Download The Betrayal : The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball AudioBook Free
In the most well-known scandal of sports record, eight Chicago White Sox players - including Shoeless Joe Jackson - agreed to toss the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in trade for the guarantee of $20,000 each from gamblers apparently working for NY mobster Arnold Rothstein. Heavily preferred, Chicago lost the series five game titles to three. Although rumors of your fix flew while the series was being played, these were generally disregarded by players and the general public at large. It wasn't until a time later a general investigation into baseball gaming reopened the case, and a countrywide scandal emerged. In such a book, Charles Fountain offers a full and engaging record of 1 of baseball's true moments of turmoil and hand-wringing and shows how the scandal changed the way American baseball was both managed and identified. After an intensive investigation and a trial that became a countrywide morality play, the jury delivered not-guilty verdicts for all the White Sox players in August of 1921. The following day, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, baseball's new commissioner, "whatever the verdicts of juries", suspended the eight players forever. And thus the Black Sox joined into American mythology. Guilty or innocent? Guilty and innocent? The country wasn't sure in 1921, so when Fountain shows, we still aren't sure today. But our company is continually pulled to the story, because so a lot of modern sport, and our frame of mind toward it, springs from the scandal. Fountain traces the Black Sox history from its root base in the gaming culture that pervaded the overall game in the years encircling World Warfare I through the puzzling occasions of the 1919 World Series itself to the loud aftermath and trial and illuminates the moment as baseball's tipping point. Regardless of the clumsy unfolding of the scandal and trial and the callous treatment of the players included, the Black Sox saga was a cleaning moment for the activity. It launched age the baseball commissioner, as baseball owners employed Landis and surrendered to him the control of their game. Fountain shows how sweeping changes in 1920s prompted by the scandal migrated baseball away from its association with gamblers and fixers and details how People in the usa' attitudes toward the pastime shifted as they joined into "The Golden Age of Sport". Situating the Black Sox occasions in the framework of later scandals, including those affecting Reds administrator and player Pete Rose and the ongoing use of steroids in the overall game up through the present, Fountain illuminates America's in close proximity to century-long desire for the story and its carrying on relevance today.