All language subtitles for Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E03 (Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E03) (ENGLISH)

Baseball is thought of
as this game of geometry.

The game of geometry.

It's perfect, it's 90 feet, it's 60
feet, it's this, it's that, everything's

perfect, right angles,
everything's all in.

And then it has the strictest
rules, and it has the strictest history,

everything interpreted.

And kids play it all over the place,
with two bases, one base, with a car

parked in the middle
of where they're playing.

They play it in the street, we played
it in the holly, used trees for bases,

we call it the holly where I
lived in Lexington, Virginia.

We had a wonderful
baseball game.

You can improvise
baseball in a living room.

You can improvise baseball on a New
York street, and people do every day.

You can play it in a
pasture, you can play it on

the side of a hill, you can
play baseball anywhere.

You can play it at the park,
you can play it on a Favorite

You can pay for a few games,
you can play baseball anywhere.

You can play baseball
alone, like dad would say.

© BF-WATCH TV 2021

Between 1910 and 1920, Albert Einstein
published his Theory of Relativity.

The first ships moved
through the Panama Canal.

And 22 million people
died of influenza.

The war to end all
wars was fought.

The Bolsheviks
seized power in Russia.

And immigrants from Eastern and Southern
Europe streamed into the United States.

More than a million
of them a year.

Harriet Tubman and Julia Ward
Howe and Albert Goodwill Spalding died.

Orson Welles and Joe DiMaggio
and Jackie Robinson were born.

Americans turned out to
watch the Racine malted

milks and Rockford dries
in Milwaukee brewers.

The Jackson convicts, Quincy
crybabies, Zanesville flood sufferers.

And the Telluride,
Colorado baseball club.

Champions of the Western slope whose
home field was 8,745 feet above sea level.

Thousands of small town players
dreamed of moving on to still greater fame.

I didn't expect to
make it to the big

leagues, said Cincinnati
outfielder Ed Rausch.

But I didn't care.

I had to get away
from those damn cows.

Baseball transformed
the language.

A success was now a home run.

Crazy ideas came
out of left field.

And inappropriate
behavior was off base.

Bleacher seats
now cost a quarter.

Box seats went for a dollar.

A hot dog cost a nickel.

The game was
still fast and furious.

Speed and strategy took
precedence over power.

Ty Cobb and John
McGraw still set the pace.

Music

When the decade began, baseball
had never been more popular.

By its end, fans everywhere would feel
betrayed, as some of the finest players in

the game sought to sell
out the national pastime.

There had been many, many, many scandals
and incidents because wherever there was

any kind of sporting
event, there were gamblers.

And basically,
gamblers won an edge.

And that edge often is having paid one
or the other players, or having gotten the

opposing pitcher drunk the night before,
or that morning, or distracting them by

shooting bullets at the left fielder
when the ball would come in the air.

And, you know, the early games didn't
have a fence that you could hit it over.

You got a home run by hitting it
and it would roll and roll and roll.

So there was less separation
between the fans and the game.

And if you hit a line drive that was
two inches foul, you hit a spectator.

Because they were
going to sell not only all

the seats, but all the
room up to the sidelines.

And in fact, in a couple of the World
Series games in 1919, they put a rope

across left field and they
put people standing there.

And there was a
ground rule triple.

If the ball went into that group
of people, you would get a triple.

And so, of course, if it was
your guy and he hit a foul

ball, you would surge
forward and try to have the ball.

And if it was the other guy,
you'd try to back up against the

wall and pull the rope back so
your guy had a chance to catch it.

What this led to, of
course, is that there was

much more familiarity
even while you were playing.

There were guys yelling out, you
know, 15 bucks if you drop that ball,

you know, and the
guy might listen in.

If the other guy said
20 if you catch it, you

know, he might catch
it at the last minute.

And that thing that kind of existed in
hometown baseball certainly was not

strange to the major leagues because
it was so hometown in the beginning.

It still was a very, very personal,
we-know-our-boys-personally kind of game.

If you look at pictures of, say, the
1915 Pirates, you're going to see a

very different kind of
face than you see today.

Hard men.

Baseball at that point
was a way out of the mines.

This was a way for immigrant Americans
to make a career, and they were tough men.

Hungry young men coming
after the established youth.

Older men.

Baseball was played with
a ferocity of a kind of life

and death, which in a
sense it was for these players.

So it represented the rise of
American striving in a certain way.

That's the way
it is in baseball.

It's a tough racket.

There's always someone sitting on the bench
just itching to get in there in your place.

Thinks he can do better.

Wants your job.

In the worst way.

Back to the coal
mines for you, pal.

The pressure never lets up.

It doesn't matter what
you did yesterday.

That's history.

It's tomorrow that counts.

So you worry all the time.

It never ends.

Lord, baseball's
a worrying thing.

Stanley Kowalewski.

The game of baseball
is a clean, straight game.

And it summons to its presence everybody
who enjoys clean, straight athletics.

William Howard Taft.

In 1910, William Howard Taft became the
first president ever to attend opening day.

And he saw a novel sight.

A victory by the
Washington Senators.

Over the Philadelphia Athletics.

It was an aberration.

The mighty athletics went on to take
the pennant and the series that year.

They would win the pennant three
more times in the next four years.

And take two more World Series.

They were a remarkable team.

Sparked by the fine clutch
pitching of Albert Bender.

Who was a Chippewa Indian.

And therefore known as Chief.

And the so-called $100,000 infield
of Stuffy McGinnis, Eddie Collins,

Black Jack Barry
and Frank Baker.

Who led the league
with 12 home runs.

But it was their manager who
deserved most of the credit.

Tolerate profanity, obscene language
or personal insults from my bench.

I will always insist as long
as I am manager of the club.

That my boys be gentlemen.

There is room for
gentlemen in any profession.

Connie Mack.

The real name of
the man who built the

athletics was Cornelius
Alexander McGillicuddy.

Born in 1862 to
Irish immigrants.

He began as a catcher.

Known for his ability
to simulate with his

fingers the sound of a
ball just touching the bat.

That fooled the umpire into
believing he had caught a foul tip.

He spent 11 years in the majors.

Managed to play every position
except third base and pitcher.

And vigorously supported John Montgomery
Ward and his ill-fated players league.

In 1901 he became part owner
of the Philadelphia Athletics.

And immediately
made himself manager.

A post he held for 50 years.

Connie Mack became baseball's
most conspicuous gentleman.

Managing in coat and tie.

Demanding that his players
be on their best behavior.

He could be as tough as
rawhide and as gentle as a mother.

Reasonable and
obstinate beyond reason.

And courtly and
benevolent and fierce.

He was kind-hearted
and hard-fisted.

Drove a close bargain and
was suckered in a hundred deals.

He was generous and thoughtful.

And autocratic and
shy and independent.

And altogether
completely lovable.

Red Smith, New
York Herald Tribune.

Connie Mack, in the words
of Wilfred Sheed, like a tree

from the Garden of Eden,
came into baseball in the 1880s.

He began as a not
very good player.

And like so many other not very good
players, he took instead his passion for

the game and his, in this case,
his brains, and became a mogul.

A great manager who
would build terrific teams.

Great manager and owner.

And then as soon as they had
reached their pinnacle, he would

sell the players for as much
money as he could possibly get.

It is more profitable for
me to have a team that is in

contention for most of the
season, but finishes about fourth.

A team like that will draw
well enough for the first

part of the season to
show a profit for the year.

And you don't have to give the
players raises when they don't win.

Baseball was Mack's
livelihood, but it was also his life.

And he was worried
about the game's integrity.

Violent players like Detroit's
Ty Cobb distressed him.

When the Tigers came to town, Connie
Mack advised his team to never get Mr.

Cobb angry.

They may not have liked
him, but they admired him.

Cobb had that terrific
fire, that terrific drive.

I never saw a fella
with the drive Cobb had.

It was his game.

It was his base.

Everything was his.

He would just...

He dominated the game.

I never saw a fella like that.

Rue Bressler.

In 1910, Ty Cobb was locked in a
fierce battle with Napoleon Lajoie of the

Cleveland Indians for the batting
championship of the American League.

The hugely popular Lajoie had led the
league in batting twice before and was

considered the greatest
second baseman in the game.

The Chalmers Motor Company had offered
a new car to the man who won the title.

Cobb wanted that car.

