The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [92]
Ring said he told Chase to forget about him trying to lose, but he wound up losing the game anyway. The next day, Chase dropped a $50 bill in his lap. Ring told his manager, Mathewson, almost immediately. Mathewson suspended Chase, and Chase sued the team for back pay.
The evidence against Chase appears overwhelming. Although Mathewson was overseas in Europe, fighting in World War I, he sent his testimony in an affidavit. Besides the corroborating stories from Ring and Mathewson, a Giants pitcher named Pol Perritt said that Chase had asked him before a doubleheader which game he was going to start. Chase had apparently told him, “I wish you would tip me off, because if I know which game you’ll pitch, and can connect with a certain party, you will have nothing to fear.” Perritt also said that Chase boasted that he had won $500 after a 1918 game, and testified in the hearing that he had told his manager John McGraw about this. There was even more damning testimony. But McGraw’s testimony apparently helped Chase, and Mathewson (no fan of Chase) was fighting a war on the other side of the Atlantic. It seems incredible, but John Heydler, president of the National League, found the evidence against Chase insufficient to warrant expulsion. But why would “Little Napoleon” help Chase, a noted fixer of games, to stay in baseball?
Two weeks after the trial, Chase was traded to the New York Giants for two players. Chase went right from the Reds to McGraw’s Giants! How convenient! In 1919, Chase played for the Giants until he hurt his wrist and missed most of the last month, as the team was battling the Reds for the National League pennant.
Chase’s career in the majors ended after that 1919 season. Soon after that, a player named Lee Magee threw even more dirt on Chase’s baseball grave, saying that Chase fixed games when Magee played for Chase and the Reds in 1918.
MY OPINION
The whole era was filled with underworld figures that fixed, threatened to fix, or influenced many more people than the small handful we’re led to believe. Even revered moral figures of the day like Christy Mathewson had to “play ball” and work with guys like Chase.
John McGraw was not the religious, moral man that Mathewson was. He was interested in winning, at all costs. If this meant looking the other way when gamblers accosted members of his team—or refusing to testify truthfully in regards to a noted cheater and gambler—I can’t put it past him.
Although there were rules against gambling on games, it was much harder to throw players out of baseball before Judge Landis came on the scene in the 1920s. Chase was allowed to flourish, and was given repeated chances in New York (despite indifferent play, accusations, and even jumping the team to play on the west coast in another league for a spell), in Chicago (despite breaking his contract and signing with the Federal League), and in Cincinnati (despite teammates going to management with reports that Chase bet on games).
What kind of sport could put up with a player like that—so obviously gifted defensively, but one who led the league in errors no less than seven times?
Why was McGraw never questioned about signing Chase in 1919? McGraw was given a pass over and over again. He was bigger than the game. In his era, McGraw earns only four Oswalds, but in a later era, he would ring up the maximum number of five.
CONCLUSION:
#22
Did the NFL conspire in the mid-1980s to monopolize professional football?
On April 1, 2007, two media giants squared off in a pay-per-view extravaganza entitled “Battle of the Billionaires” as part of World Wrestling Entertainment’s annual Wrestlemania event. Donald Trump’s designated professional wrestler, Bobby Lashley, defeated Vince McMahon’s wrestler, Umaga, and as a result Lashley and Trump were allowed to