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Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series

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Red Legs and Black Sox:

Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series

Susan Dellinger, PhD

Emmis Books 2006



Reviewed by David J. Fletcher, MD



Fresh in the wake of the White Sox winning the 2005 World Series and overcoming the curse of the 1919 Black Sox comes a new book that looks at that fateful 1919 World Series from the perspective of a star player from the team that won the tainted crown.



Red Legs and Black Sox Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series (Emmis Books 2006) is authored by Susan Dellinger, PhD. This book is about the life and times of Edd Roush, the ambidextrous Hall of Fame center-fielder from the Cincinnati Redlegs.



Roush, who inducted into the Hall of Fame, in 1962 along side Jackie Robinson and Bob Feller, was the last living player from the 1919 World Series until his death in 1988. In fact, in 1987 six months before his death, Roush visited the set in Covington, Kentucky of the movie version Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out (8M0) and met with 8MO director John Sayles. Edd (with his colorful two Ds in his first name) Roush was also a principle reference source for Asinof in the early `60s when he wrote 8MO



Dr. Dellinger, who happens to be the granddaughter of Roush, adds tremendous details to the story previously told in pieces before by Lawrence S. Ritter in his The Glory of His Times (McMillan 1966) and in Eugene Murdoch's oral baseball history.



The slick-fielding Roush and two-time batting National League batting champion, lived for the rest of his 95 years with the specter of a tainted World Championship even though he told anyone that would listen that Reds were a better ball team and that they would have beaten the White Sox even if they had not thrown the 1919 World Series. (Ironically, Roush's own major league career started with a cup of coffee with the Chicago White Sox in 1913.)



Dellinger continues and expands on the story line first laid down in David Pietrusza's Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the World Series (Carroll & Graf 2005) about the complex webs of deceit that the gamblers who infiltrated both the White Sox and Reds players. She adds more to knock the conventional myth that the 1919 Black Sox scandal was baseball's single sin. She adds to the newly uncovered story that St. Louis gambler Kid Becker first planned the fixing of the World Series in 1918 between the Cubs and Red Sox played at the Sox Park because Comiskey Park held more fans than Weeghman Park (now known as Wrigley Field). Becker, who was killed in April 1919, had his brilliant fix plan picked up by Carl Zork and a cartel of St. Louis and Des Moines small time gamblers, who are relegated to minor roles in his history of the Black Sox scandal but were really the master fixers never given the real credit they deserve.



The story also expands on the belief that the Reds may have intentionally lost Game Six and Game Seven of the 1919 World Series because possibly two of their pitchers may been reached (Dutch Ruether the loser of Game 6 in the Sox won 5-4 in 10 innings was believed to have been reached by the gamblers and who also sued Eliot Asinof in 1962 for writing in Eight Men Out that he been drinking before Game 1 of the 1919 World Series).



The book outlines Roush's theory that the White Sox were playing to win after Game 1. This theory is developed with Roush's story of Jimmy Widmeyer, the "Million Dollar Newsboy" who ran a newsstand at the Walnut and 5th in Cincinnati. Widmeyer, who was alerted about a possible fix, rented room 712 of the Sinton Hotel, the room next to Black Sox stars Ed Cicotte and Happy Felsch. Widmeyer "with his ear pressed against the wall with a water glass" overhead arguments between White Sox players and the gamblers, presumably Abe Attell, about getting their pay-off for tanking Game one of the 1919 World Series.



The craziness of the gambling activities in and about the Cincinnati Hotels around Game 1 and Game 2 are particularly insightful in the missing links of the Black Sox story and correspond to the trial testimony that Sleepy Bill Burns late gave in the 1924 Milwaukee trial of Joe Jackson versus Charles Comiskey



One charming aspect of the book is the emergence of Roush's fiery personality and his going-his-own shrew negotiating style exemplified with his jump in 1914 to the newly-formed Federal Leagues where he starred for two years with the Indianapolis Hoosiers and the Newark Pepper and also he was a year-long salary hold-out in 1930. This probably explains his life-long steadfast view that the '19 Reds were the champs fix or no fix.



