The 1919 World Series was the championship series in Major League Baseball for the 1919 season. The 16th edition of the World Series, it matched the American League champion Chicago White Sox against the National League champion Cincinnati Reds. Although most World Series have been of the best-of-seven format, the 1919 World Series was a best-of-nine series (along with , , and ). Major League Baseball decided to try the best-of-nine format partly to increase popularity of the sport and partly to generate more revenue.
The events of the series are often associated with the Black Sox Scandal, when several members of the Chicago franchise conspired with gamblers, allegedly led by Arnold Rothstein, to throw the World Series games. The 1919 World Series was the last World Series to take place without a Commissioner of Baseball in place. In 1920, the various franchise owners installed Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first "Commissioner of Baseball."
In August 1921, despite being acquitted from criminal charges, eight players from the White Sox were banned from organized baseball for either fixing the series or having knowledge about the fix.
Teams
Chicago White Sox
In 1917, the Sox won the World Series and, managed by William "Kid" Gleason, the 1919 Chicago White Sox had the best record in the American League. Team owner Charlie Comiskey had succeeded in building one of the most powerful teams in baseball. Most of the same players had defeated the New York Giants in the 1917 World Series, four games to two. They had fallen to sixth place in the American League in 1918, largely as a result of losing their best player, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and a few of his teammates as well, to World War I service. Comiskey fired manager Pants Rowland after the season, replacing him with Kid Gleason, who had played over 20 years in the majors but had never managed before. The 88–52 White Sox won the American League pennant again in 1919, by games over the Cleveland Indians (world champions the following year).
Jackson was the unquestioned star of the team. The left fielder hit .351 that season, fourth in the league and in the AL's top five in slugging percentage, RBI, total bases and base hits. He was not the only star in a lineup with hardly a weak spot, as former A's superstar leadoff hitter Eddie Collins, one of the greatest second basemen of all time, was still going strong in his early thirties, hitting .319 with a .400 on-base percentage. Right fielder Nemo Leibold hit .302 with 81 runs scored. First baseman Chick Gandil hit .290, third baseman Buck Weaver .296, and center fielder Oscar "Hap" Felsch hit .275 and tied Jackson for the team lead in home runs with only 7 (as the dead-ball era was coming to a close). Even typical "good field, no hit" catcher Ray Schalk hit .282 that year, and shortstop Swede Risberg was not an automatic out with the .256 average and 38 RBI. Manager Gleason's bench contained two impressive hitters, outfielder Shano Collins and infielder Fred McMullin, both veterans of the 1917 world championship.
The 1919 pennant-winning pitching staff was led by a pair of aces and a very promising rookie. Knuckleballer Eddie Cicotte had become one of the AL's best pitchers after turning 30 and discovering the "shine ball;" he had won 28 games for the 1917 champions, and after an off-year in 1918 had come back with a hefty 29–7, leading the league in wins and second in earned run average to Washington's veteran "Big Train" Walter Johnson. Next came Claude "Lefty" Williams, at 23–11 and 2.64. Twenty-six-year-old rookie Dickie Kerr started only 17 games, but turned in a solid 13–7 and 2.88. Fourth in the rotation was Urban "Red" Faber, who had beaten the Giants three times in the 1917 World Series but had an off-year in 1919 at 11–9 and 3.83 in 20 starts. He was ill and unable to pitch in the Series, limiting Gleason to three top-of-the-line starters for what could be nine games.
However, all was not well in the White Sox camp. Tension between many of the players and owner Comiskey was quite high, given his penny-pinching ways memorialized in two urban legends: (1) that he told Gleason to shut down Cicotte in the last days of the regular season to prevent him from winning 30 games, a milestone which would have earned him a sizeable $10,000 bonus; (2) that many derided the White Sox as the Black Sox because Comiskey wouldn't pay to have their uniforms laundered regularly, and they became blacker and blacker due to accumulated sweat, grime, and dirt.