网站公告列表

  没有公告

加入收藏
设为首页
联系站长

您现在的位置: 一番英文吧 >> 英文吧 >> 行业英语 >> 法律英语 >> 经典案例 >> 文章正文

 

  The Black Sox Trial           

The Black Sox Trial
作者:佚名 文章来源:不详 点击数: 更新时间:2007-1-1 12:11:46
left, scoring two more.  The bottom of the Cincinnati order was teeing off on the Sox's ace.  The game ended with the Reds winning 9 to 1 [game stats link].  Meeting later that night with Charles Comiskey, Sox manager Kid Gleason was asked whether he thought his team was throwing the Series.  Gleason hesitated, then said he thought something was wrong, but didn't know for certain.

  The fourth inning turned out to be determinative in game two as well.  Lefty Williams, renown for his control, walked three Cincinnati batters, all of whom scored.  Final: Cincinnati 4, Chicago 2.  Sox catcher Ray Schalk, furious, complained to Gleason after the came: "The sonofabitch! Williams kept crossing me.  In that lousy fourth inning, he crossed me three times!  He wouldn't throw a curve."  After the game, Sleepy Burns left $10,000 in Gandil's room.

  Before game three in Chicago, Burns asked Gandil what the players were planning.  Gandil lied.  He told Burns they were going to throw the game, when in fact they hadn't yet decided what to do.  Gandil and the rest of players in on the fix were angry at so far receiving only a fraction of their promised money.  He saw no reason to do Burns any favors.  Burns and Maharg, on Gandil's word, bet a bundle on the Reds to win game three.  The Sox won the game, 3 to 0, with Gandil driving in two of his team's runs.

  Gandil told Sullivan that he needed $20,000 before game four, or the fix was over.  Sullivan made the deadline——barely.  The Reds broke a scoreless tie in the fifth when pitcher Eddie Cicotte managed to make two fielding errors.  After the 2-0 game, Gandil passed out $5000 each to Risberg, Felsch, Williams, and Jackson.  He gave nothing to Weaver.  It was clear by this time that the Sox third baseman was not participating in the conspiracy.

  In the sixth inning of game five, Felsch misplayed a fly ball, then threw poorly to Risberg at second, who allowed the ball to get away from him.  Before the inning was over, Felsch would misplay a second ball hit by Edd Roush, allowing three runs to score.  Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton, watching from the press box commented on the disaster: "When Felsch misses a fly ball like Roush's——and the one before from Eller——then, well, what's the use?"

  When gamblers failed to produce the promised additional $20,000 after the loss in game five, the Sox players decided they'd had enough.  It would be the old Sox again——the Sox that won the American League pennant going away.  They took game six  5 to 4, then won again in game seven, 4 to 1.  With a win in game eight, the best-of-nine Series would be tied.

  Rothstein told Sullivan in no uncertain terms that he did not want the Series to go to nine games.  Make sure it doesn't, he told Sullivan.  Sullivan contacted a Chicago thug known as "Harry F."  Sullivan told "Harry" to pay a visit to the starting Sox pitcher in game eight, Lefty Williams, and make sure that the game is to be thrown——in the first inning.  At 7:30 on the evening before the game, Williams was greeted by a cigar-smoking man in a bowler hat when he and his wife were returning home from dinner.  The man asked to have a word with Williams in private.  He did.

  Williams threw only fifteen pitches in the eighth and final game.  He pitched hurriedly, allowing four hits and three runs, before being taken out of the game with only one out.  Cincinnati went on to win the game and the Series, 10 to 5.

  The Trial

  Charles Comiskey tried to discourage talk of a fix, brought on by his team's dismal performance in the Series, by issuing a statement to the press.  Comiskey told reporters, " I believe my boys fought the battle of the recent World Series on the level, as they have always done.  And I would be the first to want information to the contrary——if there be any.  I would give $20,000 to anyone unearthing information to that effect."  Meanwhile, Comiskey hired a private detective to investigate the finances of seven of the eight men who were part of the original conspiracy.  (Weaver was the player not under suspicion.)

  A bombshell was thrown into the winter baseball meetings on December 15, 1919, when Hugh Fullerton, a Chicago sportswriter, published in New York World a story headlined IS BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL BEING RUN FOR GAMBLERS, WITH BALLPLAYERS IN THE DEAL?  Fullerton angrily demanded that baseball confront its gambling problem.  He suggested that Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a federal judge, be appointed to head a special investigation into gambling's influence on the national pastime.

  Talk of a possible fix in the 1919 Series continued through the winter months into the 1920 season.  In July, Sox manager Kid Gleason ran into Abe Attell at a New York bar.  The Little Champ confirmed Gleason's suspicions about the fix.  "You know, Kid, I hated to do that to you," Attell told Gleason, "but I thought I was going to make a bundle, and I needed it."  Attell revealed that Arnold Rothstein was the big money man behind the fix.  Gleason went to the press with the story, but was unable to convince anyone——because of fear of libel suits——to print it.

