william lynch wrote:



Outstanding? Batting .100 with runners in scoring position is outstanding?

Malcolm Tobias wrote:

Nope. They pre-date organized leagues.

nterestingly the anti-gambling rules were there before pitching
overhand was allowed, before the mound was 60'6" (Hell, before
there was a mound), before a foul ball was a strike, before 4 balls
was a walk.

It goes back to the 1850s. When batters could call for a high
or a low pitch and balls caught on one bounce were outs.

And the language hasn't changed much over the years. Landis
invented guilty knowledge and retroactively applied it to the
Black Sox

Specific language from the 1857 rule book:

Section 30. Gambling/Substitute. No person engaged in a match,
either as umpire, referee, or player, shall be directly or indirectly
interested in any bet upon the game.

Mind you, this predates organized baseball so the penalty was
only removal from the game. (which is why the rule is
gambling/substiute. Think about it though. There's a certain
charm to the manager bringing a bookie to the mound when
he wants to make a pitching change. *No* substitutions
permitted in those days without the consent of the other team
except for removal on discovery of a wager.)
In 1874 the National Association slightly ammended the rule:

Any player who shall, in any way, be interested in any bet or
wager on the game in which he takes part, either as umpire,
player, or scorer [no lie - *scorer* - RNJ], or who purchases
or has purchased for him any "pool", or chance, sold or
given away. on the game in which he takes part, he shall
be dishonorably expelled from both his club and the association.
Umpires, players and scorers who have wagers on any other
association game shall be suspended for the season.

When the NL started up they took this rule with them (literally
the only change made was to substitute the word league for
association).

Over time they stopped caring whether a scorer had money on the game
and added manager to the list of persons covered. Non-playing
managers were pretty rare in the 1870s.

Now Landis did ammend the rules in the wake of the Black Sox
affair (and applied the ammendment retroactively). He created
the concept of guilty knowledge (and used it to ban Buck Weaver,
who didn't take a dime but knew of the fix and didn't tell anybody).
Kowing of a fix and not telling the league (it's not actually
good enough to tell your team -- they might cover the matter up)
is treated in the exact same manner as somebody taking part in
a fix.

It is worth noting that there was an attempt to organize a competing
fix (think about that -- *both* teams trying to lose) which
was derailed by Ed Roush telling his manager about what he'd
heard and Pat Moran confronting his team -- telling everybody
that they were coming out the first time he saw something fishy.

Lance Freezeland wrote:

(And turned up year laer in time for Jackson's suit against Comiskey.
Handy that.)

Eddie Cicotte's confession also went missing at the same time.

What you're missing is that the Black Sox were part of a larger
picture. Arnold Rothstein (a major organized crime figure. At
various times Al Capone, Bugsy Siegal and Lasky all worked
for him) was on trial for organizing the fix. If the players get
off, it's going to be tougher to convict him.

Right, because throwing the games was never an issue at trial.

Dead certainty. Here's the key part of the instructions to the jury
(and there are reasons to think the jury was not objective in any
case)

"The State must prove that it was the intent of the ballplayers and
gamblers charged with conspiracy through throwing the World Series, to
defraud the public and others, not merely to throw ballgames."

And guess what? They weren't out to defraud others, they were out to
line
their own pockets. Given these instructions to the jury, aquittal was
inevitable.

Lance Freezeland wrote:


Also,

"When a Cincinnati player would bat a ball out into my territory,
I'd muff it if I could. But if it would look too much like crooked
work to do that, I'd be slow and would make a throw to the infield
that would be too short. My work netted the Cincinnati team several
runs that they would never have made had I been playing on the square.

I helped throw games by muffing hard chances in the outfield or by
throwing slowly to the infield."

(source is Harvey Frommer's "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball."
Best I can tell Sean Lahman was the first to post this)

Further, Jackson also told a sportswriter, Westbrook Pegler, that
he had "only poked at the ball" in key situations.

And years later Chick Gandil did say that Jackson was in on the
fix. Take that for what it's worth - Gandil isn't the guy I'd
want to build a case around. Nor is Pegler when it comes down to it.

(Worth noting that Gandil is known to have kept $15K of the money
that was promised Jackson. Gandil ended up with $35K.)

On 31 Oct 2005 11:09:14 -0800, johnson@ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca gave us:

THAT's the quote that I was looking for, and couldn't find. I was
searching through the grand jury transcript for it, but apparently
it's not there. This was a quote by Jackson to Frommer?

--
Lance

"I know my history with Mr. Rolen. He is 9 for 8 against me
with 10 homers." -- Kent Mercker 5/8/03

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Lance Freezeland wrote:

And I think there's a pragmatic reason behind this. You're never
likely to know of all of the bets a person has made. Tough
enough finding out he's bet in the first place. And it's not
like MLB has anything to gain by allowing their players to
bet on their games. So keep it simple. Bet and you're gone.

Doesn't have to be this way, but it's utterly impossible for
a player to misunderstand the intent.

Lance Freezeland wrote:

I *think* it's from his confession. Best I can tell Sean posted this
once and everybody's copied it since then. I tried to source the quote
myself but couldn't (beyond the Frommer reference)

The things I have been able to source are his comments to Pegler
(but I've found other cases where Pegler's accounts are simply
wrong when you run a Tracer on them) and Gadil's comments (and I
wouldn't trust Gandil's word on anything)

> Look, providing proof that Joe Jackson threw games isn't going to

That's it, don't let the facts get in the
way of a good myth. O.J., they let a
coldblooded, premeditated murderer
go free, in order to prove some abstract
point about racicm.
Also the way the JFK conspiracy
people overlook the overwhelming
evidence against Oswald's acting alone.
This, in order to take a backhand swipe
against "big" government, or "the
powers that be"...
In Jackson's case, I think the myth that
is preserved, is the one of the modest
country boy, with no schooling and a
world of natural talent, who makes good
and becomes a star, and a symbol against
the elite, educated, power establishment,
who is wrongly accused, totally innocent,
and his career is ruined.
Hollywood couldn't write a better
script. Except for one thing, he did it...

johnson@ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca wrote:

The quote comes from Frommer's book, and Frommer gets it from the
transcript of Jackson's grand jury testimony. It appears on page 139
of my version of the book.

Regards,
Sean Lahman

amateurshttp://s-url.net/0q44 - amateurs