EDITOR'S NOTE: This account first ran in the Star Tribune in September 1994 on the scandal's 75th anniversary.

----Nearly 75 years ago, eight members of the Chicago White Sox were involved in a plot to lose the 1919 World Series.

First baseman Chick Gandil, whose major league career alreadyhad been dotted with gambling connections and fixing regular-seasongames, was the mastermind among the eight. The St. Paul native dealtwith the gamblers, recruited teammates, handled the money andparticipated on the field in helping the National League championCincinnati Reds win the Series five games to three. His first lieutenant in the conspiracy was Swede Risberg, ajut-jawed shortstop whose fearlessness on the field was matched onlyby his quick temper away from it. Rumors of a fix were rampant in the days before the Series,during the Series and soon after. By 1920, newspapers were crankingout reports - the accuracy of which was a product of the yellowjournalism of the time - of what the press dubbed the Black SoxScandal. Late in the 1920 season, the eight were indicted by the stateof Illinois and suspended by Sox owner Charles Comiskey. In 1921,seven were tried but acquitted (the case against reserve infielderFred McMullin was dropped for lack of evidence). "Lost"confessions, an adoring judge and star-struck jurors in Chicagoworked in their favor. Even so, their exoneration would be shortlived. The Nationaland American league owners had hired Kenesaw Mountain Landis astheir first commissioner. His mission: to protect the image ofbaseball and keep the turnstiles turning. Landis seized on his absolute mandate, and in one pitch goteight men out - Eddie Cicotte, Oscar (Happy) Felsch, Gandil,(Shoeless) Joe Jackson, McMullin, Risberg, George (Buck) Weaver andClaude (Lefty) Williams. The extent of involvement in the fix varied - Weaver neveraccepted money and played his best at all times, yet he knew of theconspiracy. Jackson also knew of the plot and received a $5,000payoff, yet he put up the best numbers among the Sox in the Series.Even so, Series reporters were suspicious of some plays that Jacksonmade in the outfield. Landis cared none for degrees of guilt; there would be noappeals heard, no reductions in punishment, no restoring of goodnames. The first to die among the eight was Jackson in 1951 at age 63.He was the best player in the group, and his story has grown tomythical proportions because of fables about his nickname, hisrituals involving candles and collecting hairpins, and the tender,loving care that he gave his feared black bats. The recent movies"Eight Men Out" and "Field of Dreams" have added Hollywood stardustto the legend. Gandil died in December 1970 in virtual obscurity inCalifornia's Napa Valley at age 82. His four-paragraph obituary inthe St. Helena (Calif.) Star made no mention of his baseball past.Risberg, whose love for the game never waned, died in RedBluff, Calif., on Oct. 13, 1975, his 81st birthday. As with Gandil,Risberg's obituary, in the Red Bluff Daily News, was brief and didnot mention baseball. The eight men out had similar backgrounds: little if any formaleducation, a quickness to throw a punch to settle a dispute, andpaltry paychecks from Comiskey that bordered on ridiculous. It wasthese common threads that bonded the eight and gave root to thegreatest scandal the game has known. And at the center of it were Gandil, who moved west from St.Paul as a child with his parents, and Risberg, whose post-White Soxlife included putting down and pulling up stakes in southernMinnesota. Kate Smath remembers one of the last days of Chick Gandil'slife. Her grandfather lay in the Calistoga Convalescent Hospital inCalifornia, his body surrendering to heart disease and emphysema. "He said he was going to get in touch with some attorneys andget `this whole thing straightened out,' " recalled Smath, 66. "Buthe never recovered. Evidently, it was on his mind." Otherwise, Gandil "never talked about the scandal," said Smath,who lives in Red Bluff. "One of the reasons he never spoke about itagain [was that] he thought all of his fans turned against him." Fourteen months before his death and with the 50th anniversaryof the 1919 World Series approaching, Gandil did speak of thescandal, defending his actions, even contending that he did nothingwrong. "I have taken an awful beating in this thing," Gandil said in anewspaper interview. "But it's all on the record. My hits won two ofthe games against the Reds. If I'd been trying to throw the Series,would I have tried to win those games? If anybody wants to sayI looked terrible, at bat or in the field, let them get the papersand look it up." Born Sept. 19, 1888, in St. Paul, 4-year-old Arnold and his Swissemigre parents, Christian and Louise, moved west. At age 14, he was a member of the Oakland (Calif.) Highbaseball team, playing every position except first