The Fix Is In, page 9
For his part in the agency, Franzese later saw the possibilities available to him. “There’s no question in my mind had Norby been successful, and both my associates and I realized we had somewhat control over a number of major league ballplayers, that at some point in time we’d try and use this to our advantage….I mean, the mob lives to gamble. The mob is built upon it…almost everybody is a gambler. It’s a major mob enterprise. I saw that as a tremendous possibility. Just establishing a line, throwing the bets the right way, making the bets tilt the right way. That would have been a tremendous advantage.”10Franzese went on to tell Mortensen, “I think if he [Walters] had maintained control, he could’ve spoken to them, ‘let’s make some money this way.’ There would have been things that if he wanted continued support from the family, which he always got, then he would have been obligated to deal.”11
Several years later when Franzese was out of the mob, he appeared as a guest on the Jim Rome radio show in February 2006. Rome asked him what would happen should an athlete get in trouble with a bookie and can’t pay. How exactly does an athlete get compromised? Franzese’s response: “Well, it’s real easy. If they’re gambling with a bookmaker, you understand, and they lose money, I mean, they gotta pay. If they can’t come up with the money some way, shape, or form, you explain to them, listen, if you’re in a game, okay, and you have a meaningful position in that game, you’re going to help us win. If you guys are favored by 10, you’re gonna shave points. You’re gonna win by seven. You’re not gonna cover the spread. Get some of your teammates, tell them you’re in deep trouble, and then do whatever you gotta do to help us out and we’ll cover the debt in that way. The problem with that is normally they’ll go along. They don’t know what else to do. They’re scared. But if they do it once, they’re done. I mean, then they’re gonna do it forever or until they’re told to stop.”12
Rome pressed him further on the matter. And the conversation became more enlightening.
Jim Rome: “When you were in the business, did you ever fix a game?”
Michael Franzese: “Yes. Well, when I say ‘fix a game’ we had an athlete compromise the outcome of a game. Yes. Absolutely.”
Jim Rome: “Professional?”
Michael Franzese: “Professional and college.”
Jim Rome: “They looked the other way or purposefully missed a shot or did something to lose a team a game?”
Michael Franzese: “Purposefully did something to compromise the outcome of a game. Yes.”
Jim Rome: “It happens obviously, right, still?”
Michael Franzese: “Without a doubt.”
Jim Rome: “How often?”
Michael Franzese: “Well, I gotta tell you, Jim. The NCAA, on a college level, there are recent studies showed that approximately one percent of 21,000 players admitted to being asked to compromise the outcome of a game because of a gambling debt. And I believe 2.3 percent admitted to actually compromising the outcome of a game because of a gambling debt. These are anonymous studies, but it’s going on right now.”
Jim Rome: “Not to be salacious, but did anybody ever tell you ‘no’ in that situation? Where you said ‘you’re going to make this right and you’re going to fix that game?’”
Michael Franzese: “No. They have no choice. At that point, they’re going to do it or they’re going to pay.”
A few moments later, they progressed to this point in the conversation:
Jim Rome: “How many times were you involved in fixing a game?”
Michael Franzese: “Several times.”
Jim Rome: “How do we know what we see is legitimate?”
Michael Franzese: “Well, you don’t know for sure. And I tell people, look, you can’t assume that every bad call or every game that doesn’t go your way is fixed.”13
However, when Jim Rome asked him whether the fix could be in on a big game such as a Super Bowl and when bad calls seem to be obviously made, if someone could’ve gotten to “those guys” in that game, Franzese had this answer: “Jim, nobody is immune. I mean, I’ll be honest with you. Because of my experience in the street, whenever I see a call that’s, you know, outrageous, I’m cynical immediately. I’m cynical all the time, but that’s based upon my experience…the leagues know no one’s immune to this.”14
Of course the leagues know no one is immune to the lure of gambling and fixing games. Sports history is littered with tales of game fixing and point shaving. What follows is the litany of gambling athletes, rumors of point shaving, and true fixes that have occurred over the years in professional sports, presented in chronological order.
