- [Narrator] Coming up.

It's the most notorious scandal in the history of professional sports.

- Corruption, betrayal, injustice.

- [Narrator] The Chicago White Sox conspired to fix the World Series.

- People want to know, they want all the details.

- The biggest thing in American sporting life, and you're willing to lose for money?

Man, that's tough.

- [Narrator] The betrayal broke the heart of a nation and destroyed the careers of some of the greatest players of all time.

- Behind the scenes of this wonderful game lurks a very sinister dark side.

- The American psyche has been damaged at bargain basement prices.

- [Narrator] And the aftermath still reverberates today.

- There is a threat that something like this could happen again.

- You've got a team that's called the White Sox fixing World Series games and defiling the entire sport, it was natural that they would be called the Black Sox.

- [Narrator] The Black Sox Scandal, next on "Chicago Stories".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Major funding for The Black Sox Scandal: An American Story is provided, in part, by The Negaunee Foundation.

Additional funding is provided by these donors.

(MUSIC) (dramatic music) September 28th, 1920.

Inside a Chicago courthouse, baseball is under siege.

White Sox pitcher, Eddie Cicotte, one of the biggest stars in the game, knows his career is over, and he's ready to come clean.

Yes, he was guilty.

Yes, he'd cheated the game he'd played since he was a kid, and yes, he'd had plenty of help.

In the end, eight White Sox players are indicted for conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series.

Baseball, the sports world, and the city of Chicago would never be the same.

- Play ball!

- Ready?

- [Narrator] Everything about it, the smell of cut grass, the clean blue sky, the daily ritual of ball games running in tandem with the rise and fall of the summer sun.

Everything about baseball marks it as an original, perhaps the original American pastoral.

(crowd cheering) - You can't tell the story of America without the story of baseball.

(baseball cracks) It was the national pastime.

(crowd cheering) - That was the game that I grew up playing with my dad and playing catch outside in the backyard, and so many people have those types of family moments.

I think that's a really beautiful thing.

- In the public mind, baseball was a sacred sport.

It was free of scandal, of disgrace.

It didn't have the same taint as horse racing, boxing, and other sports at the time.

(bell dings) - [Narrator] As the 20th century dawned, however, America's game had become big business, and its critical mass had shifted from the country to the city.

Big cities, tough cities, like New York, Boston, and of course, Chicago.

(upbeat music) - Chicago was an unprecedented place.

Out of nowhere, the flat prairie becomes skyscrapers and factories, the stockyards and the steel mills.

No one had ever seen a city grow like that before.

- [Narrator] 1919 was a tough year for Chicago, still dealing with the devastating aftermath of World War I and on a razor's edge after a summer of race riots.

Folks needed an escape, and baseball became a sanctuary.

(crowd cheers) - By 1919, Chicago was probably considered the center of baseball.

- You're talking about two sides of town, South Side Sox, North Side Cubs.

- It's a rivalry that permeates so much of the city.

You might watch a fight break out in the stands, which I'm certainly not condoning, but which seems to happen often.

- [Rich] You identified with your team, it became part of your blood.

I was born a White Sox fan and I shall die a White Sox fan.

- The White Sox had always been one of the marquee franchises.

They won a World Championship in 1906, won a World Championship in 1917, and observers were saying that this might be the best team ever assembled by any owner.

- [Narrator] Up and down the lineup, the White Sox had stars everywhere you looked, and the brightest among them, a country kid called "Shoeless" Joe Jackson.

- Joe was a natural ball player.

He could do it all.

He could throw, he could hit, he could run the bases.

Babe Ruth copied his swing.

Babe Ruth said, "When I was coming up, I looked around the league, and when I saw Joe Jackson, I quit looking."

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The son of a South Carolina sharecropper, Jackson was born with nothing, and it only seemed to get worse from there.

- There were eight kids in the family, and they were all dirt poor.

In those days, there were no child labor laws, so he had to go to work 12 to 14 hours a day to help support the family.

- [Narrator] Joe Jackson never learned to read or write, but by age 13, he was playing semi-pro ball in South Carolina's mill leagues.

