The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [57]
The play-by-play of the fixed game was reprinted in all the newspapers. The Tigers scored two runs in the first inning, and two more in the second. They cruised to an easy victory. The reaction of the baseball fans around the country was predictable. The NEA service (another wire service) questioned fans in baseball cities. There is no doubt that the court of public opinion was in the favor of the two ex-managers. Most fans severely criticized Baseball. There were many assertions that Cobb and Speaker were innocent. Many fans felt that the best interests of Baseball would have been served by burying the charges.
Many fans also opined that it was wrong to dredge up a scandal after seven years had passed, and that there should have been a statute of limitations on the transgression. “The exposé should have been made long before, or not at all,” the Los Angeles reporter observed after canvassing fans. Obviously, Dutch Leonard held on to his letters—his evidence—waiting for the right time and place.
Cobb and Speaker joined forces and hired attorney W.H. Boyd. Making their defense in the investigation, the future Hall of Famers came out swinging. They received testimony from clubhouse attendant Fred West, who said that the money he received was not for a bet on the Tigers-Indians game, but rather a horseracing bet. (Even in the 1920s, it was a safe route for baseball players to admit betting on the horses!) Since Leonard had testified that it was West who was given the money to place the bets, it was a good day in court for the former outfielders. “The bet on the game was Leonard’s idea, but when Wood gave me the money, I convinced Wood that the money should be bet on a ‘hot tip’ at the racetrack,” West testified.
Could Cobb and Speaker—both rich and powerful men—have gotten to witnesses Wood and West, as well as the leading sportswriters of the day? Sure they could have. Of course, they also had a compelling case.
Speaker had three hits in a game his team was supposed to lose. Cobb had only one in a game his team was supposed to win (and did). As Cobb put it, “The paltry profit in betting on a game was the last thing I needed. Likewise Speaker, who was a man of substantial means. For any trio of men [Wood didn’t appear in the game] to attempt to rig a ballgame is ridiculous on the face of it.”
Cobb proclaimed his innocence and was believable. “I am branded a gambler on a ballgame in which my club took part. I have never in the twenty-two years I have been in baseball made a single bet on an American League game.”
Which raises my antennae, into thinking he may have made bets on National League games.
EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT A CONSPITACY
If Cobb and Speaker were not guilty of fixing and betting on baseball games, why did they agree to quietly step down in October of 1926?
Cobb believed that Ban Johnson wanted to make a grandstand play in which the two veteran stars were ruthlessly sacrificed to prove that baseball was honest. It makes sense that Johnson wanted the matter dropped with the two stars retiring (with enough space apart to make them seem unconnected). It also makes sense that Landis wanted the exposure of a public sacrifice even greater than the banned “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. And Tigers’ owner Navin wanted out of Cobb’s huge contract.
Cobb had big-time political connections, even playing poker in the White House with President Harding. Al Stump’s 1996 biography of Cobb reported that Cobb had arranged a meeting with Charles Evans Hughes, the former U.S. Supreme Court justice. Several wealthy men in Georgia had offered to meet Hughes’ fees for handling Cobb’s libel and slander suits.
On January 27, 1927, Commissioner Landis made his ruling. “This is the Cobb-Speaker case. These players