1865 - On September 28th of that year, three members of the New York Mutuals—shortstop Thomas Devyr, third baseman Ed Duffy, and catcher William Wansley—all agreed to accept $100 to throw that day’s game against the Brooklyn Eckfords. The Mutuals lost 23-11 (or 28-10 depending on your source). Wansley was charged with six passed balls in the game. All three were subsequently banished from baseball; however, in keeping with baseball tradition, all three were allowed back into the game by 1870.
1877 - Just one year into its existence, the National League faced a gambling scandal. Three members of the Louisville Grays accepted bribes ranging from $10 to $150 from a New York City gambler to throw games at the end of the season. The games they intentionally lost cost the team the pennant as they dropped from first to second behind the Boston Red Caps. Newspaper owner and team president Charles Chase smelled a rat. An investigation into the matter revealed that infielder Al Nichols had received telegrams regarding the fixes. Nichols, outfielder George Hall, and pitcher Jim Devlin all admitted to being in on the scheme. Subsequently, National League president William Hulbert banished the three players for life. However, it was claimed by the three that they only took the bribes because the team had failed to pay their salaries. Shortstop Bill Craver was also banned along with the other three for failure to cooperate with the investigation. It’s not known if he was involved with the others or not. The next season, the Louisville Grays disbanded.
1882 - Richard Higham was a former player and manager before he turned to umpiring in 1881. When too many calls seemingly went against the NL’s Detroit Wolverines in 1882, team owner (and mayor of Detroit) William Thompson became suspicious of Higham. Thompson hired an investigator who discovered letters written from Higham to a gambler informing him when to bet against Detroit. The NL owners agreed on the situation and forever banned Higham from the game.
1903 - Baseball’s first World Series. Along with it came rumors of its attempted fixing. Twenty years after the Series had taken place, Boston Red Sox catcher Lou Criger, believing he was on his deathbed, confessed to American League president Ban Johnson in 1923 that he was approached by a gambler before the Series and offered $12,000 to throw it. Criger made three errors during the course of the eight-game Series that Boston eventually won five games to three. Criger went on to live another 11 years after his deathbed confession.
1905 - Pitcher George “Rube” Waddell very well may have been mentally handicapped. Easily distracted with stuffed animals and shiny objects, Waddell was also known to love fire engines and would literally run from the field to chase one if he heard it drive past the stadium. Waddell had a great season in 1905 going 26-11 with a 1.48 Earned Run Average (ERA) for the Philadelphia Athletics. They were set to face off against the New York Giants when a group of gamblers offered Rube $17,000 to sit out the series. Waddell indeed did not pitch in the World Series, claiming he tripped over some luggage at the train station injuring his arm just prior to the Series’ start. Without Waddell, the Athletics lost the Series four games to one. Waddell was subsequently suckered out of the $17,000, receiving maybe only $500 of the total. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1946.
John McGraw, a future Hall of Famer himself, was the manager of the Giants in that 1905 World Series. McGraw reportedly placed and collected a $400 wager on his own team against the Athletics. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that. McGraw was arrested in 1904 for unsolicited public gambling. McGraw was never disciplined for either transgression.
1908 - Philadelphia Phillies weak-hitting catcher Charles “Red” Dooin alleged that three unnamed pitchers on the team had been offered $150,000 by gamblers to throw the last seven games of the season against the New York Giants in hopes of giving the Giants the 1908 pennant. The pitchers refused. Dooin himself was then approached with a similar offer. He, too, refused. The Phillies managed to win enough games against the Giants to force the Giants into a tie-breaking game against the Chicago Cubs to determine who would win the pennant.
