Other Fixed World Series?
In a 1956 Sports Illustrated article, Chick Gandil—one of those members of the ’19 White Sox—remembered the attitude toward gamblers at the time: “Where a baseball player would run a mile these days to avoid a gambler, we mixed freely. Players often bet. After the games, they would sit in lobbies and bars with gamblers, gabbing away. Most of the gamblers we knew were honorable Joes who would never think of fixing a game. They were happy just to be booking and betting.” Another player of that era, catcher Eddie Ainsmith, later told an interviewer, “Everybody bet in those days, because it was a way of making up for the little we were paid.”
There’s virtually no chance that the Black Sox were the first team to play a crooked World Series. In the SI article, Gandil discusses the World Series proposal Boston gambler Sport Sullivan made to him in 1919. “I said to Sullivan it wouldn’t work,” Gandil said. “He answered, 
Buck Herzog, who was suspected of having, “sold out,” manager John McGraw in the 1917 World Series. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.) ‘Don’t be silly. It’s been pulled before and it can be again.’”But other than 1919, there’s little hard evidence of fixed championship games. There is, however, a long list of World Series whose honesty remains dubious:
• As far back as 1903, when the Boston Americans (later the Red Sox) played the Pirates in the first World Series, catcher Lou Criger claimed he was offered $12,000 by gamblers to call bad pitches. Criger turned them down and caught the entire series.
• Ahead by a count of 3-1 (with one tie) over the Giants in the 1912 World Series, Red Sox manager Jake Stahl was ordered by owner Jimmy McAleer to start pitcher Buck O’Brien instead of ace Joe Wood, who had gone 34-5 and already had two wins in the series. Stahl and Red Sox players knew McAleer’s motives—he wanted a seventh game, because it would take place at Fenway Park, allowing McAleer to collect more gate-receipt money. Stahl begrudgingly started O’Brien, and the Red Sox lost. In the next game, Wood and his teammates probably laid down. Wood had an impossibly bad outing, allowing seven hits and six runs in the first inning, and Boston lost, 11-4. In Red Sox Century, Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson write, “It is not inconceivable that the Red Sox, already upset with management, threw the game in order to recoup their losses by laying money on the Giants in game seven at favorable odds. In the days that followed, Boson newspapers intimated precisely that.” The Red Sox did go on to win the series.
• When Sullivan told Gandil that the World Series had been fixed before, he may have been talking about the greatest upset in series history, the sweep of Connie Mack’s mighty, 99-win Athletics by the 1914 “Miracle” Braves. Rumors held that Sullivan had been involved in the fixing of that series. Songwriter George M. Cohan supposedly cleaned up on the Braves—and Sullivan was Cohan’s betting broker. Mack never accused his team of throwing the series, but after the series, he dumped half his regulars and half his starting pitchers. The A’s sank to 44-108 the next season.
• In the 1917 World Series, in which the White Sox beat the Giants, New York manager John McGraw suspected something was off about his second baseman, Buck Herzog. McGraw later told writer Fred Lieb that Herzog had played out of position throughout the series and that Herzog had, “sold him out.” Herzog would later be accused of fixing games with the 1919 Giants—and the 1920 Cubs.
• Before the 1920 World Series between Brooklyn and Cleveland—while the Black Sox investigation was barreling through baseball—Illinois State’s Attorney Maclay Hoyne declared that he had evidence showing that the upcoming series was fixed, too. “It appeared that the gamblers had met with such success that they were brazen in their plan to ruin the national sport,” Hoyne said. “What will be the result? I will not say at this time, but I will venture the assertion that there is more and a bigger scandal coming in the baseball world.” Hoyne’s evidence, though, never materialized. The Indians won, 5-2.
• During the 1921 World Series, Lieb heard a story about Yankees pitcher Carl Mays pitching less than his best because he had been paid off by gamblers. Lieb reported the story to commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who took no action against Mays. Years later, Lieb sat with Yankees owner T.L. Huston, who had been drinking. Lieb recalled the conversation:
“‘I wanted to tell you that some of our pitchers threw the World Series games on us in both 1921 and 1922,’ he mumbled.
“‘You mean that Mays matter of the 1921 World Series?’ I asked.
“He said, ‘Yes, but there were others—other times, other pitchers.’ By now he was almost in a stupor and stumbled off to bed.” The Yankees lost both the ’21 and ’22 World Series. Mays lost three of the four games he started in the two series.
