This is a biography of Charles Comiskey, the great baseball player, manager and founder of the Chicago White Sox. It is very enjoyable to read, and very informative. I give it five stars despite the fact that from time to time the author draws conclusions without appropriate supporting facts. I believe that often the facts were not available to him because pro baseball teams have always been privately held, not publicly traded.
I call the title fraudulent because the book has nothing to do with rehabilitating the reputation of the team following the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Only one chapter of 22 pages touches on the post-scandal years, and that chapter primarily deals with the team's acquisitions of many players, only a couple of whom I have ever heard of.
There are a few basic themes to the book:
1) Comiskey was well liked by everyone until 1915 and later. It seems that the stress from owning the team accumulated to the point that it affected his health, and his personality changed considerably toward irascibility.
2) The popularity of pro baseball skyrocketed between 1905 and 1915. As a result, many team owners replaced their small wooden ballparks with large expensive steel stadiums. (I suspect that the players, seeing this spending, wondered why their salaries were not increasing accordingly.)
3) A new league called the Federal League started in 1912, and enticed the players by offering to double their salaries. (I suspect that the players wondered if the American and National League owners had the same money available to spend on salaries, but chose not to. Furthermore, after three years, the Federal League went out of business, but it did not go broke. Rather, many of its owners purchased National League teams. So I suspect that the players wondered why, if the magnates had the money to spend when they owned the Federal League teams, they weren't spending it when they owned the major league teams.)
4) The book and movie entitled Eight Men Out falsely portray Comiskey as a tightwad. On the contrary, the White Sox always had one of the highest payrolls in the majors.
5) Gambling very large amounts on baseball games became very common after 1910. (So this gives the impression that not only the owners but also the fans were making lots of money on the games. Lots of people were getting rich except the players.)
The author surprised me regarding two items:
1) He gives very little time and space to Arnold Rothstein, the gambler widely considered to be the primary culprit.
2) The author fails to mention the idea expressed in the book Eight Men Out that the idea that Chicago players were throwing the 1919 World Series was the world's worst kept secret.
Some 45 years ago, I read Bill Veeck's second book, entitled The Hustler's Handbook. In it, he briefly mentions that one day in the White Sox offices he accidentally came across some documents which indicated that the Chicago Cubs had thrown the 1918 World Series. (There is now a book available on that subject.) This suggests that the major league players might have been accustomed to the concept that games were being thrown.
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Marc Ranger
Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Reviewed in Canada on November 9, 2014