In 1919, eight players from the Chicago White Sox baseball team made a bad decision that would affect their careers forever, as the players planned to lose the World Series to the underdog Cincinnati Reds and get money in return.
According to court records, the players were promised between $70,000 and $100,000 if they lost.
The eight players involved were pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude “Lefty” Williams, first baseman Arnold “Chick” Gandil, shortstop Charles “Swede” Risberg, third baseman George “Buck” Weaver, outfielders Oscar “Happy” Felsch and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and utility player Fred McMullin.
After the 1919 series ended, suspicions of a conspiracy started getting clearer and more focused around those eight players until 1920. A Cook County grand jury was set up to investigate gamblers in baseball. Then, on September 28, players like Eddie Cicotte and Joe Jackson openly confessed to the grand jury.
Cicotte admitted he took $10,000 for two games, while Jackson got $5,000 of $20,000 promised to him.
As soon as the eight players were caught, White Sox owner Charles Comiskey suspended them indefinitely, ruining the team’s chance to win the American League over the Cleveland Indians, but Comiskey said guilty players must be retired from organized baseball for life. His letter notifying the players of their suspension read,
“Chicago, Sept 26. To Charles Risberg, Fred McMullen, Joe Jackson, Oscar Felsch, George Weaver, C.P. Williams and Eddie Cicotte: You and each of you are hereby notified of your indefinite suspension as a member of the Chicago American Baseball Club. Your suspension is based on information that has just come to me directly involving you and each of you in the baseball scandal resulting from the World Series of 1919.”
If you are innocent of any wrongdoing, you and each of you will be reinstated; if you are guilty, you will be retired from organized baseball for the rest of your lives, if I can accomplish it. Until there is a finality to this investigation, it is due to the public that I take this action, even though it costs Chicago the pennant.”
The players went to trial the following summer, and on August 2, 1921, none of them played for the first four months of the 1921 season.
All Players were acquitted on August 2 that year. But a day later, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the Major League Baseball commissioner, suspended all eight from organized baseball for life.
Evidence showed the players were guilty, and many said Jackson, one of the greatest players in MLB history, was even involved.
The incident involving eight White Sox players left a black mark on baseball. In a letter to Comiskey, published in an Oklahoma newspaper, a fan wrote, “Don’t let those suspended ballplayers return to the White Sox fold, tho a jury declared them free and a judge deemed justice accomplished. The Black Sox can never be washed white.”
In 2025, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said that all eight players named in the scandal would be removed from the sport’s ineligible list; he wrote, “In my view, once an individual has passed away, the purposes of Rule 21 have been served. Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.”
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