One hundred years ago, the Cincinnati Reds defeated the heavily favored Chicago White Sox in the 1919 World Series for the first championship in the team’s storied history. The next year, eight White Sox players, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, were indicted for conspiring with gamblers to “fix” the World Series.
The Black Sox scandal has tainted the Reds’ victory ever since. Not quite an asterisk, but always a question mark.
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Popular history, powered by the films “Eight Men Out” and “Field of Dreams,” wants to have it both ways, that the Sox would have won if they hadn’t thrown the Series, but also that Shoeless Joe and the others were tragic figures who took the money, yet played their best.