The scandal was covered heavily by the media at the time, was revisited in Lawrence Ritter’s classic oral history “The Glory of Their Times,” and in every biography of everyone involved. So was their racism, Cobb from Georgia, Speaker from Texas, both born in the 1800s..
It seems the only person surprised by the Cobb-Speaker disclosure is Zev Chafetz, author of“Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame.” ( Bloomsbury USA, 2009). At least he’s the only person with nerve enough to write enough a book about baseball history, and try to pass it off as an investigative report full of new discoveries that the baseball establishment has been hiding.
The book shows no evidence that Greenberg or DiMaggio were "mobbed up," in the sense of being corrupted by the Mob. In fact, the book says they were NOT CORRUPTED by the mob.
In his introduction to the book, Chafetz admits he was never a baseball fan. As a kid in Detroit, he knew about Al Kaline, and heard stories from the old timers about Ty Cobb. He lived most of his life in Jerusalem.
Players Campaign to Get In
And guess what! Players campaign hard to get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, as movie people do for the Academy Award. It’s the highest honor the profession can bestow, a guarantee of immortality, and a big source of money for the rest of a member’s life. He gets an annuity, and his fees for appearances, autographs, and memorabilia shoot way up.
Apparently, Chafetz thinks baseball fans should be shocked by that revelation as well.
Every fan knows that Jim Rice, who was elected this year, in his last year of eligibility, had been kept out because he did not cooperate with reporters when he was a player. Baseball writers are the ones who elect Hall of Fame members. But in recent years, Rice became as happy, grateful, and available for interviews as Ernie Banks. Now he’s in the Hall of Fame, an honor his performance on the field had always entitled him to.
DiMaggio, Greenberg, and the Mob
Chafetz said, in an interview promoting the book, that DiMaggio and Greenberg were “mobbed up.” That’s all he said on National Public Radio. You have to buy the book to learn the Italian mob never asked DiMaggio to do anything, except not tarnish his image, or embarrass Italian Americans.
The book alleges the Italian mob procured women for DiMaggio. That’s absurd on the face of it. The only problem DiMaggio had with women was fighting them off. He was the biggest sports star and biggest celebrity of his time, and movie-star handsome. There were plenty of people willing to help the hero keep his liaisons discrete. He needed no help from the Mob.
The book says a gangster in the Detroit mob once asked Greenberg to play in an exhibition game between prison inmates and an Army team. Greenberg had said he would not play baseball while serving in the Army in World War II, but he played this one time for the inmates.
Calling people “mobbed up,” when that’s all you have to back it up, borders on slander. It is certainly irresponsible journalism, and deceptive salesmanship.
Lefty Grove a Sociopath
The book says Grove was a “sociopath,” a person without a conscience, because he threw at batters who hit well against him. That was part of the game. It still is, though new rules put stricter limits on it.
Here’s what Grove’s teammate Doc Cramer said in the oral history. “Baseball When the Grass Was Green,” about the time he homered off Grove in a meaningless spring training game between the scrubs and the first-stringers: “[Next time up,] he hit me in the ribs so hard I thought it would come out the other side. I went right down. But he never threw at anyone’s head.”
That’s not a sociopath. It was not even against the rules of baseball, written or unwritten.
Roger Clemens once threw at his wife after she banged a pitch off his shin. She was eight months pregnant at the time. A 300-game winner from the ‘50s named Early Wynn reportedly threw at his 4-year-old son in a backyard game of Whiffle Ball. “He hit a double off me,” Wynn said.
Retaliation and intimidation by pitchers is as old as the game. It's not about injuring hitters. If a pitcher really wanted to hit a batter in the head, he'd throw behind the batter's head. The hitter's natural impulse would be to pull his head backward. He could not get out of the way. Pitchers throw close to batters to keep them from "digging in," getting too comfortable, or standing too close to the plate, and controlling the outside of the strike zone.
In 135 years of organized baseball, only one batter has been killed by a pitched ball, though any power pitcher, like Grove, Clemens, Sandy Koufax or Nolan Ryan, who threw 95 mph or more, could do it almost at will.
Cobb and Speaker Under the Grandstand
In 1925, when Cobb and Speaker were playing out their careers as part-time players and full-time managers for the Tigers and Red Sox, a pitcher named Dutch Leonard saw them meeting under the grandstand and reported them for conspiring to throw a ballgame.
Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis allowed both to play one more year for the Philadelphia Athletics, so Connie Mack, the beloved owner of the A’s, a founder of the American League, could make a few extra dollars from their names.
It’s the first responsibility of an “investigative” reporter to disclose something people need to know that power structures are concealing. There’s nothing in this book people who care about baseball did not already know.
Ken Braiterman - Ken Braiterman writes columns for the Concord (NH) Monitor print and online editions. He also writes and lectures on recovery from ...