base. He lefthome at age 17 (by some accounts, over his parents' objections)without finishing high school and played semipro ball in Amarillo,Texas, as a catcher. The next year, he pitched for a team inCananea, Mexico. He filled in at first base late in the season, andthat would be his position for teams in Shreveport, Sacramento,Montreal, Washington, Cleveland and Chicago. After three seasons in the minors, Gandil made his major leaguedebut with the White Sox on April 14, 1910. He played well in thefield, batted poorly and was sent back to the minors for anotherseason before returning permanently to the majors - this time withthe Washington Senators. After four seasons (batting over .300 twotimes), he was sold to Cleveland, stayed one season and was sold tothe White Sox in time for the 1917 opener. With the addition of Risberg - which allowed the Sox to moveBuck Weaver from shortstop to third base, where he blossomed as thegame's best all-round third baseman - Comiskey boasted that his teamwas the game's best, and with good reason. He had three qualitystarting pitchers, an infield of Gandil, future Hall of Famer EddieCollins at second, Risberg and Weaver to go with hitting star JoeJackson in the outfield and the leadership of Ray Schalk behind theplate. The team had no weakness, except perhaps for gambling. It was during the 1917 pennant drive that Gandil got his firstbig-time taste of fixing games. The White Sox were in first place, with the Boston Red Soxclose behind. The Detroit Tigers, playing out a mediocre season, andthe White Sox were scheduled to play two doubleheaders over LaborDay weekend in Chicago. Years later, in a sworn affidavit given in the offices of theChicago Tribune, Gandil supported a contention that Risberg had madeearlier: that the Tigers laid down for the White Sox in those fourgames. Gandil told how he met with Tigers pitcher Bill James, andthey agreed that Detroit would go easy. In return, Gandil and nearlyall of his teammates each put $45 in a pool that totaled $1,000 to$1,100. The four-game sweep propelled the White Sox to thepennant. (In 1927, Landis investigated the allegations of the 1917 fixand met with several players on both teams - Gandil and Risbergincluded. Landis heard contradictory testimony and denials. Hedeclined to act against any of the players.) Gandil's ongoing relationship with gambling and his longtimeassociation with Joseph (Sport) Sullivan, a bookmaker with mobconnections, proved to be the key ingredients that led to Gandil'soffer to fix the 1919 Series. Gandil told Sullivan that it wouldtake $80,000 to buy the Series. The money surfaced. Whose money it was has forever been indispute. The gamblers doublecrossed the players at the outset (theywithheld much of the bribe money so they could place bets), and theplayers doublecrossed them right back (the gamblers were stunnedwhen the White Sox won Game 3). But when it was over, the less-talented Reds had won thebest-of-nine series - just as the gamblers and several White Sox hadplanned. All the players involved were paid off - some got morethan others - and went their separate ways for the offseason.Gandil spent the winter in California, reportedly $35,000 richer forhis trouble. That might explain why Gandil, who made $4,000 in 1919,decided to sit out the '20 season after having his $5,000 salaryrequest turned down by Comiskey. As the scandal broke late in the 1920 season, Gandil refused toreveal his involvement. Cicotte, Jackson and Williams signedconfessions (the veracity of which were dubious, at best). Cicottewas said to describe Gandil as the "master of ceremonies." "I never confessed," Gandil said 50 years later. "And five ofthe eight players who were accused of throwing the Series didn't." After his banishment at age 33, Gandil played many years ofsemipro and outlaw ball all along the West Coast and in Arizona. Hetook up plumbing in the late 1930s and worked in the Bay Area for 14years before retiring to Napa Valley in 1952. Kate Smath visited her grandparents often in Calistoga,bringing her four children with her from Santa Rosa. The childrensay their great-grandfather never talked to them about the Black SoxScandal. Smath saw "Eight Men Out," the 1988 movie depiction of thescandal. She paused before commenting on the film that prominentlyportrayed her grandfather. "I went and sat through it," she said."He sounded mean and tough, and maybe he was." "Every kid had to pick a favorite player," Chicago authorNelson Algren, recalling his grade-school days, wrote in an articlefor Chicago magazine. "The kid who owned Swede Risberg moved off theblock, and Swede became mine. My name immediately became Swede. . .. "No rumors of the fix had yet reached us by midsummer 1920. TheWhite Sox were still white. Swede Risberg was still my favoriteplayer. I began to walk pigeon-toed because Risberg was pigeon-toed.I did