The umpire for that fateful playoff game between the Cubs and Giants was Bill Klem. Before walking out onto the field for the game, the Giants’ team doctor Joseph Creamer offered Klem a deal which would keep him “set for life” if the Giants won. Creamer even forced $2,500 into Klem’s hand. He refused the generous offer. The Cubs wound up winning the game (well, not exactly that game), thanks mainly to the immortal play of one Fred “Bonehead” Merkle for the Giants. With the game tied, the Giants had a runner on third while Merkle sat at first. A base hit knocked in the winning run, but Merkle never reached second base. In the ensuing craziness of the Giants’ apparent win, Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers got the ball back (that is a ball, maybe not the ball) and tagged Merkle out. The game was ruled a tie, thanks in part to Klem calling Merkle out. (Was the call made to counter Creamer’s offer?) Another playoff game the following day resulted in the Cubs winning their only world championship ever. Creamer was banished from baseball in 1909.
1908 - Hal Chase was known as one of the best first basemen in baseball. Two baseball immortals, Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth, agreed with that assessment. Yet for all the praise lavished on Chase for his glove work, he led the league in errors seven times, committing a grand total of 402 in a little over 1,800 games played. Of course, this very well may have had something to do with Chase’s career-long love of fixing ball games. Chase’s scandalous career may have had just as much of a hand in the rise of an overlording baseball commissioner as the 1919 Black Sox.
Chase was first accused by his New York Highlanders manager of fixing games in 1908. Highlander management didn’t look too closely into the accusations because Chase was their marquee attraction. Instead, a new manager was hired. Chase felt the job was rightfully his and he (most likely) laid down in a few games to get his new skipper fired. The ruse worked. Even though the Highlanders finished in second place in 1910, Chase was named player-manager in 1911. The team plummeted to sixth place in Chase’s sole year at the helm. In 1913, the Highlanders changed their name to the Yankees and ex-Cub Frank Chance was brought in to manage. Chance, too, felt Chase was throwing ball games, and brought it to the attention of Yankees management. Apparently they had had enough of Chase’s shenanigans and traded Chase to the Chicago White Sox. But Chase opted to jump to the rival Federal League and play in Buffalo for the Buffeds. There, he led the league in home runs. However, after the 1915 season, the Federal League collapsed. In 1916 Chase couldn’t find an American League team that would take him, so he jumped to the National League and joined the Cincinnati Reds. Chase kept out of trouble until the stout Christ Mathewson became his manager in 1918. Mathewson didn’t take kindly to gamblers, and when one of the Reds’ pitchers told Mathewson that Chase had tried to bribe him into throwing a game, Mathewson suspended Chase for the last part of the 1918 season. Chase was then shipped from the Reds to the New York Giants in 1919. There, he recruited third baseman Heinie Zimmerman to help throw ballgames and bribe other players into doing likewise.
Through all those years of accusations including rumors that Chase was doubling his baseball salary by throwing games, not a shred of evidence ever got him into hot water. That is, until a check in Chase’s name for the amount of $500 from a known Boston gambler came to light in 1919. Finally armed with something substantial, National League president John Heydler banned the 38-year-old Chase from the game for life. Heinie Zimmerman was also shown the door for his cooperation with Chase.
1912 - One of the most obviously fixed games that received little attention was Game Seven of the 1912 World Series. The Boston Red Sox led the New York Giants three games to two with their ace due to pitch Game Seven (Game Two was called due to darkness and ruled a tie after 11 innings). Set to clinch the Series at home in Fenway Park that day, the Red Sox sent their ace “Smoky” Joe Wood, who posted a 34-5 record that season, to the mound. He lasted an inning. Wood lobbed in pitches and gave up a quick six runs on seven hits. Wood even pitched out of a full windup with runners on base, allowing the Giants to pull off an easy double steal. But Wood wasn’t alone in the fix. Hall of Fame outfielder Tris Speaker was in on the con as well. Wood threw an errant pickoff throw to second base into center field, and somehow the ball managed to get past Speaker in center. The right fielder had to track the ball down while Giants runners circled the bases. The Red Sox lost the game 11-4.
