This Is My Story Of The Black Sox Series

During the next two months, after returning to my winter home in Los Angeles, I heard some wild reports about the killing I made on the World Series. One account said I was flashing around a bankbook with a $25,000 entry. Another said I had been paid off in diamonds. And still another had me plunking down cash for a house. The truth was, I did buy a house—with $2,500 I had borrowed from the bank for down payment. The loan was repaid when I finally got my World Series check from the White Sox.

By the time the 1920 season came around, I was kind of sour on baseball, Comiskey and everything else. I didn't care whether I went back to the Sox or not. I asked for a $2,000 raise, which Comiskey naturally refused. I became the only one of the eight conspirators not to report that year. Instead, I played semipro ball twice a week for the Elks Club in Bakersfield, Calif. I earned $75 a game.

News about the 1919 World Series was disappearing from the newspapers—which was fine with me. And then came the explosion. It happened in September of 1920 while the Sox were fighting for the league lead. I recall the headline I read clearly: WHITE SOX CONFESS SERIES FIX.

Cicotte, for reasons unknown, appeared to have told the story of our plot to Comiskey, who ordered him to confess (with immunity) before the Cook County grand jury. There were reports that Williams, Jackson and Felsch squealed, too. Meanwhile Comiskey banned from the team the seven players connected with the conspiracy. It was just before the end of the pennant race, and the Sox lost out to Cleveland.

No one really knows for sure what the players confessed privately to the grand jury, and we'll never find out because the confessions later turned up missing (in my opinion, this was Rothstein's work), and everyone repudiated the things that were supposed to have been confessed.

The grand jury brought an indictment against the eight of us in September 1920, but the case didn't come to trial until July 1921. I was picked up by police in Los Angeles and spent a night in jail before being extradited to Chicago.

The trial dragged out for 15 days. Upon advice of our attorneys none of us testified, and without our testimony the state had no case. When the jury finally found us not guilty there was loud cheering in the court room, and the jurors even carried a few of us out on their shoulders. What a scene.

SUSPENDED FOR LIFE

But our ban from baseball stuck, and when Judge Landis took office as commissioner a short time later, one of his first acts was to extend the suspensions for life.

Inasmuch as we were legally freed, I feel Landis' ruling was unjust, but I truthfully never resented it because, even though the Series wasn't thrown, we were guilty of a serious offense, and we knew it.