A couple weeks ago, with the 90th anniversary of the 1919 Black Sox Series having just past and this year's World Series coming up, I went through the Chicago Tribune archives and put together a post on their coverage of the end of that series and the gambling rumors that were circulating around it.
With the 2009 series nearing its conclusion, we can be happy that, 20 years after the Pete Rose scandal, a World Series being thrown seems like a ludicrous idea that today's players wouldn't even attempt. So as a reminder of what could happen, here are some excerpts from the statement of White Sox manager Kid Gleason after the 1919 series ended:
"The Reds beat the greatest ball team that ever went into a world’s series. But it wasn’t the real White Sox. They played baseball for me only a couple or three of the eight days.
"When the series began I thought it would be the easiest thing in the world for my fellows to win five games. They gave us a terrible jolt in the first game and came back with another kick in the second. Then was when I began to think and think hard. It didn’t seem possible that my gang was getting the small end of the bottle.
"I was terribly disappointed. I can tell you those Reds haven’t any business beating a team like the White Sox. We played the worst baseball, in all but a couple of games, that we have played all year. I don’t know yet what was the matter. Something was wrong. I didn’t like the betting odds. I wish no one had ever bet a dollar on the team."
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