Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball's Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded

By Gene Carney

Book Overview

Most fans today know that gamblers and ballplayers conspired to "fix" the 1919 World Series--the Black Sox Scandal. It has been touched upon in classic works of sports history such as Eliot Asinof's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1574889729
• ISBN13: 9781574889727
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Potomac Books
• Length: 363 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The VERY best Black Sox related book to date, bar none!!

This is a must read for any fan interested in the Black Sox Scandal story. Gene Carney has done his research and the book speaks for itself. Gene is objective in his telling of this very complicated story of the fix and it's attempted cover up. Gene lays out the facts as we know them (with help from newspaper articles, letters and other documents that have remained hidden to all but a few serious researchers for over 80 years) and lets the reader decide for themselves. Gene does an excellent job of showing how much Charles Comiskey, Ban Johnson and others within Major League Baseball knew about the fix, when they knew it and what they did to try to cover it up. People say that Joe Jackson and others shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame and that may or may not be the case. After reading this book, you may question why Charles Comiskey is IN the Hall of Fame. Gene shows that Comiskey knew about the fix after the first game, possibly before the start of the Series. Comiskey directed Manager Kid Gleason to confront the team about the rumors, which Gleason did after Game 2, no later than the start of Game 3. Based on this fact, Landis' reason for banning Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver doesn't hold up (the guilty knowledge and not telling their team). There was no motivation for Weaver or Jackson to tell their team something the team already knew. Comiskey then spends the winter of 1919, spring and summer of 1920 attempting to cover up the fix and he almost succeeded in doing so. I won't reveal any more of the book...I'll just say this......I have been researching Joe Jackson and the Black Sox Scandal for over 22 years now and this is the very best book to date on the true story of the fix. This book contains something most Black Sox related books don't....FOOTNOTES.....if you don't believe Gene, you can look it up.....it's all there. If you only have time to read one book on the Black Sox Scandal, you gotta read this one!!!

Commy's Cube

I liken Gene Carney's wonderful study of the Black Sox scandal to my lengthy attempts years ago to solve Mr. Rubik's frustating little cube. He has taken an incident which is really a tapestry of smaller, often unconnected events, twirled them around in his mind, analyzed them from every angle, and done the best job yet of solving a seemingly unsolvable puzzle. He has done this by uncompromisingly thorough research, as he literally discusses almost everything written or said about baseball's most intriguing event and yet keeps it highly readable. There is much to like about the result. My favorite portion of the book appears on page 179, where Carney names a jury of "experts" (various baseball historians and writers) and records their opinion on whether or not "Shoeless" Joe Jackon played the 1919 World Series to win. The verdict may surprise some. There is one other aspect of Mr.Carney's book that is worth mentioning. There is a striking resemblance to the actions of White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and other owners in attempting to keep a cover on the scope of player involvement in betting on baseball in 1919 and the efforts of present ownership to keep the lid on steroid use by players of the current era. Those who pick up and enjoy the recent Bond's expose, Game of Shadows, will find in Burying the Black Sox an early lesson in how that "game" is played. Both books are well worth one's time.

"Must Read" for All Baseball History Buffs!

It is hard to put into words the service that author Gene Carney - with the publication of his wonderful new book: BURYING THE BLACK SOX - has performed for all of us baseball history enthusiasts who are eternally intrigued by the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Mr. Carney's great achievement is that he steps into the sordid world of lies, conspiracies, gamblers, and cover-ups that pervade this sad but fascinating chapter in baseball history, and attempts to make sense of it all. He successfully emerges with a book that is both a joy to read and incredibly informative. The wealth of new information that the author uncovers and explores is simply breathtaking. It's a book that is extremely well written and edited, with just the right blend of stylistic flair and humor. It is never boring and, quite frankly, I couldn't put it down. It's also one of the few books I've ever read that I was disappointed when it ended: I just wished that it could go on for about another 200 pages. It also succeeds in capturing both the essential elements of the 1919 World Series scandal and the cultural flavor of post World War I America. We see remarkable, uncanny similarities to our present time. Like steroids in today's game, we sense that gambling had a "death grip" on the National Pastime by 1919, a problem that had been festering for at least a decade. And, like today's baseball hierarchy trying to deal with the problem of steroids, many of baseball's ruling elite buried their collective heads in the sand, hoped it would just go away, and orchestrated a cover-up. It took a Grand Jury to get their attention. The thought of dealing with the problem in an open and forthright manner never seemed to occur to them. Like Watergate, the cover-up didn't hold, and in many ways, was worse than the crime. But with a help of a cooperative media, ever in defensive of the baseball establishment, the cover-up in some senses lives on even today. Most of us are familiar with the overall picture of the Black Sox scandal, but we get lost in the morass of details. Here's where BURYING THE BLACK SOX is a real help. How many of us confuse and conflate the 1920 Grand Jury "confessions" with the 1921 trial with the 1924 civil suit? The cast of characters includes a highly jumbled mix of crooked and clean ball players, their families, baseball "magnates," Fixers, reporters, commissioners, lawyers and judges. And what about all the gamblers? Who could possibly keep them all straight? Arnold Rothstein, Abe Attell, Sleepy Bill Burns, Sport Sullivan, Billy Maharg, David Zelcer, Mont Tennes, the St. Louis group, the Chicago group, the New York group, the Des Moines group, the Montreal group. Mr. Carney has earned a permanent and everlasting niche in Baseball history just for sorting out this mess! He details the incredibly tangled web of gamblers and Fixers in a spoof of the old Abbott and Costello "Who's on First?" routine. It's worth the price of the book itself. And then there are the etern

Destined to be a classic

If you think you know the story of the Chicago White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series... think again. Carney knocks down the myths and legends that have evolved and lays out the cold hard facts. His meticulously documented research uncovers new evidence in the 85-year old case, including diaries of key figures, grand jury testimony, and other contemporary sources. Carney definitively answers the questions about who was involved in the scandal and to what extent. More importantly, however, he shows why the cover up was more damaging than the fix itself. Burying the Black Sox will change the way we view the history of the game, and no baseball library will be complete without it.

A MUST READ for any baseball fan!

Gene Carney is truly the reigning expert on the subject of the most famous event in the 137 year history of American MLB - the1919 "Black Sox" World Series. It is a mystery that just won't go away. If you want to learn how the business of baseball works, how the media is intertwined, and how the owners, managers and public officials conspired to create the "version" of this event that we all believe today, this is a must read for you.