Baseball's Black Spots

Somewhere lost in all the coverage of the long-delayed 1995 baseball season is the anniversary of baseball's darkest moment. It has been 75 years since the banishment of the eight White Sox players who were charged but not convicted of fixing the 1919 World Series.

On September 29, 1920, the headline on the front page of The New York Times read, "Eight White Sox Players are Indicted on Charges of Fixing 1919 World Series." This announcement broke the news to the American public.

While a jury failed to convict the eight White Sox players, baseball's first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banished the eight players from baseball for life.

In the process, Judge Landis denied men like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weever their rightful places in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The forgotten anniversary of the Black Sox Scandal is a somber reminder that sports had lost its innocence well before more recent drug scandals and labor disputes.

The resumption of professional baseball does not mean redemption.

A sign held by a Red Sox fan at Wednesday's Fenway opener was accurate. "How quickly we forget," it read. We should not be so quick to dismiss the greed and corruption of the past with token gestures by the players and the owners.

Neither the smiling visage of Cal Ripken on the cover of Sports Illustrated nor a banner reading, "Thanks Fans" at the bottom of the Fenway scoreboard should persuade any fan that the ills which continually detract from the purity of sport are cured.

If baseball fans are too willing to forgive and forget, too eager to fall into the false security of their baseball fantasy, then they have learned nothing from the past.

There was a time when sports writers like Charles Murphy wrote, "Nothing that I know of could take its place and those of us who love the game, trust that it will go on forever as the poor man's game--a sport so democratic that it is a national necessity."

Written just before the news of the Black Sox Scandal in 1920, no statement could have been further from the truth, and nothing is further from the truth today.

The Black Sox Scandal was a betrayal of the average American sports fan. In much the same way, the recent baseball strike has mocked the loyalty of today's fans. Both incidents showed players and owners placing greed above the integrity of the game.

"Our pride in victory was the essance of American pride in itself Baseball was a manifestation of the greatest of America at play... Now suddenly that pride was shattered. The National pastime was nothing more than another show of corruption," wrote Eliot Asinof in his book Eight Men Out.

Although the public was not privy to the labor talks during the strike, they should not be silent now. If baseball is to be America's pastime, then all Americans have an interest in protecting its integrity.

While baseball fans may not remember how many years it has been since the Black Sox Scandal, it is more important that they guard their enthusiasm after the strike. Players and owners have been quick to realize that the innocence of sports is gone.

After 75 years, it is time for sports fans to wise up and realize that baseball has moved from fair play and fantasy to a more disturbing reality.