- WHITE SOX PLAY BY PLAY OFFERED AT BALLPARK TRIAL
- WHITE SOX PLAY BY PLAY OFFERED AT BALLPARK PROFESSIONAL
WHITE SOX PLAY BY PLAY OFFERED AT BALLPARK PROFESSIONAL
In the 1920s and ’30s, Chicago was a hotbed of amateur and semipro baseball, with many former and future professional players - including big names like ex-Cubs pitcher Jim “Hippo” Vaughn - coming together every week to play games at local parks all over the city. The answer, naturally, was to get back on the ballfield and do what they did best.
WHITE SOX PLAY BY PLAY OFFERED AT BALLPARK TRIAL
So how best to pass the time - and maybe bring in some extra income - while waiting for their trial to open? Their recognizable faces precluded them from taking jobs where they might have to interact with the general public. 1 They could not earn a living playing baseball with the White Sox, having been suspended by new commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis before Opening Day.Īs lawyers for both the prosecution and the defense engaged in pre-trial machinations without them, some of the Black Sox players spent their days at Joe Jackson’s pool room on Chicago’s South Side, 2 but there was only so much near-beer to drink in those early days of Prohibition. As prosecutors worked to round up all 13 defendants - eight players and five gamblers involved with the World Series fix - from their homes around the country, the players found themselves with no money coming in and little to do in Chicago. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, and the other players were technically free men, but they were effectively stuck in limbo until the trial was finally scheduled to begin in late June. The team of prosecutors leading the case had been overhauled in the wake of a contentious election that fall, and the new State’s Attorney made a strategic decision in March 1921 to dismiss their charges and re-indict the accused players in order to buy more time. Following their indictments in October 1920, the defendants were forced to wait through lengthy delays that pushed back the opening of their trial for months.
The legal proceedings that would determine the Black Sox players’s fate were moving at a snail’s pace. Before they could face conspiracy charges in a Cook County courtroom, they suddenly found themselves out of work. In the months leading up to their criminal trial in the summer of 1921, the eight Chicago White Sox players accused of fixing the 1919 World Series faced a more tedious dilemma than the prospect of a prison sentence.
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