Notes #429 — From the Horse’s Mouth

                             NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
                                           Observations from Outside the Lines
                                     By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@adelphia.net)
 

#429                                                                                                           DECEMBER 20, 2007
                                    FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH
 

            This issue zig-zags all over the place, from the racetrack, to the courtroom to Nazi Germany. So it seems fitting to start off at a familiar home base. #429 — when I was in second grade, my family moved to 429 Kennedy Avenue on Pittsburgh’s North Side. That is where I lived until I left that city after high school, in 1964. I earned a letter (for my white sweater) in HS for journalism. North Catholic High School — still on Troy Hill, but getting ready to move — believed letters were not just for athletes. I was an editor on The Trojan News and one of my columns was “From the Horse’s Mouth” — which featured a nice sketch of the Trojan Horse near my by-line. That may have suggested that I smuggled into print all sorts of things that the school censors might miss if they failed to read between the lines. But it didn’t, it was just a play on words. But the Trojan Horse image may fit this issue, which looks like the usual baseball stuff. Is the Mitchell Report a baseball event?  Does it belong on the sports page?  You make the call.
           
            We’ll get to that in a minute, after a stop at the race track, place your bets. I’m re-running a little satire on the Mitchellites from last June, then taking a stroll thru history, where we meet a Swedish terrorist, an American icon receiving a medal from a Nazi leader, and look, up in the sky!  Is that the Spirit of St Louis overhead?  Never MIND what Lindy did — all we really want to know is, did he do it on his own, or was that performance “enhanced” by anything illegal in 1927?  “Just a minute, Mr Lindbergh, the crowds can wait, we’ll need a sample of your urine and blood first.” 
 

 

THE MAN O’WAR FACTOR  
 

            If my research into the “Black Sox scandal” has taught me anything, it is surely that sometimes, you don’t learn the whole story for a long time. Maybe we never do. But if you keep the right questions in mind, that increases the chances of finding  more answers. Fullerton’s rule, again: thou shalt not quit.
 

            But sometimes chance plays a big role in research. And this story is a perfect illustration. It also raises the question: should I acknowledge the old, great racehorse Man o’War in my next B-Sox book?
 

            I won’t re-tell here the long story about Collyer’s Eye, the obscure Chicago weekly that was the only publication I know that truly investigated the rumors of the Fix of the 1919 Series. As Notes readers know, the search for the Eye ended in January 2004, when volumes from 1920 forward were discovered after many months of searching, by many librarians all over the country. They turned up in a library at the University of Chicago’s Urbana-Champaign campus. The front page of their “Vindicated!” issue, after the scandal broke, is reproduced in my book.
 

            Fast forward a year, to early 2005. I was contacted by a Maryland writer, Dorothy Ours, a historian of horse racing. I’m not certain how our paths crossed, but my e-mail suggests that she had responded to my inquiry about whether the racetracks were shut down across the country during the First World War, resulting in a migration of gamblers and fixers from the tracks into the ballparks, as Eight Men Out suggested. (Some tracks were closed, but many remained active.) Dorothy was interested in seeing if Collyer’s Eye, devoted more to the stock market and to horses than to baseball, could shed any light on Man o’War, who had burst on the racing scene in June 1919.
 

            A word about Man o’War. I wish I could take credit for the line, but I can’t, it’s something I read: Man o’War is sometimes called the only athlete of his era who was not performing under some suspicion. Seabiscuit got the movie deal, but MOW was the Babe Ruth of horse racing. In his two seasons, he won 20 of 21 races, setting all kinds of track records — just as the Bambino was starting to do the same with his long-distance clouts, “the longest ever hit at” [fill in the blank with wherever Ruth played next]. He was never accused of taking equine growth hormones, but his performances were genuinely enhanced, and he caught the country’s fancy. Looking at Man o’War’s success as a sire later, for twenty-seven years after he hung up his shoes, you wonder if baseball should not have put the Babe out to pasture sooner, and let him breed a new generation of sluggers … or did he?
 

            That’s a question for another time. Apparently the only horse that dominated his sport in a similar fashion was Secretariat, who made the cover of Time, but really did not have that amazing winning percentage of MOW. Naturally, when a horse has just one loss in their lifetime, you have to wonder about that loss. And that’s what Dorothy Ours was doing, when I told her where to find Collyer’s Eye, at UIUC.
 

