The Original Curse (20 page)

The Braves were so short of material that, when they played the Cubs on July 12, manager George Stallings sent Ed Konetchy to the mound and Hugh Canavan to the outfield. Konetchy was a first baseman, and Canavan was a pitcher (who happened to go 0–4 with a 6.36 ERA in 1918, his only major-league season). The Cubs won, 8–0. When the Cubs played Philadelphia two days later, tempers were so testy that Phillies manager Pat Moran nearly came to blows with Otto Knabe, Moran’s teammate for four years in Philadelphia. The Cubs were exhausted but had to play a doubleheader against the Phillies the next day. They were swept. The fatigue got worse. On July 17 the Cubs and Phillies played a 21-inning game, second-longest in NL history
at the time, with Lefty Tyler throwing a complete game (now, there’s an understatement) in a 2–1 win. It got even worse. The next day the Cubs and Dodgers played a 16-inning game, with Hippo Vaughn throwing all 16. In three days, the Cubs played 55 innings, part of their worst stretch of the season with six losses in seven games.

But some rest was on its way, whether the players liked it or not.

Baker wasn’t buying Griffith’s plea. On July 19, well past the halfway point of the 1918 season, the government finally gave baseball the advice that Ban Johnson had been seeking for a year. And that advice was a bombshell. In the War Department’s eyes, the game was not essential. Baker shot down Griffith’s three major points. He started by noting that baseball had enough players outside of draft age to make the game viable (which was, of course, not true). He mocked Griffith’s notion that ballplayers could do nothing else but play ball—“It is quite inconceivable,” Baker said, “that occupations cannot be found by these men.”
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He did take the recreation angle seriously, but he decided that in war citizens should and would sacrifice recreation for the good of the country. Baker had made it official: every ballplayer of draft age was a slacker and should get useful work or be forced to join the army.

Chaos followed. Baker’s ruling came out late on a Friday, and little could be resolved over the weekend. Baseball was unprepared for Baker’s decision. The National League scrambled to call a meeting in New York the following Wednesday but moved it to Tuesday in Pittsburgh. Johnson, with no authority to do so, said the American League would shut down immediately. Griffith countered that Johnson was “talking through his hat,”
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and Harry Frazee, of course, criticized Johnson sharply. Johnson saved face by sending out a telegram directing AL teams to keep playing their schedule, which they were already doing. Barrow seemed as unimpressed with the big-league magnates as he had been with those of the International League. “Barrow was all het up,” the
Globe
reported. “His impression was that the baseball men had bungled the job.”
²¹

When business opened on Monday, things looked grim. The Cubs and Reds canceled their doubleheader. At Fenway, 10,000 fans were sure they were giving their Red Sox a wartime send-off. Down in Washington, though, NL president John Tener, Giants owner Harry Hempstead, and Indiana senator Harry New visited Crowder, essentially
asking him to overturn the decision the War Department had just handed out.
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Crowder got another group of baseball visitors: Griffith and Senators owner Ben Minor, along with Ohio representative Nicholas Longworth.
²³
They employed a different strategy, asking that Crowder give baseball enough time to finish the season before enforcing the ruling. (Interesting that baseball’s leaders took along two very partisan Republican congressmen who were critics of Baker and Wilson—Longworth, in fact, was the son-in-law of the administration’s bane, Teddy Roosevelt.) Crowder, hoping to settle the thing once and for all, told the baseball men to get organized and present a brief that Wednesday.

In a rare show of unity, 15 of baseball’s leaders, including Frazee and Weeghman, gathered at Ben Minor’s office to work out their request to Crowder. Even Johnson and Tener made nice. Their disdain for each other had grown over the course of the year, in part because of an interleague contract squabble involving the rights to pitcher Scott Perry. Two weeks later Tener would resign, but for now Johnson and Tener were all handshakes and guffaws. The 15 arrived at Crowder’s office and presented their brief. One of the key points was that only 63 big-league players were
not
within the draft ages, finally disabusing Baker of his notion that baseball would not be disorganized by the work-or-fight order. They requested that baseball be given an extension through October 15, enough time to finish the year, play the World Series, and settle their business.