  Exposure of the Series fix finally came from an unexpected source——just as the Sox were in a close fight for the 1920 American League pennant.  Reports on another fix, this one involving a Cubs-Phillies game on August 31, led to the convening of the Grand Jury of Cook County.  Assistant State Attorney Hartley Replogle sent out dozens of subpoenas to baseball personalities.  One of those called to testify was New York Giants pitcher Rube Benton.  Benton told the grand jury that he saw a telegram sent in late September to a Giants teammate from Sleepy Burns, stating that the Sox would lose the 1919 Series.  He also revealed that he later learned that Gandil, Felsch, Williams, and Cicotte were among those in on the fix.

  News of Benton's revelations was leaked to Cicotte within hours of his testimony.  A couple of days later, the Philadelphia North American ran an interview with gambler Billy Maharg, providing the public for the first time with many of the shocking details of the scandal. Cicotte regretted his participation in the fix.  He seemed to Gleason and others to have been stewing over something all summer.  Cicotte decided to talk.

  "I don't know why I did it," Cicotte told the grand jury.  "I must have been crazy. Risberg, Gandil, and McMullin were at me for a week before the Series began.  They wanted me to go crooked.  I don't know.  I needed the money.  I had the wife and the kids.  The wife and the kids don't know about this.  I don't know what they'll think."  Tears came to Cicotte's eyes as he continued talking.  "I've lived a thousand years in the last twelve months.  I would have not done that thing for a million dollars.  Now I've lost everything, job, reputation, everything.  My friends all bet on the Sox.  I knew, but I couldn't tell them."

  Within hours, the other Sox players learned that Cicotte had talked.  Who would be next?  It was Joe Jackson that turned up, unshaven and smelling of alcohol, in the chambers of presiding judge, Charles McDonald.  Two hours after he began testifying, Jackson walked out of the jury room, telling two bailiffs, "I got a big load off my chest!" [link to Jackson confession]  On the way out of the courthouse, according to a story that ran in the Chicago Herald & Examiner, a youngster said to Jackson, "It ain't so, Joe, is it?"——to which Jackson replied, "Yes, kid, I'm afraid it is."  (Jackson later denied that such an exchange ever occurred: "The only one who spoke was a guy who yelled at his friend, 'I told you he wore shoes.'")

  That same day, in his office at Comiskey park, Charles Comiskey dictated a telegram that would be sent to eight of his players and then made public: YOU AND EACH OF YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED OF YOUR INDEFINITE SUSPENSION AS A MEMBER OF THE CHICAGO AMERICAN LEAGUE BASEBALL CLUB.  With those words, the hopes of Sox fans for the 1920 championship came to an end.  The final games in St. Louis would still be played——Comiskey said "We'll play out the schedule if we have to get Chinamen to replace the suspended players"——but the results were predictable.

  Arnold Rothstein's attorney,William Fallon, knew that to protect his client he would have to keep Abe Attell and Sport Sullivan away from the Chicago Grand Jury.  The two gamblers were called to Rothstein's apartment, where Fallon announced that Sullivan would go to Mexico and Attell to Canada.  Vacation with pay, Fallon said, as Rothstein pulled out his wallet.

  Meanwhile, in Chicago, more details about the fix were coming out. Lefty Williams became the third White Sox player to tell his story to the Jury.  Then Oscar Felsch told his version of events in an interview that ran in the Chicago American.  "Well, the beans are spilled and I think I'm through with baseball," Felsch said.  "I got $5000.  I could have got just about that much by being on the level if the Sox had won the Series.  And now I'm out of baseball——the only profession I know anything about, and a lot of gamblers have gotten rich.  The joke seems to be on us."

  Fallon decided to adopt a bold strategy for his client.  With Sullivan and Attell out of the country, he would bring Arnold Rothstein to Chicago to testify before the Grand Jury.  (Fallon had a second reason for heading west: he understood that Comiskey hated

上一页  [1] [2] [3] [4] 下一页

文章录入:bolang    责任编辑:bolang 
  • 上一篇文章:

  • 下一篇文章:
  • 【字体: 】【发表评论】【加入收藏】【告诉好友】【打印此文】【关闭窗口
    最 新 热 门
    相 关 文 章
    You Are The One
    You Say Nothing
    You Touched My Soul
    YOURE BACK
    YOURE THE ONE
    Your Smile, Your Touch
    He Put A New Song In M
    Nature Brings Me to My
    His Eye Is On The Spri
    Heavenly Flowers of Sp
     
      网友评论:(只显示最新10条。评论内容只代表网友观点,与本站立场无关!)
    Copyright© ENG8.NET All Rights Reserved
    QQ:272895858 网站所有:一番网旗下网站
    一番英文吧 站长:博浪