The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [55]
In the final days of the 1919 season, the White Sox had pulled away from the pack and clinched first place. The Indians, with first-year player-manager Speaker, were solidly entrenched at second. The Yankees were battling the Tigers for third. In those days, teams were paid based on whether they finished in first, second, or third place. The Tigers and Yankees were battling for the third place money when the Indians and Tigers met for a series in the final week of the season. The Yankees had a record of 75-59 at the time of the series, mere percentage points better than the Tigers.
So it was that on September 24 in Detroit, Tiger players Cobb and Dutch Leonard got together for a “friendly chat” under the stands with Indians player-manager Speaker and outfielder Joe Wood. Leonard, Wood, and Speaker were all one-time Boston teammates. The thirty-two-year-old Cobb was more than friendly with fellow Southerner Speaker. Cobb had led the American League that year with a .382 batting average, and Speaker was one of the few opponents he deeply respected.
According to Timothy M. Gay’s Tris Speaker: The Rough and Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend (2007), Leonard and Cobb told Speaker and Wood how much they would appreciate finishing with the third-place money. By Leonard’s account, Speaker told Cobb he had nothing to worry about. With all four players knowing the outcome of the next day’s game, it was then decided to put some money down on it. Cobb reportedly got a clubhouse attendant named Fred West to collect the bets and get them placed with a local bookie. Supposedly, each of the four co-conspirators bet between $1,000 and $2,000. Leonard would later claim that Wood and Cobb each wrote separate letters to him in the coming months, saying West had been unable to bet more than $600—which, because the Tigers were favored, only netted $420 for the four to split (the letters would implicate Speaker as a co-conspirator). Leonard eventually released those letters, which were printed by the New York Times.
That’s Leonard’s story. Cobb testified seven years later to Commissioner Landis that he had recommended West as a trusted person with whom to place a bet—implying that he did nothing more than serve as an intermediary to the making of a bet. Cobb’s letter to Leonard mentioned a “business proposition,” but never the word “bet.”
Detroit won the game, and the four players won their $600. The Tigers, even with their 9-5 victory on September 25, finished the season 80-60. The Yankees won their final five games of the season to finish 80-59, a half a game better than Detroit. The White Sox won the pennant, and eight of their players would go on to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.
Speaker, in his second year as player-manager, won the 1920 World Series as a member of the Cleveland Indians. The next year, Cobb took on the responsibilities of being a player-manager with the Tigers.
Leonard continued to pitch for the Tigers until he was cut by Cobb in the middle of the 1925 season. In his 1961 autobiography, My Life in Baseball: The True Record, written with Al Stump, Cobb said “I’d dropped him from the roster for a good and sufficient reason.... Speaker, as Cleveland manager, had refused waivers on him. For this, Leonard openly had vowed revenge on both of us.”
This is where I get suspicious. Cobb gave Leonard the ball for eighteen starts in 1925, and Dutch went 11-4 with an ERA right around the League average. When Cobb released Leonard, the Tigers were 48-46, meaning that the team was 37-42 in games that Leonard didn’t earn a decision in, and 11-4 in games he did. What were the “good and sufficient” reasons that Cobb had? Maybe Leonard was trying to extort money from Cobb, being that he was in possession of Cobb’s 1919 letters?
It was at the beginning of the 1926 season that Leonard,