5. The Black Sox scandal didn’t really shock anyone involved in baseball
Several preceding World Series were tarnished with suspicions of fixed games prior to the infamous Black Sox Scandal of 1919. Waddell’s “injury” in 1905 and questionable plays in 1917 and 1918 World Series games are still regarded as evidence of the influence of gamblers regarding play. The 1919 World Series pitted two Western teams, as they were then regarded, against each other. The Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds were both from the more moralistic states, far from the evil influence of the corrupt Eastern cities, where moral decline and corruption were viewed as prominent. It should be noted the bribing of Chicago players to throw the World Series has never been definitively proved in a court of law (though two admitted it). All of the players were acquitted by a jury. Yet they stand as the cause celebre of corruption in professional sports, the notorious Black Sox.
In modern perspectives of the incident, the Black Sox scandal shocked baseball, as well as the rest of the country. In reality, for the jaded sportswriters of the time, it was not all that shocking. The eight men who comprised the Black Sox played all but the last three games of the 1920 season together except for Chick Gandil, who retired. Not until 1921 were they tried and acquitted. Despite that acquittal, the newly formed office of the Commissioner of Baseball, in the person of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned them for life. The 1919 World Series became known as the thrown World Series, somewhat unfairly to Cincinnati, which won nearly 70% of its games that year. The 1919 Series also increased national attention to the event, just as the Roaring Twenties were about to begin. The decade of conspicuous consumption boosted the World Series to new heights.