By now Burns had no cash and less dignity. He brought Attell's proposition to the Sox. They greeted it with the ridicule it deserved. "All right," Sleepy Bill parried. "We'll drop the whole business. But I want my share of the ten thousand I got you."
By now Gandil knew that Burns was powerless. "Sorry, Bill," he grinned. "It's all out on bets."
His teammates exploded in laughter. A humiliated Burns threatened to expose the whole rotten deal. "I'll get my share or I'll tell everything," he sputtered. The Sox wouldn't budge. He and Maharg got good and drunk and slunk away from what began as the opportunity of a lifetime. "I had to hock my diamond pin to get back to Philadelphia," Maharg remembered bitterly.
The Black Sox were ready to walk away from the fix. The double crossers were tired of being double-crossed and would now play to win.
What Burns and Maharg didn't know is how nervous Chicago's Game Three win made their fellow conspirators. Attell and Zelser may have seemed unflappable, but even before Game Three they still had parted with ten grand more than they ever intended to. After Game Three, their underlings, Carl Zork and Ben Franklin, were panic-stricken. They met with two friends from St. Louis, gamblers Joe Redmon and Joe Pesch, at Chicago's Morrison Hotel, begging for $5,000 toward a $20,000 payment to the players. Redmon and Pesch turned them down.
Unlike Burns and Maharg, Rothstein and Sport Sullivan weren't betting on individual games, but rather on the Series as a whole. Just after midnight on the morning of Saturday, October 4, A. R. and Sullivan conferred at Rothstein's offices. They weren't worried about Chicago's Game Three victory. But when Sullivan reached the lobby at the Ansonia Hotel, around 1:00 A.M., gambler Pete Manlis, yet another associate of Rothstein, greeted him. Manlis wanted to bet on the Sox. Suddenly Sullivan was worried. Did Manlis know something he didn't?
Just after 9:00 A.M., Sullivan phoned Chick Gandil. Gandil and his teammates were fed up. They'd received a measly $10,000 from Sullivan-and not a dime since the Series began. Now they'd play to win. Sullivan knew this could result not only in his financial ruin, but in death at the hands of A. R.'s henchmen. He promised Gandil $20,000 immediately and another $20,000 before Game Five. He had no intention of making the second payment, but Gandil needn't know that.
Before Game Four a messenger delivered twenty one-thousanddollar notes to Gandil. Five thousand each would go to Jackson, Felsch, Williams, and Risberg. Ed Cicotte already had $10,000-so he could damn well wait before receiving more. Buck Weaver and Fred McMullin wouldn't get anything. True, Buck had sat in on meetings to plan the fix, but he was doing nothing to further the plot. McMullin hadn't earned anything either, sitting on the bench. He might get something-but not now.
Even without more money, Cicotte lost Game Four 2-0. It was a good loss, fairly subtle, and more artistic than his first defeat. Rain washed out play on Sunday, October 5. There was no game-and no additional money. Play resumed on Monday-but the money deliveries didn't. Yet the now-trusting Black Sox still threw Game Five, as Lefty Williams and his teammates collapsed in the sixth inning, losing 5-0 to Reds righthander Hod Eller.
But still no more money came. The Black Sox realized they had been had once again. Well, if money can't be made dishonestly, one could always try earning it honestly-for the winner's share of the Series. The Sox won Game Six 5-4 in twelve innings behind Dickie Kerr. With Cicotte finally on the level, they captured Game Seven 4-1. Now Chicago trailed Cincinnati by a mere 4-3 margin. If the Sox took the next two games, they would not only be world champions, but how better to cover the tracks of throwing a World Series than by winning a World Series?
There was another factor. Mont Tennes was hearing rumors that a group of gamblers who had lost heavily on the Sox-and who stood to lose more if the Sox ultimately lost the Series-were about to take the law into their own hands: They'd bribe key Reds players to lose. Reds manager Pat "Whiskey Face" Moran heard the same stories and confronted pitcher Hod Eller: "Had any gamblers approached you, Hod?"
"Yep," Eller replied laconically. A gent on the elevator had offered him five one-thousand-dollar bills. Hod told him if he didn't get lost "real quick he wouldn't know what hit him." Moran told Eller he could still pitch-but he was keeping an eye on him.
A. R. now became nervous and summoned Sport Sullivan to his home. He didn't shout, didn't sweat, but made it clear that things were too close for comfort. The Series should not go nine games.
