![]() The story that emerged reeked with sinister complication, one deception bringing on another, lies feeding on other lies, a jigsaw puzzle of a monster's face with too many pieces missing. Old gamblers, on the other hand, freely spit up their guts. I spent almost two years crisscrossing the country, digging into archives, searching for stolen documents and trial records, reading into endless newspaper accounts, and above all, chasing down old ballplayers of whom even the honest ones were reluctant to talk. What, I wondered, was so threatening to baseball that kept the story buried for all those years? Ironically, in 1959, it was Ford Frick, commissioner of baseball, stopping production of the first film docudrama on the scandal which inspired the writing of "Eight Men Out." Sweeney, who portrayed Shoeless Joe in "Eight Men Out" Rovell: Shoeless Joe still a hit with collectors.The cat was quickly returned to the bag and remained there for over 40 years. The national pastime had been corrupted! In a scandal of such magnitude, one waited for investigations, Pulitzer Prize-winning exposes, confessional as-told-to books, research projects uncovering its causes. When the cat came out of the bag a year later, there were headlines in every major newspaper in the country. And so it was from the day the 1919 World Series fix began. To understand the Black Sox Scandal, the magic word is cover-up. ![]() SportsCenter Flashback looks back at the Black Sox ban. ESPN Classic - The Black Sox scandal is forever ESPN Network: | ![]()
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