It was there he earned the nickname he'd carry with him the rest of his life.

- He had bought a new pair of spikes.

They wore a blister on his feet, so he took the spikes off and he played in his stockings.

And about the seventh inning, he hit a triple, and as he was sliding into third, one of the opposing fans stood up and hollered, "You shoeless son of a gun, you!"

There was a reporter for the Greenville paper.

He heard it, and he coined the term, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson.

Joe didn't care for the nickname.

He actually hated it.

And he compensated, he bought a lot of nice shoes to kind of say, "I'm not shoeless."

But that's how the world knew him.

- [Narrator] Jackson made it to the big leagues in the summer of 1908.

In his first full season, he hit 408, one of the highest batting averages for a rookie in baseball history.

Four years later, Shoeless Joe was one of the most coveted ball players in the game.

- Charles Comiskey told his secretary to go to Cleveland.

He gave him a blank check and he said, "Bring Jackson back.

I don't care what I have to pay for him.

We need Joe Jackson."

- [Narrator] On the south side of Chicago, Jackson was dropped into a locker room full of big names and even bigger egos.

There was future Hall of Famer, Eddie Collins, fiery catcher, Ray Schalk, and one of the game's highest paid players, Buck Weaver.

- They had all the stars, they played in the best ballpark, and they had the history that baseball fans liked to wrap their emotions around.

(crowd cheering) - [Narrator] But all was not well on the South Side.

Not even close.

- So, the White Sox of this era did not get along.

- [Rich] There had been two separate cliques that had developed in the White Sox.

You had the better educated, higher paid players such as Eddie Collins, the Columbia man, true blue American patriot.

- Eddie Collins had a reputation for being, you know, very arrogant, very confident.

His nickname was Cocky, and he earned it.

There are stories of the White Sox infielders not throwing the ball to Eddie Collins because they simply didn't like him.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] On the other side of the locker room sat a group of malcontents.

Swede Risberg, Happy Felsch, and Chick Gandil, to name a few.

These were tough men, weathered, with little to no refinement, and they were being paid, for the most part, a lot less than their high profile teammates.

- They had come from hard scrabble, mostly rural childhoods.

- Tobacco chewing guys with limited education and a penchant for alcohol and rowdyism.

- Chick Gandil was a big, burly first baseman.

Early in the 1919 season, he got in a fight with Tris Speaker, and supposedly, the White Sox teammates let Tris Speaker beat him up.

Chick Gandil was not well-liked, but he was respected or feared in a lot of ways.

- So you had, by 1919, two disparate groups who rarely talked to each other, but somehow, these guys played an excellent brand of baseball.

- [Narrator] The only thing this collection of ball players might have disliked more than each other was their owner, Charles Comiskey.

- Well, the legend has grown up about this club that they were all united in their hatred of Charles Comiskey, that he was the cheapest owner in sports.

Name me a business owner in any business who did not want to maximize his profits.

Those were the baseball owners.

They wanted to maximize the profits.

- [Narrator] The owners had the power to keep players' salaries artificially low with something called the reserve clause.

- The reserve clause was a provision in the standard major league contract.

That player could not sign with any other team because his original team held him in reserve.

- The reserve clause made ballplayers, essentially, indentured servants.

Your labor is your only power in this world, and if you can't sell your labor to the highest bidder, I can see resentment building up.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Baseball owners like Comiskey were raking in money hand over fist.

It was only a matter of time before the players decided they deserved a bigger piece of the pie, and it all started with White Sox ace, Eddie Cicotte.

(train rumbling) In the summer of 1919, Cicotte and his teammates spent a lot of time riding the rails.

(upbeat music) They smoked, they drank, they played cards, and sometimes, they talked a little treason.

- [Eddie] "The way it started, we were going east on the train."

- [Narrator] That's Eddie Cicotte telling a Cook County grand jury how the whole thing got started.

- [Eddie] "Somebody made a crack about getting money, if we got into the series, to throw the series."

- Baseball was always seen as the purest form of athletic competition.