But he was so detested by those who played
against him, that when he and Lajoie were

neck and neck for the title at the very
end of the season, the manager of the St.

Louis Browns, just to spite
Cobb, ordered his third baseman

to play so deep that Lajoie
got six bunt singles in a row.

The manager was
found out and fired.

Cobb ended up winning the
title by a single percentage point.

Years later, it was discovered
that in fact Lajoie should have won.

Cobb's average had been
inflated by having one game twice.

But both men got cars.

It would be the first of ten cars
Cobb would receive over his career.

He was now widely hailed
as the best player in the game

and was one of the best
paid, making $9,500 a year.

He was careful with his money and
had already begun to invest in the small

Georgia soft drink company,
Coca-Cola, that would

soon help make him
baseball's richest player.

But no degree of success
could exorcise his demons.

Cobb is the great black
mark on the history of baseball.

There's no question that
he was a great player, but

he was a man of vile
temperament and vile habit.

Terribly racist, brutal,
and one of the most awful

moments in a career
that was filled with them.

He went into the stands and brutally beat
up a handicapped fan who was heckling him.

On May 15, 1912, at Hilltop Park in
Manhattan, Ty Cobb endured the taunts of a

New York fan, Claude
Luker, until after the third

inning, when Luker shouted
that Cobb was a half nigger.

Cobb vaulted the
railing, knocked down the

heckler, and began
stomping him with his spikes.

When the crowd shouted that the man
was helpless because he had no hands,

Cobb replied, I don't care if
he doesn't have any feet, and

kept kicking him until a park
policeman pulled him away.

Van Johnson, president
of the American League,

suspended Cobb from
organized baseball indefinitely.

Everybody took him.

I took it as a joke.

I was only kidding that fella,
and I frightened him to death.

But I would not take from the United
States Army what that man said to me.

And the fans in New York cheered
me to the echo when I left the field.

I don't look for applause,
but for the first time

in my life, I was glad
that the fans were with me.

Although his teammates despised
Cobb, they thought he'd been justified.

Being called a half
nigger was considered an

insult too great for
any white man to bear.

They refused to play
until he was reinstated.

It was the first players'
strike in Major League history.

The Tiger manager
desperately rounded up a team of

amateurs for the next day's
game against Philadelphia.

A seminary student
pitched for Detroit that

afternoon, and the
new Tigers lost 24 to 2.

The next game was canceled.

Van Johnson now warned that
he would suspend every Tiger

from the game unless they
all agreed to return to the field.

Cobb urged his
teammates to give in.

And when they did, they
were each fined $100.

After Cobb paid
only a $50 fine for the

savage beating, Johnson
lifted his suspension.

The more his fires burned, the
more that provoked him on the field.

And I suppose one could say that the happy
byproduct was the extraordinary success of

the legendary baseball that
he gave the fans of the time.

But there's a moment when
you have to say it's not worth it.

I think that Ty Cobb in his totality
was an embarrassment to baseball.

On November 13, 1911, John Jordan O'Neill,
who would one day become one of baseball's

greatest ambassadors, was
born in the Gulf Coast port

town of Carrabelle, Florida,
the grandson of a slave.

Every town had a baseball team.

In my town, Carrabelle,
that's where I was born.

They had a little
local baseball team.

And my father played
on the baseball team.

And he would take me around with him to the
baseball fields, wherever they would play.

And I loved it.

And I could catch the ball so the older
fellas would like to throw the ball to me,

because I was
kind of a little show.

You know, here's a little boy catching
the ball, and the people kind of liked it.

So that started me in
wanting to play baseball.

For years, Andrew Rube Foster and
other black stars had organized dozens of

barnstorming teams in the hope that they
might one day play in the major leagues.

But in 1911, the gentlemen's agreement
among the owners still kept all black

players, no matter how good,
out of organized white baseball.

Nevertheless, that same year, the
Cincinnati Reds signed two light-skinned

players from Cuba, Armando
Marsanz and Rafael Almeida.

When questions arose about their
playing a white man's game, the Cincinnati

management assured the public
they were as pure white as Castile soap.

Now that the first shock is over, it
would not be surprising to see a Cuban

of few shades darker breaking
into the professional ranks.

It would then be easier for colored
players, who are citizens of this country,

to get into fast company.

New York age.

But black Americans
were still barred.

It was only four high schools in the
state of Florida black kids could attend.

So just elementary education, well,
this was by design, because they were

thinking, well, this is all
that a black kid needed.

So I've got to go
to the salary field.

So I was working
in the salary field.

And in that salary
field, I was a box boy.

I'm sitting behind the boxes
one day, and it was hot.

It was hot in Florida.

And I was sweaty, and
that muck was... I'm itching.

And my father was
the foreman on this job.

And he was on this
side of the boxes.

All the old men.

And I was on the
other side of my boxes.

And I said, damn, there's got
to be something better than this.

I'm saying it out loud, you see.

So when we got off the
truck that night, my daddy

said, I heard what you
said behind the boxes.

And I thought he was going to
reprimand me for saying damn.

See, because he'd
never heard me say damn.

Not if I had ever said damn,
really, to tell you the truth.

And he said, I heard it.

He said, well, yeah,
there's something better.

I said, but you know
you can't get it here.

So you'd have to... you're going
to have to go someplace else.

And that was one of the
reasons I wanted to play baseball.

I wanted to get
out of that field.

And I did.

Baseball got me
out of that field.

For years and years and years,
baseball was the one where you could say,

you know, nobody plays
shortstop like this guy.

Nobody has a batting
stance like this guy.

I think originally there was
a very local kind of feel to it.

Certainly in the teens and 20s
and 30s, it was your hometown team.

You knew those guys.

They, you know, in the 20s, they
were still living in boarding houses and

sometimes putting their uniform on
there and walking or riding to the stadium.

Back in 1909, a rookie
outfielder named Harry Hooper

reported for spring
training with the Red Sox.

He was a college man and began to keep a
diary of the often dreary life on the road.

Thursday, March 25th.

Played the bench.

Came near getting into
the game when Tris Beaker

got hit sliding home, but
he stayed in the game.

Harry Walter and myself take in
moving pictures in the evening.

Friday, April 16th.

Walk to the top of Washington
Monument with Nickerson.

Play left field
in the afternoon.

Get two hits in four
and one stolen base.

Three put outs and
an assist to the plate.

Monday, April 19th.

President Taft sees game.

Monday, April 26th.

Doc Powers, who took sick at the
finish of the opening game, died today.

We sent $25 for a wreath.

Monday, May 10th.

Rained all day.

Sat around in the hotel.

We were all invited to the
burlesque at the Empire.

It's a good show for its kind.

Monday, June 28th.

Beat Washington.

Get a hit off Walter Johnson,
which scores the winning run.

Harry Hooper.

The plain fact, the New York Times
wrote, is that the art and mystery of

professional baseball
have never taken so strong a

hold on so large a public
as they are now taking.

Trey Cobb and the Washington
Senators star pitcher,

Walter Johnson, were the
decade's greatest players.

Harry Hooper and a host of other stars
vied for an adoring public's attention.

Tris Speaker was Harry Hooper's teammate,
the Boston Red Sox regal center fielder.

A former rodeo cowboy
whose fans called him

the Gray Eagle, he
transformed outfield play.

He played so shallow that he often recorded
unassisted double plays at second base.

He threw out a record 35 American League
base runners in a single season twice.

During a slump in 1910, he
was asked by his manager to

give up his cherished third
spot in the batting order.

Like hell I will, he said, and ended
the season the Red Sox's best hitter.

Eddie Collins first played in Connie
Mack's celebrated $100,000 infield,

but was sent to the Chicago White Sox
when Mack sold off his championship team.

Collins hit over 340 for 10 seasons and
played second base with such cheerful

confidence in his own skills that
opponents and teammates alike called him

Cocky Collins.

First baseman Hal Chase, Prince Hal,
was charming and skilled enough to have

become one of baseball's
most popular stars.

But he was also so unabashed about
consorting with gamblers that three

different managers accused
him of throwing games.

And fans took to chanting, what's
the odds, whenever he took the field.

Chase was a great fielding
and decent hitting first

baseman for the New York
team in the American League.

He was a gambler.

He ran with the gambling crowd.

And he lived very well
on the winnings that he got

from making errors when
you need to make errors.

He was a scary figure.

Scary because he was tolerated.

Scary because of what he did.