To add new nuggets of knowledge to the Black Sox scandal, Dr. Dellinger was able to take advantage of newly discovered documents in the Baseball Hall of Fame Library from the American League co-founder Ban Johnson papers. It was Johnson's feud with White Sox owner Charles Comiskey that fueled the prosecution of Comiskey's 8 prized indentured servant investments in the 1921 Black Sox trial after the three September 1920 Grand Jury confessions of Ed Cicotte, Joe Jackson, and Lefty Williams mysteriously disappeared. Dellinger particularly cites the detective work of Calvin Grimm, first hired by Johnson to investigate a possible World Series fix on the morning of Game 2 on 10/2/19.



The book provides the unique viewpoint that is missing in most film and literature about the Black Sox scandal-that of the victor who has to explain for a lifetime why he was a real champion, a viewpoint also passionately argued in William A Cook's The 1919 World Series: What Really Happened (McFarland & Company 2003)



The most haunting story is of Roush's close encounter with an unnamed St. Louis gambler whom he spoke to in August 1928. Roush had suffered an abdominal injury and was hospitalized in St. John's hospital in St. Louis and this gambler who also hospitalized, told Roush: "It was fixed all right. It started here in the little ole' St. Louie. A fellow name of Zork came up with the idea, but the money came from New York, from Rothstein."



It is this story about baseball's cover up (now the subject of another new book on the Black Sox entitled The Burying of the Black Sox-How Baseball's Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded Potomac Books 2006 by Gene Carney) that is most fascinating and provides a new perspective on how the baseball magnates tried their best to keep the fixing of the 1919 World Series a secret and relegated to the dustbins of history.



My only major criticism with Dellinger's book is that future editions need to have an index.



The illustrations are a joy and nearly all new for Black Sox related publications.

The best illustration is the newly discovered picture of gambler Abe Attell grinning with a cigar in his mouth behind the Reds starting line-up before Game 1 on October 1, 1919. The photo creates a JFK s conspiracy-nior film-Oliver Stone moment.



A lot of the story of Red Legs and Black Sox begins where Eight Men Out ends. It is must read for any baseball fan or history buff who wants to learn more about baseball's darkest moment and how one proud man Edd Roush lived the rest of his life with the taint of the Black Sox.



Finally, I must add as a White Sox fan that had to wait 88 years for another World Championship I disagree with Dellinger's ever-running theme that the Reds would have won anyway. I will always believe that believe that Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver and all the rest would have beaten Edd Roush's Reds if Ed Cicotte hadn't done it for the wife and kiddies by plunking Morrie Rath on the back with the second pitch to tip off to the gamblers that the fix was on, especially if pitcher Red Faber who had won three games in 1917 World Series had not gotten sick with the Spanish Flu, the 1918 version of Avian influenza, that prevented him from pitching in the 1919 World Series.





David J. Fletcher MD

President, Chicago Baseball Museum

dfletcher@chicagobaseballmuseum.org

Director "The Black Sox-85 Years Later"

Chicago Historical Society October 2004

I had high hopes for the book. I'm an avid reader of anything related to Reds history, and the early-1900 era has always fascinated me.

Let me start by saying that the book seems well researched. The author (the granddaughter of Edd Roush, perhaps the greatest player of Cincinnati's 1919 squad) clearly spent a great deal of time tracking down information, never before seen photos, and she did a fairly decent job of examining a topic that's been exmained in baseball literature over and over and over again. From a strictly fact-finding standpoint, the book is a success.

However, I found that the overall story just didn't live up to my own expectations. Maybe that's my own fault, and not the book's, but I think a lot of baseball fans will come to the same realization I did. At times, the book felt too "cutesy." I doubt the recreations of some of the conversations and events. And I got the impression that the author didn't enter the project with a great deal of baseball knowledge.

Susan Dellinger, the granddaughter of Edd Roush, pens a biography on the legendary outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds, with the focus at about the halfway portion of the book on the 1919 World Series.

