The Book of Baseball Literacy: Second Edition

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Chapter 4: Dates & Events

All-Star Game

The interleague exhibition game between the best players of each league managed by the skippers of the previous season's pennant winners. Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward implemented the idea in 1933, just in time for an aging Babe Ruth to hit the first All-Star home run in a 4-2 AL victory played at Comiskey Park.

Baseball's version is, I think, the best of all major sports' all-star games, but it has had its share of controversy, most of which has involved the selection of players. For the first 14 years, all players were chosen in a poll of major league managers. In 1947, league officials decided to let the fans select the eight-man starting lineup (excluding pitchers) in league-wide balloting. But in 1957, a Cincinnati newspaper printed an all-star ballot with Reds players marked at every position and encouraged fans to mail it in, which resulted in the selection of seven Reds to the lineup (the other player was Stan Musial). Incensed at the abuse of a system that it had created and had failed to control, the commissioner's office replaced two of those Reds with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and thereafter decided to hand over the selection of all-stars to a poll of players, managers, and coaches. In 1970, the league decided to return the vote to the group for whom the game is supposedly dedicated: the fans.

Even so, every year complaints arise that "deserving" players have been left off the team while popular stars who have been injured, slumping, or otherwise "unworthy" are annually selected. Although the games are sometimes boring or one-sided, I think the All-Star gala is a great showcase.

Black Sox Scandal

The name given to what ensued when Chicago White Sox were charged with accepting money from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Reds. Allegations and rumors of fixed games actually permeated the entire decade, and there was even some talk that the Reds had won the 1919 pennant because of the suspicious play of Giants players Hal Chase and Heinie Zimmerman, who allegedly "laid down" for second-place New York. Throughout the decade, players consorted openly with gamblers to supplement their meager baseball incomes. The baseball powers did little to stop it, apparently fearing the publicity might hurt gate receipts. That was the environment that spawned the Black Sox: greed supported by quiet tolerance.

Near the end of the 1919 season, gamblers including former major leaguer Bill Burns and former boxing champion Abe Attell -- supported by gambling heavyweight Arnold Rothstein -- conspired to fix the Series by promising $100,000 to eight Sox players: pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams; infielders Buck Weaver, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, and Fred McMullen; and outfielders Happy Felsch and Shoeless Joe Jackson. Weaver never took any money and played his best, Jackson took the money but seemed to play his best, and McMullen barely played at all. But the others were enough to tip the scales away from Chicago as Cincinnati took the best-of-nine Series.

Throughout the offseason and into the 1920 season, the rumors and accusations swirled against the Sox, much of it dismissed as grumblings by the losing team. Then late in the season, as the Sox battled Cleveland and New York for the pennant, a Chicago grand jury convened to investigate the charges. In September, Cicotte, Jackson, and others confessed to the grand jury; they were coerced into confessing with empty promises that no action would harm them. Immediately suspended by the League, the players sat out the final week of the season as the decimated Sox lost the pennant to the Indians by two games. In June 1921, just before the jury trial was to begin, the players' grand jury testimony mysteriously disappeared, and the Sox were acquitted due to lack of evidence.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the scandal, major league baseball searched frantically for ways to restore public confidence in the game -- and to keep ballparks filled. The result: the installation of all-powerful commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a former federal court judge who'd made his name earlier in the decade with some popular antitrust cases. One of Landis's first official rulings was to uphold the suspensions of the eight players: "Regardless of the verdict of juries," wrote Landis, "no player who throws a ballgame, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame, 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!" That last part covered the suspension of Weaver, whose "guilty knowledge" doomed him.