Scary too because in 1916, as Christy
Mathewson, the great Christian gentleman,

is completing his career with the
Cincinnati Reds, Chase is on that team.

And Chase's open and
vituperative scorn for somebody

who lived so well and so
purely was beyond ugliness.

One of baseball's most beloved
stars was Cleveland pitcher Addy Joss.

He was nicknamed the human
hairpin because of his height

and the exaggerated motion
with which he hurled the ball.

He had won 20 or more
games four seasons in a row

and was a favorite with
fans and players alike.

Even opposing players
enjoyed hearing him

harmonize with Ed Walsh
of the Chicago White Sox.

But Joss had a terrible secret.

He was suffering
from meningitis.

He struggled through the 1910 season, even
pitched a no-hitter without telling anyone.

But he collapsed before an
exhibition game the following spring.

Joss died 11 days later.

He was just 31.

Afraid that their owner would refuse
to give them the day off to attend the

funeral, his grieving
teammates simply skipped town.

The players were growing
increasingly rebellious.

They now began to talk
seriously about organizing again.

They wanted to abolish the reserve clause,
which made each player the exclusive

property of his team and
kept all salaries artificially low.

Workers all across the country
were demanding their fair share.

Textile workers in Lawrence,
Massachusetts went out on strike.

So did coal miners and steel
workers, even policemen in Boston.

In 1911, Walter Johnson
was paid $6,500 a year, while

his great rival, Christy
Mathewson, made $10,000.

Johnson complained in an article he
wrote for Baseball Magazine called Baseball

Slavery, the Great American
Principle of Dog-Eat-Dog.

The employer tries to
starve out the laborer, and

the laborer tries to ruin
the employer's business.

They quarrel over a bone and
rend each other like coyotes.

And we are freeborn Americans
with a constitution and public schools.

Our business philosophy
is that of the wolf pack.

Walter Johnson.

It's a game where the emphasis during the
course of it is put on a single individual.

You know, a fly ball goes out towards
the left fielder and he has this moment of,

what's going to happen?

You know, Fred Snodgrass,
who was one of the

great players for the
Giants back in the old days.

I think it was in 1912 he missed a fly ball
which lost the Giants the World Series.

When he died, this enormously successful
man at the age of 83 or something like

that, a banker in
California or whatever,

Fred Snodgrass dies,
muffed fly ball in 1912.

And despite his success, despite
his joys, his grandchildren and so forth,

there was this one stigma that was
attached to him for the rest of his life.

So it does indeed have
to do with you better

catch that fly ball
out in that fielder.

You're marked forever.

John McGraw's New York Giants had never
really recovered from the Merkel boner,

the base-running error that
cost them the pennant in 1908.

Though they remained a perennial National
League power with superb pitchers like

Christy Mathewson and Rube
Marquard and won the pennant

in 1911, they couldn't
seem to win a World Series.

Then, in 1912, after dominating the league
throughout the season, they faced one of

the greatest of all Boston Red
Sox teams in the World Series.

The Red Sox had won 105 games,
an American League record, and their

intimidating lineup included
Harry Hooper, Tris Speaker,

and a dazzling fastball pitcher
named Smokey Joe Wood.

Smokey Joe Wood was a pitcher who,
though not remembered nearly as well as

Walter Johnson, was at his peak as equal,
and such that in the 1912 season they both

had these extraordinary streaks
of winning 16 consecutive games.

When he was at his prime, it was Walter
Johnson who said of him, there's no man

alive who throws as hard
as Smokey Joe Wood.

The 1912 World Series was a fiercely
fought contest, on and off the field.

Fans followed the action by
telegraph and on scoreboards

mounted in saloons and city
squares all across the country.

When I was 13 years old, I
got a job posting scores in an

old-fashioned corner saloon
at 85th Street and First Avenue.

At World Series time, a complete
play-by-play came over the ticker,

and the management
had me stand up.

I'd stand on a platform and
read the tape in a loud voice.

This was 1912, remember.

The Giants and the Red Sox.

And the saloon was jammed
to overflowing with hundreds

inside and out, eagerly
following each game's progress.

Specs to poor sir.

No individual, whether player,
manager, owner, critic or spectator,

who went through the 1912
World Series will ever forget it.

There never was another like it.

From the lofty perch of the Bleacherite,
it was a series crammed with thrills and

gulps, cheers and gasps,
dejection and wild exultation,

recrimination and adoration,
excuse and condemnation.

Spalding died.

The first game was
played in front of a huge,

noisy New York crowd
of more than 35,000.

The Giants took
an early 2-0 lead.

But Smokey Joe Wood held steady.

Boston came back.

And after Wood snuffed out a
ninth-inning rally, the Red Sox won 4-3.

The next game
would be in Boston.

Mayor John F.

Honey Fitz Fitzgerald,
grandfather of John F.

Kennedy, was there to
throw out the first ball.

He was a loyal member of the Royal
Rooters, a hard-drinking band of 1,000

fanatical fans who'd been cheering on
the Red Sox since the turn of the century.

Game two was enlivened
by a fistfight between Trish

Speaker and the Giant
third baseman, Buck Herzog.

The score was tied
6-6 in the 11th inning.

The contest was inexplicably called
because of impending darkness.

After heated discussion, officials
declared that game two would not count.

If necessary, the series
would go to eight games.

For the next four games, the
series seesawed back and forth.

The two teams shuttling between
Boston and New York with hardly a day off.

At the end of game six,
Boston had the upper hand.

Ahead, three games to two.

Even the great Christy Mathewson it
seemed could not stop the Red Sox.

They needed only one more victory and
they were heading back to Boston, friendly

territory, where Smokey Joe Wood,
the hero of games one and four,

would pitch the next game.

Just before the seventh game began,
the Royal Rooters filed onto the field,

on the way to their accustomed
seats just beyond the left field foul line.

But when they got there, they found
that their seats had already been sold.

The Rooters refused to
leave until they got them back.

Mounted policemen had to be called
in to drive them behind the bleachers.

The near riot in the stands kept
Smokey Joe from warming up.

When he walked to the pitching
mound this afternoon, Wood wore a halo.

But before three hours
had gone, fickle fandom was

looking about for someone
else to put on his pedestal.

Wood lasted but one inning.

And during that, he
pitched only 13 balls.

They were more than
enough, for they produced

no less than seven
safe hits and six runs.

New York Times.

It was a rout.

The Giants won the
seventh game 11 to 4.

Back in New York, scoreboards throughout
the city relayed the happy news in minutes.

Because the second game had not counted,
the series was tied three games apiece.

Write in the pages of World Series
baseball history the name of Snodgrass.

Write it large and blank.

Not as a hero.

Truly not.

Put him rather with Merkle,
who was in such a hurry

that he gave away a
National League championship.

Snodgrass was in such a hurry that
he gave away a World Championship.

New York Times.

Christy Mathewson would pitch again for
New York in the eighth and deciding game.

The Giants went ahead one to nothing
in the third, and only two in the third.

Two brilliant catches by Harry Hooper
kept New York from scoring two more runs.

Boston tied it up in the
seventh, but a single by Fred

Merkle drove home New
York's go-ahead run in the tenth.

Now all Mathewson had to do was hold
Boston for one more inning, and the Giants

could take the championship
home to New York.

The first man up for Boston
was a pinch hitter, Clyde Engle.

He hit a great, big,
lazy, high fly ball,

recalled Giants center
fielder Fred Snodgrass.

It looked like an easy out.

Snodgrass and the left fielder
both moved toward the ball.

Snodgrass called for it.

I yelled and waved
him off, he remembered.

And then, well, I
dropped the darn thing.

Engle ended up on second.

Snodgrass put out the very next batter,
Harry Hooper, with a spectacular catch.

But it was his muff that
fans would remember.

Mathewson walked
the next Boston batter.

Chris Speaker drove
Engle home to tie the game.

And Larry Gardner followed with a sacrifice
fly that drove in the winning run.

Boston had won it 3-2.

It had taken them eight
games to get there, but

the Boston Red Sox
were the world champions.

The Royal Rooters went wild.

I broke down and found
it almost impossible to

announce the tragic
events to the hushed crowd.

After it was all over, I
sat on a platform silently

reading and rereading the
doleful news on the tape.

As though repeated reading
would erase the awful words.

For over half a century,
I've had to live with

the fact that I dropped
a ball in a World Series.

