Chicago White Sox: 1919

http://www.historicbaseball.com/teams/1919whitesox.html
In an effort to get the fans even more enthusiastic, baseball decided to lengthen the 1919 World Series to nine games. The contest between the favored White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds drew the largest series attendance to date. Underneath all of this success was an effort by some members of the Chicago White Sox team to throw the World Series in exchange for $100,000 from gambling interests.
Chick Gandill Eddie Cicotte (led the AL with 29 wins); Lefty Williams (23-11 during the season); Swede Risberg (shortstop with 38 runs batted in and 19 stolen bases); Buck Weaver (75 runs batted in, 22 stolen bases); Fred McMullin (bench player who heard about the fix and wanted in); Happy Felsch (88 runs batted in and 19 stolen bases), Shoeless Joe Jackson (.351 average and 96 runs batted in).

Joe Jackson had batted a Series-leading .375 but acknowledged that he had let up in key situations.All of the players involved were banned from baseball because of their undeniable link to gamblers. The league offices were constantly denying accusations from the press that professional baseball itself was in on the take and made every effort to assure the fans that the 1919 scandal was an isolated incident. "Regardless of the verdict of juries," the commissioner said in a statement, "no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball." To this day participants in the Black Sox conspiracy have been denied entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The signal that the World Series "fix" was on occurred when Eddie Cicotte hit the first batter he faced in the bottom of the first inning of Game 1.



1903-2003: 100 Years of the World Series
2003 Barnes and Noble, Eric Enders, england

the white sox were owned by charles comiskey, a tyrant who paid low and took laundry fees out of the teams pay check.
one group was bankrolled by Arnold Rothstein, the nations most famous gambler

a man named Harry F. visited Williams the night before the game that if he didn't throw the game his wife would be harmed

it was because of this event that the commissioners office , the first was Kenesaw Mountain Lanis