It seems unthinkable that such an event could occur today, with the big money the players are making. But is it? In 1994, Jim Bouton (author of Ball Four) and Eliot Asinof (Eight Men Out) co-wrote a fascinating novel called Strike Zone suggesting the possibility that a crooked umpire could fix an important game. Legal and illegal gambling is a multibillion-dollar industry in this country, and greed will always remain high on the list of American sins. It is therefore imperative that baseball, and other sports, keep gamblers as far as possible from the game. That means meting out harsh punishment to those who are proven to have bet on baseball. If Pete Rose (who is almost certainly guilty) is an unfortunate victim of the zeal in which baseball prosecutes such offenders, then maybe the Hall of Fame is a better place without him in it. The integrity of the sport, of all professional sports, is at stake.

Recommended books available from Amazon.com:

Eight Men Out
by Eliot Asinof

Shoeless Joe Jackson and Ragtime Baseball
by Harvey Frommer

Strike Zone
by Eliot Asinof and Jim Bouton

The Catch

"The Catch" is what baseball fans call Willie Mays's legendary grab of Vic Wertz's 460-foot blast in the 1954 World Series. With the score tied and two Indians on base in the eighth inning of Game One, Wertz sent a Don Liddle pitch to the deepest part of center field. In any park other than New York's Polo Grounds, it would have been an easy home run, giving the Indians a commanding 5-3 lead. Instead, Mays made a running, over-the-shoulder, back-to-home-plate catch that has been preserved on countless highlight reels and works of art. The Giants went on to win that game in extra innings on the way to a four-game Series sweep.

Pine Tar Incident

Probably the weirdest mini-scandal in recent major league history, replete with late-inning heroics, allegations of cheating, a near brawl, and Billy Martin. What would a minor scandal be without Billy Martin.

It was July 24, 1983, New York vs. Kansas City in Yankee Stadium. Relief ace Goose Gossage was on the mound for the Yankees, protecting a 4-3 lead in the top of the ninth. With two outs and a runner on, third baseman George Brett smashed a Gossage fastball over the fence to give the Royals an apparent 5-4 lead. To everyone's surprise, Yankee manager Billy Martin ran out his dugout carrying a rule book, trying to contain his glee. He had known for weeks that Brett was putting pine tar -- a sticky black substance that helps a batter's grip -- higher on his bat than the 18 inches the rules allowed. He was waiting for the right moment to spring the news on an umpiring crew, and this was it. After measuring the pine tar on Brett's bat using the width of home plate, umpire Tim McClelland ruled the home run illegal and called Brett out, the apparent third out of the inning, giving the Yankees an apparent victory.

Now here comes Brett, storming out of the dugout! Anybody who has seen the video footage of Brett in a wild rage, restrained by several other men, knows what pure, unadulterated anger is about. Even though the game was supposedly over, the umpires tossed Brett, manager Dick Howser, coach Rocky Colavito, and pitcher Gaylord Perry, who tried to hide the bat, out of the game. Umpires were able to confiscate the bat only because, as it was getting passed from Royals player to player, the last man in the line didn't have anybody to give it to.

The Royals, of course, protested to the league office: "Broadway wouldn't buy that script . . . it's so unbelievable," huffed Howser. Four days later, AL President Lee MacPhail agreed with Howser. He overruled his umpiring crew, a rare occurrence, and allowed the home run. He declared that even though the pine tar was technically illegal, it didn't violate the "spirit of the rules."

The Yankees were outraged. "It sure tests our faith in leadership," moaned Yankee czar George Steinbrenner (of all people). Martin howled that the rule book was "only good for when you go deer hunting and run out of toilet paper." But MacPhail had the power, and his decision stood. Now there was the matter of completing the game, which was still in the ninth inning. The completion was scheduled for August 18, and the Yankees decided they would charge regular admission, even for fans who had tickets to the first game! Enraged fans protested, and two lawsuits were filed declaring the team's policy illegal. In response, the club changed its policy but forgot to announce it, so only 1,200 fans showed up to watch nine minutes and 41 seconds of baseball. Hal McRae struck out to end the ninth, and the Yankees went down in order in the bottom of the inning, giving the Royals a hard-fought 5-4 victory.

Copyright 2008 David H. Martinez. All rights reserved.