Oh, yes, you're the guy that
dropped that fly ball, aren't you?

But for years and years, whenever I'd
be introduced to somebody, they'd start

saying something and
then stop, you know.

Afraid of hurting my feelings.

John McGraw felt so
bad for his center fielder

that he raised
Snodgrass's salary $1,000.

When you play it
yourself, there are

moments that stay
with you for 40, 50 years.

I can remember pitching for
my school here in New York.

It's called St. Bernard's.

I was the pitcher.

And I could throw a great
big roundhouse curve.

Being long-armed, and
someone taught me how to

throw the thing, and it
was a great sweeping curve.

And I used to be
devastating with this thing.

I mean, these 11-year-olds would back out
of the batter's box and this thing would

sail in.

I used to strike out 17, 18
men a game with this curve ball.

I can remember a pitch I threw that
was hit for the final out of a ball game.

Lazy fly ball out to left field.

Someone had actually gotten his
bat on this great sweeping curve ball.

And they had a man on third.

And the score was 1 to 1.

And my 12-year-old classmate out
there, Charlie Lee, dropped the ball.

I can see it falling
out of his glove.

I can see that man
coming home from third.

I can remember sitting next to Charlie Lee
on the bus going back to New York, tears.

I can't believe it.

In 1912, Boston fans
had both a championship

and a bright new
ballpark to boast about.

It was there they had
beaten the New York Giants.

And fans were convinced it
had brought them good luck.

Built in a marshy area called the
Fens, the park's most prominent features

included a badly sloping left field that
was called Duffy's Cliff because Red Sox

left fielder Duffy Lewis had
learned to play it so well.

The left field wall was just 320 feet
from home plate and was very friendly to

right-handed hitters
and very damaging to the

windows of store
owners across the street.

Great stretches of Canadian
forest have been destroyed to

print the paper which people
have written plans to Fenway Park.

There's something
in its intimacy.

There's something in
that incredible greenness.

There's something in the
peculiarity of the way that the

outfield wall follows its
meandering path from right to left.

There's something about the way that it
fits so tightly and neatly into the city,

not surrounded by
endless acres of ballparks.

And there's something about the fact that
it has been the site of so much baseball

that baseball tragedy
might be too much of a...

might be an overstatement.

But so much baseball
sorrow has gone down there

that you can compare it
to a Civil War battlefield.

It is a veil of tears.

There is no greater
optimist in baseball than

President Charles Hercules
Ebbets of the Brooklyn Club.

For 30 years, he's
been in baseball.

And all that time, he has had
confidence in the Brooklyn fan.

Through many seasons of losses
and disappointments, he has carried the

Trolley Dodgers, losing money
year after year when those

about him lost faith in the
game as a paying proposition.

But the confidence of Mr. Ebbets
has never been shaken.

He believed years ago, as he does today,
that Brooklyn is a major league city.

And that it would
support a good team.

New York Times.

Over the years, Brooklyn would be
represented by many teams with many names.

The Atlantics and Excelsiors.

The Bridegrooms,
Bushwicks and Superbas.

The Tip Tops, after the baker of
tip-top bread who owned them for a time.

The Robins, after their
manager Wilbert Robinson.

The Trolley Dodgers.

And finally, just the Dodgers.

The story of the
Brooklyn Dodgers is the

story of one of the five
boroughs in New York.

Brooklyn was an independent
city to itself until 1898.

It was one of the great cities.

It was a city with a population
bigger than Chicago.

But because of the subway, because of the
bridges, because of the water and electric

facilities, the state forced Brooklyn
into the city of New York in 1898.

And Brooklyn didn't want
to be in the city of New York.

New York had the tall
buildings and this, that and

the other, and the railroad
stations and Broadway.

Brooklyn was just, well, they
called it the bedroom of New York.

But the one thing that they had in Brooklyn
was a baseball club called the Dodgers.

And the whole borough of Brooklyn centered
its love and attention on the Dodgers and

used the Dodgers against
the tall buildings of Manhattan.

Charles Ebbets was convinced
He sensed the team's fortunes

would improve if they had
a bright new park to play in.

The site he picked was a
garbage dump called Pigtown in

one of the poorest sections
of the borough, Flatbush.

I've made more money than I ever expected
to, but I'm putting all of it and more,

too, into the new plant
for the Brooklyn fans.

Of course, it's one thing to have a fine
ball club and win a pennant, but to my

mind, there's something more
important than that about a ball club.

I believe the fans
should be taken care of.

The club should provide a
suitable home for its patrons.

This home should be in
a location that's healthy,

it should be safe, and
it should be convenient.

Charles Hercules Ebbets.

My father used to talk about
the building of Ebbets Field.

He was 11 years old
when they started building it.

And he somehow remembered what the
hopes were for that whole area of Brooklyn,

because he lived right near there, that
they would have their own stadium nearby.

And he said he used
to go by every day and

watch another piece
of it being put together.

So when he first took me there, it
was like showing me something that was

part of his own history, not
just a stadium somewhere else.

Ebbets spent $750,000 to build his park,
with its marble rotunda and chandeliers

made in the form of bats
and balls, so much that he had

to sell half his interest in
the team to pay his debts.

Ebbets Field opened to
the public on April 5, 1913.

With an exhibition game against
the Highlanders, who officially

changed their name that
spring to the New York Yankees.

Brooklyn won 3-2.

An inside-the-park home
run by a young former dental

student named Casey
Stengel made the difference.

Over the next 45 summers,
Ebbets Field would witness some of

the worst baseball ever played,
and some of the very best.

Why is baseball you ask?

Because it is like charity.

It never faileth.

It is always there, except
on Mondays or wet grounds.

Into the man who is too old to keep
up with the attempt to civilize football,

and too young to need so
soothing a sedative as golf.

Who works hard when he works,
and wants to rest hard when he rests.

Who wants a
drama that is as full of

surprises for the actors
as it is for the audience?

Who wants a race that cannot
be fixed like a horse race?

Who is so genuine and
American that he wants

something to kick
about without meaning it?

And something to yell
about that everyone around

him will think more of
him for yelling about?

To that man, baseball is the one great
lifesaver in the good old summertime.

Los Angeles Times.

Baseball suits the character
of this democratic nation.

Democracy is
government by persuasion.

That means it requires patience.

That means it involves
a lot of compromise.

Democracy is the slow
politics of the half loaf.

Baseball is the game of
the long season, where small

incremental differences
decide who wins and who loses.

Particular games.

Series.

Seasons.

In baseball, you know going to the
ballpark that the chances are you may win,

but you also may lose.

There's no certainty, no given.

You know when a
season starts that the best

team is going to get
beaten a third of the time.

The worst team is going
to win a third of the time.

The argument over 162
games, that middle third.

So it's a game that you can't
like if winning is everything.

And democracy is that way too.

And with that sad story right
before the even comes to a close.

sir, I don't give a
damn to be in the big

leagues unless I get
something from my work.

I'll pick shit with the chickens
before I play for any less.

After Cleveland's great
pitcher Addy Joss died, his

fellow ballplayers staged a
benefit game to aid his widow.

All the great stars came.

Walter Johnson, Smokey Joe
Wood, Napoleon Lajoie, and Ty Cobb.

The game was a great success.

They managed to raise $12,931.

But it only increased
the players' anxieties.

With no pensions of
their own or job security or

grievance procedure with
the owners, they felt powerless.

They now formed
a players' fraternity.

It had two goals.

To rid baseball of the hated reserve
clause and to gain a larger share of the

profits for the men who
made those profits possible.

At first, they got nowhere.

The owners lost.

Simply ignored them.

Then, in 1914, a band of rich businessmen,
hoping to get in on the baseball action,

formed their own league.

The Federal League.

They began offering big money to big
stars willing to sign up with their teams.

They even gave the players
the right to become free agents.

Eighty-one players were
lured to the new league.

Including Three Finger Brown,
Joe Tinker, and Chief Bender.

Old ballparks were
renovated and new ones built.

Including one on Chicago's north side
that would one day be called Wrigley Field.

For a time, the Federal
League was a success.

With teams in eight cities, including
Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Brooklyn,

St. Louis, and Kansas City.

But the upstart league was a direct
challenge to Ban Johnson, who resented the

interlopers just as National
League owners had resented

him when he launched the
American League in 1901.

Johnson denounced the
competition as pirates and threatened

to blacklist any players who
jumped to the new league.