In the midst of the chaos, the Red Sox players looked to Captain Hooper, who called a team meeting in the clubhouse at Fenway Park. Hooper, like most players, would have taken a serious financial hit if the season had stopped. He had a wife and two children at home in California, where he had also built up some farmland holdings. The previous winter his farm’s foreman urged Hooper to buy more land. Hooper took out loans and did so.
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With that debt hanging over him, the thought of losing his Red Sox income, including probable postseason pay, was surely worrisome. But, at the same time, players were worried about whether they should be playing at all after Baker’s ruling.

Harry and his teammates decided to play until the final word came from Washington. On July 22 they played a doubleheader at home against Detroit and swept both games with shutouts. Two days later the Red Sox headed west to play Chicago, unsure of whether the AL would still be running when they got there. They lost the series
opener, 4–2, in what the
Globe
described as “about as quiet a victory as ever was won on the South Side grounds. The 2,000 persons present seemed afraid to cheer, for they didn’t know just how Sec. of War Baker would take such actions.”
²⁵

On July 26, Crowder and Baker denied baseball’s request for an extension to October 15. They did, however, grant an extension to September 1, enough time to allow the game to wrap up its business affairs. After that, both leagues would shut down for the rest of 1918 and, it seemed, for all of 1919.

As the Red Sox ranks were thinned by the draft, Barrow began signing players from minor leagues that shut down because of the work-or-fight order. One of those players was Jean Dubuc, a so-so, 29-year-old right-handed pitcher who had slipped out of the big leagues after seven seasons. Dubuc didn’t pitch much for the Red Sox—only two games, though he was used as a pinch hitter. He was signed by the Giants the next year and had some success as a reliever.

In 1912 Dubuc had befriended a teammate with the Tigers, little-used pitcher Bill Burns. Yes, the same Bill Burns who fed the Cubs wild turkey in spring training and gained further fame as briber of the Black Sox. During the trial, Giants pitcher Rube Benton testified that Dubuc had received telegrams—presumably from Burns—telling him how to bet on the 1919 World Series. His friendship with Burns convinced manager John McGraw to drop Dubuc from the Giants after his solid 1919 season. In 1920, after news of the Black Sox scandal broke, McGraw would explain: “Bill Burns, also indicted in Chicago, hung around the Giants the latter part of the 1919 campaign. He was trying to interest me in a Texas oil proposition, he said, but when the season ended and the Reds had clinched the pennant, he disappeared. He constantly associated with one of our pitchers, Jean Dubuc, for which reason I finally decided to release Dubuc unconditionally.”
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Dubuc, though not formally banned, never played in the big leagues again. He did go on to become a very popular figure in New England sports. He was Brown University’s baseball and hockey coach and had success establishing a pro hockey team in Providence, Rhode Island. He also did well for his former team, the Tigers, as a scout—among the players he signed was Hank Greenberg.

Q
: I wish you would describe what was said between you and Lee Magee, if anything was said, on or about July 24, 1918.

A
: On the evening of July 24, about eight o’clock, Magee came into my place looking for me, and he called me aside and told me he had a proposition for me. I says, “What is it?” He says, “On tomorrow’s ball game,” he says. “We can’t talk details just now,” he says, “but I will have another man tomorrow with me and we will talk it over.” I says, “What time?” He says, “Ten o’clock.” The next morning, about ten o’clock Magee and the other party comes in the room and we go down in the far part of my room.

Q
: Before you come to the next morning, what was said, if anything, by Magee, as to what was to be done?

A
: He said it was in regard to a ball game the next day; they were going to “fix” a ball game. By “tossing” a game it means your own side loses the game—bet against his own side.

Q
: Did he come back the next day?

A
: The next morning at ten o’clock Magee and the other party came in my room and we go down in the corner and talk things over.

Q
: Who was the other party?

