Notes From the Shadows of Cooperstown: Western Swing

BACK IN THE SHADOWS

I’m home again, but another road trip is on deck, another jaunt north to the Adirondacks, with a couple excursions from there a good possibility. So this is another “tweener” issue, squeezed in while I have access to my computer and the internet.

I did just a bit more research lately, though, visiting the National Baseball Library — the place where myths go to die, located in Cooperstown, where myths often flourish.

I had just a short list this time. I visited Lee Allen’s 100 Years of Baseball (Bartholomew House, 1950), which has a good summary of the B-Sox events. Allen does not mention Collyer’s Eye in this account, as he did in The American League Story (pg 94), written in 1962.

I also took a gander at August “Garry” Herrmann: A Baseball Biography by William A. Cook (McFarland, 2008). Cook referred to the 1935 Fullerton Sporting News memoir and to Collyer’s Eye, but I didn’t see any reference to Burying the Black Sox; he also had material on Cal Crim and his detectivework, but no reference to Susan Dellinger’s Red Legs and Black Sox, unless I missed it. Cook did not seem to deal with Herrmann’s little problem with the tickets, for Game Seven of the 1919 WS, which surprised me.

Cook does cite Rube Benton, citing that betting commissioner Hahn, that the Sox players had visited Pittsburgh before the 1919 World Series and made some deals there, and I made a mental note to see if I could look this up in the Pittsburgh papers. The ‘Burgh is my hometown, and I’ve always taken some pride in the way the Pittsburgh gamblers covered up their trail in this mess. But I’d like to see the local coverage, especially during the 1920 grand jury, when Pittsburgh was in the news.

Cook also states categorically that “Commy knew all the details” of the fix right after the series. Did he get that from a careful perusal of the huge collection of Garry Herrmann papers? No — because they are not yet accessible, and we wonder why Cook wouldn’t wait a bit, so he could dive into that treasure trove and serve up a lot of great new nuggets. (I am anxious to dive into the new B-Sox material in Chicago right now, and as much as I want to do a sequel to Burying, it just makes sense to wait.)

I was also curious about Middle Innings, edited by Dean A. Sullivan (U of Nebraska Press, 1998), to see which newspaper accounts were selected for this anthology of clippings. Good choices, I think: Fullerton’s October 10, 1919, column from the Chicago Herald & Examiner (”seven shall not return”); and the “exchange” between Baseball Magazine (FC Lane) and Fullerton, in which Hughie is clobbered for his mean-spirited muckraking, and after he is proven to be on target (when the scandal breaks), he is clobbered again. Easier to condemn than to forgive? Anyway, if you haven’t seen that slice of Fullertonia, get Middle Innings.

The above is an excerpt from Issue #455 of Gene’s Notes From the Shadows of Cooperstown. To read the rest of the issue (or past issues), click here.