Did Cubs Throw 1918 World Series?

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  • EmpireWF
    Giants in the Super Bowl
    • Mar 2009
    • 24082

    Did Cubs Throw 1918 World Series?

    Testimony from a deposition of one of the infamous 1919 White Sox players has raised the possibility that the Cubs a year earlier were paid to lose.

    The Associated Press: Did Cubs throw 1918 World Series vs Red Sox?

    Posted the interesting parts from the AP piece:

    CHICAGO (AP) — If Chicago has been willing to believe that a cow caused the Great Chicago Fire, maybe it will buy this one: The White Sox got the idea to throw the 1919 World Series after the Cubs did the same thing one year earlier.

    That's the suggestion — more of a hint, really — from Eddie Cicotte, one of the infamous Black Sox banned from baseball after their tainted World Series against Cincinnati.

    In a 1920 court deposition the Chicago History Museum recently put on its website, Cicotte said "the boys on the club" talked about how a Cub or a number of Cubs were offered $10,000 to throw the 1918 Series they lost 4-2 to the Boston Red Sox.

    Cicotte is as vague as vague can be, failing to name any names or provide any details about how the players might have done it or even if he believes the Cubs threw the Series. But if what he suggests is true it means that when it came to fixing ball games in the early 20th century, Chicago was nobody's Second City.

    "It is interesting to me as a Cubs fan and a historian of Chicago that both teams could be involved in back-to-back years," said Peter Alter, an archivist at the museum who examined the document and other artifacts that the museum paid $100,000 for at auction.

    If Cicotte's deposition lacks specifics, it does offer a glimpse into the life of a player when their lives were a lot more like the working stiffs who rooted for them than the wealthy owners they played for.

    Players commonly groused about being underpaid and there wasn't anyone in the majors who didn't hear rumors about fixes. It was impossible not to see the gamblers at the games, the lobbies of the hotels where they stayed or in the taverns where they drank.

    And they talked about such rumors all the time, including, Cicotte said, on a long train ride from Chicago to the East Coast.

    "The ball players were talking about somebody trying to fix the National League ball players or something like that," Cicotte is quoted as saying in the deposition.

    "Well anyway there was some talk about them offering $10,000 or something to throw the Cubs in the Boston Series," he said. "Somebody made a crack about getting money, if we got into the Series, to throw the Series."

    Cicotte apparently likes the sound of $10,000 because that is what he said somebody left in his hotel room for his role in the fix of the 1919 Series. He died in 1969.

    Whether any of this is true is unknown, but an author who wrote about the 1918 Series after examining the deposition and other material said not only was such a fix possible, it was understandable.

    So did the Cubs throw the Series? No great hitter suddenly forgot how to hit, and the Cubs pitchers were terrific, finishing the Series with an astonishing 1.04 ERA.

    Still, "there were definitely some suspicious plays," Deveney said, and most of them involved outfielder Max Flack.

    In the fourth game, Flack was picked off not once, but twice. Flack turned a catchable fly ball in the sixth and final game into an error that allowed two runs to score in the Red Sox's 2-1 win.

    And there was the time Babe Ruth came to the plate for the Red Sox — a pitcher at the time, but emerging as one of the game's best hitters — and the Cubs' pitcher, Lefty Tyler, saw that Flack was not playing deep enough in right field.

    "He waved him back and Flack just stood there," Deveney said. "Sure enough, Babe hit one over his head" for a triple that scored two runs.

    Later in the game, Cubs pitcher Phil Douglas came in the game long enough to field a grounder and throw the ball over the first baseman's head, allowing the decisive run to score in the Red Sox's 3-2 win.

    A few years later, Douglas was banned from baseball for what the papers called "treachery" after proposing that another team in the pennant race pay him to leave the team and "go fishing."

    All six games in the 1918 Cubs-Red Sox Series were close — Boston never won a game by more than a run — and it would only take a dropped ball here or a badly thrown ball there to turn victory into defeat.

    "It didn't take much to throw a game," Deveney said. "It really didn't."

    If there is a record of a baseball official asking Cicotte a single question about the 1918 World Series, Deveney doesn't know about it.

    "Baseball didn't want to investigate," he said. "They wanted to make it all about the Black Sox and say, 'OK, gambling's gone.'"

    And what if the Cubs — a team that hasn't won a World Series in 103 years, blaming the curse of a goat and the glove of a fan named Steve Bartman along the way — had actually beaten Boston back in 1918?

    "It would have bumped the curse up a decade," joked Alter. "We could be looking at a century (without winning a World Series) seven years from now."


  • strahanfan92
    Meat
    • Aug 2009
    • 5456

    #2
    :yes:

    Comment

    • G-men
      Posts too much
      • Nov 2011
      • 7579

      #3
      so what youre saying is...

      the curse should only be 93 years and not 103?

      Comment

      • ryne candy
        Aggie C/O '01
        • Feb 2009
        • 4355

        #4
        Wouldn't doubt it but it doesn't make a big difference to our generation. We've had other chances to get to the WS (Amazing Mets & Marlins come to mind)
        and failed.

        Comment

        • FirstTimer
          Freeman Error

          • Feb 2009
          • 18729

          #5
          Does it matter? You could make the argument that almost every WS at that time and for over a decade prior was thrown. Hell, the Cubs only made the WS back in 1908 because of Fred Merkle's "mistake". This gets thrown around by Cubs fans all the time as if it makes them feel better about not winning one for 103 years. Could it have been thrown? Sure...then again the 1908 WS could have been too.

          Comment

          • strahanfan92
            Meat
            • Aug 2009
            • 5456

            #6
            Personally if I was a Cubs fan I would not feel better if this was true. I would look at it in a karma type way and believe that throwing a WS plays to the part of why the Cubs still haven't won.

            Comment

            • j.hen
              Self Care
              • Oct 2008
              • 10058

              #7
              Pro sports teams throw games all the time.

              Comment

              • Warner2BruceTD
                2011 Poster Of The Year
                • Mar 2009
                • 26142

                #8
                Originally posted by FirstTimer
                Does it matter? You could make the argument that almost every WS at that time and for over a decade prior was thrown. Hell, the Cubs only made the WS back in 1908 because of Fred Merkle's "mistake". This gets thrown around by Cubs fans all the time as if it makes them feel better about not winning one for 103 years. Could it have been thrown? Sure...then again the 1908 WS could have been too.
                Don't ever question Merkle's boner. Yes, he had one of the biggest boner's of all time, and that boner was legit. People still talk about his boner. I've never seen a bigger boner, and I doubt we will ever see a bigger boner again.

                Comment

                • Senser81
                  VSN Poster of the Year
                  • Feb 2009
                  • 12804

                  #9
                  Leon Durham threw the 1984 NLCS.

                  Comment

                  • Primetime
                    Thank You Prince
                    • Nov 2008
                    • 17526

                    #10
                    They didn't need to.

                    Comment

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