1918 Rumors
At some point in the fall of 1920, White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte gave the following statement about he and his 1919 teammates in an unsigned deposition marked, State of Illinois, County of Cook:
“The way it started, we were going east on the train. The ball players were talking about somebody trying to fix the National League ball players or something like that in the World’s Series of 1918. Well anyway there was some talk about them offering $10,000 or something to throw the 
Might pitcher Gene Packard somehow been involved in helping the Cubs fix the 1918 World Series? (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.) Cubs in the Boston Series. There was talk that somebody offered this player $10,000 or anyway the bunch of players were offered $10,000 to throw this series. This was on the train going over. Somebody made a crack about getting money, if we got into the series, to throw the series.”
Cicotte and his teammates, of course, did throw the 1919 World Series, and became known from there as the Black Sox. But if there’s any truth to his statement, then we can say, at least, that there were rumors among players at the time that the 1918 Cubs had also thrown the World Series and that those rumors helped inspire the Black Sox to do the same. Cicotte’s testimony about the 1918 World Series was never officially entered into the record, and it was never investigated by the authorities. But that was part of a pattern in the Black Sox investigation—officials kept the focus strictly on the Black Sox and failed to examine other gambling accusations.
The fixing of the 1918 World Series comes up on two other occasions. American League president Ban Johnson would later claim, “A report came to me well authenticated that a St. Louis professional gambler (since deceased) had laid his plans to fix the world series of 1918.” In his book, Rothstein, the writer David Pietrusza identified the gambler as Henry “Kid” Becker, St. Louis’ “King of Gamblers.” However, Pietrusza added, “Becker originally wanted to fix the 1918 Red Sox-Cubs World Series but didn’t have the cash.”
Maybe not. But in 1918, with the war on and most around baseball quite sure the game as it was known was coming to an end, it would not have taken much money to successfully fix the series—especially after Game 3, when players began to realize how meager their World Series shares were shaping up to be. It’s entirely possible that the series was fixed midway through.
There’s another mention of a 1918 fix. In the wake of the Black Sox scandal, Harry Grabiner, the secretary for White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, began doing some investigating into the scope of baseball’s gambling scandal. He had a list of players that were said to have been involved in gambling, which was in his diary. Former White Sox official Bill Veeck found Grabiner’s diary and wrote about it in his book, The Hustler’s Handbook. Veeck wrote:
“But the most interesting name of all is one that nobody would recognize. Packard. The record book shows a Eugene Milo Packard, who had knocked around from club to club, ending with the Phillies in 1919. Opposite Packard’s name are the chilling words: ‘1918 Series fixer.’”
Packard certainly would have had connections with the Cubs. He pitched for Chicago in 1916 and made two starts for the team in 1917 before being traded. And if Becker or someone in St. Louis wanted to get to the Cubs players, Packard would be a good candidate—he pitched for the Cardinals in ’17 and ’18.
