On This Day

Black Sox Scandal

Black Sox Scandal is the American baseball scandal centering on the charge that eight members of the Chicago White Sox had been bribed to lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. On Sept. 28, 1920, after Cicotte, Williams, Jackson, and Felsch admitted to the grand jury that they had thrown the 1919 series in return for a bribe, Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox, suspended seven of the players.

The indicted players stood trial in the summer of 1921 but were acquitted on insufficient evidence—largely because key evidence, including the original confessions of the players, had disappeared from the grand jury files. (They probably were stolen.) On August 4 the new baseball commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned the eight players from the game for life.