Uh, Ray Schalk IS in the Hall of Fame. You can’t be elected twice.
Cicotte would have been a middle-of-the-road Hall of Fame candidate, so I’d say his election would have been far from certain. He was 37 when they banned him so most of his career was behind him, and his career record was 208-149. We can assume without gambling he would have tacked a little more on, but not that much. Pretty good, but I’d say his odds would have been 50-50 at best, based on the Hall candidacies of similar pitchers.
No, I’m afraid that’s quite wrong. Cobb’s MOTHER shot his father, and claimed she thought it was an intruder. You have your facts mixed up.
From Bucky Weaver. Weaver actually brought a lawsuit to be reinstated himself. There have been a number of other comments on the same issue. Many covered in the great interviews done in When the Grass Was Real and its predecessor.
Guess I grew up with this stuff. I’m from Cincinnati. No Rose fan. (“I read half of one book,once,” he’s reported to have said. “The Pete Rose Story”.) But we had a wonderful announcer around here named Waite Hoyt. Same guy who pitched for the Yankees and was elected to the Hall of Fame.
As to the Cobb story, you may be right, but there’s something in Cobb, or one of those books, that indicates his mother may have been covering for him.
From Jackson’s testimony in his 1924 suit against Comiskey:
Q: Did you have a talk with “Lefty” Williams one or two days after the World’s Series was over?
A: I had a talk with Mr. Williams the night after the World’s Series was over, that day.
Q: What talk did you have with Williams at that time?
A: Mr Williams came in my room and held out a couple of envelopes and said, “Here, do you want one of these?” I said, “No, what is it?” He pushed it over to me again. I said, “Go on; what is it that you got?” He told me; “Why,” he says “it is money.” I says, “I don’t want your money.” He said it was part of what he got in a frame-up with some eastern gamblers and they had used my name.
This time frame is put in dispute by Jackson’s own testimony in the original grand jury statement of 1920 where he said he was paid after game four, but that original testimony is suspect since both he and the lawyer examining him (Replogle) got the dates and locations wrong. Further, Lefty Williams himself confirmed at the 1920 grand jury trial that he was paid after the Series:
Q: Was there any plan to lose any of the first four games or were you just to lose the Series?
A: Just to lose the Series. We were supposed to lose the first two games and after the first two games we were supposed to get our money, but I never got a nickel until the last two games were played.
As to the price of throwing the Series, Cicotte received $10,000, everyone else got $5,000, and were promised anything from $10,000-$20,000 according to the testimony. Chick Gandil may have been given the money either before or during the Series and spread it around later, but those details are very unclear.
For the record, Lefty Williams had a salary of $2800 for the 1919 season and Joe Jackson made $6000 from the ChiSox.
Chick Gandil and Happy Felsch were the go-betweens, I seem to remember. Even with everything covered in Eight Men Out (the book, not the movie) we may never know what actually went down. Eddie Roush, of the Reds, claimed that no series was thrown. Though Williams performance, alone, would seem to indicate at least a lack of trying.
The perspective also has to be set. This was not the first gambling problem. Hal Chase had been charged before this, as was a Boston catcher whose name escapes me.
If you read the papers of the day (there’s a great book of newspaper clippings available) the Sox were considered a team similar to today’s Lakers. Unbeatable. The were the best team money could buy. And it did.
I don’t know why you’re asking for a cite, it’s not hard to believe. Comiskey had already benched Cicotte after 29 wins to keep him from winning a bonus after he reached 30. If you want a cite for that too, there’s one in my Comiskey link up the page a ways.
Checking my own link, Comiskey did promise a bonus for winning the 1917 World Series, which turned out to be a case of cheap champagne. The promised 30-win bonus was in 1919.
Maureen, Nothingman, WeirdDave, spooje and anyone else who thinks that Rose should be in the HoF simply because of his accomplishments on the field.
Fortunately that isn’t the single criteria for induction.
The criteria for induction as laid down by the Hall of Fame are as follows: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, charcter and contributions to the team(s) on which he played.”
Three of those six criteria have nothing to do with performance on the field.
Bogie, I’d like to point out that none of those criteria say “hasn’t been banned from baseball by the comissioner” either. I think that everything would be a million times less annoying if they just did what spooje suggested. Don’t make induction into the hall contingent on the comissioner’s stance.
Because they linked the two, everybody who wants him in the hall is asking for his reinstatement. Notice that nobody wants him back because they think he should manage again. Put his sorry ass in the hall, mention the gambling, and the lifetime ban, and let’s all get on with our lives.
So Rose gets into the HoF without having to apologize or even pretend to pay lip service to the overwhelming evidence that he not just violated, but wiped his ass with the most sacrosanct rule in baseball?
Uh-uh, no way does he get off scot free. He doesn’t get in until he admits that he bet on baseball and that he’s sorry, that it was a bad/dumb/stupid/thoughtless thing to do and he’s sorry for the damage he has caused the game.
Until he does that he gets to spend every HoF week down the strett from the Hall signing memorabilia.
Darn right, and, as an added bonus, every 10 year old boy who visits the hall gets to see how a truly great player got himself banned from baseball by violating the rules.
If he was already in the hall, nobody would be defending him, nobody would be asking for his reinstatement, we would all just know that he was disgraced. He would be nothing more than an occasional blurb on ESPN.