Customer Reviews

The 1919 World Series: What Really Happened?

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It's about time that someone gives the 1919 Cincinnati Reds the respect they deserve. In his well documented book, author, William A. Cook has finally brought to light the fact that the Cincinnati Reds were quite capable of winning the 1919 World Series, without any help from the Chicago White Sox.The inning by inning replay of the series in the book should raise a few historian's eye brows in that Mr. Cook raises some very important questions in regard to propaganda advanced by the media on baseball's most infamous event over the past 87 years.
I highly recommend the book for baseball fans and historians alike, who have a penchant for objectivity. KUDOS to Mr. Cook for his bold insight.

Will Cook's book on the much publicised 1919 Worls Series is right on the money. More rumors have been spread on this series than all other sporting events. Rotten rumors were flying all over Cincinatti. Cook doesn't question, there is no need to, the many lies, tricks, baloney, and double crosses that occurred before the opening pitch. But, he reveals most of the rumors never transpired onto the playing field. Each team had 12 errors and several shabby plays. Modern computer data, not available in 1919, fully confirm Cook's theory that the Sox were a good team, about even with the two top Reds rivals in the National League. But, for the year 1919 the Reds were a great pitching loaded team. They were much better prepared for a tough series, fully capable of beating the Sox week in and week out of 1919. The Red under ace manager Pat Moran were ready and the Sox were down with sore armed pitchers, poor relief, and low morale.
Will Cook reveals a factual true as possible survey of the series. He covers all the controversial plays using all available data to arrive at a verdict. Also, he lists several "grey areas" in which no present day man can detect the true motive of certain players. Cook plainly states that Sox hero and captain, Hall of Famer Edd Collins, had a miserable series. In the first six games he had 2 hits that produced nothing, all while disgraced Joe Jackson had 8 hits.
Every student of the 1919 series should read this book and then reread it to get the real picture. Then they will understand the truth in Will Cooks premise that its high time the media quits low-rating the 1919 Reds. Will Cook helps the Reds gain full credit for a great series performance.

David Karickhoff

Cook provides the first-ever objective look at the events in the 1919 World Series. His research is well done and superbly documented. In doing so he raies a lot of very important questions that historians need to re-examine. I liked the book very much and recommend it and believe that it will set the standard for future books on the 1919 World Series.

William A Cook's The 1919 World Series:What Really Happened is an amazing chronicle of the series in that the author lays out inning by inning what happened at each at bat. Therefore allowing the reader to reach their own conclusion on major league baseball's most controversial event. After reading the book I came to the conclusion that Mr. Cook is correct in his theory that regardless of the fact that the series was not played on the square; the Reds would have won anyway. None the less it's going to take a lot of time before history vindicates the Reds for simply playing great ball.

I have read all of the histories of the scandal and this is the poorest book for a novice to read. The author ignores all previous research that does not fit with his view - that Cincinnati would have won the '19 Series. Actually, the great weight of evidence is that all of the games lost by Chicago were deliberately lost by the starting pitchers and others. Instead of examining the well-researched books by Asinof and Luhrs, among others, he attacks a Hollywood movie and presents no original research of his own. Buy a different book!

I'm a South-Side Chicago born, 55 year old former baseball player, and lifelong White Sox fan.

I've always been interested in baseball's rich history, given how woven it seems to be into the fabric of American history in general, and have lately been reading/rereading through all I can about the fateful 1919 Black Sox Series. One generally starts with Asinof's "Eight Men Out" (probably the most well-known history of the Black Sox Scandal), and the excellent recent (2007) book by Gene Carney, "Burying the Black Sox", the latter of which fills in all the notably missing footnote documentation from Asinof's otherwise spell binding work. The popular 1988 movie "Eight Men Out" directed by John Sayles, and based on Asinof's book, probably brought the 1919 Black Sox scandal to a wider audience than any of the books, which is often true for movies about historical events.

While all these efforts have their pros and cons, it's clearly evident that, after 90+ years now, the full truth behind the Black Sox Scandal in the 1919 World Series will likely never be known with any certainty: too many players involved (ballplayers, managers, sportswriters, gamblers, baseball commissioners, team owners, etc, etc, etc), all with their own, often competing, reasons for why they did what they did (and also what they didn't do).

I bought this book ("The 1919 World Series: What Really Happened")to supplement my reading list on the topic. I had always wondered, with all the controversy after-the-fact, with all the shadings of cover-ups and competing personal interests behind the subsequent Grand Jury depositions and trial, and Commissioner Landis' final banishment of the "eight men out"- exactly what REALLY happened where it counted the most: on the baseball field.

Of course, in all the above works on this subject, events in the games are detailed- but generally just the ones that were "suspect", without the (necessary) context of what happened in the entire, 9 game World Series that year. Unfortunately for posterity, the scorecards of sports writer Hugh Fullerton and observer ( and former baseball great) Christy Matthewson, who agreed to mark down all the plays during the Series that they though looked "fishy", have been lost- though reportedly they came up with only 7-10 total plays (during the 8 games played) that remotely suggested less-than-honest effort by the White Sox players. One wonders: were there also some fantastically GOOD plays by the guilty players during the Series? Only the fishy ones get much press or screen time, it seems. And how did the "clean" Sox players do, compared to their much-reviled "guilty" team mates?

So this book was a most welcome addition to the history of the topic- and such a simple premise, too: what actually happened on the field?

Mr. Cook carefully takes the reader through each game of the 1919 Series, and though he does have an agenda in telling the story (to give the Cincinnatti Reds the real credit they deserved for winning the Series against the favored Sox), he doesn't let that get in the way of telling the facts. No matter what opinion you may have about the Black Sox scandal, what happened on the field is immutably and irrevocably preserved for all time, in the box scores and descriptions of what happened on the field. Cook presents the details of each game clearly, interjecting a few of his personal opinions along the way, but never to the point of avoiding just telling what happened. Congratulations to him for just "telling it like it was".