Sullivan realized two things. Despite Rothstein's pleasant demeanor, he had no choice. The Series had to end with Game Eight. And, Sport knew that merely offering the Sox more money might not necessarily work. Why should they trust him? Why should he trust them? Perhaps other gamblers were working to ensure a Cincinnati loss.
Finally it came to him. Money might not work-but force could. Lefty Williams would start Game Eight. A call went to Chicago, to man named "Harry E" who knew how to handle things.
For a mere $500 in advance, this gentleman would contact Lefty Williams and in no uncertain terms indicate that Lefty should notwould not-survive his first inning on the mound. If he did, he would not survive ... period.
Around 7:30 on the evening before Game Eight, Williams and his wife were returning from dinner when a man wearing a derby hat and smoking a cigar approached them. He desired a word with the lefthander-alone.
His message was straightforward. Pitch to lose, pitch to lose big in the first inning, or bad things would happen. Bad things to Williams. Bad things to his wife.
Lefty Williams got the message. So did his teammates.
When Hugh Fullerton entered Comiskey Park for Game Eight, a gambler friend provided him with some friendly advice: Bet heavy on the Reds because they are going to have "the biggest first inning you ever saw."
In the press box itself, the gambling fraternity moved about at will, not bothering to keep their voices down. New York sportswriter Fred Leib overheard three men talking. They were worried the Sox might still pull the Series out. Then a fourth gambler entered and reassured his comrades cheerfully: "Everything is okay, boysnothing to worry about. It's all in the bag. Williams will pitch and it will be all over in the first inning."
He was right. The Reds scored five times in the first inning, coasting to a 10-5 win. The Series was over, and Arnold Rothstein was even richer than before it had begun.
THE WHISPERS ABOUT A FIX grew into shouts.
The day after the Series ended, former Cubs owner Charles Weeghman walked into the barbershop at Chicago's LaSalle Hotel. There was gambler Mont Tennes, who asked if Wheeghman remembered what Tennes predicted in Saratoga that August:-The Series would be fixed. Weeghman did, and Tennes inquired what he now thought. Weeghman didn't know what to say, which didn't faze Tennes. He had more information: Seven players were involved- Cicotte, Williams, Felsch, Jackson, Gandil, Risberg, and McMullin.
Despite being among the very first tipped off to the plot, Tennes still couldn't comprehend what had happened. Sometimes even the hardest characters have their illusions. "Tennes did not believe that a big series could be framed," Weeghman explained. "He told me so. Even with the information he had he went out and backed the White Sox to win. I have been told he lost $30,000 on the series ... it is common gossip around the loop that his losses reached that amount."
Charles Comiskey offered $20,000 to anyone proving the rumors true. St. Louis Browns second baseman Joe Gedeon tried collecting, fingering Swede Risberg, Ben Franklin, Joe Pesch, and the Levi brothers. Comiskey, his Harvard-educated team attorney, Alfred S. Austrian, and his bright young team secretary Harry Grabiner, listened to Gedeon's story-and told him to go away. It was bad enough that Comiskey's team had been cheated out of the world championship, if the plot were exposed now, he would be harmed even more. The guilty would be banned from baseball and the Sox stripped of their core talent. The Sox would plummet in the standings. Comiskey's great ballpark would stand empty.
Gambler Carl Redmon stepped forward, implicating Attell, Burns, Maharg, and the usual assortment of S
t. Louis gamblers. Comiskey had Kid Gleason interview Redmon, then ignored his story.
Swede Risberg packed his loot into a big black satchel and headed home to California. He wouldn't be returning to the Sox. Something told him it might be best to stay away. Hal Chase and Heinie Zimmerman didn't rejoin the Giants. John McGraw knew about their fixing. He didn't say anything publicly, but told the two they weren't welcome back.
In Chicago Hugh Fullerton had his own theories, yet neither his own paper, the Tribune, nor the syndicate for his national column would print them. Finally, in December 1919, Herbert Bayard Swope's New York World published Fullerton's expose. "Is Big League Baseball Being Run for Gamblers, with Ballplayers in the Deal?" Even Fullerton didn't dare reveal which players were involved, but he fingered many gamblers: Attell, Burns, Zork, Mont Tennes, the Levi brothers, Joe Pesch-and last, but not least, Arnold Rothstein:
There is in New York a gambler named Rothstein who is much feared and much accused. His name has been used in connection with almost every big thieving, crooked deal on the race track, and he is openly named in this baseball scandal. There has been no legal proof advanced against him beyond the fact that he is the only man in the entire crowd who had money enough to handle such a deal. At least $200,000 was used in actual cash, and no one concerned could command that much money excepting Rothstein, who is either the vilest crook or the most abused man in America.