What the public did not know is that behind the scenes of this wonderful game lurks a very sinister dark side, the presence of gamblers who were slowly infiltrating the professional game.

- [Narrator] It was one thing for a ball player to shave a run on a game in June, but fixing the World Series, that was different, wasn't it?

- [Eddie] "The boys on the club got a talking, and we all agreed that for a piece of the money, we would throw the World Series."

- It started with sort of idle conversations.

"What about fixing the World Series?

You think we can do that?"

"No, that's impossible, that can't be done."

Then the next conversation is, "Well, I heard it was done before."

"Well, who can you get?

Can you get Jackson?

Can you get Williams?

Can you get Weaver?"

So the conversation spreads ever outward.

(bell ringing) - [Narrator] The Chicago White Sox clinched the American League pennant on September 24th, 1919.

Now, a decision had to be made.

Who was in, who was out, and what would be their price for betrayal?

- [Rich] It boils down to a moral question.

"Do I deserve this money enough to betray my city, to betray my teammates, and to betray the sport of baseball for the coin of the realm?"

Well, for these eight players, the answer was a resounding yes.

- [Narrator] The eight players settled on their price, a cool 100,000 for fixing the series.

Then, they turned to one of their own to orchestrate the scheme, former Major Leaguer turned gambler, Sleepy Bill Burns, and his buddy, Billy Maharg.

- To fix a long World Series, you need a bunch of people involved, so you need a bunch of payoffs.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Financing the fix was going to take someone with deep pockets, someone who could float a big bankroll.

(upbeat music continues) - [David] By the beginning of the 20th century, certainly, New York City has become the capital of America.

It's where everything is happening.

And in the center of it all is Arnold Rothstein.

- Arnold Rothstein was a Manhattan racketeer, a genius figure who had come up to command the Jewish faction of organized crime in New York City.

- [David] He's a money lender.

He provides finance of hit Broadway shows, speakeasies and rum running, and the international drug trade.

And if muscle has to be applied, it will be applied.

- [Narrator] Arnold Rothstein made it his business to always be one step ahead.

So when Burns and Maharg asked for a meeting, Rothstein already knew what they wanted to discuss.

(smooth music) - And they make their pitch that they want to fix the World Series, if only they had the cash to do it.

And Rothstein, he blows up.

"I want no part of this crooked scheme.

I don't wanna corrupt the World Series.

Get out.

Never darken this door again."

- [Narrator] Rothstein's show of anger was exactly that, a show, staged for anyone who might be watching.

- Arnold Rothstein wants an alibi, and he wants it to be said by the people witnessing this that he's clean.

The Black Sox may be black, but he's white as the driven snow.

- [Narrator] Burns and Maharg were out, and Arnold Rothstein was in.

But the Sox still had one problem.

How does the best team in the league make losing look natural?

(crowd cheering) - The critical meeting in all of this happened at the Warner Hotel, which was a hotel in the Comiskey Park neighborhood.

- [Rich] And in the proverbial smoke filled room, ideas are exchanged back and forth.

- That was when they discussed, "How do we do this?

How do we actually go about fixing a game without being caught, without looking foolish?"

That was when Cicotte said, "We're expert ball players, we can do this."

- [Narrator] Eddie Cicotte was slated to start game one of the series.

At the meeting with Rothstein's men, he said he was gonna need his money up front or the deal was off.

(upbeat music) - Eddie Cicotte is, in a lot of ways, the most fascinating character in this whole story.

He set his terms and stuck to them.

"I would not do this for less than $10,000, and I would need that $10,000 in advance."

- [Narrator] Cicotte made his demand and walked out.

When he got back to his hotel later that night, he found $10,000 under his pillow.

- Once Eddie Cicotte had the money in hand, there was no turning back.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The next day, the White Sox left for Cincinnati and the start of the best of nine World Series.

The fix was in.

- Vin Scully once said that the mound was the loneliest place in the world.

You've got the ball in your hand and everybody's waiting on you.

- [Narrator] Game one of the 1919 World Series.

Eddie Cicotte took the mound.