But to stem the flood of
deserting players, he and his

owners also raised the
salaries of remaining stars.

And pledged to do better even
by average players in the future.

Trist Speaker's salary rose
from $9,000 to $18,000 a season.

The Federal League
owners fought back.

Charging that the major
leagues constituted a monopoly.

And they sued organized baseball
and federal court in Chicago in 1915.

The presiding judge was
said to be death on trusts.

But he was also a baseball fan.

He refused to rule quickly.

And the months dragged on.

Finally, Federal League
owners, increasingly

strapped for cash after
two shaky seasons, gave up.

The new league collapsed.

So did Ban Johnson's
promises of better pay.

Trist Speaker's
salary was cut in half.

The players were as powerless
as they had been before.

And still, the federal
judge had not ruled.

Do you realize that a decision
in this case may tear down

the very foundations of this
game so loved by thousands?

Any blows at the thing called
baseball would be regarded

by this court as a blow
to a national institution.

Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

They have work to do.

And they should be
sleeping or eating.

But they would rather
do without sleep.

Or without a square
meal deliberately eaten.

Than miss a minute
of a ball game.

Even if they go on
their night turn in the mill

or factory, minus the
rest that should be theirs.

Baseball has been a passion of immigrants
because it is a way into the United States.

It's a kind of citizenship
perhaps more authentic

than anything which can
be on a piece of paper.

Sometimes it was the youngster's rebellion
against his father becoming less Polish,

more American, by
taking up baseball.

But it became an enormously
important part of the American identity.

Companies of every kind
promoted baseball for their workers.

Management believed it encouraged
teamwork, provided a healthy way to fill

spare time that might otherwise
be devoted to labor agitation,

and taught immigrant workers
how to be real Americans.

Nearly every
industry had a lead.

Railroads, steel, electricity, coal and
iron, textiles, meat packing, automobiles.

And thousands of workers came out
for factory games on the weekends.

And the On September 20, 1914,
more than 100,000 people filled

Cleveland's Brookside
Stadium to see the Telling

Strollers beat the
Hanna Cleaners 8 to 3.

The ones I remember are the Greenville,
Mississippi Buckshots, who were semi-pro,

I guess they were
called in those days.

Maybe they still are.

And they were... they
had jobs around town,

but the main thing they
did was play baseball.

And they were a tobacco-chewing crowd,
and men were fearful that their daughters

might go out with one
of them, that kind of thing.

They were wonderful people.

They hung around the pool a lot when
they weren't working or playing baseball.

And they were all
looking forward to a career.

I remember a pitcher.

The reason I remember is his name was
Mahady, and he went with an aunt of mine.

And he gave me a
baseball uniform of his, just

about worn out, and
had it cut down for me.

That was a great treat.

Women workers demanded to play
too, and soon the Goodyear girls, the

Westinghouse maids, and the
Miller rubber maids took the field.

July 24, 1914.

Miss Elizabeth Murphy, the young
girl baseball player from East Warren,

will accompany the local team to Rocky
Point Sunday, where she will be given

another opportunity to
appear in the game between the

Warren Shoe Company and
the American Enamel Works.

Miss Murphy played with the local
nine on the Child Street grounds Sunday,

and held down the first
sack in an excellent manner.

Warren and Barrington gazetted.

At progressive Sing Sing Prison on the
Hudson River, convicts played and beat

visiting teams made
up of electrical workers,

insurance salesmen,
and stock exchange clerks.

I want to go back to Sing Sing, one ex-con
remembered, down here, I'm just a bum.

But up there, I was
on the ball team.

George Stallings was the manager of the
Miracle Braves of 1914, who went from last

place on July 4th to winning
the pennant and eventually

the World Series against
the highly favored Athletics.

But when he was dying, so the story goes,
one of the would-be soon-to-be mourners

said, George,
what's killing you?

Stallings replied,
bases on balls.

He never complained,
never alibied.

He was never known to criticize a teammate
or call an opposing ball player lucky.

He accepted his great success modestly
and the many vicissitudes of his own.

His life in silence.

It was easy to like
and hard to know.

New York World-Telegram.

If Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson
had a challenger for the title of best

pitcher in baseball, it
was a troubled young

right-hander named
Grover Cleveland Alexander.

A Nebraska farm boy, son and grandson
of alcoholics, and one of 13 children.

He had honed his
startling accuracy by hurling

rocks to kill birds to
help feed his family.

He was a minor league
star at 22 when a shortstop's

throw to first hit him
squarely between the eyes.

He was unconscious for two
days and stricken with double vision.

He kept throwing anyway.

He was afraid, he remembered, that
if he did not, he would go to pieces.

And after months of relentless work,
his vision suddenly and mysteriously

cleared, though he
remained subject to

epileptic seizures
for the rest of his life.

Alexander stormed into the
majors in 1911, striking out 227

men for the Philadelphia
Phillies in his very first season.

He would win 30 or more
games three seasons in a row.

He pitched four one-hitters in 1915,
and 90 shutouts during his long career.

He was utterly businesslike
on the mound, throwing

an arsenal of pitches
with pinpoint accuracy.

Game after game, he'd pitch in an
hour and a half, a teammate recalled.

No fussing around, no
stalling, no wasted motion.

Even the men he struck
out so consistently liked him.

Between games, he was modest,
good-humored, and kept mostly to himself.

But then, he began to drink.

The greatest competitions, I think,
in sports, is the pitcher and the hitter.

Now, I'm gonna hit this ball.

See, right now, I'm
gonna be better than you.

And this pitcher's
saying the same thing.

I'm gonna be better than
you at this particular moment.

This is in a pressure situation.

And you are competing.

Nobody can help you.

Nobody can block fire in this.

Uh-uh.

No.

You got to do it on your own.

You're just standing there with that bat,
and he's standing there with that ball.

On May 28, 1916, Jimmy
Claxton pitched his first game

for the Oakland Oaks of
the Pacific Coast League.

A capable left-hander, he had been
introduced to the club's owner by a

part-Indian friend as a fellow
member of his Oklahoma tribe.

The Z-Nut Candy Company rushed out
a baseball card with his portrait on it.

But just six days later, he
was fired after another friend

let slip that he had black
as well as Indian ancestry.

Claxton was the first black
man to play organized white

baseball in the 20th century
and the last for 30 years.

Hitting alone will
not win ball games.

I want speed on my
team, and I also want

every man on the squad
to know how to slide.

I intend to have my
players taught how to run.

I don't say we will win any pennants,
but I do think that my systematic training

will be laying the foundation
of a pennant winner.

If this is theory, it is
blamed good practical theory.

Branch Rickey.

He was Leonardo in baseball.

He did everything.

He was artist and scientist
and genius of a million kinds.

He invented the farm systems.

He devised ways of
playing the game of training

players that had never
before been considered.

Branch Rickey graduated
from Ohio Wesleyan University.

Struggled as a catcher for a
few years in the major leagues.

Got a law degree, but
failed to drum up any clients.

And gratefully returned to
baseball, working for the St.

Louis Browns, one of the
poorest teams in the majors.

He moved up quickly
within the organization.

Scout, club secretary,
and in 1913, manager.

Rickey was a genius
at making do with less.

He approached his job scientifically,
introducing unusual calisthenics,

batting cages, and sliding pits.

No ball player can learn to steal
bases by practicing sliding into sand pits.

I wouldn't ask a
veteran to slide into a pit.

I don't think much
of this theory stuff.

Miller-Huggins.

Rickey barred profanity
and poker playing in liquor.

Offered evening lectures on
baseball theory, called skull sessions.

And keeping a promise to his
mother, managed just six days a

week, leaving an assistant to
take over for him on Sundays.

In 1919, the Browns' crosstown
rivals, the hapless St. Louis Cardinals,

offered him a still bigger job as
general manager at double the salary.

He would spend the next 23 years
with the Cardinals, and in the process,

profoundly change
the game of baseball.

In 1916, the Boston Red Sox, playing in
Braves Field because Fenway Park couldn't

hold all the fans who wanted to see
them, took on Brooklyn in the World Series,

and gave spectators and
one overwrought sports

writer something to talk
about for years to come.

October 8, 1916.

The withered stalk of the baseball season
burst with a crash into radiant bloom at

Braves Field today with the
opening of the World Series.

The superbas, pride of Brooklyn and of
the National League, and the Carmine-hosed

Boston Warriors scrambled
for the petals of the first blossom.