Rothstein sits in the box with the owner [Charles Stoneham] of the New York Giants. He has the entree to the exclusive clubhouses on race tracks; he is prominent at fights.
Baseball's establishment press savagely ridiculed Fullerton's charges. Sporting News editor Earl Obenshain issued this unmistakably antiSemitic diatribe:
Because a lot of dirty, long-nosed, thick-lipped, and strongsmelling gamblers butted into the World Series-an American event, by the way-and some of said gentlemen got crossed, stories were peddled that there was something wrong with the way the games were played. Some of the Chicago players laid down for a price, said the scandalmongers. . . . [White Sox owner Charles] Comiskey has met that by offering $10,000 [sic] for any sort of clue that will bear out such a charge. He might have well offered a million. There will be no takers because there is no such evidence, except in the mucky minds of stinkers who-because they are crooked-think all the rest of world can't play straight.
Fueling the rumors were the big mouths of those involved. Late in July 1920, the White Sox were in New York to play the Yankees. The afternoon's game was rained out, and Kid Gleason headed for Dinty Moore's bar on Times Square. What Gleason heard amazed him. He rushed to phone Chicago Tribune reporter Jim Crusinberry. "Come up to Dinty Moore's," Gleason whispered. "I'm at the bar with Abe Attell. He's talking, and I want you to hear it."
Crusinberry and his roommate, fellow Tribune sportswriter Ring Lardner, hurried over and quietly ordered drinks. For their benefit, Gleason restarted the conversation: "So it was Arnold Rothstein who put up the dough for the fix."
"That was it, Kid," Attell responded. "You know, Kid, I hated to do that to you, but I thought I was going to make a lot of money and I needed it, and then the big guy double-crossed me, and I never got but a small part of what he promised."
In August 1920 a flurry of anonymous tips reached the Chicago Cubs front office. One of their games against the Phillies would be thrown. Under pressure from Cruisenberry and the Tribune, a Chicago grand jury convened under judge Charles McDonald to investigate the matter-and then ignored it, focusing instead on the 1919 Series. Charles Weeghman appeared and testified about Mont Tennes and Arnold Rothstein, about events in Saratoga in August 1919, and what Tennes told him after the Series concerning the seven players involved. Tennes denied everything.
Dominoes started falling. Giants pitcher Rube Benton implicated Sleepy Bill Burns, Hal Chase, and pitcher jean Dubuc. Benton also testified that while in Cincinnati, he had heard rumors of a Pittsburgh gambling syndicate fixing the Series through Gandil, Felsch, Williams, and Cicotte.
On September 27, 1920 Billy Maharg spilled his guts to the Philadelphia North American-about Bill Burns and Eddie Cicotte at the Ansonia, about A. R. blowing up at the Astor grill, about Attell and Bennett/Zelser and a cash-filled room at the Sinton, about a telegram from A. R., about angry players-and how the whole stupid scheme exploded in his face.
Maharg's confession unhinged Eddie Cicotte. The next morning, awash in tears, he told all to Comiskey, Alfred Austrian, and Kid Gleason-and then to the grand jury. Shoeless Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams confessed the following day. Williams added something new to the public's knowledge: the names of gamblers Sport Sullivan and "Rachael Brown" (Nat Evans's alias during the series). Happy Felsch admitted his own guilt to an enterprising reporter from the Chicago Evening American.
That same day, John McGraw appeared before the grand jury, discussing an assortment of crooks: Chase, Dubuc, catcher Heinle Zimmermann, and outfielder Benny Kauff. In New York, detective Val O'Farrell-the same O'Farrell present when Bill Burns propositioned A. R. at the Astor-claimed that not only Burns, but Kauff (whom O'Farrell claimed was close friends with Attell), and a gambler named "Orbie" or "Arbie" were among the first to know of the fix. O'Farrell also contended that it was Kauff and Attell who first solicited A. R.'s backing for the scheme.
Things were only beginning to get curiouser and curiouser.