            Let’s fast forward again, this time to October 2005. The White Sox are in the World Series, and 1919 is in the news. My book is at the printer’s and will not be released until March 2006. But media folks looking for info on the Fix of 1919 can find me, and they do. One is Stefan Fatsis, writing on the B-Sox for the online Washington Post (Fatsis is known for his NPR work, too, not to mention his book on Scrabble). Of all the reporters I spoke with, no one dug deeper than Fatsis. When I told him about Collyer’s Eye, he wanted to check it out, as any good reporter should. So I steered him to UIUC, too.
 

            Fatsis’ inquiry set in motion a number of things. First, UIUC noticed that the volumes of Collyer’s Eye from 1920-25 were missing. They probably had been missing since they were located in January 2004, but no one noticed until Fatsis asked about them. Not to worry, after fifteen minutes of Warholian fame in the national media (MISSING! Black Sox papers? In Chicago? Say it ain’t so!), the volumes were returned, safe and sound.
 

            But in the process of looking for them, UIUC reported that they had some earlier volumes, including 1919 — volumes which had been deemed missing (or non-existent) when the others were located in January 2004.
 

            The hero turned out to be Gil Witte, who patrolled the stacks at the UIUC library. When Dorothy asked for the Eye’s take on Man o’War, he did a more thorough search than the one undertaken in 2004. Witte found some over-sized volumes, shelved flat, near the standing ones. The larger volumes contained Collyer’s Eye from 1918-1919. What happened next is also old news to readers of NOTES. The librarians at UIUC realized how rare and precious their collection of the Eye was. Before long, it was on its way to Pennsylvania, where it would be converted into eight reels of microfilm. The original copies would be safely preserved, and researchers everywhere could access the Eye by purchasing copies of the microfilm, or by borrowing the reels via inter-library loan. Which I did, and if you missed the results, you can look them up in Notes 406-411 and 416.
 

            But fast forward one more time, to the present. I had recommended the Eye to one more person, Bob Carson. I had known about Minor Trips, Bob’s excellent guide to lovers of minor league baseball, for many years. I finally met Bob in person at a Seymour Conference in Cleveland, in 2006, where I gave my “Eight Myths Out” talk, and Bob talked about Minor Trips — which he publishes out of nearby Strongsville, Ohio. His bio in the Seymour program indicated that Bob also was a regular contributor to Hoof Beats magazine.
 

            I thought that there was at least a tacit rule prohibiting baseball people from associating with horse racing people, but then I remembered that Rogers Hornsby won that battle with Judge Landis. The fact is, many ballplayers follow the horses. When Pete Rose was a free agent, the Pirates tried to lure him to Pittsburgh by dangling the thoroughbreds of the Pirate owners, the Galbreaths, in front of Pete. They offered him, according to Helyar in Lords of the Realm, a top salary and a top-notch broodmare, with championship bloodlines. Uncharacteristically, we can say, looking back, Pete just said no, and signed with the Phils. Sparing me an awful dilemma, because I had disliked Rose for a long time, but if he wore the uniform of my Pirates — ?
 

            OK, back to Bob Carson. Bob pieced together a fine article on Collyer’s Eye and the Black Sox and Dorothy Ours and Man o’War and the University of Chicago, Urbana-Champaign. You can look it up, in the October 6, 2007, issue of Thoroughbred Times.
 

            Based on Bob’s article; on another article in the same issue by Rommy Faversham, “Rothstein’s Shady Racing Interests”; and on some research of my own, I will now conclude this story. Having demonstrated why Man o’War deserves acknowledgement in my next book (without him, Dorothy’s inquiry at UIUC is not necessary, and those early volumes of Collyer’s Eye may still be laying flat and undiscovered in that library), I now ask you to close your eyes. OK, bad idea. Keep one open, just a little, so you can keep reading this. Open up your imagination.
 

            Take yourself back to Saratoga, New York. It is a hot August day in the summer of 1919. At the track, everybody is there to be seen and to see everybody else, twenty thousand people. There he is, Arnold Rothstein, the Big Bankroll. Let’s take a seat a few rows behind A.R. and watch him a while.
 

            Look, there’s Abe Attell, his bodyguard. Abe is handing Arnie something cool to drink. He looks for a tip — in cash — but instead, A.R. gives him a real tip. On August 13, the Sanford Memorial is being run. Entered is a two-year-old who is undefeated so far, the son of Fair Play, name of Man o’War. But Rothstein tells Attell to put a bundle on another horse — Upset. Attell scratches his head and calls Rothstein’s attention to the fact that Man o’War has defeated Upset six times already since the Man’s debut in June. Rothstein pats Attell’s hand. Do it.
 

