzle provide definitive answers to some old mysteries and raise other questions in their place.
However, the Black Sox Scandal isn’t the only story worth telling about the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The team roster included three future Hall of Famers, a 20-year-old spitballer who would go on to win 300 games in the minor leagues, and even a batboy who later became a celebrity with the “Murderers’ Row” New York Yankees in the 1920s.
All of their stories are included in Scandal on the South Side, which has full-life biographies on each of the 31 players who made an appearance for the White Sox in 1919, plus a comprehensive recap of Chicago’s pennant-winning season, the tainted World Series, and the sordid aftermath.
This book isn’t a rewriting of Eight Men Out, but it is the complete story of everyone associated with the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The Society for American Baseball Research invites you to learn more about the Black Sox Scandal and the infamous team at the center of it all.
When Eliot Asinof wrote his classic history about the fixing of the 1919 World Series, Eight Men Out, he told a dramatic story of undereducated and underpaid Chicago White Sox ballplayers, disgruntled by their low pay and poor treatment by team management, who fell prey to the wiles of double-crossing big-city gamblers offering them bribes to lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, Eddie Cicotte, and the other Black Sox players were all banned from organized baseball for life. But the real story is a lot more complex.
We now have access to crucial information that changes what we thought we knew about “baseball’s darkest hour” — including rare film footage from that fateful fall classic, legal documents from the criminal and civil court proceedings, and accurate salary information for major-league players and teams. All of these new pieces to the Black Sox puzzle provide definitive answers to some old mysteries and raise other questions in their place.
However, the Black Sox Scandal isn’t the only story worth telling about the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The team roster included three future Hall of Famers, a 20-year-old spitballer who would go on to win 300 games in the minor leagues, and even a batboy who later became a celebrity with the “Murderers’ Row” New York Yankees in the 1920s.
All of their stories are included in Scandal on the South Side, which has full-life biographies on each of the 31 players who made an appearance for the White Sox in 1919, plus a comprehensive recap of Chicago’s pennant-winning season, the tainted World Series, and the sordid aftermath.
This book isn’t a rewriting of Eight Men Out, but it is the complete story of everyone associated with the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The Society for American Baseball Research invites you to learn more about the Black Sox Scandal and the infamous team at the center of it all.
324 pages, Paperback
First published July 8, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 17, 2021
I'm not sure how to characterize this. It's not really a book; rather, it is a collection of biographies from the SABR Baseball Biography Project, with a few informative articles thrown in for good measure. It's certainly not a coherent historical narrative. I suppose I could call it an encyclopedia of sorts, though its lack of bibliography, uneven use of sources (most notably, few works of historical analysis before 2000), frequent misspellings, and general lack of clarity makes it feel too amateur for the "encyclopedia" title. It's big, it's bulky, and it's written in double-columns - which makes it almost unreadable.
I don't know who in their right mind would think that somebody interested in the Black Sox scandal would want to read through biographies of every single player on the 1919 White Sox. Yes, it is interesting to know about the life of Chick Gandil, Happy Felsch, or the unforgettable Joe Jackson. Unfortunately, this book starts off with Joe Benz, gives us 10 pages of Dave Danforth (compared to Jackson's 7), and get stuck in the mire with players like Fred McMullin, Win Noyes, and Pat Ragan.
This wouldn't be such a big problem if the writing were somewhat coherent. Unfortunately, the writing is more a list of biographical facts than anything else. It's like reading an endless newspaper of extended obituaries - and one that was not proofread by anybody before publication. The last straw for me was reading about Happy Felsch hitting the only home run of the 1917 World Series, in which author James Nitz gives us the outcome of the event before the setup. Sadly, the bulk of the material was written by William Lamb, whose writing style is both difficult to penetrate and incredibly dull.
Editor Jacob Pomrenke decided to put in a game-by-game account of the 1919 White Sox season between player biographies. The account, unfortunately, is limited to game line scores and a few basic statistics. The reader isn't even given access to a simply game summary, in the spirit of what The Sporting News gave us before its collapse began in the late 1980s. Rather, we're given a single headline from the Chicago Tribune, a few words about the player and pitcher of the month, and the rest is left to our imagination. And why focus on the 1919 regular season when the 1920 season offers so much more possibilities, with the historical second-guessing about thrown games and all?