- And Eddie is saying to himself, "This is it.

There's no going back.

I either do this or I don't."

- [Narrator] It was the biggest pitch of Eddie Cicotte's life.

And it hit Reds lead-off hitter Morrie Rath square in the back.

It gave Rath first base and sent the gambling world a clear signal, the Chicago White Sox were in the bag.

- And the game is afoot, as they would say in Sherlock Holmes stories.

- [Narrator] The Reds pushed across one run in that fateful first inning and then broke it open in the fourth.

- There was a ball hit back to the mound, and Cicotte fielded it and turned very slowly to second base, made a low throw to Swede Risberg, the shortstop, they were trying to get a double play to end the inning, and then Risberg made a poor throw to first base, and so the Reds were able to keep the inning alive, and they immediately went on to score five runs and blow the game open and knock Cicotte out.

- [Narrator] The favored Sox got buried in game one.

- [Jacob] I think most White Sox fans after losing game one thought it was just an aberration.

- They said, "We're gonna get 'em in game two."

- [Narrator] The White Sox trotted out 23 game winner Lefty Williams for game two of the series.

(crowd chattering) (intriguing music) Known for his control, Williams walked six, and when he did put the ball over the plate, the Reds sent it back even harder.

- He pitched ineffectively, giving up three runs in the fourth inning of what ultimately would become a four to two White Sox loss.

- [Narrator] The fix in game two wasn't as obvious as the opener, but the result was just as crooked.

- There were probably handshakes all around and the feeling that, "Boys, we did it.

We fooled them, didn't we?

The rest of this is gonna be a cakewalk."

- There was never any moment where the White Sox fans weren't hopeful of bouncing back.

I think every White Sox fan believed and bet money in support of it.

- [Narrator] The series shifted to Chicago for game three, where right-hander Dickey Kerr, a rookie who was not in on the scheme, threw a wrench in the works.

(crowd chattering) - [Rich] Dickie Kerr goes out and throws a magnificent game.

The White Sox play cleanly, and they win.

So this sends a little bit of a jolt to the gamblers.

- [Narrator] If the gamblers were getting nervous, they didn't show it, as fresh money came in on the Reds and odds on the White Sox continued to plummet.

Eddie Cicotte again found himself on the bump for game four.

- The Reds got a couple runners on and ball was hit to left field.

Shoeless Joe Jackson made a throw into home plate, and Eddie Cicotte stuck his glove up, and it deflected off his glove and rolled away and allowed the Reds to score their second run, and that was all they needed to win game four.

(upbeat music) - To make that kind of schoolboy error was just inexcusable.

It was as if he had completely forgotten how to play the game of baseball.

- [Narrator] "Completely forgotten how to play the game of baseball."

That pretty much described the White Sox effort through four games of the series.

Up in the press box, the men who wrote about the game for a living took notice.

- The sports writers smell something is wrong right as it's happening.

- Ring Lardner, the great columnist, he begins to have doubts.

("I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles") - Before the first game in Cincinnati, there was an on field band playing "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", which was one of the hit songs of the time.

And after the game, after the White Sox lost badly, Lardner in the bar composed these lyrics, "I'm forever blowing ball games.

I come from Chi, I hardly try."

- [Narrator] Lardner's shameful serenade of the White Sox had no obvious effect, as the boys from the South Side proceeded to get shut out in game five.

And so the whispers grew even louder.

The team was one loss away from blowing the series, and a handful of its players, one loss away from collecting on their scheme to fix the series.

Or so they thought.

- The gamblers who had promised the White Sox players some bribe money definitely did not pay off.

(steamboat whistles) - They contact Arnold Rothstein in New York and demand more money.

Rothstein is not of a mind to send more money because he believes he's got them over a barrel now.

What, are they gonna go and blow the whistle and incriminate themselves?

And at that point, the players are thinking that these greedy gamblers are gonna welch on them and they're gonna break the promise.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] But then, something funny happened.

Irate at being stiffed by Rothstein, the White Sox suddenly remembered how to hit, how to field, how to win ball games.