this for a full year before my mother asked me why I waswalking `like that.' I couldn't explain. I still walk like that." Despite the exposure in late 1920 of the plot to fix the 1919Series, Algren said "our love for the game was not shaken. But westopped pitching baseball cards and took to shooting dice. The menwhose pictures we had cherished were no longer gods." Years later, still feeling the sting of childhood betrayal,Algren said he was asked by a woman in his company why his gaitfavored one leg. "It's an old injury," he responded. "How did it happen?" she asked. "A big Swede hurt it when I was a kid. The Swede was a hardguy." Risberg was hardened by a life that included little formalschooling, punching out the likes of Ty Cobb after a game, theridicule of banishment, losing everything in southern Minnesotaafter the Crash of '29, working behind a shovel in Depression-eraSouth Dakota, running taverns and drawing beers in northernCalifornia. In the book "Eight Men Out," Eliot Asinof wrote that a calledthird strike in a California bush-league game angered Swede to thepoint that he knocked the umpire out with one punch. The good times began in earnest when Swede joined the White Soxat age 22 in 1917, when he played 146 games at shortstop for theWorld Series champions. He hit only .203 that year, but his range inthe field and strong arm kept him in the lineup. James T. Farrell, author of "My Baseball Diary," remembersRisberg as "snaring a grounder deep over second base and getting theball to first base like a bullet." By the time the scandal brokenear the end of the 1920 season, Risberg had a respectable .266average. After Landis took Risberg out of major league baseball, Swede'spassion for the game flowed until his death 54 years later. Risberg lived his last 13 years in Red Bluff with his sonRobert and Robert's family, which included grandson Jeff. "Hewas an avid fan until he died," said Jeff Risberg, 37, of St. Paul."He'd have at least two transistor radios [tuned in to baseballgames] . . . and he'd be watching a [third] game." Undeterred by banishment, Swede managed and played in 1922 forthe "Ex-Major Leaguers," a team that included fellow Black SoxJackson and Cicotte. In 1925, he and Felsch played minor league ball in Scobey,Mont. Risberg was paid a handsome salary of $600 a month, plusexpenses. "I can recall him saying they made more damn money after thanthey did as a professional," said Robert Risberg, 68. (Swede nevertopped $3,500 a season with the Sox.) When he wasn't playing baseball in the summer months in somefar-off town, Risberg tended to his farm in Blue Earth, Minn. Robert tells the story - though historians are at a loss toconfirm - of his father masquerading so he could slip onto NegroLeague teams. "He used brown shoe polish and played in the coloredleague," Robert said. "Then people would realize who [he was] andhave to move on." The Wall Street crash of '29 hit the Risbergs hard, Robertsaid. "We lost the home, a car agency, a hotel, the farm." Swede played a season in Jamestown, N.D., then left Blue Earthfor Sioux Falls, where he was "shoveling corn for a dollar a day,"Robert said. "I can remember going to the Salvation Army and gettingmilk for the baby." In May 1931, Swede signed with the Sioux Falls Canaries of theNorthern League as their second baseman. He told the DailyArgus-Leader that banishment by Landis cost him $150,000 to $200,000and "What did they have on me? Nothing. The records show I made anew mark for shortstops in the World Series, accepting 53 chancesand making 31 assists. They said I hit into double plays. They wereall line drives, and it was just tough luck that they didn't gosafe." (He was 2-for-25 in the Series.) His teammate and roommate during his two seasons in Sioux Fallswas shortstop Ernie Olson. "He ran the infield," said Olson, 89, who lives in Gayville insoutheastern South Dakota. "He was one of these guys who wasanticipating on the diamond. He was a jump ahead. He was that good,a thinker who figured out things. He went all out, as what he wasable to." Risberg's attempt at a coup of sorts in 1932 abruptly ended hiscareer with the Canaries. "Swede tried to take over the Canariesnear the end of the season by appealing to the other players, and[owner] Rex Stucker kicked him off the team," said Dave Kemp ofSioux Falls, a Canaries historian. From there, the Risbergs moved west, living in northernCalifornia and Oregon. He played some ball and got into the tavernbusiness. Mary, his wife of more than 35 years, died in 1960. Swedeworked in the lumber business for a few years and moved in withRobert and his family in Red Bluff. Jeff Risberg said it was a joyto have his grandfather in the same house, though he could see thathe was "shattered" by his banishment. "For my grandfather, baseball was his life," he said. "He wasout of a job at the peak of his career."