            Our attention shifts to the track, where a thin net hangs in front of the horses assembling. When it is lifted, the race will start. The horses pace in circles, waiting. Man o’War, with jockey Johnny Loftus aboard, idles back of the pack, and is turned in the wrong direction, facing away from the starting line, when suddenly the net disappears, and they’re off! Man o’War has been duped, but he charges after the pack. He catches and passes one horse after another, but three times in the race, Loftus puts the Man in bad positions, getting boxed in. Finally, turning into the stretch, the Man reaches third position, behind Upset, who trails Golden Broom up front.
 

            But now Golden Broom gives up, and Upset slides past him. In another moment, Man o’War passes Broom and takes aim at Upset. With a hundred feet to go in the six-furlong race, Man o’War is three-fourths of a length away. At the wire, he loses to Upset by a neck — in another twenty feet he would have been past him.
 

            Abe Attell has thrown his hat in the air, and so have many others, but most of them are cheering and calling out for Man o’War, who would have walked home with a fair start. Carrying fifteen more pounds, Man o’War won the hearts of the racing world with his tremendous charge, that fell just short.
 

            It would be the last time that Man o’War finished second.
 

            But look, who’s that with Attell? Isn’t that Hal Chase, the ballplayer?  We move closer, the noise is still making it hard to hear, but we pick up little pieces of the conversation. Charles Weegman, a guy from Chicago, chum of Monte Tennes, has joined them. World Series … can be fixed … don’t worry, we got men on every team. Attell is nodding, Rothstein is passive, a skeptical look on his face as he counts his winnings from the — upset?
 

            Johnny Loftus rode some winners in 1919, too. Three of them were aboard Sir Barton, a three-year old, in three races not entered by Man o’War: the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes and the Preakness. For the first time, there was a Triple Crown winner.
 

            But Loftus, the first Triple Crown jockey, was refused his license by the Jockey Club in 1920, “for the good of the sport.” Loftus had lost in 1919 with other heavy favorites besides Man o’War — Sun Briar, Beaming Beauty, and yes, even Sir Barton. The leading jockey was barred, the reasons were murky. But there would be no “Black Hoof Scandal,” this cover-up succeeded.
 

            Rothstein was also barred in 1920 from clubhouses operating under Jockey Club rules.
 

            Man o’War foaled 64 stakes winners, including the 1937 Triple Crown winner, War Admiral. The Man passed away in 1947.
 

 

FROM THE NOTES ARCHIVE, #399, JUNE 6, 2007:
 

IN THE NEWS  
 

            Another leak in the steroid probe headed up by former senator George Mitchell suggests that there has been a dramatic change in direction taken by investigators. Discouraged by the lack of cooperation from active ballplayers, their confidence shaken by the knowledge that Selig was virtually the only MLB official who thought that the probe was a good idea — and now Selig has regrets — Mitchell and his staff have pretty much abandoned the pursuit of drug and substance abuse violations.
 

            Quietly, far away from the media glare, the probe shifted its focus last April 1 to a very different problem: gambling.
 

            “It’s something that we noticed baseball never really dealt with,” Mitchell explained, asking not to be identified as the source of the leak. “It seems that the old baseball czar Ban Johnson was the last guy to think that the gambling ties to baseball were strangling the sport.”  As president of the American League, Johnson was unable to marshall enough support among team owners to thoroughly examine the extent of the gambling problem, and then take the necessary actions to solve it.
 

            A Cook County grand jury convened in Chicago in September 1920 and attempted to do just that. Even then, millions of dollars were wagered on baseball, especially in pools, and the integrity of the game was increasingly in jeopardy. But that body got distracted by one particular symptom, a case of bribery that tainted the World Series of 1919. Subsequently, “the Black Sox scandal” took over the headlines. Eight players were banned, baseball outlawed the tossing of games, and life went on.
 

            “We have learned that the practice of baseball pools was completely ignored by baseball, when it had the chance in 1920. In fact, we are shocked, shocked, that pools and betting on baseball continued to flourish — so that today, the problem is greater than ever,” an aide to Mitchell stated.
 

            “We also discovered,” Mitchell continued to leak, “that MLB never actually investigated the so-called ‘Black Sox scandal’ itself. The 1921 trial appears to be an attempt to contain and cover-up, rather than to reveal what really happened. For example, there is some evidence that the baseball authorities in charge of the 1919 World Series knew about the bribery before the first pitch of Game One. But there were record gates predicted, and baseball really needed the money, so there was no way they were going to stop and look into what they called ‘rumors.'” Nor was there any real investigation after the Series. The role of baseball’s leaders in the cover-up of that World Series fix was completely avoided by the 1920 grand jury and the 1921 trial. “We want to start there,” said Mitchell, “even though the trail is cold.”
 

