The Original Curse Read Online Free Page A

baseball. (It’s important to note that Comiskey and Grabiner hadno intention of going on a public crusade with the information their investigator gathered—their goal was to cover up whatever gambling they found, not expose it.) Among the notes Grabiner made was the name of Gene Packard, a pitcher for the Cubs in ’16 and part of ’17. Next to Packard’s name, Grabiner wrote: “1918 Series fixer.”
    Veeck’s reaction: “Oh boy.” 12
    Whether or why the Cubs and Red Sox, as franchises, have been cursed can be debated, as can the possibility of a 1918 fix. But there’s something strange about those teams that goes beyond franchise futility. There’s a bizarre level of
personal
futility too. Scan the rosters of those who played and worked for the Cubs and Red Sox (especially the Cubs, the supposed fixers) and look at what happened to them after the 1918 World Series. You’ll find an inordinate number of tragic endings, disturbing downturns, and sullied reputations—especially sullied by gambling scandals. You’ll find that, not only did the 1918 World Series seem to leave what had been two very successful franchises dragging the ball-and-chain of stubborn curses, but a high number of individuals involved with those franchises suffered cursed fates too.
    Weeghman, the team president and one of the city’s best-known businessmen, went broke 16 months after the World Series. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee would die young, at age 48, and his lasting legacy would be pariahdom in Boston decades later. The Cubs’ ace pitcher left to fight in World War I and came back an alcoholic and epileptic, later tainted as “crooked” in Grabiner’s diary. One star Red Sox pitcher would get caught up in a gambling scandal of his own making, and another would become the only pitcher to kill a man during a game. Two reserve Cubs who left for war in ’18 died young, one during an appendicitis operation and the other after a fall from a building. One star Cubs pitcher was forced out of baseball for contract jumping, and another suffered an arm injury from which he never recovered. A fourth Cubs pitcher, an alcoholic, was banished in 1922 after writing a suspicious letter to an opposing player (who had been his teammate with the ’18 Cubs). Chicago’s star shortstop mysteriously quit baseball at the peak of his career and later committed suicide. One Red Sox player, three Cubs players, and a Cubs secretary wound up entangled in the Black Sox scandal.
    How’s that for cursed?
    But the story of these two teams is about more than curses, more than baseball, more than gambling. It’s about the lives of those involved in baseball that year. The 1918 season presented unique pressures, which altered attitudes toward the game, toward gambling, toward salaries, and toward prospects for the future, not just as players but as men and citizens in a very turbulent United States. There was a constant threat of domestic terrorism. The drive toward prohibition was on, and there was a moral tug-of-war over vice—including gambling, which was as strong in Chicago and Boston as anywhere in the nation. Inflation was near its worst in history, making whatever money Americans had on hand increasingly worthless. And there was the Great War, the most brutal conflict in history, which was thrashing Europe with mechanized warfare, introducing the world to battles fought with submarines, airplanes, poisonous gas, long-range guns, tanks, and trench warfare. In 1918 the war was being joined by waves of just-drafted young American soldiers, ballplayers included.
    This was a set of circumstances ripe for crookedness in baseball. Indeed, it was in 1918 that baseball’s gambling problem finally pushed through to the surface, as actual allegations of game fixing, backed by evidence, were publicly brought before a league president with the press watching. It was due to happen, and with all of the ’18 season played under the threat of early closure (and the