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By Root 776 0

Dodgers from the press box, and noted a Brooklyn Dodgers weakness. He wrote a note, got the attention of a Bears messenger, and the note was carried to Coach Halas on the bench. Minutes later, Johnsos saw something else, and needed to get another note to Halas. They decided to connect a set of phones from an upper press box seat to the bench (today, of course, it’s standard for every team to have coordinators watch the game from the press-box view). A few years later, when the Bears lost to the Redskins, Johnsos received a telegram from Lee Jeanes, the President of the Green Bay Packers. The telegram read, “What is wrong, telephone out of order?” Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall had stationed the Redskins band behind the Chicago Bears bench and had rigged a phone from his box to the bandleader. Every time Marshall saw Johnsos pick up the phone at a critical time, he’d order the band to play its noisiest number.

CONCLUSION:

#21

Did John McGraw conspire to fix games and World Series?

In the early 1900s, Major League Baseball was similar to the National Football League of the late 1960s. The National League was the senior circuit, proud and boastful of its place in the game, miles ahead of the new American League (just like NFL teams were proud and lordly over their American Football League counterparts). The first World Series had occurred when owners of the two pennant winning teams met following the 1903 season. There would be no World Series the following year, however, as the New York Giants refused any part in a series. The Giants at that time were managed by John McGraw, known as “Little Napoleon.”

Some said the Giants refused to participate in the World Series because for much of the 1904 season, the American League was led by the New York Highlanders. Regardless of whether the opponent was the Highlanders or the Boston Red Sox—the team that had defeated the Pirates in the 1903 World Series—McGraw had an intense hatred of A.L. President Ban Johnson. But McGraw (more powerful than the owner of the team) felt that his team had little to gain by playing the A.L. champ—but plenty to lose. The New York Giants won the pennant again in 1905, but this time they agreed to play the American League champion Philadelphia Athletics. Why did McGraw suddenly welcome the format of a World Series? Could he have received some information before the Series started that would have comforted (or benefited) him?

Reports from the time say that gamblers approached Rube Waddell, the star Philadelphia Athletics pitcher, and offered him $17,000 to miss the World Series against the Giants. Wadell did miss the Series, giving the excuse that he had hurt his arm when he tripped over a suitcase. The Giants won the Series, but Horace Fogel (a sportswriter from Philadelphia, and the leading baseball authority in Philadelphia at the time) said that Waddell was stiffed, only receiving $500 from the fixers. Waddell, who passed away in 1914, was one of the great pitchers in history, and was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame as a Veterans Committee pick in 1946. But reports have suggested that he may have been mentally challenged, and has also been described as an alcoholic. But the official story of why he missed the 1905 World Series was that he hurt his shoulder late in the season, horsing around on a train platform.

It is never good for a team when a pitcher who won twenty-seven games, had a 1.48 ERA, and seventy-five more strikeouts than the next closest pitcher in the league horses around on a train platform and misses the World Series. Ray Robinson’s book Matty: An American Hero (1993) suggests that rumors were rampant that Rube had been bribed by gamblers to sit out the Series. “In the last days of the season, [Philadelphia manager Connie] Mack even accused Waddell of malingering,” Robinson wrote. “Rube’s response was that he was pitching in pain for more than a month. ‘It would be worse for the team if I pitched. That would be better for the gamblers, wouldn’t it? I’m no crook.’”

Crook or not, Rube didn’t