The summary of the 1919 World Series is dull, the summary of the scandal itself reads like an account paint drying, and the piece on the actual salaries of 1919 baseball players is little more than a few tables. I could go on. Then again, I'm not sure what to expect from self-proclaimed historians who throw away traditional interpretations once they find a few contract cards of dubious provenance.
Having read through the major works of the SABR era of Black Sox historians, I can't say I'm impressed. Every single work on the subject since 2003 comes out as an attack on Eliot Asinof rather than a serious, measured account of the scandal. Modern statistics and interpretation tools are treated as anathema, important sources, such as Chick Gandil's 1956 Sports Illustrated piece are completely ignored (it does get a single sentence in this work - a summary sentence that completely dismisses the lengthy and informative article), and the whole production reads more like a continuation of Gene Carney's messy blog than anything else.
Baseball historians deserve far better than this. As far as I'm concerned, this type of book makes me question my interest in baseball history in general.
I don't know who in their right mind would think that somebody interested in the Black Sox scandal would want to read through biographies of every single player on the 1919 White Sox. Yes, it is interesting to know about the life of Chick Gandil, Happy Felsch, or the unforgettable Joe Jackson. Unfortunately, this book starts off with Joe Benz, gives us 10 pages of Dave Danforth (compared to Jackson's 7), and get stuck in the mire with players like Fred McMullin, Win Noyes, and Pat Ragan.
This wouldn't be such a big problem if the writing were somewhat coherent. Unfortunately, the writing is more a list of biographical facts than anything else. It's like reading an endless newspaper of extended obituaries - and one that was not proofread by anybody before publication. The last straw for me was reading about Happy Felsch hitting the only home run of the 1917 World Series, in which author James Nitz gives us the outcome of the event before the setup. Sadly, the bulk of the material was written by William Lamb, whose writing style is both difficult to penetrate and incredibly dull.
Editor Jacob Pomrenke decided to put in a game-by-game account of the 1919 White Sox season between player biographies. The account, unfortunately, is limited to game line scores and a few basic statistics. The reader isn't even given access to a simply game summary, in the spirit of what The Sporting News gave us before its collapse began in the late 1980s. Rather, we're given a single headline from the Chicago Tribune, a few words about the player and pitcher of the month, and the rest is left to our imagination. And why focus on the 1919 regular season when the 1920 season offers so much more possibilities, with the historical second-guessing about thrown games and all?
The summary of the 1919 World Series is dull, the summary of the scandal itself reads like an account paint drying, and the piece on the actual salaries of 1919 baseball players is little more than a few tables. I could go on. Then again, I'm not sure what to expect from self-proclaimed historians who throw away traditional interpretations once they find a few contract cards of dubious provenance.
Having read through the major works of the SABR era of Black Sox historians, I can't say I'm impressed. Every single work on the subject since 2003 comes out as an attack on Eliot Asinof rather than a serious, measured account of the scandal. Modern statistics and interpretation tools are treated as anathema, important sources, such as Chick Gandil's 1956 Sports Illustrated piece are completely ignored (it does get a single sentence in this work - a summary sentence that completely dismisses the lengthy and informative article), and the whole production reads more like a continuation of Gene Carney's messy blog than anything else.
Baseball historians deserve far better than this. As far as I'm concerned, this type of book makes me question my interest in baseball history in general.
December 27, 2019
This book wasn't what I expected. I expected something like a full defense of the Black Sox. The book consists mainly of SABR biographies of everyone - and I mean everyone - on the White Sox from Comiskey to the bat boy. However the introduction and the appendices give greater detail on what happened with the fix of the 1919 World Series and the aftermath . The only real issue I had was some of the biographers propagated the myth that the fix was done because they were paid poorly. However you get the idea that the players had (possibly legitimate) gripes against Comiskey and that may have been more of an impetus to participate in the fix than being legitimately underpaid.
January 17, 2025
good book!
I enjoyed this book.. provided information about the 1919 season and then biographies of each player and person associated with the team. It was neat to learn more about some of the other members of the Sox. I trust the SABR team for anything that they put out and you should too!
I enjoyed this book.. provided information about the 1919 season and then biographies of each player and person associated with the team. It was neat to learn more about some of the other members of the Sox. I trust the SABR team for anything that they put out and you should too!
May 7, 2020
It’s ok. Lots of info, but lots of repetition from essay to essay. It’s worth reading if you want to learn something new.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews