The
Comiskey-Johnson rift - which grew into a hatred that might have consumed the
game - may have begun over nothing more than the simple fact that proximity
often breeds irritation. The two men saw one another in their shared office in
the Fisher Building on a daily basis for more than seven years. The camaraderie
of the early years inevitably began to wane as the years passed, and each man
tended to his separate interests.
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The
origins of the falling-out are murky, and were perhaps murky even to the
principals, but it seems to have started, as such feuds often do, with little
things. [Ban] Johnson took umbrage at being the victim of some Woodland Bards
pranksterism in the early days of the trip - some accounts put it in 1902,
others in 1904, others as late as 1912. Johnson had had custom-made a new
Parker shotgun and a natty suede hunting vest to go with it He was quite proud
of each, showing them to one and all on the overnight train ride to the
trailhead. His days as the group's worst hunter were over, he assured his
friends. In the morning, while Johnson and most of the group were having
breakfast at the train station, two of the Bards replaced the pellets in
Johnson's shotgun shells with paper wadding.
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On
the carriage ride through the forest, Johnson was given the prized spot, in the
front seat next to the driver, so that he might test his new weapon upon the
partridge that were sure to present themselves on the daylong ride to the
cabin. In the target-rich environment, Johnson blasted away to no avail, to his
great frustration and the increasing amusement of his fellow Bards, who laughed
and teased and passed the flask. Now the one fundamental decorum of bird
hunting is that the target must be taken on the wing, but Johnson, champion of
fair play and the civil treatment of umpires in baseball, grew so exasperated
that at one point he climbed down from the wagon, crept up on a sitting bird,
and fired point-blank. The bird survived and flew off. Finally Johnson nailed a
paper target to a tree, fired from a foot away, and realized hed been had. All
of the Bards laughed, but Johnson blamed only Comiskey for his humiliation -
"I can't believe Commy would do this to me," he said. He pouted
uncharacteristically, and was a frosty companion for a couple of days before
arranging to leave the forest early.
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Charles
Fountain "The Betrayal: How the 1919 Black Sox Scandal Changed Baseball"
(2016)
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