It's an unavoidable conclusion (to me, anyway) that, fix or not, the White Sox just ran into some mighty fine pitching from Cincinnatti in the 1919 World Series, and the saying in baseball is as old as the hills: good pitching will beat good hitting any time, particularly in a short series. The Reds' 1919 National League record that year was outstanding, btw, as was their pitching staff, all year long. The hype that is commonly given to the White Sox team of 1919 is part of the enduring mythology of the Scandal, too (keep in mind, this is coming from a life-long Sox fan)- they were a very good team, but hardly vastly superior to the Reds, in just about every statistical category except team batting average. And while this is likely to be a never-ending debate amongst baseball history fans (read:nuts), the play on the field in the Series also suggests that most of the "guilty" Sox players played pretty hard, after the first game or two. Even those players commonly portrayed in most modern versions of the event as "guilty as sin", such as Chick Gandil and Eddie Cicotte, had a Series' performance that hardly was an obvious indication of a fix. Yes, the players were guilty for being part of the fix, but I'm not so sure they played out all the games that way (understandable also when you recall that they were largely double-crossed by the gamblers, and most never received the $$$ they though were coming to them). It's instructive to note that Cincinnatti star (and future Hall of Famer) Ed Rousch, who was on the field playing against the Sox for the whole Series, was convinced that all the Sox players, guilty or clean, played very hard. I doubt Rousch was just saying that to embellish his team's accomplishment in winning the Series, either- he was there, on the field, saw all the action at ground level, and likely had much more insight as a player into what was going on, than any sportswriter or after-the-fact historian.

The cases of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver usually get most of the sympathy vote, but suffice it to say, based on what actually happened on the field, several other of the "guilty" Black Sox played pretty well, and several of the "clean ones" (ie: Eddie Collins) didn't. And lastly, even if you consider ALL of the commonly mentioned "fishy" plays to have been part of an intentional fix to lose the Series, they just weren't enough to accomplish that feat. The Sox lost, 5 games to 3, because they couldn't score many runs off the brilliant Reds' starting pitchers. Chalk up another one for good pitching (and defense- check out the numerous descriptions of game-saving defense played by the Reds in this Series).

I'd recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in the history of the 1919 World Series, and the Black Sox Scandal. I'd say that to fully understand the subsequent proceedings, that lead to the "eight men out" being banished from baseball forever (so far), it's a plainly obvious requirement to know what actually happened on the baseball field first. And that, like so much other history down through the ages, has been twisted into so many interpretations and conclusions as to be almost semi-fictional in character. As Mark Twain once said: "There are lies, damn lies,and.....statistics."

Only reason I give this 4 stars (instead of 5) is the price: for 192 pages, $25+ seems a bit high.
But then, you can blow $25 at McDonalds with your family, and that's just a one-time deal.

For those baseball history fans with a common sense approach to history, this book is a welcome addition to the history of the Black Sox.

And my vote: reinstate both Buck Weaver and Joe Jackson, and put Joe in the Hall of Fame, where he belongs. If you need to create a space for Joe's plaque, get rid of Charles Comiskey's.

Mr. Cook, I hold the study of History sacred. I was trained as a Historian at one of the more prestigious History Departments in the U.S. by some of the finest professors in the field. First, let me start by saying that I give the author all due respect for attempting to add to the collective knowledge of History and the 1919 World Series; your effort is commended. However, besides Mr Cooks thin research and his hollow attempts to "connect" certain dots, Mr Cook makes one of the most egregious errors in the study of History and Historiography as a whole, and as such the book loses all credibility. The error you ask? My friends, History is the search for fact through secondary and more importantly primary sources. Mr Cook, however, simply makes a guess. His thesis is that the Cincinatti Reds would have won the World Series even without the fix. Mr Cook, wondering what might have been is not history. The fact is the White Sox did throw the Series. You can not just guess as to what might have happened had the White Sox not commenced their devious plot. I'm sorry sir but once again this is not History, it is merely speculation. For example, based on your premise, I could write a book about the many great achievements which Abraham Lincoln would have acomplished save for the unfortunate incident at Ford's Theatre. Mr Cook, I do not wish to sound boorish or uncouth but it appears that this book was written by a fan who wants nothing more than for his beloved Reds to get the respect they deserve. And, as a fan myself, I certainly understand your motivation. Regardless Mr. Cook, This is not a work of History but rather a story of what might have been - wishful thinking.

William A Cook's premise for this book is two-part: 1. Eight Men Out, the film, was historically inaccurate and 2. The Reds won the World Series fair and square and didn't need the help of the Black Sox throwing games to win.

First of all, Eight Men Out was never meant to be a completely factual account of the Black Sox Scandal. It's a movie. Movies aren't accurate representations of actual events. No one expects that, except Mr. Cook apparently.

As far as his second premise, he seems to be under the impression everyone thinks Eight Men Out is a documentary and no one believes the Reds could have won against an almost-superhuman White Sox team. Which is simply not true--the Reds were good enough in '19 to get to the Series, they could have won it had both teams been playing on the up and up. They might not have, but the possibility was there.

One more thing--since Mr. Cook rails on what he calls the bad history of the movie, I'm going to point out the mistakes I have found in the first few chapters. Lefty Williams was not named Charles. His name was Claude. No one called Charlies Comiskey 'Chommy' but 'Commie.' I would return the book to Amazon, but I'm afraid they might resell it to someone else who doesn't realize this is bad history. So I'm throwing it away.