A
: The other party was Hal Chase. He says, “The proposition is this,” he says. “How much money can you place on a ball game in Boston?” I says, “I can bet an unlimited amount.” “Well,” he says, “I think we can do business with you, Jim.” I says, “I don’t do business on ball games myself, so I will get somebody else.” He says, “What will we do?” I says, “I want you to understand this in the first place: if you are going to throw a ball game, you have to bet some of your own money, because the gamblers won’t bet unless you do.” I says, “I have a gambler that can handle the thing for you.” I asked them how much they wanted to bet themselves. “Well,” they says, “we haven’t got the money with us, will you take our check?” “Yes,” I says, “I will take your check,” I says, “for any amount, with this agreement—if you lose that ball game according to the agreement, I will give you your checks back and the amount equivalent to your check and one-third of what the gamblers win.” That satisfied them. So then I walked down to my safe, took out my own checkbook on the Old Colony Trust Company of Boston, and gave them each a check. They crossed out the “Old Colony Trust Company” and filled their own banks in for five hundred dollars apiece. I took them checks and put them in my safe and took out one thousand dollars.

Q
: Well, then you found out the Reds didn’t lose the first game.

A
: Well, I had a ticker across the street and I sent the boys over to see the ticker, and they came back and reported that the Reds had won the game. So that night, nobody comes and sees me. The next morning, Chase comes in and sees me. He says, “It was a tough break we had, Jim; we tried awful hard.” I says, “Yes, the gamblers are satisfied you tried, both of you.” He says, “Put them checks through.” I put them checks through my bank, the Old Colony Trust Company. In a few days, them checks came back, one of the checks came back—Magee’s check came back and the other check went through. So I says to my brother, “What are you doing Saturday?” He says, “Nothing.” I says, “Drive me to New York.” So I take the machine and drive to New York. At that time, Cincinnati was playing Brooklyn. …

[Two days later] I go up to the hotel and we all three met. Magee says, “There is Matty going across the room. Look out he don’t see us.” So we walked down Seventy-First Street to West End Avenue, and down West End Avenue to Sixty-Fifth Street, and there we talked
the thing over. I says, “What are you going to do?” He says, “Well, the best I can do is send you reports of different games we are going to fix. You can do business on them.” I says, “That don’t satisfy me.” I says, “I don’t gamble on baseball myself.” He says, “That is the best I can do.” I says, “If you don’t take this check up immediately, I will take it up with the club.” Chase and Magee got a little ways away and talked the thing over among themselves. They says, “Why not stay here in New York today? We are going to play New York and that game is fixed.” I says, “I don’t gamble on baseball.” They talked the thing over. He says, “I will tell you what I will do, Jim. You go back to Boston and we will send you half of that check, and the other half when we get home to Cincinnati.” I says to Chase, “Will you stand good for that check and make Magee pay it?” He says, “Yes.” I says, “I will take your word, Hal.”

Q
: When Magee was talking to you about this gambling, for how long, if it all, did he say it had been continuing on his part?

A
: I asked the boys down at Sixty-Fifth Street how long this thing was going on. They said, “Oh, it has been going on in the Cincinnati Club for two years.”
¹

This was the actual, word-for-word testimony of Jim Costello, a well-known Boston gambler who had been subpoenaed as a witness in a lawsuit filed by Lee Magee in 1920. The circumstances were unusual. Magee had been the second baseman for the Reds in 1918, and in July of that year Magee and his Cincinnati teammate—first baseman Hal Chase—visited Costello’s poolroom with the proposal to throw a game against the Braves the following afternoon. The fix failed, though, and Magee did not settle his debt to Costello. Magee was traded to Brooklyn after the 1918 season and to the Cubs in the summer of 1919. Costello, finally ticked off over not having been paid, hit Magee with a court order and took his story about the bet to baseball officials. He even took along the crossed-out Old Colony Trust check as proof. Not only did Costello have evidence against Magee and Chase, but he had an added nugget: the pair told him that, among the Reds, game fixing had been going on for two years.