They stormed back to take game six and seven, the latter behind a masterful performance from none other than Eddie Cicotte.

The tide had seemingly turned.

The Sox were on the verge of tying the series.

But Arnold Rothstein didn't become Arnold Rothstein by being outsmarted.

On the eve of the pivotal game eight, the gamblers turned the screws on the players.

- It is very likely that the gamblers paid off the players a little bit more and said, "Okay, this has to end, you have to lose."

- [Narrator] Game eight was over before it began.

Pitcher Lefty Williams never made it out of the first inning, giving up four runs and putting the White Sox in a hole they could never dig out of.

(suspenseful music) The Reds won the game and captured the World Series five games to three.

- You look at that eighth game and you look at the sloppy way the White Sox played, and it was all over with.

- [Narrator] As the Cincinnati Reds celebrated their world championship, the numbers on the South Side of Chicago told an ugly story.

Pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams took all five losses, giving up 19 runs.

Swede Risberg went just two for 25 at the plate, and Joe Jackson hit an impressive .375 for the series and played a flawless left field.

But the big hits he was known for never came.

And there were too many times when he and the team just didn't look right.

- [Rich] We can only surmise the number of sleepless nights they might have felt in fear of detection.

- How does any fan base react to their team losing the World Series?

Keenly disappointed, but the White Sox fans, after their initial disappointment, turned right back into ever hopeful.

(crowd cheering) I think there was the expectation amongst the gamblers and the ballplayers that this would blow over and would soon be forgotten.

- [Narrator] The 1919 season faded away, and Chicago's winter set in.

But the rumors persisted, and the drumbeat of suspicion around the White Sox grew louder and louder.

- Generally speaking, the sport media in a big city like Chicago kind of was like a PR arm of the ball club.

They were expected to write positive stuff about the team.

If they didn't, the owner might not let them into the game for free to watch.

- [Narrator] In December of 1919, Hugh Fullerton, baseball scribe for the Chicago Tribune, sat down and started to type.

(upbeat music) (typewriter clacking) The column he wrote was anything but a puff piece.

In fact, it would help to change American sports forever.

- [Chuck] Hugh Fullerton wrote a story that says baseball is in the control of the gamblers who are fixing the games for their own interest.

- [Rich] He was planting the seeds of suspicion that spread across the country.

- [Narrator] Fullerton never singled out any specific players, but many fans who picked up the paper could read between the lines.

- It was inevitable that the lid was going to come off this.

So, Charles Comiskey, shrewd businessman that he was, decided that he would be the one to blow the lid off.

Comiskey hired a team of private detectives.

Comiskey was not looking to get to the bottom of the story so that he might expel the players and save the honor of the game, Comiskey wanted to know whether something was going to blow up that would prevent him from re-signing these players.

- [Narrator] Comiskey's detectives found hints of a fix, but no smoking gun.

And it seemed like all the speculation about the series might remain just that, speculation.

(crowd cheers) But everything changed on August 31st, 1920, when the Sox crosstown rival, Chicago Cubs, lost a meaningless game in August to the Philadelphia Phillies.

- Bill Veeck, then the president of the Chicago Cubs, got a call that said, "Watch your players this afternoon, this game is fixed."

So, Cubs switched out their starting pitchers, still lost the game, but Bill Veeck then went to the Cook County grand jury.

- So, the first grand jury was convened in September, 1920, and the focus was whether or not there was any corruption in a single game between the Phillies and the Cubs.

And so three weeks into this investigation, the grand jury then turned its attention to whether or not there's any corruption in baseball as a whole.

(gentle music) (crowd cheering) - [Narrator] "Corruption in baseball as a whole."

In other words, forget the Cubs.

Did the team on the South Side of town actually throw the World Series?

As the grand jury began its work, the press was once again sniffing around.

This time, it was Billy Maharg, disgruntled from being pushed out of the fix by Arnold Rothstein, who gave a tell-all.

- [Chuck] That was the first time that anyone said, "Yes, it happened, these are the players who made it happen, I was there when it happened."