Rothstein's scheme had clearly proven too clever by half. Maharg was to have served as an alibi, a fall guy. Now, he was the prime witness for whoever dared prosecute this mess, convincingly tying Attell, Zelser, and company to the fix. Sport Sullivan and Nat Evans should have known enough to work directly with Gandil or Risberg, mugs who could keep their mouths shut. Instead they met face-to-face with weaklings like Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams-men who would talk.
A New York Tribune reporter visited A. R.'s three-story stoneand-brick home at 355 West 84th Street to interview "a member of the family"-a source that sounded like the Great Brain himself.
"You can say that Maharg's story is substantially correct," the Tribune's source admitted. "Arnold was never in on that deal at any stage. He told me that he was much surprised when the proposition was put up to him, and declared to Burns that he didn't think it could be done. He never sent any telegrams to Attell in Cincinnati during the Series, and if Attell says he received any money or telegrams from him at that time [emphasis added-the telegram Attell produced to Burns and Maharg was sent the night before the Series started], it's a lie. Why should Arnold be sending telegrams when he didn't have a thing to do with the matter?
"I had heard long ago that Abe Attell had been bragging to friends how the deal was put over. He should keep on bragging now."
That afternoon Abe Attell watched ball scores being posted upon a Times Square scoreboard-and heard of A. R.'s comments. Realizing that Rothstein had no compunction about betraying him, he fired back, talking wildly and dangerously to a reporter:
You can say that the story placing the responsibility upon me for passing the $100,000 to the White Sox is a lie. It looks to me that Rothstein is behind the stories, and I am surprised at this, because I have been a good friend of Rothstein.
He is simply trying to pass the buck to me. It won't go. I have retained a lawyer to take care of my interests and in a day or two I will tell what I know about this thing in a story that will shoot the lid sky high.
You can see that someone is trying to make it appear that I was responsible for the deal at the Astor. Well, I can tell you that I was not responsible for the `deal' at the Astor. I can tell you I was not responsible for it. I will tell you what I knew about it at the proper time. Rothstein, I know, is trying to whitewash himself. Nobody can pass the buck to me. Maharg's story of the fake telegrams and all the rest is all bunk, and all the rest, as far as I'm concerned is all bunk.
I have done many things for Rothstein, and when he didn't have a cent I fed him and boarded him and even suffered a broken nose in defending him from a bootblack in Sa
ratoga. We have not been on the best of terms for the last year, but I didn't think he would open up this way.
At Boston's Fenway Park, that busy September 29, 1920, Sport Sullivan watched the Sox trounce the A's 10-0, and learned that Lefty Williams had implicated him before the grand jury. He fled the park and headed for New York. Perhaps Rothstein could find a way out of this madness. On the train he bought a paper and learned Attell was squealing on A. R. Where would all this stop?
It wasn't about to stop with Sullivan. At Lindy's, Sport promised a reporter to reveal "the whole inside story of the frameup.... They have made ... made me a goat and I'm not going to stand for it.... I know the big man whose money it was that paid off the Sox playersand I'm going to name him."
He couldn't warn A. R. more clearly.
Rothstein grew edgier. From the beginning, he'd taken steps to protect himself. They hadn't worked. Now he would have to buy politicians. Investigating the New York side of the matter was Manhattan District Attorney Edward Swann, who quickly declared Rothstein off limits. A. R., revealed Assistant District Attorney James E. Smith, wouldn't be testifying before any grand jury "because of orders I have received from District Attorney Swann."
It didn't take much to control Swann. A. R.'s Tammany friends were always helpful. Controlling the press was entirely different. A. R. wanted his operations to proceed quietly, anonymously. All this clamor only hurt business. Controlling the Chicago grand jury was equally difficult. Tammany didn't rule Chicago, and A. R. had no desire to summer at Joliet.
Rothstein turned to thirty-four-year-old New York attorney William "The Great Mouthpiece" Fallon. Fallon had already established himself as not only the best-but the most spectaculardefense attorney in Manhattan. Relying on spellbinding oratorical skills and an uncanny ability to establish empathy with jurymen, he rarely lost a case. When these weapons proved insufficient, Bill Fallon employed obfuscation, demagoguery, judge baiting, concealment of evidence, bribery of witnesses, and jury tampering. With an entire nation outraged by the corruption of its national pastime, Fallon would have to employ virtually everything in his arsenal to save his client.
Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series Page 19
