Most fans today know that gamblers and ballplayers conspired to fix the 1919 World Series-the Black Sox Scandal. It has been touched upon in classic works of sports history such as Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out, referred to in literary classics like W. P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, and has been central to two of the best baseball movies ever made, John Sayles's Eight Men Out and Phil Robinson's Field of Dreams.Many, however, would be surprised to learn that it took nearly a year to uncover the fix. Burying the Black Sox is the first book to focus on the cover-up that kept the fix from the American public until almost another whole baseball season was played, and to examine in detail the way events unfolded as the deception was unraveled. Unlike Eliot Asinof in Eight Men Out, previously the definitive book on the subject, Carney thoroughly documents his information and brings together evidence from a wide variety of sources, many not available to Asinof or more recent writers.In Burying the Black Sox, Gene Carney reveals what else happened and answers the questions that fascinate any baseball fan wondering about baseball's original dilemma over guilt and innocence. Who else in baseball knew that the fix was in? When did they know? And what did they do about it? Carney explores how Charles Comiskey, the owner of the White Sox, and his fellow owners tried to bury the incident and control the damage, how the conspiracy failed, and how Shoeless Joe Jackson attempted to clear his name. He uses primary research materials that weren't available when Asinof wrote Eight Men Out, including the 1920 grand jury statements by Jackson and pitcher Eddie Cicotte, the diary of Comiskey's secretary, and the transcripts of Jackson's 1924 suit against the Sox for back pay. Where Asinof told the story of the eight Black Sox, Carney explains the baseball industry's uncertain response to the scandal.

"In revisiting the 1919 World Series scandal, baseball historian Carney argues persuasively that the infamous fix consisted of two conspiracies: the unsuccessful attempt of players, managers and owners to hide the fact that a handful of crooked White Sox had thrown the Series; and the largely successful effort of Charles Comiskey, owner of the team, and Judge Landis, baseball's first Commissioner, to ensure that the expulsion of eight accused Sox would preserve baseball's clean public image despite widespread ties between players, gamblers and officials. He assembles an impressive range of perspectives on each question about the incident, including whether gambling kingpin Arnold Rothstein dreamed up the fix, when Shoeless Joe Jackson refused and accepted $5,000 from Lefty Williams and how Comiskey learned that his team was playing to lose. Extensive research and thorough documentation will make this a valuable resource for future scholars of the scandal despite the book's uncomfortable organizational shifts among narration, biography, bibliography and an ill-conceived passage arranged into an Abbott and Costello sketch. Casual readers will be frustrated by Carney's emphasis on accuracy of detail over storytelling drive and his reluctance to commit to any single interpretation of these controversial events; these readers would be better served by Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out. 11 b&w illustrations." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Most fans today know that gamblers and ballplayers conspired to "fix" the 1919 World Series-the Black Sox Scandal. It has been touched upon in classic works of sports history such as Eliot Asinof's EIGHT MEN OUT, referred to in literary classics like W. P. Kinsella's SHOELESS JOE, and has been central to two of the best baseball movies ever made, John Sayles's EIGHT MEN OUTand Phil Robinson's FIELD OF DREAMS.

Presents the definitive history of the entire Black Sox scandal and the attempt to cover it up

New insight on baseball's most famous scandal