And the entrance from New York
started their scrambling a little late.

They emerged from the struggle
on the short end of a 6-5 score.

October 10, 1916.

Under lowering gray skies that finally
yielded splashing tears of sympathy for a

team mighty even in defeat, the Brooklyn
Superbas went down today before the Boston

Red Sox in the second
encounter of the World Series.

Fourteen innings were needed
to establish a final score of 2-1.

And they were fourteen innings of
such baseball as shuttles the heart of the

genuine fan back and forth
between his mouth and his heels.

And every inning was a gem, clear-cut and
flashing, its colors now blue, now rosy.

October 13, 1916.

The Red Sox celebrated Columbus Day
in their hometown by wresting the World's

Championship banner free from
the trembling, nerveless fingers of the

Superbas and throwing it wide to
the wind that swept Braves' field.

Theirs for another year.

New York Times.

America's entry into World War I
was very near in the spring of 1917.

Millions had died on battlefields in Europe
and Americans could no longer stand by.

Baseball was eager to show
that it was ready to do its part.

Van Johnson ordered teams
to learn close-order drill.

And the Washington Senators showed off
their marching skill led by the athletic

young Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

But baseball had become one of the biggest
entertainment industries in the country.

And when war actually came in April,
the owners saw no reason to stop playing.

With an astonishing disregard for
the new proprieties and new decencies,

the so-called magnates of baseball
have proclaimed in both leagues their

unswerving adherence to the
wretched fallacy of business as usual.

That policy is not
calculated to make us

proud of baseball as
an American institution.

New York Times.

The owners argued that baseball should be
declared an essential wartime industry so

that players would be
exempt from the draft.

It didn't work.

Washington Star.

July the 21st, 1918.

Baseball received a knockout wallop
yesterday when Secretary Baker ruled

players in the draft age must obtain
employment calculated to aid in the

successful prosecution of the
war or shoulder guns and fight.

Fresh recruits drilled on the Elysian
Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey,

where Brooklyn and
Manhattan teams had

developed a game of
baseball 70 years before.

Some ball players found jobs
in defense industries where

they were paid handsomely
to play on company teams.

Critics denounced
them as slackers.

But 247 major leaguers did serve
and three were killed in action.

Soldiers played ball in camps and
on battleships, on fields in Flanders,

and in hastily constructed
ballparks throughout France.

The Rover Cleveland Alexander served
in the trenches with an artillery unit and

emerged from the fighting shell-shocked,
his hearing damaged, drinking more heavily

than ever to forget the
horrors he had seen.

Though Branch Rickey was 36 and had
four children, he went to war too, became a

major, and commanded a unit that included
Captains Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson.

Cobb and Mathewson did not get to
France until after the shooting stopped.

But during a drill,
Mathewson was exposed

to poison gas that
fatally seared his lungs.

He would live for
seven more years.

But his great career was over.

September 6, 1918.

Far different from any incident that has
ever occurred in the history of baseball

was the great moment of the first World
Series game between the Chicago Cubs and

the Boston Red Sox, which
came at Comiskey Park

this afternoon during
the seventh-inning stretch.

As the crowd of 19,274 spectators stood up
to take the afternoon yawn, the band broke

forth to the strains of the
Star-Spangled Banner.

The yawn was checked as the ballplayers
turned quickly about and faced the music.

First the song was taken up
by a few, then others joined.

And when the final notes came, a great
volume of melody rolled across the field.

It was at the very end that the onlookers
exploded into thunderous applause and went

to the air with a cheer that marked
the highest point of today's enthusiasm.

New York Times.

The wartime crowd sang
so enthusiastically that the

performance was repeated
at every game of the series.

From then on, the song was an
integral part of the national pastime.

It did not become the official
national anthem until 1931.

The Red Sox won the World Series that year,
beating the Chicago Cubs four games to two.

One of the series stars was the young
pitcher Babe Ruth, who had won both his

starts, including a masterful
one-to-nothing shutout.

It was Boston's fourth world
championship in the decade.

They have never won another.

Who is he anyhow?

An actor?

No.

A dentist?

No.

He's a gambler.

Gatsby hesitated, then
added coolly, he's the

man who fixed the
World Series back in 1919.

Fixed the World Series?

I repeated.

The idea staggered me.

It never occurred to me that one man could
start to play with the faith of 50 million

people with the single-mindedness
of a burglar blowing a safe.

How did he happen to do that?

I asked after a minute.

He just saw the opportunity.

Why isn't he in jail?

They can't get him, old sport.

He's a smart man.

F.

Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby.

In 1919, no team played
better than the Chicago

White Sox, pennant winners
in the American League.

And few teams were paid as
poorly or got along as badly.

Players deliberately crossed
each other on the field.

During infield practice, no one threw
the ball to second baseman Eddie Collins,

Chicago's highest-paid
player, all season long.

Teammate Chick Gandal had
not spoken to Collins since 1915.

I thought you couldn't
win without teamwork,

Collins said later, until
I joined the White Sox.

Yet somehow we won 100
games, and the pennant that year.

The White Sox were heavy
favorites to beat the better-paid

but far weaker Cincinnati
Reds in the World Series.

The Chicago owner was
the old Roman, Charles A.

Comiskey, himself a
former player, but now

among the game's most
parsimonious executives.

They were abused horribly by
Charles Comiskey, who was a

man of a small mind, a tight
fist, and nasty temperament.

The climate was too
good for it not to happen.

It certainly was a kind of
have-and-have-not thing.

The baseball players
were very expendable.

If you got hurt, you were gone.

There was no pension
or anything else like that.

And they saw people
making money hand over fist.

The owners, in Comiskey's
case, he owned the ballpark.

He bottled his own
soda in the basement.

He was making a
nickel on everything that

went, you know, that
moved in that ballpark.

And there they were.

You know, they were nicknamed the
Black Sox even before they threw the World

Series because one year he started charging
them for laundering their uniforms.

And they went on strike by saying,
okay, then we won't launder them.

And they got dirtier
and dirtier and dirtier until

the sports writers called
them the Black Sox.

And then, in fact, Comiskey said,
okay, I'll launder your uniforms.

And then he took it out of
their World Series bonus.

Comiskey's first baseman, Chick Gandel,
a former hobo and one-time club fighter,

was tired of it.

He was nearing the end of his career and
wanted one shot at some really big money.

For the right money, Gandel
let it be known, he would be

willing to talk some of his
teammates into throwing the series.

There was nothing new in working
closely with gamblers to throw games.

Many players supplemented
their incomes that way.

The brilliant infielder Hal Chase
had made something of a career of it.

But throwing the World Series
was something else again.

Still, Gandel was determined,
and now the right money was found.

An ex-boxer Abe Attell and Sleepy
Bill Burns, a one-time White Sox pitcher,

served as go-betweens.

But behind it all was New York's most
notorious gambler, Arnold Rothstein,

who was said to be willing
to bet on anything except

the weather, because there
was no way he could fix that.

Rothstein was basically
a guy who never gambled.

You know, he's known as a gambler,
and he never gambled on anything in his

life, which is why he
got very, very wealthy.

He only put money ostensibly gambling
on things that he knew were a sure thing or

that he had covered so well that there
was no way that he couldn't make a profit.

I don't think he really
cared about sports.

I think he really did cynically feel
like, well, these guys are schmucks.

They're going to be old men, and I'm still
going to be making money off this game

when they just have to
pay to get into the stadium.

The proposition to throw the
World Series was first brought

to me in New York City in
front of the Ansonia Hotel.

Chick Gandel came to me and
said he wanted a conference.

He asked me if anybody
had approached me on the

1919 World Series with
the purpose of fixing.

I told him, not yet.

He asked me if it was fixed, would I be
willing to get in and go through with it?

I told him I would refuse
to answer right then.

Lefty Williams.

Gandel recruited six teammates.

Pitcher Claude Lefty Williams.

Outfielder Oscar Happy Felch.

Third baseman Buck Weaver.

Shortstop Swede Risberg.

Right-handed
pitcher Eddie Sicotti.

And the idol of schoolboys all over
the Midwest, Joseph Jefferson Jackson.

In two years, he had
risen from a poor millboy

to the rank of a player
in the major leagues.

The ignorant millboy had
become the hero of millions.

Out on the hot prairies,
teams of Joe Jacksons

battled desperately
with the Thai Cobbs.

