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On September 27, 1865, gambler Kane McLoughlin paid William Wansley $100 to ensure that the Brooklyn Eckfords would beat the Mutuals of New York. Wansley bribed Mutuals shortstop Tom Devyr and third baseman Ed Duffy to join the plot. The result was a 23-11 win by the Eckfords in a game marked by "passed balls and...muffed easy flys." Baseball was faced with its first gambling scandal. This is a comprehensive account of gambling and game fixing scandals that have gripped the nation. Attention is rightly focused on the best known incidents (e.g., the Black Sox scandal and the Pete Rose case), but the lesser known scandals are covered in-depth as well. Included are two chapters on game fixing scandals in the minor leagues.
Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is most famous for his role as the first Commissioner ever to rule organized baseball. But before he came into his legendary position as baseball's final say, Landis already had built a reputation from his Chicago courtroom as the most popular and most controversial federal judge in World War I-era America. Judge and Jury is the first complete biography of the Squire, from the origins of his unusual name through his career as a federal judge and his clean-up after the infamous Black Sox scandal.
This collection of nine essays examines some of baseball's most elusive mysteries. Topics include the discovery of the body of Ed Delahanty at the bottom of Niagara Falls, the suicide of Chick Stahl, the strange death of National League president Harry Pulliam, the case of a game that may never have been played, three gambling scandals (one involving Hall of Famers), the facts concerning the legendary matchup of Satchel Paige and slugger Josh Gibson, and the intrigue behind the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to Los Angeles.
BACK ISSUE Base Ball is a peer-reviewed book series published annually. Offering the best in original research and analysis, it promotes study of baseball's early history, from its protoball roots to 1920, and its rise to prominence within American popular culture. Prior to Volume 10, Base Ball was published as Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. This is a back issue of that journal.
This book is the result of one man's twenty-year quest to solve some of baseball's most enduring mysteries--the "cold cases" of major leaguers about whom virtually nothing is known. (In many instances, the various baseball encyclopedias list only their names and one other word: "deceased.") Some of these mysterious players had negligible professional careers and their time on a major league diamond was more the result of good fortune than anything else; others were stars in their day and then vanished. The Biographical Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research is committed to finding them and award-winning researcher Peter Morris tells the story of some of the most remarkable of the searches that resulted, many of which featured twists so surprising no mystery writer could have invented them.
In an era of rowdy teams, the Cleveland Spiders (1887-1899) were baseball's rowdiest. Managed by Oliver "Patsy" Tebeau, a quick-tempered infielder, the Spiders seemed to heap abuse of one kind or another on everyone--umpires, opposing teams, even the fans. Their aggression never brought home the pennant, but Cleveland's battles with the league's top clubs, including an 1895 Temple Cup victory over the Baltimore Orioles, are now legendary. Yet the story of the Spiders amounts to more than a 12 year free-for-all. There were top-flight players like Ed McKean, George Davis, Jesse Burkett, and Cy Young. There was the racially progressive signing of Holy Cross star Louis Sockalexis, the first American Indian in the major leagues. And then there was the team's final season, 1899, when a club ravaged by syndicalism set the standard for baseball futility.
Robert Dean Emslie (1859–1943) spent fifty-six of his eighty-four years in professional baseball—eight as a player and forty-nine as an umpire. When arm problems ended his career as a Major League pitcher, he turned to umpiring, serving in that capacity for thirty-five seasons, then as an umpire supervisor for thirteen years. His longevity is all the more remarkable considering he toiled during the three most contentious and difficult decades umpires ever faced: the years from 1890 to 1920, when baseball transitioned from amateur to professional sport and from regional business to commercial entertainment industry. Emslie endured the rough-and-tumble umpire-baiting 1890s, the Deadball er...
An in-depth and multiperspectival look at the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal and its roots in the culture of baseball fandom. In 2017 the Houston Astros won their first World Series title, a particularly uplifting victory for the city following Hurricane Harvey. But two years later, the feel-good energy was gone after The Athletic revealed that the Astros had stolen signs from opposing catchers during their championship season, perhaps even during the playoffs and World Series. Their methods were at once high-tech and crude: staff took video of opponents’ pitching signals and transmitted the footage in real time to the Astros’ dugout, where players banged on trash cans to signal to thei...
Many histories of the New York Yankees only skim the early years in their rush to pick up with the 1919 season when Babe Ruth joined the team and go on to celebrate the careers of Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Whitey Ford, and the team's World Series titles. But what about the Yankees before these big names? The early Yankees, who spent their first 12 years known as the Highlanders and were occasionally known as the Americans and the Invaders, get the attention they deserve in this work. It tells the story up until the sale of the Yankees in December 1914, beginning with 1903 when the team was formed from the remnants of the Baltimore Orioles. Led by future Hall of Famers "Wee" Willie Keeler, Jack Chesbro, and Clark Griffith, they were the most expensive major league team ever assembled--but they are remembered primarily for their terrible failures, which included losing a club-low 103 games in 1908 and finishing 55 games out of first place in 1912. Yes, the Yankees.
A comprehensive, non-partisan account of the judicial proceedings spawned by the corruption of the 1919 World Series is badly needed. This book provides it. The narrative of events has been crafted from surviving fragments of the judicial record, contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the proceedings, museum archives and, occasionally, the literature of the Black Sox scandal. Preceding the account of judicial events are a brief overview of the baseball gambling problem, a summary of the 1919 Series, and a discussion of post-Series events that presaged revelations of the Series fix. The grand jury proceedings, the criminal trial, and ensuing civil suits initiated by various of the banned players against the White Sox are then recounted in detail, accompanied by copious source citations. The book concludes with a survey of how Black Sox-related legal proceedings have been treated in scandal literature. The book does not purport to be the definitive account of the Black Sox scandal. Rather, it uniquely presents how the matter played out in court.