            Asked to comment on this surprising development, Commissioner Bud Selig expressed his satisfaction with the change of targets. “It certainly allows all of us to breathe a little easier. My office’s shredder will get a needed rest. I might even attend the game when Barry Bonds passes Aaron. This is great news, even if it is a leak.”
 

            Off the record, the Players Association expressed similar delight with Mitchell’s shift of gears. “It only seems fair, to deal with the bigger problem, the one that’s needed attention for over a century. We are happy that the steroid issue will be resolved by the medical community and the nation’s legal system.”
 

            Because fans have been so upset with the apparent widespread use of steroids and other banned substances, it is anticipated that they will cooperate fully when Mitchell’s investigators appear this summer and next October in their workplaces, to check for the presence of illegal betting pools.
 

            “We are thinking that we can take this a step further,” Mitchell added. “We want to start in the newspaper offices, be sure they are clean, so they can report our progress with clear consciences. We will also check to make sure writers are themselves not enhancing their performances with various substances. Again, we were shocked to learn that the Baseball Writers Association has no standards in place, regarding either gambling or steroids. Yet its members vote on who gets into Cooperstown. We think that is ludicrous and hypocritical.”
 

            There is reason to doubt that the Mitchell probe will advance swiftly, however. Its initial round of subpoenas were sent out to Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other players banned by Commissioner Landis in 1921. “We want to talk to a certain Hal Chase, too,” Mitchell said. “We understand that he was right in the middle of the gambling mess, for years, but always escaped any punishment. We think he can implicate many others, maybe even John McGraw. We are giving them all ample time to reply. So far, nothing, but they are probably consulting with their lawyers.”
 

            Whether the Mitchell probe will go beyond gambling, when it touches the average fan, is not clear. “Sure, we have thought about following the trail, from the office pools that look so innocent, to the more organized crime disguised as Rotisserie ball, and then to checks at random homes,” Mitchell’s top aide whispered, asking not to be quoted. “The Homeland Security guys are pressuring us to follow fans after games, and then check their houses for illegal stuff — you know, anything that might enhance their performance as fans, even when they watch TV or listen to the radio. Wire-tapping has been mentioned, yes. I know it sounds bizarre, but how else can we really clean up the sport, to make it 100% All-American, safe and straight enough to bet on — oops, I mean, to follow.”             NFL, NBA and NHL officials are said to be watching the Mitchell probe carefully, and are likely to follow its model if it succeeds in cleansing baseball’s image and restoring the confidence of advertisers and consumers.
 

 

HISTORY — HOW WILL THE MITCHELL REPORT GO DOWN?  
 

            Last issue, I scrambled like everybody else to write something about my first reactions to The Mitchell Report. A week later, it is still ‘way too early to tell how this thing will go down in history — major scandal? forgotten footnote? — but at least the first draft is in the books.
 

            The one-two punch in the immediate aftermath, at least here in the Shadows of Cooperstown (Yankee country, or at least a place where fans can safely wear Yankee caps and slap pinstriped bumper stickers on their cars) — was Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Pettitte seemed to have a believable explanation for his name’s appearance in The Report — he was on the DL, trying to get back to action ASAP, so for two days, two days in his whole career, he tried something which apparently was not banned by baseball, but may not have been prescribed by a doctor, either. He might have mentioned that when you are being paid millions of dollars a year to play any sport, there is just a tiny bit of extra pressure placed on your by your team (if not by your fans), to get the hell back in playing condition. Anyway, I have to wonder if Pettitte’s name was even worth mentioning in the report — maybe a phone call or exchange of e-mail was in order. Was Mitchell trying to pad his report with big names?
 

            Then came Roger Clemens’ denial, which I have not fully digested yet, but it looks like Roger is going to attack the foundation of The Mitchell Report — namely, the two or three guys who coughed up many of the 86 names. By now, Americans are familiar with this defense, Pete Rose used it in 1989, didn’t he? How can an icon be condemned by the testimony of someone who is out to save himself or get a reduced punishment?  Don’t folks in that position usually tell investigators what they want to hear? It will be their word against those they accuse, if there are no cancelled checks or other hard evidence. Again, it is too early to call this one — some folks in the media have already bounced Clemens out of consideration for Cooperstown, even while others have said this Mitchell thing won’t make a bit of difference to them. It’s like many have been saying about Barry Bonds — take away the seasons under suspicion, and you still have a Hall of Fame career.
 

