The Original Curse (21 page)

When Cubs president Bill Veeck (the father of the Bill Veeck who discovered Harry Grabiner’s diary) was shown the evidence against Magee, baseball tradition dictated his next move. He confronted
Magee, who confessed, and in February 1920 the Cubs abruptly released Magee without public explanation. This was just the baseball way. Problem players—whether drinkers, gamblers, or fighters—did not have their problems brought before the public. They were simply shuffled along with closed lips. To protect the greatest-game-in-the-world image, baseball never acknowledged that its players were even capable of transgressions.

The problem for the Cubs—and baseball—was that Magee refused to follow the script. If he had, he would have accepted his release and gone off to find work with some minor-league team, never again speaking of the incident. But Magee insisted that, when he and Chase visited Costello, he had intended to bet on the Reds, not against them, and that Chase had double-crossed him. As Magee saw it, the Cubs had terminated his contract without just cause. He wasn’t going to go quietly. Magee sued the Cubs.

This created a difficult tangle. Baseball had to do whatever it could to win the case—the right of owners to release players at any time, for any reason, was a crucial power for the magnates. But, in doing so, baseball had to acknowledge that gambling was the reason for Magee’s release, that gamblers and players easily crossed paths, and that players had attempted to throw games. Worse, baseball had to call Costello to the stand. The game worked so hard to keep gambling in the shadows, but Magee’s suit brought to light a voice from those shadows.

Costello’s testimony doomed Magee’s case, and the jury needed just 45 minutes to find in favor of the Cubs. But to get that win, baseball allowed the first crack to show in the barrier that had shielded the public from the problem of players mingling with gamblers. That barrier already had been trembling beneath the weight of suspicions about the honesty of the 1919 World Series, but it would not be utterly demolished until months later, in 1920, when Veeck would receive word that a Cubs–Phillies game had been fixed—which led to the uncovering of the previous year’s Black Sox conspiracy. (Funny how the Cubs always seemed to be on the periphery of the juiciest gambling scandals of the era, isn’t it?)

But at the time, Costello’s testimony went largely overlooked. The magnates celebrated the verdict and took the opportunity to pat themselves on the back. The National League issued a commendation to the Cubs for “forcing into the full light of publicity its reasons for the discharge of player Lee Magee.”
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The commendation failed to
mention that the Cubs had intended to keep the reasons for Magee’s discharge secret and that the Magee issue would have been swept neatly under the rug, as usual, if not for the fact that Magee had filed a lawsuit. Magee was subject to the full light of publicity, but the Cubs hardly forced it.

What the magnates also did not want to mention was the fact that, in the summer of 1918, a couple of players could walk into a poolroom and attempt to fix a game. They surely did not want to mention that neither the players nor the gambler seemed to find this circumstance all that unusual. And, of course, they completely shrugged off Costello’s suggestion that the Reds may have been throwing games as far back as 1916.

The game that Chase and Magee attempted to fix in Boston took place on July 25, just as the 1918 season was crumbling and the game’s leaders were looking for one last boost from Washington. It was the day before Baker granted baseball the September 1 extension, and both leagues were mired in War Department purgatory. No one knew how much longer the season would continue, if at all—if you were gamblers like Chase and Magee, why not try to make one last big score?

All around baseball, players were taking the game lightly. In Chicago, the first-place Cubs tentatively left for a trip east, unsure whether they’d actually play any of the scheduled games. Some players didn’t even show up for the trip. Lefty Tyler left the Cubs to return to his farm in New England. Bill Killefer went home to Michigan for a fishing trip. Charley Deal quit to go into government service. After Baker’s extension was announced on July 26, Tyler, Killefer, and Deal returned to the team, but the games were a farce. A 7–1 win over the Braves was, according to the
Boston American
, “a fitful, absentminded game [featuring] many boob plays.”
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Players were understandably distracted. But, make no mistake, it wasn’t the integrity of baseball itself that concerned the players. Nor was it worry over the progress of the war or anxiety about the dwindling recreational choices faced by Americans in wartime. It was money.

