Where
the money came from has been argued about as much as anything in the Black Sox
story, but the only plausible source is Arnold Rothstein. The other purported
fixers were poseurs, or entered the conversation either too early or too late
to have played a part. What little money made it into the hands of the
ballplayers came from two Rothstein associates. Moreover, everyone mentioned in
connection with the fix - gamblers from other cities mostly - had a direct and
proven connection with Arnold Rothstein. And none of these men or groups of men
had a connection with each other, except through Rothstein.
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Rothstein
himself would always deny involvement. Those who charged that it was him, he
pointed out, were up to their own necks in the scandal and looking to save
them. When asked about the 1919 World Series, Rothstein always said his only
involvement was betting on the White Sox and losing money. He made the case for
his innocence under oath before the grand jury in 1920, and did it so
convincingly that he was never indicted in the case. That was the way it was
with Rothstein. In a criminal life that spanned more than a quarter century, he
was never convicted of any crime. He had connections and charm and the best
lawyers, and nothing ever stuck to him.
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Escaping
culpability for his role in the 1919 Series fix may have been Rothstein's most
famous dodge, but it wasn't his most remarkable. Earlier in 1919, he had shot
three policemen in front of nineteen witnesses - and gotten away scot-free. He
was overseeing a crap game in a West 57th Street apartment when, at two in the
morning, there came a heavy rapping on the door and voices demanding to be let
in. Rothstein had been robbed twice during private gambling evenings in the
previous year and wasn't taking any chances this time. He responded to the knock
by firing three shots through the closed door. Each one struck a New York City
police detective. Three shots, three officers, three wounds. The officers
weren't hurt badly, a shoulder wound and two flesh wounds in the arm. Rothstein
was as solicitous as he could be. His limousine took the officers to the
hospital. Knowing they were dealing with a man who had considerable pull with
both the courts and city hall, the cops apologized, saying publicly that they
understood gamblers were naturally wary of being robbed and that they should
have been clearer about identifying themselves as police.
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Rothstein
was indicted, but the case was dismissed because the policemen had not seen who
had fired the shots, and all of the nineteen men in the room testified before
the grand jury that they hadn't either. All but one denied he had even heard
shots fired; another testified that he had seen a muzzle flash but didn't know
who fired. Any man who can so deftly beat a felonious assault rap is too good
to let himself be taken down by murky allegations about fixing some baseball
games.
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History's
best guess as to what it cost to fix the World Series - the cash actually paid
to the seven players who took money for agreeing to be a part of the fix - was
at most $80,000-$90,000. This was quite literally pocket money to Arnold
Rothstein: at the height of his power and celebrity, he would often travel the
streets of Manhattan with $100,000 in cash in the pockets of his bespoke suits.
Rothstein had in effect financed the biggest sporting scandal in American
history with what he had on him.
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Arnold
Rothstein - A. R. as he was known to associates and newspapermen - remains one
of those larger-than-life personalities from the 1920s, someone whose story
seems to fit far more comfortably into fiction than biography. F. Scott
Fitzgerald modeled Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby on Rothstein, though
Wolfsheim is a far more thuggish and cartoonish figure than the pol. hed,
sophisticated, well-connected real-life Rothstein. Damon Runyon, the Hearst
writer who mined Broadway for stories and characters the way Rothstein mined it
for his pocket money, saw another side of Rothstein when he made him the
inspiration for Nathan Detroit, the master of the floating crap game in Guys
and Dolls. But Runyon, too, portrayed just one dimension of Rothstein - the
rakishness and bravura. Nathan Detroit is street-smart and devilishly
mischievous, but he's also a bit sentimental, perhaps even a little na?ve -
thus ultimately far more redeemable than the manipulative, ruthless, vengeful
real-life Rothstein.
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To
the newspapermen, and thus to the American public in the 191Os, Arnold Rothstein
was simply a "gambler" which, although making him slightly unsavory,
proved no obstacle to admission to the best circles. It gave him cachet.