- It was a national story that had literally pushed all the other news off of the front page, and thereafter, the lid blew off.

(dramatic music) - [Reporter] It's 1919, and here are leading investigators in probe of recently finished World Series.

- [Narrator] The ensuing investigation engulfed the White Sox and turned the club into a national punchline.

- [Reporter] Here are actual films of sensational fourth inning of first game between White Sox and Cincinnati Reds.

Something wasn't right, and thousands mourned the proof that baseball wasn't fully honest.

- So the newspaper reporters, the sports writers, were traveling on the trains with them, and Eddie was listening to these guys.

"What's wrong with the arm, Eddie?"

"Are you feeling a little nervous about your future?"

(reporters yelling) - The pressure is building so much, Eddie Cicotte finally cracks.

He goes to Charles Comiskey's office.

He admits, "Yeah, we were crooked.

We fixed the World Series."

(gentle music) And Charles Comiskey said, "Well, go tell it to the grand jury."

- [Eddie] "I don't know why I did it.

I must have been crazy."

- Confession, they say, is best for the soul.

So he, without lawyers present, spilled the beans.

- [Eddie] "I've lived a thousand years in the last 12 months.

Now, I've lost everything.

Job, reputation, everything."

- They then brought in Joe Jackson, and at that point, it's the biggest sports story maybe of all time.

- [Narrator] Shoeless Joe, icon to millions, took the stand on September 28th, 1920.

In a tight spot, Jackson tried to walk a fine line, admitting some guilt while trying to salvage his integrity as a ball player.

- I don't know that Joe ever saw the major leagues coming.

I really don't.

He just loved playing the game.

The Brandon Mill, their ball field was right next to the actual mills, and Joe could look out the windows and see the men out there practicing baseball.

So, that was his motivation, he wanted to get out there and play baseball as opposed to work 12 hours a day.

(gavel banging) (attendees murmuring) - [Prosecutor] "Did you do anything to throw those games?"

- [Joe] "No, sir.

I tried to win all the time."

- Joe Jackson was illiterate, he wasn't stupid.

He knew his teammates were trying to lose.

(suspenseful music) - [Prosecutor] "Did anybody pay you any money to help throw that series in favor of Cincinnati?"

- [Joe] "They did.

They promised me 20,000 and paid me five."

- Lefty Williams, Joe's roommate, came to Joe's room and threw down an envelope.

Joe Jackson asked him, "What's this?"

And he said, "This is your part of the money."

I think Joe knew it was wrong.

He knew that there could be some serious repercussions for having that money.

- [Narrator] The prosecutor pressed Jackson, asking if his wife knew what he had done.

- [Joe] "She said she thought it was an awful thing to do.

Cried about it for a while."

- Joe says some disturbing things in that confession, and he talks a lot about money.

The first thing I would've done if I was Joe's lawyer is I would've told him to shut up.

- [Reporter] And when after the famed White Sox fielder, Shoeless Joe Jackson, confessed his guilt, it's said that one weeping fan of his cried out, "Say it isn't so!"

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] When Arnold Rothstein was called to the stand, he stopped outside the courtroom for an impromptu chat with the press.

- And he gives a very pious speech about how his reputation has been sullied by these rumors.

And then he goes into the grand jury and denies everything.

(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] White Sox players were promised $100,000 to fix the series, but in the end, they'd get less than half that.

Arnold Rothstein, on the other hand, made a killing.

Estimates put his take at more than $350,000, 6.5 million in today's dollars.

- This really is the Napoleon of crime, the fellow with the nerve and with the vision to make things happen.

- [Narrator] Rothstein walked away untouchable, but not everyone would be so lucky.

On October 29th, 1920, eight White Sox players and a handful of low level gamblers were indicted and charged with conspiracy to defraud the public.

(reporters yelling) - The revelation of this placed baseball in the same position as prize fighting and horse racing.

The last clean sport in America has sold out.

(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Baseball went on trial in the summer of 1921.

Despite confessions from several players, the burden of proof would be a difficult bar to reach.

- The hard part actually came at the end of the trial.