In the wake of Baker’s ruling, a number of questions were left unanswered, and they all seemed to concern money. Would players be paid for the whole season or only through September 1? What would happen to multiyear contracts? Would there be a 1919 season? And the
big question: was there time to play a World Series? That was most important, for players and magnates alike. As Colonel T. L. Huston had called it, the World Series was a “financial orgy.” Owners made bushels, as their teams played in front of packed houses with jacked-up ticket prices, and the National Commission got a cut of the receipts too. But the World Series mattered most to the players. The winners’ share for the 1917 World Series had been almost $3,700, which was as much as some players made in a whole season. This year, with the members of the top four teams in each league sharing in the receipts, more players than usual were especially concerned about the playing of the World Series.

The money question dominated when the Cubs arrived in Boston to play the Braves on July 27, just two days after Costello’s encounter with Chase and Magee. A heat-and-humidity wave had hit the East Coast, and the dead-tired Cubs had lost 8 of their previous 11 games, allowing the Giants to pull within 2 games of first place. Manager Fred Mitchell called a meeting. His players admitted that, in addition to being fatigued, they were worried about salaries. The following day,
Tribune
writer I. E. Sanborn scolded some of the Cubs for their pecuniary focus. He wrote: “While all the rest of the world is wrapped up in the monster game between democracy and autocracy, ‘over there,’ some of the ball players cannot see beyond the wings of the American dollar bill. With the nation’s pastime about to be interred for the duration of the war their minds are centered on wringing the last possible nickel out of it before the blow-off.”
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Sanborn later expanded on that notion, saying that the Cubs’ only motivation was to have the World Series played so that they could collect the extra pay. “Some of them,” he wrote, “go so far as to declare that if there is to be no World’s [Series] they will quit right away.”
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If the Cubs were looking for a bright side, Mitchell was the wrong guy to ask. He didn’t see a rosy outlook. “Big league baseball will be run much less expensively after the war,” Mitchell said. “New contracts will be drawn and ball players will be forced to play for smaller salaries than they now get.… Contracts which have two and three years to run probably will be void after Sept. 1. When these contracts are drawn after the war men who have been receiving fabulous salaries probably will have to accept big cuts.”
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For all the questions around baseball’s future, it seemed certain that when the game did return after the war it would be on a much
different basis, without the fabulous salaries. And, yes, the salaries in 1918 were fairly fabulous. That might not square with the assessment of Eddie Ainsmith—who, remember, had noted that most players bet in that era to make up for “the little we were paid.” But Ainsmith was comparing salaries across eras, putting his paycheck up against those that came decades later, after free agency drove up contract values in baseball. At the time, ballplayers did pretty well for themselves. Ty Cobb was the game’s highest-paid player and had made $20,000 in 1917. Grover Cleveland Alexander was the highest-paid Cub in 1918, at $12,000 per year. Ruth had signed for $7,000. When writer Eliot Asinof wrote to ex–Reds pitcher Dutch Ruether, inquiring as to his salary in 1919, Ruether wrote back sarcastically, “My salary was a huge $8,400 per season.”
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According to the Department of Labor’s consumer price index, Cobb’s ’17 salary of $20,000 would work out to $330,000 in 2008 dollars. Ruth’s $7,000 in 1918 was the equivalent of about $98,000 nine decades later. Aleck would have been making $168,000 (before the $10,000 spring bonus, that is).
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These were not astronomical incomes by today’s standards. But against other 1918 professions, baseball players’ salaries put them firmly in the upper middle class. A typical bartender made $3,000. A union bricklayer in Chicago made $1,700. A coal driver in Boston made $1,560. And teachers were woefully underpaid, earning an average of just $630, or what would be $8,800 in 2008 money.
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(Some things never change.)

