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The Betrayal - The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball (Paperback)
Loot Price: R528
Discovery Miles 5 280
You Save: R41
(7%)
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The Betrayal - The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball (Paperback)
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List price R569
Loot Price R528
Discovery Miles 5 280
You Save R41 (7%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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In the most famous scandal of sports history, eight Chicago White
Sox players-including Shoeless Joe Jackson-agreed to throw the 1919
World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for the promise of
$20,000 each from gamblers reportedly working for New York mobster
Arnold Rothstein. Heavily favored, Chicago lost the Series five
games to three. Although rumors of a fix flew while the series was
being played, they were largely disregarded by players and the
public at large. It wasn't until a year later that a general
investigation into baseball gambling reopened the case, and a
nationwide scandal emerged. In this book, Charles Fountain offers a
full and engaging history of one of baseball's true moments of
crisis and hand-wringing, and shows how the scandal changed the way
American baseball was both managed and perceived. After an
extensive investigation and a trial that became a national morality
play, the jury returned not-guilty verdicts for all of the White
Sox players in August of 1921. The following day, Judge Kennesaw
Mountain Landis, baseball's new commissioner, "regardless of the
verdicts of juries," banned the eight players for life. And thus
the Black Sox entered into American mythology. Guilty or innocent?
Guilty and innocent? The country wasn't sure in 1921, and as
Fountain shows, we still aren't sure today. But we are continually
pulled to the story, because so much of modern sport, and our
attitude towards it, springs from the scandal. Fountain traces the
Black Sox story from its roots in the gambling culture that
pervaded the game in the years surrounding World War I, through the
confusing events of the 1919 World Series itself, to the noisy
aftermath and trial, and illuminates the moment as baseball's
tipping point. Despite the clumsy unfolding of the scandal and
trial and the callous treatment of the players involved, the Black
Sox saga was a cleansing moment for the sport. It launched the age
of the baseball commissioner, as baseball owners hired Landis and
surrendered to him the control of their game. Fountain shows how
sweeping changes in 1920s triggered by the scandal moved baseball
away from its association with gamblers and fixers, and details how
American's attitude toward the pastime shifted as they entered into
"The Golden Age of Sport." Situating the Black Sox events in the
context of later scandals, including those involving Reds manager
and player Pete Rose, and the ongoing use of steroids in the game
up through the present, Fountain illuminates America's near
century-long fascination with the story, and its continuing
relevance today.
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