The prosecutor had to show that each of the defendants not only conspired, but they did so with a conscious intent to defraud the public, to defraud the White Sox organization, and to defraud various other victims.

There was no evidence at all at trial of what their intent was, it was an impossible, impossible thing to prove.

- [Narrator] In closing arguments, prosecutors went all in, painting the Black Sox as killers, and baseball, their victim.

- [Jury Member] We have reached a verdict.

- [Narrator] The Chicago jury didn't quite see it that way and only needed three hours to decide, not guilty.

(crowd applauding) - [Rich] The Cook County Court room erupted in a show of positive emotion.

The jurors, the press, the players, they were throwing their hats in the air.

- [Collette] And so they go outside, they take pictures.

It was just a big celebration.

- Those players, once they heard the verdict, believed that all their troubles had been swept away.

They look to the future with great optimism... (reporters yelling) But they're dancing on a volcano.

- [Narrator] That night, the exonerated players hit the town.

The next morning, their hangover arrived... - That was a bully ball game!

- [Narrator] In the person of newly appointed baseball commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

(rhythmic music) - He's got the look.

I mean, I love the Kenesaw Mountain Landis look.

The shock of white hair, the craggy, thin face, and the look of disdain and judgment and wrath when he looked down upon you from the judge's bench.

- Judge Landis was hired as baseball's commissioner in order to clean up the game.

There had been so many rumors about game fixing and other instances of corruption, he was brought in with a mandate of, "Let's clean this up."

- [Narrator] Landis wasted no time.

The day after a jury acquitted what the press were now calling the Black Sox, baseball's commissioner banned them from the game for life.

- It's like that.

"You guys are gone."

- Judge Landis' statement said, "Regardless of the verdicts of juries, no ballplayer who conspires to throw a game or sits in the company of ballplayers where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not report such conversations will ever play baseball again."

- [Narrator] Landis' ban was effective immediately.

The careers of the eight Black Sox were finished.

- All of America was stunned, not just the baseball world.

From the children who were weeping at the news to their parents and grandparents, they had thrown their hearts over to the game.

How can this be happening?

- This is the national game, but you've disgraced it, and you've disgraced your family, you've disgraced your own name and reputation, and for what?

In the aggregate, they get something like 30 or $40,000.

The American psyche has been damaged at bargain basement prices.

- The White Sox betrayal of their brother players, Eddie Collins, Ray Schalk, Dickey Kerr, Kid Gleason, the manager, the Clean Sox, you don't think of the hurt and the betrayal that they suffered in this because there was so much other betrayal to go around.

- [Happy] "I'm as guilty as the rest of them.

I got my 5,000.

I could have got just as much if we had won."

Now, I'm out of baseball.

The joke seems to be on us."

- [Narrator] The immediate aftermath of the Black Sox scandal was disillusionment, anger, and a dip in attendance at ball games.

Baseball, however, had an answer for that sort of malaise, a man named Ruth.

(upbeat music) - Babe Ruth was playing his first season for the New York Yankees.

He became the center not only of the baseball world, but in a lot of ways, the center of the celebrity world.

(crowd cheering) - [Narrator] His first year in Yankee pinstripes, Ruth hit a record 54 home runs.

The next, he hit 59.

Fans across the country flocked to ballparks to see its newest hero, and baseball entered what would become a golden age.

(crowd cheers) On the South Side of Chicago, however, the long shadow of the Black Sox proved harder to shake.

- Charles Comiskey was a villain.

He was a tightwad, he was a crook.

Those are the things that have just been perpetuated over time, and it just simply is not true.

- In 1963, Eliot Asinof published the book "Eight Men Out", and it crafted Charles Comiskey in the role of consummate villain.

- [Eddie] You said if I won 30 games this year, there'd be a $10,000 bonus.

- So?

- I think you owe me that bonus.

- 29 is not 30, Eddie.

You will get only the money you deserve.

- The movie is what really sealed the deal in making him the bad person.

- Any bet against my Sox this series is a sucker bet.

- He was such an enthusiast about the game of baseball.