But, from the start of the war in Europe back in August 1914, there was a problem with money, and players were finding that their fabulous salaries were not going as far as they had before. They were not alone. Across America, the dollar was losing value. The war had created such an immense demand for basic necessities at home and for the Allies in Europe that the domestic supply chain could not keep up. The United States was providing Britain, France, and Italy with everything from wheat and lard to coal and clothing. Herbert Hoover’s Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays were not enough to stem the overwhelming demand. Meanwhile, credit policies were relaxed to help fund the purchase of Liberty Bonds, leading to an increase in the amount of cash printed. Prices soared. Inflation hammered the economy. Overall, 1918 registered the second-highest single-year inflation rate in U.S. history, at 17.26 percent. The only worse year was 1917, when inflation was 17.80 percent. (The inflation
rate in 2007, by way of comparison, was typical—2.85 percent—and even the severe inflation of 1980 was only 13.58 percent). In fact, it was this problem that spurred the government to begin measuring inflation rates and cost-of-living indexes. A report released in August 1918 showed that from August 1914 until June 1918, the cost of living in America rose 50 to 55 percent. Food prices rose 62 percent. Clothing was up 77 percent. The price for a pair of men’s overalls, the report stated, rose 161 percent.
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Money was a problem, for everyone in America. But ballplayers had reason to be particularly concerned. After all, someone who was a chauffeur or bartender before the war could be a chauffeur or bartender after the war. No one could say whether ballplayers could be ballplayers again once the war was over.

The details of the game that Lee Magee and Hal Chase attempted to throw are dosed with irony. Costello claimed Magee and Chase had the Reds’ scheduled pitcher, Pete Schneider, in on the fix, but Schneider went to Mathewson before the game and asked to sit out. Matty inserted shine-baller Hod Eller, who threw a great game and would have won a 2–1 decision except that, with two out in the ninth, Magee made a wild throw that allowed the tying run to score. The score was still 2–2 in the 13th inning when Magee (who had been 0-for-5) hit a routine grounder that took “a crazy bound and hit [shortstop Johnny Rawlings] on the nose for a knockout blow.”
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Rawlings, his face bloody, was taken to the clubhouse to have his broken nose set and later came out wrapped up in adhesive tape. One of the Reds wisecracked, “What battle were you in?”

It wasn’t humorous for Magee, because the bad bounce put him on first base. With Rawlings out and their roster already depleted, the Braves moved outfielder Roy Massey to shortstop, putting pitcher Art Nehf in center field and another pitcher, Hugh Canavan (who had also manned the outfield against the Cubs on the day of the slacker sweep in Chicago), in left. The next batter, Edd Roush, took advantage of the makeshift outfield, knocking a deep hit between Nehf and Canavan. Magee did his best to foul up the works by running slowly, but with two pitchers in the outfield it was impossible for Magee to move slowly enough not to score. Thus, it was Magee himself who scored the winning run that cost him his $500 bet with Costello and, eventually, his career.

Though Costello’s testimony indicates that Magee led the plot to throw the game in Boston, it’s no surprise to find Chase with a hand in the fix. This was the hallmark of his career. Chase was a very talented and popular player, dubbed “Prince Hal” almost from the start of his career in 1906, with the New York Highlanders (later renamed the Yankees). An excellent hitter, Chase was best known for his fielding, where his speed and athleticism made him, arguably, the greatest ever to play first base. For all his talent, though, Chase racked up a suspicious number of errors—402 in 1,815 games at first base, or one error for every 4.5 games. Compare that to Fred Merkle, who was not a great fielder but made only one error every 6.1 games. Or Red Sox first baseman Stuffy McInnis, an excellent fielder, who made an error every 12.5 games. And yet, when McInnis was asked, in 1942, who was the best first baseman he ever saw, he said, “Without question, Hal Chase.”
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In 1910, Chase was accused by Yankees manager George Stallings of “laying down.” Stallings was right—Chase was loafing because he wanted Stallings’s job. Chase got it and got what he was really after: more money. “It is understood that his [managerial] duties will bring him a fat increase in pay,” the
New York Times
reported.
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Chase struggled as a manager, though, and the Yankees brought in Frank Chance to run the team. But Chase did not give up his habit of laying down. Early in the 1913 season, Chance visited the press box after a game and asked two reporters, “Did you notice some of the balls that got away from Chase today? They weren’t wild throws; they were only made to look that way. He’s been doing that right along. He’s throwing games on me!”
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The reporters didn’t print Chance’s accusation, fearing a libel lawsuit. Still, even bringing up Chase’s suspicious play was a dangerous break from baseball protocol for Chance. Gambling players were not to be discussed—they were to be swept under the rug. Sure enough, two days after Chance’s outburst, the Yankees traded Chase to Chicago, and the game-throwing accusation was never mentioned again. Problem solved.