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Rothstein
moved comfortably through the worlds of politics, business, Broadway, and
Manhattan society. His rumored involvement with the Series fix made him a
national figure, but he was already a celebrity in his home city by 1919, his
life making wonderful newspaper copy. He married a showgirl and had affairs
with at least two others. He owned thoroughbred racehorses and was a visible
presence at the horse track. He'd won $300,000 on a single race at Laurel in
1917, a head-turning triumph until he won $850,000 on a single race at Aqueduct
in 1921 and another $850,000 on a single race at Saratoga a month later. He ran
a Times Square gambling parlor until a reform movement in 1912 landed a lot of
New York police officers who had been paid to look the other way in jail.
Rothstein responded by starting New York's first and longest-running floating
crap and card games, in a different hotel or apartment every night, always one
step ahead of whatever police officers he couldn't payoff. After things got too
hot in Times Square, he moved his fixed casino out to Long Island, and in the
summer of 1919 he opened The Brook, the most elegant of all of Saratoga
Spring's wink-at-the-law casinos, where the dress code in season was always
evening wear and the clientele came from the demimonde, the Social Register,
and all the strata in between-all of them the sort of men who could afford to
lose five and six figures a night, and frequently did.
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The
newspapers almost always treated him kindly, because he was connected in that
world too; his friends included Runyon, with whom he regularly shared a table
at Lindy's, and Herbert Bayard Swope, editor of the New York World, who was a
regular at the card and dice games Rothstein sponsored. The newspapers wrote of
his friends and sometimes business partners, men like Charles Stoneham, the
owner of the Giants and partners with Rothstein in a New York bucket shop, and
John McGraw, manager of the Giants and partners with Rothstein in a Midtown
pool hall.
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Thirty-seven
years old in 1919, five foot seven and a fit 160 pounds, abstinent in the
matters of smoke and drink, partial to silk shirts and conservative, dark,
custom-tailored suits, Rothstein was more than just the raffish gambler from
the newspaper stories. He was a gangster, one of New York's most powerful, with
tentacles reaching into every corner of gangland commerce. "A. R. fenced
millions of dollars in stolen government bonds," wrote his biographer
David Pietrusza, "backed New York's biggest bootleggers, imported tons of
illegal heroin and morphine, financed shady Wall Street bucket shops, bought and
sold cops and politicians."
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Any
sporting man with brains and guts enough to try to pull off something like a
World Series fix would have eventually and inevitably found his way to Rothstein.
He was the gold standard in big-money fixes. "Everyone went to A. R. when
they needed something," wrote Pietrusza. "Everyone had to pretend to
be his friend. He was the man who made things happen, who put people
together." He was the man with whom to have the conversation.
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There
are conflicting opinions as to whether somebody brought the scheme to Rothstein
or whether Rothstein hatched the scheme and passed it to associates who could
execute it. Sport Sullivan, former ballplayers Bill Burns and Billy Maharg, St.
Louis gambler Carl Zork, and who knows how many others all talked to Rothstein
about a fix sometime during the 1919 season, leaving the impression that
Rothstein was merely the facilitator. But Chicago gambler Mont Tennes came away
from an August conversation with Rothstein in Saratoga believing that he had
already put a fix in place. Tennes was so sure he told Cubs owner Charlie
Weegham about it.
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Carl
Zork was part of a cabal of St. Louis gamblers who had long dreamed of fixing a
World Series. Between them they knew a fair number of ballplayers who would be
willing to tank a game for a few bucks, and they had had some success in
influencing the outcome of some regular season games. But to fix a World
Series, they needed their contacts to be on a team that was playing in the
World Series, and there was never a guarantee of that. The St. Louis men were
also rather light in the wallet; it was one thing to make a living as a
gambler, quite another to make a good living at it. Thus Zork approached
Rothstein - whenever that was - with a proposal that was far more concept than
plan. Still, Rothstein no doubt listened with polite interest, as he even then
foresaw a role for Zork and his colleagues in this, should it come together in
another way.
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Charles
Fountain "The Betrayal: How the 1919 Black Sox Scandal Changed Baseball"
(2016)
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