Boston 1917
One thing about gambling in baseball in the early 20th century is this: Boston was its capital.
A letter written by a fan—who had recently visited Boston’s new ball field, Fenway Park—to Baseball Magazine in 1912, noted, “I was considerably annoyed to find on ach of my several trips to the park that gambling was as open there as at any race-course in the country. … I cite Boston particularly because any schoolboy there could point out a score of the gamblers in the 50-cent stands on mighty short notice, but what is true of Boston is pretty true all over the circuit. … The gambling question, and it is just as true, mark my words, in the National League as in the American, is one that we have constantly before us threatening ruin of the ‘greatest game on earth.’”
If there was ever a time at which Boston’s penchant for baseball gambling became evident, it was June 16, 1917.
On that day, it was unseasonably cool and wet at Fenway, with the Red Sox playing an important afternoon game against the White Sox. Boston was in 
Gambling was most widespread here along the right-field line at Boston’s Fenway Park, shown in 1914. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.) second place in the American League, nipping at Chicago’s heels. There were 9,400 fans on hand, including several officers from the French army, who were in town to train American soldiers. The pitching matchup was a great one. Chicago had 32-year-old shineballer Eddie Cicotte, with his twisting, floating offerings, while Boston called on 22-year-old Babe Ruth, a fire-throwing lefty.
The White Sox took a 2-0 lead in the top of the fourth when rain began, muddying the field. Fans in the right-field bleachers—where the betting both at Fenway and at the National League’s Braves Field, was generally at its most rampant—chanted, “Call the game!” For a game to be official, five innings must be completed. With two out in the fifth and the White Sox winning, the frustrated chants of, “Call the game!” grew louder. Then, 300 fans overran the fence and stormed the field.
The Globe reported, “Sgt. Louis C. Lutz and five patrolmen from the Boylston St. station were powerless against the mob, which drew many recruits from the left-field bleachers.” In the mayhem, a fight broke out between Red Sox fans and White Sox players. One fan let out three cheers for the Red Sox and claimed he was attacked by Chicago’s Buck Weaver and Fred McMullin. White Sox catcher Ray Schalk got into a scuffle with one of the cops. There was a 45-minute delay to clear the fans. The field was soaked, but play continued. The White Sox won, 7-2. The French officers must have thought baseball a very strange game.
There was no question who was behind the demands that the game be called. It was Red Sox fans hoping to have the game called off so that they could rescue their losing bets. They wanted to rescue their losing bets on the Red Sox. With the Red Sox down, 2-0, all bets on Boston officially would be losers if the umpire waited until the next inning to call the game. The gamblers attempted a human rain delay.
James Crusinberry wrote in the Tribune:
“Later investigation made it practically certain that the trouble was started by the horde of gamblers that assembles each day in the right field pavilion and carries on operations with as much vigor and vim as one would see in the wheat pit of the Chicago board of trade. The same condition prevails at the National league park, and although gambling may take place more or less in all big league parks, there is no other city in which it is allowed to flourish so openly. …
“Just why this betting ring is allowed in Boston and not tolerated in other cities never has been explained by the baseball magnates, but it is supposed to carry a political angle which has the hands of the magnates tied. The attention of major league presidents has been called to it in the past and even has brought forth statements from the baseball heads that there was no open gambling. Any one present, however, can see the transactions and hear them plainly.”
As Crusinberry suggested, this wasn’t the first time gambling in Boston came to a head. In August 1915, when stories appeared about betting at the park, A.L. president Ban Johnson set out to address the problem. “We stopped gambling there a few years ago,” Johnson said at the time. “There is nothing more harmful to baseball than gambling and I think we have it pretty well rooted out. When we started after the gamblers in Boston … we had all kinds of obstacles thrown in our way. Influential politicians and others tried their best to protect these leeches, but we stopped at nothing and soon had the regulars suppressed.”
Evidently not. Here Johnson was, again, in 1917 hearing that gamblers had again made a farce of the game in B. Outraged and embarrassed, Johnson began an anti-gambling crusade in August 1917. He hired Pinkerton detectives, and by August 24, nine men had been convicted of gambling at Boston’s two parks. Others were awaiting hearings. Four days later, at Braves Field, police manned the bleacher gates and denied admission to 25 men suspected of being gamblers. The crackdown was swift, but lacked teeth. The convicted gamblers only had to pay a small fine, and off they went.
Johnson’s 1917 fight against gambling in Boston quickly subsided. When 1918 opened, Fenway was still infested with gamblers. When the White Sox—with Weaver and McMullin in tow—returned to Boston for a late-May series, Weaver was hounded by Fenway gamblers. “Those money changers who ply their trade brazenly in the face of authority at major-league ball games remembered the incidents of last season—one in particular—when they tried to stop a ball game by force, when they stood to lose some shekels on the series with the White Sox,” one story in the Daily News read. “[Weaver] had been booed before in the Hub, but since that incident gamblers who infest the park have paid particular attention to Buck at practically every appearance. … This was the case in the series that ended [May 28].”
Nothing changed at Braves Field, either. During one game in 1918, according to the Tribune, “It was so hot the spectators in the open-faced seats were invited into the shade of the grand stand. Most of them belonged to the gambling squad which still maintains headquarters high up in the first base pavilion. The jitney bettors accepted the invitation and established a temporary clearinghouse near the quickest grand stand exit.”
