The Chicago Black Sox Trial: How 8 Players Went From the Dugout to the Courtroom

The infamous cheating scandal from the 1919 World Series, between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, broke America’s belief in the purity and innocence of baseball. As the story slowly unfolded, it became filled with all the colorful characters you’d expect from 1920s America: baseball players with catchy nicknames, short-tempered gangsters/gamblers immaculately dressed in business pinstripe suits, newspaper reporters and radio broadcasters with flowery descriptions of the trial as if itself was a baseball game, and even New York mob boss Arnold Rothstein, who was alleged (but never proven …) to be the impetus of the scandal.

Unfortunately, the Black Sox trial transcripts were lost long ago, requiring modern-day historians to rely on newspaper reports of trial testimony, which sometimes were sensationalized for their readers and at other times were directly contrary to one another. From this reality, admittedly many of the facts about the scandal we examine in this episode are (true to this show’s title) In Dispute.

LINKS:

• Sign up for our newsletter so that you’re the first to know when new episodes drop!
• Listen to J. Craig Williams’ other podcast, Lawyer 2 Lawyer.
• Tell us what you’re looking forward to the most for this show on LinkedIn, Facebook, X or Instagram! 
• Purchase the e-book. 

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR VOICE ACTORS:

Todd Berger as Eddie Cicotte

Brandon Harpold as Shoeless Joe Jackson 

Adam Lockwood as Carl Victor Little

Alan Chudnow as “Sleepy Bill” Burns

Chad Trudeau as James “Ropes” O’Brien

Dennis Kennedy as David Zelzer 

Tom Mighell as Al Spink

Jim Brady as Commissioner Landis 

Lily Spader as Newspaper Journalist #1

Nathan Todhunter as Newspaper Journalist #2

Thomas Wolfe as Radio Broadcaster #1

Cari Lockwood as Radio Broadcaster #2