Watson World Series Series 1919 'Black Sox'
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This is the 1st of a series of caches placed in the Watson area related to 7 memorable World Series. Each cache contains a clue you will need to solve to find the coordinates for the 7th and deciding cache. One piece of advice: If you plan to find them all at once, you might want to have internet access available to research the clues, as they may not be readily known to all. To help you, we placed the sixth cache near The Watson Library, so you can use their computers if you wish. "Play Ball"
Small cylinder with log and clue. All caches are within a three mile radius of beautiful downtown Watson. OK, it's not exactly a booming metropolis, but everyplace has a heart, and so it is in "Our Town". Hope you enjoy your visit.
Note each clue as you go. You will need the answers for the final coords
Please use stealth when visiting the cache sites-schools, churches, ballparks-you know the drill.
The 1919 World Series matched the American League champion Chicago White Sox against the National League champion Cincinnati Reds. The events of the series are often associated with the Black Sox Scandal, when several members of the Chicago franchise conspired with gamblers to throw World Series games. The 1919 World Series was the last World Series to take place without a Commissioner of Baseball in place. In 1920, the various franchise owners installed Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first "Commissioner of Baseball".
The Chicago White Sox of 1919 were one of baseball's glamour teams. Shoeless Joe Jackson was the unchallenged star of the team. The left fielder hit .351 that season, fourth in the American League and also finished in the AL's top five in slugging percentage, runs batted in, total bases and base hits.
All was not well in the White Sox camp. Tensions between many of the players and owner Charlie Comiskey were very high, with the players complaining of his penny-pinching ways, which are reflected in two urban legends: the first is that Comiskey instructed manager Kid Gleason to sit down Eddie Cicotte at the end of the year in order that he would not win 30 games, a milestone which would have earned him a sizeable bonus; the second was that the team was known derisively as the Black Sox because Comiskey would not pay to have their uniforms washed regularly. Interestingly, Comiskey had once been a pitcher but later moved to first base and revolutionized how the first base position was played. He became the first player to play off the bag at first allowing him to cover a larger part of the right infield.
The conspiracy was the brainchild of White Sox first baseman Arnold "Chick" Gandil and Joseph "Sport" Sullivan, who was a professional gambler of Gandil's acquaintance. New York gangster Arnold Rothstein supplied the major connections needed. Rothstein was reputed to bet on "anything but the weather". The weather was the only thing he couldn't fix.The money was supplied by Abe Attell, former featherweight boxing champion, who accepted the offer even though he didn't have the $80,000 that the White Sox wanted.
Gandil enlisted seven of his teammates, motivated by a mixture of greed and a dislike of penurious club owner Charles Comiskey, to implement the fix. Starting pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude "Lefty" Williams, outfielders "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and Oscar "Happy" Felsch, and infielder Charles "Swede" Risberg were all involved. Buck Weaver was also asked to participate, but refused; he was later banned with the others for knowing of the fix but not reporting it. Utility infielder Fred McMullin was not initially approached but got word of the fix and threatened to report the others unless he was in on the payoff. Sullivan and his two associates Sleepy Bill Burns and Billy Maharg, somewhat out of their depth, approached Rothstein to provide the money for the players, who were promised a total of $100,000.
Immediately after the end of the Series, rumors were rife throughout the country that the games had been thrown. Journalist Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago Herald and Examiner, disgusted by the display of ineptitude with which the White Sox had "thrown" the series, immediately wrote that the Series should never be played again.
Jackson led all players with his .375 average. Some believed that most of his offensive potency came in games that were not fixed and/or when the game appeared out of reach. Shoeless Joe had 12 hits overall, a World Series record that has been broken by Bobby Richardson 1964, Lou Brock 1968 and Marty Barrett 1986 with 13 hits.
When Jackson left criminal court building in custody of a sheriff after telling his story to the grand jury, he found several hundred youngsters, aged from 6 to 16, awaiting for a glimpse of their idol. One urchin stepped up to the outfielder, and, grabbing his coat sleeve, said:
"It ain't true, is it, Joe?"
"Yes, kid, I'm afraid it is," Jackson replied. The boys opened a path for the ball player and stood in silence until he passed out of sight.
"Well, I'd never have thought it," sighed the lad.
Regardless of whether Jackson's exchange with the shocked young fan was a true historical event or a fabrication by a sensationalist journalist, the "Say It Ain't So Joe" story remains an oft-repeated and well-known part of baseball lore.
In 1921, a Chicago jury deliberated for less than 3 hours before acquitting Jackson and his seven White Sox teammates of wrongdoing. Apparently, confessions signed by Jackson, Cicotte, and Willliams were missing along with waivers of immunity. Nevertheless, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the newly appointed Commissioner of Baseball, banned all eight accused players, claiming baseball's need to clean up its image took precedence over legal judgments. As a result, Jackson never played major league baseball after the 1920 season. He died in 1951 at age 62 in Greenville, S. C, after years as a liquor store owner.
Other players' subsequent occupations included: Weaver-drugstore owner; Williams-gardener and nursery owner; Felsch-bartender; Cicotti-game warden; Gandil-plumber; Risberg-dairy farmer.
Another sidebar to the trial was the fact that the White Sox players were represented at trial by some of the most expensive lawyers in the area. However, none of the players had enough money to afford their services. Comiskey, it turned out, paid the attorney fees.
* In the book The Great Gatsby the character Meyer Wolfsheim is supposedly the one who fixed the World Series of 1919.
* In the movie, The Godfather II, Hyman Roth states that he has liked baseball since Arnold Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series.
* Eight members of the 1919 White Sox, most prominently Joe Jackson, make an appearance in the fictional movie Field of Dreams.
* The film Eight Men Out is about the fix itself
Game One winner and FTF goes to rryder. Congratulations
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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