There has been so much written concerning the infamous "Black Sox Scandel," but Dellinger adds a piece to the puzzle through the perspective of Roush. Roush had heard about the fix from a Cincinnati businessman and had the opinion that several players on his club were attempting to dump games late in the series.

The book demonstrates how gambling was part of baseball; from those who made of living of playing/manipulating the odds, to the fans in the "cheap seats," and - importantly - the players and team management.

There will never be a definitive account of the fix. But Dellinger delivers a few more facts that will allow the reader to make a determination on "what really happened" that fall in Cincinnati, Chicago and cities large and small throughout the country.

A great book about the life and times of Ed Roush,the Hall of Famer from the Cincinnati Redlegs(Reds)who played against the Chicago "Black Sox (the color of their stockings,)in the infamous 1919 World Series.Susan is Roush's grandaughter.She has details that only she would know revealing details and information that are unavailable elsewhere.(Her grandfather would not reveal the name of the gambler who he spoke to in the hospital in 1928 who "blew the entire affair up" but it is hard to check his story.She begins where "Eight Men Out" ends.MUST READ.!

Susan Dellinger's book contributes a fascinating missing piece of the puzzle of baseball's cold case, the Fix of the 1919 World Series ... telling the story of Edd Roush's life and times from her unique perspective would be enough for one book ... but the light she sheds on the mystery that has been summed up (wrongly, I think) as "the Black Sox scandal" is also welcome.

While numerous books exist regarding the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, this book takes a unique perspective. Written by the granddaughter of Reds star Edd Roush, the book explores the scandal from the Reds point of view. A quick paced read, fans of the topic are likely to enjoy the book regardless of which side of the divisive arguments they fall.

While this book tells much the same story as other books about the scandal, it does have a unique selling point. The book gives a new angle to the story; the White Sox were not the only crooked players. Through his granddaughter, Roush suggests not only that other players of the era were crooked, but members of the 1919 World Champion Reds may have been under the influence of gamblers. Dutch Ruether and Slim Sallee, according to Roush's observations and his speaking to others, seem to have been influenced.

I enjoyed the story and the fresh angle it was given. The research seems solid though it is inexcusible to make careless mistakes such as alternating between the incorrect "Comiskey Field" and "Comiskey Park". The newspaper cartons from newspapers of the era are further demonstration of solid research efforts.

One of the center arguments seems to be that the Reds would have won the series regardless of the gamblers. Dr. Dellinger makes the argument that the Reds have been relegated the title "synthetic champions" far too long. While I respect her biased opinion, I will politely disagree that the better team did not win the 1919 World Series.

I read this book in less than two days. As a distant relative of Edd Roush, I thought I knew a lot about what happened during his career and during the 1919 World Series. But Dellinger's book added a lot to the story. It was well-written and inciteful. I would recommend it to any baseball fan, and to anyone interested in a story of a man who remained honest despite nearly everyone around him succumbing to temptation.

Dellinger captivated me with this story of her grandfather even though I'm not a baseball fan. It has everything--a wonderful love story, exciting sports events, the mob, suspense, wrongs righted-- you name it. Something for everyone.

Dr. Dellinger has done a great job of showing another side of the 1919 World Series story. I liked the mix of Edd Roush biography and first-hand accounts of the way things were during the World Series.

The author cites "evidence" from Edd Roush that shows Chicago wasn't the only team on the take, there were loads of gamblers involved, and the Sox were playing to win most of the time.

It is a nice, easy read - I will probably go through it a few more times over the next couple months.

I am in the midst of reading this book and generally enjoying it (other than having to keep flipping pages to read the footnotes, they would be more convenient at the bottom of each page). However, I am curious as to what extent the final version was edited. The number of basic misspellings and grammatical errors is astounding. For example, on page 59 there are three alone. First, the last sentence in the first full paragraph starts out, 'He handled her the bag....' Handled her the bag???! Second, at the end of that sentence, there is no period. Finally, in the last sentence of the page (above the letter being written), 'stationery' is misspelled 'stationary'. The word for paper for writing is spelled w/ 'ery', not 'ary'. Just wondering if anyone else noticed these and the various other errors.