Add Your Thoughts 5 Comments. He was a tremendously talented outfielder who was supposedly involved in the "Black Sox" scandal in the World Series when several of the White Sox were indited for throwing a game.
Outside of the courthouse where the trial was being held a young boy came up to Joe and infamously said "Say it ain't so Joe. Roger Daltrey did an outstanding cover of this song in on his solo "One of the Boys" album. Check it out. No Replies Log in to reply. There was an error. General Comment Such a powerful song - adorable - especially to anyone who has known a Jo - as I memorably have nagromnai on October 01, Link.
Song Meaning The title comes from a quote uttered in Shoeless Joe's direction, but I believe it was inspired by a lot of people's reaction to Watergate revelations. Maharg and Burns were now suspicious, and pointedly questioned Attell as to whether Rothstein was actually backing him.
Have wired you twenty grand and waived identification. At the moment, however, Burns was angry because there was no money for the players. Burns gave this to one of the players whom Maharg did not name , and afterward told Maharg that the eight White Sox were restless and might not go through with their agreement.
A somewhat different story, for instance, was told by Chick Gandil in the magazine Sports Illustrated almost forty years later. According to Gandil, the White Sox were ripe for trouble. The players quarreled among themselves, and the one common bond among them seemed to be their dislike for Comiskey, who paid his pennant-winning team the lowest salaries in the league. The pair consulted with the others, and the group decided to accept the offer—cash in advance.
Sullivan, however, explained that it was difficult to raise so much money quickly, and made arrangements to meet the players again in Chicago. He put the bills under his pillow. By the time of the first game, talk of a fix was so prevalent that the players were reluctant to go through with it. According to Gandil their intention was to double-cross Rothstein by keeping his money and playing to win; in effect, this is what they did.
But it was a demoralized White Sox team which took the field against their National League opponents—and the Reds played much better than anyone expected. After the third game, which the White Sox won, Gandil received a visit from Burns, who was panicky. Now they had their doubts. In Chicago, its publication set off a limited chain reaction. On the morning of September 28, , the pressure became too much for Eddie Cicotte. Later in the day, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams visited the grand jury chambers to add their mea culpas.
Comiskey at once suspended the tainted players, and in so doing ruined any chance of wresting the pennant from the Indians, who at the moment were leading the league by only one game, with three left to play. Yet outwardly he maintained his composure.
Cicotte, for example, said: The eight of us got together in my room three or four days before the [first] game started. Gandil was the master of ceremonies. Decided we could get away with it.
We agreed to do it. I was thinking of the wife and kids and how I needed the money. I told them I had to have the cash in advance. I wanted it before I pitched a ball. The day before I went to Cincinnati, I put it up to them squarely for the last time, that there would be nothing doing unless I had the money.
That night, I found the money under my pillow. There was ten thousand dollars. I counted it. It was my price. Williams said the group bargained over price. The rest has been called off. One other player made momentary public acknowledgment of complicity. At this point Arnold Rothstein was subpoenaed by the Chicago grand jury. Protesting that he had long ago renounced gambling for an honest career in the real-estate business, Rothstein nevertheless took the precaution of hiring one of the slickest trial lawyers of the day, William J.
Although Rothstein was cleared, other gamblers were not. Meanwhile, organized baseball had taken a step that was greatly to affect the destinies of the indicted players. His first important act occurred on March 12, , when he banned the eight guilty players from organized baseball by placing them on the ineligible list. On June 27, , the long-delayed trial finally got under way, with seven of the eight Black Sox present. Fred McMullin, who was not there, was said to be hurrying to Chicago from the West.
The proceedings attracted feverish interest on the part of the public. The courtroom was jammed daily to its capacity of five hundred, including many small boys, and special guards were needed to hold back those who could not be accommodated. Most of the spectators sweltered in their shirtsleeves, and collars were conspicuously absent. A hard fight was expected, since it was no secret that Jackson, Cicotte, and Williams had repudiated their confessions; the admissibility of these statements as evidence would be briskly debated.
At the same time, there was an air of near-joviality. They better not get him riled up. One exchange, involving the confessions, went as follows:.
George E. After the selection of a jury, which took over two weeks, the prosecution presented its case—which rested mainly on the testimony of Sleepy Bill Burns.
The presence of Burns as a witness was due, it was said, to the persistence of Ban Johnson, who had tracked him to Mexico and persuaded him to testify. One implication, of course, was that Burns would be spared prosecution.
And on one point Burns was emphatic: the players, and not the gamblers, had conceived the idea of throwing the Series. What ultimately happened to the confessions and the waivers remains one of the unsolved mysteries of the case. The verdict was greeted in the courtroom with a wild demonstration of approval. The spectators cheered, and the judge congratulated the jury, whose members responded by carrying the vindicated players from the courtroom on their shoulders. To Buck Weaver and Happy Felsch, the acquittal may have seemed unnecessary, for before the case went to the jury, the judge had announced that, on the basis of the evidence, he would not let a verdict against them stand.
Chick Gandil seasoned his joy with a dash of gloating. The press and organized baseball were hardly as jubilant. As a matter of fact, Commissioner Landis had precisely that in mind. On the day after the verdict, the eight were suspended for life.
Landis stated: Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ball game; no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.
From that day on, organized baseball never retreated from this position. It is no exaggeration to say that every one of the Black Sox bitterly regretted his role in the scandal. What about the tear-jerking line by the crushed kid?
Quotation experts have determined the legendary quote is a misquote of a quote that was probably fabricated by a reporter in the first place. Eventually, it became an idiomatic expression used humorously as a comment about some disappointing revelation or bad news.
However, no other eyewitness accounts corroborate either version of the alleged quotation by the young baseball fan. Jackson himself always denied any such thing was said to him by a kid or anyone else that day.
So, basically, the quote and story were apparently made up by a reporter — and then further distorted in later accounts. Email me or post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook page. All rights reserved on the original commentary written for this blog.
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