There came a day when a crook spread money
before this ignorant idol, and he fell.

For a few dollars,
he sold his honor.

New York World.

A South Carolina country
boy, he had learned

how to bat from a
Confederate veteran.

Who had learned his baseball from
Union soldiers in a northern prison camp.

He had hoped to be a pitcher, until
he broke a batter's arm with a wild pitch.

Jackson could neither read
nor write, but he could hit.

.408 in his rookie year.

.356 lifetime.

The third highest
average in history.

His home runs were called Saturday
specials because most of the textile

workers games in which he got
his start were played on Saturdays.

And he hit them with a special 48 ounce
bat, Black Betsy, made for him by a local

lumberman from the
north side of a hickory tree.

And darkened with coat after
coat of Jackson's tobacco juice.

Thai Cobb himself thought Joe Jackson
the greatest natural hitter I ever saw.

Blindfold me, another player remembered
half a century later, and I could tell you

when Joe Jackson hit the
ball, it had a special crack.

He was called Shoeless Joe because he
was said once to have been spotted in the

minors playing in his socks
when new shoes proved too tight.

When Fred McMullen, Chicago's reserve
infielder, got wind of what was happening,

he demanded that Chick
Gandel let him in on the fix.

Now eight White Sox were
involved, though Buck Weaver

would later claim that he
had not agreed to participate.

The smart players demanded
their money up front.

The meeting was held
about 8 o'clock in the evening.

I said, there's so much
double-crossing stuff.

If I win in the series, I want
the money put in my hand.

I went back to my room at 11.30,
and the 10 grand was under my pillow.

Eddie Ciccotti.

Rumors of wrongdoing
were everywhere.

You couldn't miss it, one
New York gambler said.

The thing had an odor.

I saw smart guys take
even money on the Sox,

who should have
been asking five to one.

Chicago sports writer Hugh Fullerton
was joined in the press box by an ailing

Christy Mathewson to judge if
everything was on the up and up.

Mathewson and Fullerton
would quickly see that it was not.

Everybody in the
game knew it was a lie.

Nobody was even pretending
that it wasn't happening.

No one was admitting
it out loud for the public.

How could you
admit it for the public?

What would that mean?

To boost their gate receipts,
the owners decided that the

1919 World Series would be
a best-of-nine game contest.

The first game was
held in Cincinnati.

Eddie Ciccotti, ordinarily a master of
control, hit the first batter in the back.

Then he threw wild, bobbled a
grounder, ignored his catcher's signals.

Swede Risberg ruined an easy
double play by failing to step on the bag.

Joe Jackson threw
wide from the outfield and

seemed to slow down
to miss balls near him.

Cincinnati won 9-1.

This contest between the Reds
and the White Sox is something that is

concentrating the nation's
attention and its faith.

What was unsaid was the horror that
existed in so many minds as the baseball

establishment watched
the series being thrown.

It was visible from the very first pitch,
the first game, when the signal was put

in, and Eddie Ciccotti
hit the first batter, and that

was the signal to the gamblers
that the fix had worked.

The only thing that the gamblers did
wrong with that series, from their own

perspective, was that they
made the mistake of letting the

Reds win the first game,
because that drove the odds down.

And if the White Sox, the Black Sox,
had won the first game, Rothstein and his

cohort would have made
a hell of a lot more money.

In the second game, it was Lefty
Williams, and it was Williams' turn.

He held the Reds to only four hits,
but he uncharacteristically walked six.

And Cincinnati won
again, four to two.

In the stands was Judge Kennesaw
Mountain-Landis, who was impressed enough

with Cincinnati's play to call them the
most formidable machine I have ever seen.

The third game
was held in Chicago.

Cincinnati, not in on the fix,
threw a masterful three-hit shutout,

and Chicago finally
won, three to nothing.

But Chick Gandel made a critical error on
the base path, and reporters continued to

grumble among themselves
that all was not right with the Sox.

The public remained
unaware of the conspiracy.

Cincinnati took the fourth
game, two to nothing,

behind the superb
pitching of Jimmy Ray.

Eddie Ciccotti had pitched
well for the Sox, but once

again, he made several
devastating errors in the field.

There is no alibi for Ciccotti.

He pitched a great game,
a determined game, and

one that would have
won nine times out of ten.

But he brought the defeat,
crashing down upon his

own head by trying to
do all the defensive work.

He made the wild throw that gave the Reds
their opening, the only real one they had.

And he followed that up
by grabbing a ball thrown

from the outfield and
deflecting it past the catcher.

A high fly to the left,
blown by the wind over the

head of Jackson, who was
playing close in, followed.

And Chicago was beaten.

Hugh Fullerton.

Three White Sox, Felsch, Gandal,
and Shoeless Joe, all of them

conspirators, had
managed hits that afternoon.

Only at bat did Jackson
evidently forget the script.

He would bat 375 in the series.

And Buck Weaver was
having the series of his life.

By the time it was all over,
he would collect 11 hits.

It was enough to suggest that
the series was on the level after all.

But the heavier than usual
batting convinced most seasoned

reporters that something
was still terribly wrong.

After the game was
over, I went up to my room.

I was ill.

I was sick all night.

Felsch was in the room with me.

I believe I discussed
the matter with him

and said, Happy, it will
never be done again.

I don't believe he
even answered me.

Eddie Soccotti.

In game five, Lefty Williams, pitching
for the White Sox, gave up only four hits,

but three of them came in
a four-run Cincinnati sixth.

Happy Felsch made a throwing error,
and the Reds won easily, five to nothing,

for their fourth victory.

Cincinnati needed only one more win
to clinch the best-of-nine game series.

White Sox manager Kid
Gleason was stunned.

They aren't hitting.

I don't know what's the matter.

But I do know that something's
wrong with my gang.

The bunch I had fighting in
August for the pennant would

have trimmed this Cincinnati
bunch without a struggle.

The bunch I have now
couldn't beat a high school team.

Well, I was in awe.

All the Chicago games.

And Eddie Soccotti, one of
our pitchers who had won 29

games and lost seven during
the season, lost his two games.

And Lefty Williams
lost his two games.

I've forgotten what his 1919
record was, but it was great.

And it was just virtually
impossible for those

two men to lose two
games each and be honest.

The two teams traveled
back to Cincinnati for game six.

Ring Lardner, who was covering the
series, he would walk up and down the train

singing, I'm forever blowing
ballgames, pretty ballgames in the air.

And the players all knew what he was
saying, and they were seething with rage.

Christy Mathewson sat
in the press box with Huey

Fullerton, the great
Chicago baseball writer.

And Fullerton said, I want you to
point out to me things that aren't kosher,

the plays that look like that these
guys are not trying their hardest.

And Mathewson had a string
of them throughout the series.

It wasn't subtle.

But now the
conspirators rebelled.

They had not received all the
money they had been promised, and

the Black Sox now resolved
among themselves to play all out.

In game six, Chicago
came from behind to win on

dramatic 10th inning hits
by Jackson and Gander.

In game seven, Sicotti again pitched
well, and this time made no errors.

Jackson and Fels drove
in all of the Sox runs.

Chicago won again, four to one.

The series now stood four
games to three in Cincinnati's favor.

Chicago fans, battered by their
team's poor play, now began to hope.

Game eight would be held in Chicago,
and Lefty Williams was scheduled to pitch.

Humiliated by his poor play, and angered
at not being paid all the money he was

owed, he was now determined
more than ever to win.

But the night before the game,
gamblers sent by Arnold Rothstein came to

his room and threatened to harm
his wife if he did not cooperate.

Game eight.

Chicago had to win.

The entire city held its breath.

Lefty Williams
walked to the mound.

As he had in game two and game
five, Williams pitched miserably.

He gave up four runs and was
replaced before the first inning was over.

Home runs and extra base hits by Joe
Jackson and Chick Gandel did little to

stop the inspired Reds,
who won the game going

away, and the World
Series five games to three.

The Cincinnati Reds are
the champions of the world.

There'll be a great deal
written about the World Series.

There'll be a whole lot of inside
stuff that never will be printed.

The truth will remain that the team
that was the hardest working won.

The team which had the ability
and individuality was beaten.

The fact is, the series
was lost in the first game.

Hugh Fullerton.

It was actually a sickening feeling
because this was the pure sport.

This was the pure sport.