He did a lot of important things that have just kind of been overlooked.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] At a time when Major League Baseball was still segregated, Charles Comiskey supported both the all-Black 8th Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, and Provident Hospital, the first Black owned and operated hospital in Chicago.

- To be an astute business person, that doesn't mean you can't be a good, generous human.

Every good story needs a villain, and he was an easy one to target.

- [Narrator] If history has painted Charles Comiskey as a villain, he's one of many.

But no one and nothing has taken as big a hit as the game of baseball itself.

- The questionable integrity of the game has been a recurring issue throughout baseball history.

- The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a sorry episode.

- If it wasn't gambling and game fixing, you know, you've got steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.

- What I wanna ask is, what happened to sportsmanship?

- The Houston Astros, they have apologized.

- In recent years, you've got electronic sign stealing that has become a huge issue and led to a major scandal in the 21st century, and with the legalization of sports betting, the Black Sox scandal continues to have relevance today.

- There's become a weird proximity between gambling and ballparks in a very physical sense, which is very different from in years past, where it's been so taboo to even talk about gambling.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Purists love to ponder if the game will ever regain the special luster it once enjoyed.

- The essence of the big fix in the Black Sox scandal is that it drives argument.

We're arguing about it now over 100 years later.

- The issue is whether the New England Patriots cheated.

- I've always played within the rules.

I would never do anything to break the rules.

- [Reporter] To be judged by a fair- - But other sports, college sports, basketball and football both, tremendous number of point fixing and other scandals, and it goes away faster because it's not baseball.

- [Narrator] So what is it about the game that makes it so sacred?

Perhaps the answer lies in the game's origins.

- Baseball was exclusive to the American experience.

- [Jacob] Baseball's place in American culture means that people have higher standards, that it should be better, even if it's not, even if it's just as human as every other sport and every other human endeavor.

(crowd cheers) - [Narrator] In some ways, the idea of baseball is more important than its reality.

The chasm between the two being where we find the remnants of our childhood dreams and the shadows of men like the Black Sox, men whose imperfections off the field ultimately eclipsed their talent on it.

- The game is a beautiful thing, from the first pitch to the last out.

If you concentrate on that, you're gonna be less likely to have your heart broken.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) (gentle music continues) - My name's Mike Miller.

I'm a volunteer and a board member here with the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum.

We are standing here in the living room of Shoeless Joe Jackson's house.

Joe actually had the house built in 1940.

He and his wife, Kate, spent the last 10 years of his life here.

He had a room in this house where he kept a lot of his trophies, so I'm sure he spent a little bit of time in there looking over some old history and things that had happened during his career.

- Joe ran a liquor store on Pendleton Street in Greenville, South Carolina, Joe Jackson's Liquor Store.

And there's a famous story about Ty Cobb.

Ty Cobb wanted to see Joe, and he walked in and he walked around, and Joe acted like he didn't know who he was.

And finally, Ty Cobb gets a little aggravated and he's like, "Joe, you don't know me?"

And he says, "Yeah, Ty, I know you."

He said, "I just didn't think anybody that knew me up there would wanna know me now."

I don't think Joe ever really reconciled getting kicked out of baseball.

That hurt him, that hurt him bad.

Because he never thought that he did anything wrong.

- [Joe] "I was found innocent and I was still banned for life.

I can say that my conscience is clear, and I'll stand on my record in that World Series.

I'm willing to let the Lord be my judge."

- I believe Joe should have been punished for his guilty knowledge.

But I think, you know, 10 years, whatever, he should have been reinstated.

Joe's been dead since December 5th, 1951.

He's banned in perpetuity now.

- [Narrator] The Black Sox Scandal remains baseball's original sin.

And so more than 100 years after the fact, eight men who gambled and lost stand on the outside of history, looking in, all for a few thousand bucks.

Say it ain't so, Joe.

Say it ain't so.

(upbeat music) Major funding for The Black Sox Scandal: An American Story is provided, in part, by The Negaunee Foundation.

Additional funding is provided by these donors.

(MUSIC) (upbeat music continues)