            Trivia Time. Name the person who participated in the trials of murderers Leopold and Loeb (1924); of Bruno Hauptman, the kidnapper-killer of the Lindbergh baby (1935); and of Shoeless Joe Jackson, who sued the White Sox for back pay (1924)?  If you answered John Tyrell, you are correct — give yourself ten points. Tyrell was the preeminent handwriting analyst of his day, and his expertise was called on in all three cases. On the stand in 1935, Tyrell described his full-time occupation for over forty years as “examiner of questioned documents.”  I mentioned in Notes #426 that a letter from Comiskey’s Milwaukee lawyers and his Chicago crew, in August 1923, stated that Tyrell had looked at the evidence and corroborated Jackson — but perhaps with more samples, he could reach a different conclusion, the one Commy’s team wanted. That letter now belongs to the Chicago History Museum, formerly the Chicago Historical Society; it was among the thousands of documents in their $100,000 purchase.
 

            John Tyrell had helped the police solve an odd crime committed by “the Yule Bomb killer.”  On December 27, 1922, a package arrived at the home of a Marshfield, Wisconsin, couple. Thinking that it was a late Christmas gift, the wife opened it with her husband nearby. The explosion killed her, maimed him. There was not much evidence to sift through, but the killer made a mistake, by sending taunting notes to the police, in Swedish. The handwriting samples helped to convict John Magnuson, a local resident who had a well-known feud with the victims over a drainage ditch. Elementary, my dear Watson.
 

            I often get thoroughly distracted when I visit Doug Linder’s Famous Trials web site — that’s where I got some of the info above on Tyrell. While there, I read up some on that Hauptman case.
 

            Charles Lindbergh, born in 1902, was an American aviator who became a national hero in May 1927. That was the year Babe Ruth, already a national hero, smacked 60 home runs, to cement his place as an American all-timer. Lindbergh achieved his fame almost overnight, by flying The Spirit of St Louis across the Atlantic ocean, solo. This was a performance that was clearly enhanced, over anything he had done before. If he had injected himself with caffeine instead of taking it in a thermos of coffee, the flight might have rated an asterisk, but this was 1927, and Anything Goes. By doing this, Lindy claimed a $25,000 prize that had been waiting for someone to do it, since 1919. He was dubbed “The Lone Eagle” because Tris Speaker already had taken “The Gray Eagle.” The NY Times paid him $250,000 for his story and his book became a best-seller.
 

            The two-year-old first child of Lindbergh and Anne Morrow, Charles Augustus, Jr (also known as “The Eaglet” — no, really, go read the papers), was kidnaped and killed in 1932. As you might expect, it went very rough on the fellow accused, Bruno Richard Hauptman, who had fought for Germany in WW I. (We always get to know the middle names of the infamous — ask Lee Harvey Oswald. When we know Roger Clemens’ middle name, that will be a sign.)  The country was outraged and after due process, Bruno got the chair. But what is kind of interesting is what happened next, and with the Mitchell Report knocking off heroes — well, here’s what happened next.
 

            First, Hauptman’s wife lived on forever (into her 90s), insisting that her husband was innocent. I’m not sure if she made it to the O.J. Simpson trial, or if that did her in. But in this country, we like to take everybody seriously, so her pleas on behalf of Bruno Richard H. meant that the case would remain open in the minds of many people, no matter what the evidence said.
 

            Charles Lindbergh left the country for Europe, understandably. The media crush must have been unbearable. But timing is everything, and with Adolph Hitler on the rise and World War II on deck, it was not a good time to become an admirer of the German Luftwaffe. Or to accept a medal from Herman Goering. Lindbergh testified in congress in 1941 to keep the United States out of the war. He was a member of America’s Greatest Generation, but he was also an isolationist. He eventually resigned his military commission and was criticized toward the end of 1941 by President Roosevelt, and then came Pearl Harbor. The bottom line is that we remember Lindbergh for 1927, and not 1941.
 

            Athletes are not exactly Lindy-level heroes, yet each of them is a hero, at least back where they came from. And to get into the national spotlight, they all sacrificed a lot, worked hard, competed. Sure they were well-compensated along the way and became millionaires when they made it big. But give credit where it is due, they didn’t become rich and famous overnight, like Lindy. It took years.
 

            My point here is this: let us not be quick to dismiss in a moment, or a week, what took so long to build up. The Mitchell Report may go down in history like the Starr Report, an expensive project, too explicit for many, and perhaps because it was so expensive, took so long, and got so much publicity, it was assumed to be fair, important and worth it all. But was it?  As far as the Mitchell Report goes, it is too soon to say. From where I sit — and it has been a busy week, I did not remain glued to my TV, radio and computer once the Report was out there — it seems like it has done more harm than good.