You didn't cheat because,
you know, a kid would tell

you at that time, if
anything, say, that's not fair.

That was the main word.

That's not fair.

I was 15 years old at the
time of the Black Sox, and I was

the most disappointed kid
in the city of Chicago, I think.

I couldn't, at the age of
15, I couldn't understand it.

You know, this was just
a terrible thing to happen.

I didn't know about gambling
or anything else of that kind.

I was just heartbroken.

And the stats show that
certainly Shoeless Joe and

Buck Weaver on third
base had better series stats.

And thinking it was crooked, no.

Terribly disappointed, yes.

That winter, in an article
for the New York World,

Hugh Fullerton suggested
the series had been fixed.

The baseball
establishment was outraged.

They didn't want to believe it.

Certainly the baseball establishment,
even the ones who knew there was probably

something to it, just said,
oh, no, this is total fabrication.

You know, there's a famous quote from
one of the baseball magazines about that we

should take the pressure off our
boys in the field and aim it toward the,

you know, thick-lipped, big-nosed
gambling elements, you know.

So there was a certain kind of racism in
the reaction of how dare you even mention

something so unpatriotic
as that this might be possible.

There's always some
scandal of some kind following

a big sporting event
like the World Series.

These yarns are
manufactured out of whole cloth

and grow out of bitterness
due to losing wagers.

I believe my boys fought the battles
of the recent World Series on the level.

And I would be the first to
want information to the contrary.

I would give $20,000 to anyone
unearthing any information to that effect.

Charles A.

Comiskey.

Charles Comiskey, afraid of losing his
best players, did not want to admit the

truth and refused to
investigate, even after several

players from other teams
told him what they had heard.

And after a letter arrived from
the wife of Joe Jackson himself

suggesting that the series
had not been on the up and up.

But American League president
Van Johnson hated Charles Comiskey.

He pursued the
case without let up.

It took almost a year, and the White
Sox were in close contention for the 1920

pennant when a grand jury finally indicted
players and gamblers alike for conspiracy.

Eddie Sicotti confessed
before the grand jury.

So did Joe Jackson.

What is your name?

Joe Jackson.

Where is your home?

In Greenville, South Carolina.

Did anybody pay you any money to help
throw that series in favor of Cincinnati?

They did.

How much did they pay?

They promised me
$20,000 and paid me five.

Who paid you the five?

Lefty Williams brought it in my
hotel room and threw it down.

Does Mrs. Jackson know that you got
$5,000 for helping throw these games?

She did that night, yes.

What did she say about it?

She said it was an
awful thing to do.

Leaving Comiskey Park
one afternoon, Jackson

was surrounded by a
crowd of men and boys.

One boy called
out, It ain't true, Joe.

It ain't true.

Others joined in.

Jackson kept walking to his car.

The fans followed at a distance.

Jackson never said a word.

Professional baseball
is in a bad way.

Not so much because of the Chicago
scandal, as because that scandal has

provoked it to bringing up all the
rumors and suspicions of years past.

The general effect is to wrinkle the noses
of fans who will quit going to ball games

if they get the
impression that this sort of

thing has been going
on underground for years.

New York Times.

October 7th, 1920.

Fix these faces in your memory.

These are the White Sox players
who committed the astounding

and contemptible crime of
selling out the baseball world.

They will be remembered
from now on only for the

depths of depravity to
which they could sink.

The Sporting News.

In the end, no one went to jail.

Arnold Rothstein indignantly
denied knowing anything about any fix.

He loved baseball, he said.

It was the national game.

He moved on to bootlegging, drug peddling,
and labor racketeering, and was eventually

shot to death by a rival gambler whom
he had accused of fixing a poker game.

A.

Battelle and Sleepy Bill
Burns were freed for lack

of evidence, but were no
longer welcome at ballparks.

All eight ballplayers were acquitted by
a jury after the transcripts of Saccotti's

and Jackson's confessions
mysteriously vanished from the court file.

They were tried
and found innocent.

A travesty, really.

But it came out that Arnie Rothstein and
the rest of them were crooked gamblers and

were able to persuade the
boys to throw the games,

even though some of them,
I guess, never got a dime.

And they weren't.

Most of the Black
Sox were not crooks.

They were dumb farm boys who didn't know
anything about finance or anything else.

Baseball is something more
than a game to an American boy.

It is his training
field for life work.

Destroy his faith in
its squareness and

honesty, and you have
destroyed something more.

You have planted suspicion
of all things in his heart.

Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

The scandal had so
disillusioned the public that

the owners felt compelled
to take drastic action.

Even before the trial ended, they had
dissolved the old National Commission that

oversaw the game and
replaced it with a single

independent commissioner
vested with extraordinary powers.

And to that post, they named a
federal judge with a reputation for willful

independence equaled only
by his flair for self-promotion.

Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

Appearance is what mattered
to Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

Primarily.

He was a very
distinguished man, you recall.

That famous pose of his, leaning
on his hands against the railing.

The nester, the judge.

Balancing, just as the scales.

Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis
was brought in as an authority figure.

He certainly looked the part.

This great granite
face, shock of white hair.

Looked like Jupiter
in a very bad mood.

Will Rogers used to say that they needed
a commissioner and they looked down the

first baseline and there was
this old guy who was always

sitting there so they
decided to give him the job.

The real reason they gave him the job is
that he had found exactly what the owners

wanted him to find in an
antitrust lawsuit when he

was a sitting federal judge
with the federal league.

But he surprised them.

He ran the game as an absolute autocrat,
but in terms of being beyond reach and

beyond reproach and doing what he thought
was right for the game, he did what one

could say could never be done in
baseball and hasn't been done since.

He could make the
owners follow him.

Born in Millville, Ohio,
Landis was named for the

Civil War battlefield on
which his father had lived.

He lost his leg.

As a judge, he had once sentenced
an aging bank robber to 15 years in jail.

Your Honor, the man
said, I am 72 years old.

I can't serve that long.

Landis replied, Well,
do the best you can.

He was best known for
having hauled John D.

Rockefeller himself into his courtroom,
then levying a stiff fine against Standard

Oil, a decision which a
higher court later overturned.

Van Johnson had
opposed his appointment.

Keep non-baseball people
out of baseball, he warned.

But this time, Johnson was outvoted
by his frightened fellow owners.

The survival of their
business was at stake.

Well, Judge Landis is considered
the savior of baseball by many people.

I think he was what the political people
considered him, which was a showboat judge.

He's the kind of guy
who gets a lot of headlines

and then all his
decisions are overturned.

And he found the perfect place,
which was in baseball, where they said,

There is no overturning
your decision.

You are the absolute
commissioner for life.

We can't fire you.

You are the final word.

And so he got, you know, every showboat
judge's dream, which is to be able to be a

showboat and then have nobody
say, But you violated the law.

He was the law.

Regardless of the verdict of juries,
no player who throws a ball game,

no player that undertakes or promises to
throw a ball game, no player that sits in

conference with a bunch of crooked players
and gamblers where the ways and means of

throwing a game are discussed
and does not promptly tell

his club about it will ever
play professional baseball.

The day after the Black Sox
were exposed and acquitted,

Judge Landis barred
all eight players for life.

None of them ever played
Major League Baseball again.

Had he any sense of
the consequences, there's

no way that he would
have taken part in that.

But I don't think that anyone could guess
that a man as basically simple as Jackson

could have known really what
it meant, what he was doing.

His livelihood was taken away after the
1920 season, and with it, really, his life.

He lived another 30
years, but not very happily.

Joe Jackson played outlaw baseball
in South Georgia for a time, then ran a

liquor store in
Greenville, South Carolina.

Ty Cobb once came
in for a fifth of bourbon.

Jackson did not seem
to recognize his old rival.

Cobb finally asked,
Don't you know me, Joe?

Sure, I know you,
Ty, Jackson answered.

I just didn't think anyone I used to know
up there wanted to recognize me again.

Judge Landis and the club
owners had done their best to

reassure the public that the
game's honesty had been restored.

But fans remained skeptical.

Something, or someone else, was
needed to revive their shattered faith.

But I tell you what, here comes a guy
with big, broad shoulders and skinny legs,

and he could hit that
ball out of the ballpark.

See, a lot of people had stopped going
to baseball for the reason of the scandal.

And here comes Babe Ruth.

Babe Ruth started hitting that ball out of
the ballpark and then brought them back.

Yeah.