1919-1921 - There are a few interesting things to know about the 1919 fix of the World Series. First, even though the White Sox were heavy betting favorites to win, the Cincinnati Reds had a better record (96-44) than the Chicago White Sox (88-52). Second, in truth, the White Sox as a team weren’t that underpaid when compared to other players and teams of that era. What stood out was owner Charles Comiskey’s “fat cat” nature. He made it clear to his players that not only did he own them like farm animals, (which was true thanks to baseball’s reserve clause which contractually bound players to teams for life prior to the advent of free agency in the 1970s) but that he was and would always be much richer than any of them could dream of becoming. Third, the fix was an open secret among other ball players, as several bet on the Series, with the aforementioned Hal Chase winning a reported $40,000 on the eventual outcome. Fourth, through the course of the Series, the Reds as a team committed as many fielding errors as the White Sox did, leaving a few to think that players on the Reds also attempted to fix at least a game or two, if not the entire Series themselves. And finally, had the players of the White Sox really needed the money that badly, they could’ve just gone out and won the damn thing without all the controversy. The winner’s share was $5,000 apiece—more than what most of the crooked players earned for their part in the fix.
The 1919 World Series is an excellent case to study and recommended to those who don’t believe gambling conspiracies can happen. Eliot Asinof ’s Eight Men Out chronicles all the sordid details. Besides the eight White Sox players—“Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, “Lefty” Williams, Ed Cicotte, Chick Gandil, “Happy” Felsch, Swede Risberg, and Fred McMullin—at least nine others outside baseball contributed to setting up the fix. Also, Comiskey and both league presidents were made aware of the potential existence of the fix immediately following the end of the first game. Even armed with this damning information in the midst of the Series itself, baseball didn’t get around to investigating the matter until nearly a year after the Series was over.
The strange part is how the Black Sox fix eventually came to light. In August 1920, a Kansas City gambler by the name of Frog Thompson received a telegram from a Chicago Cubs pitcher Claude Hendrix telling Frog to bet $5,000 on the Cubs’ opponent that day, the last-place Phillies. At the same time, another telegram (from a different source than Frog’s) arrived for Chicago Cubs president William Veeck, Sr. detailing the possibility that day’s game against the Phillies was being rigged. It was followed by five more telegrams relating the same information. The Cubs altered their pitching rotation, benching Hendrix in favor of their best pitcher, Grover Cleveland Alexander. The Cubs still dropped the game to the Phillies 3-0.
But the alert flags had been raised. Frog’s telegram eventually wound up on the desk of sportswriter Otto Floto. Floto published a story detailing baseball’s gambling issues based in part on Frog’s telegram. Soon afterwards, as rumors and innuendo swirled, Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton further broke the story in the New York World. Why was a Chicago sportswriter published in a New York newspaper? Because Fullerton’s employers at the Chicago Herald and Examiner refused to run his story on the alleged fix of the 1919 Series. The thought was that Fullerton wrote the anti-White Sox story simply because he had predicted them to win and wanted to save his own reputation. With these and other stories circulating nationwide, an actual investigation into baseball’s gambling problem finally began.
In September of 1920, a grand jury convened to look into the allegations behind the Cubs-Phillies game in question—not the 1919 World Series. The grand jury took testimony from owners, managers, and players regarding gambling in baseball. Somehow during the grand jury’s questioning, the whole scheme behind the White Sox fix unexpectedly spilled out for the world to hear. White Sox pitcher Ed Cicotte confessed to taking the $10,000 bribe to throw games, and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson signed a confession admitting to taking part as well. (For all you apologists out there, Jackson did indeed pocket $5,000 to participate in the fix.) Suddenly all focus shifted away from the Cubs-Phillies game to the previous year’s World Series, and eight of the White Sox found themselves indicted.
