page_title: World Series
section_title: 1919 Black Sox Scandal
hierarchical_section_title: World Series / Modern World Series (1903–present) / 1919 Black Sox Scandal
caption_attribution_description: Four outfielders of the 1919 Chicago White Sox pose together on the eve of the World Series. This quartet featured Black Sox Shoeless Joe Jackson (far right) and Happy Felsh (second from left) as well as clean players Nemo Leibold and Shano Collins.
context_page_description: The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball in Canada and the USA, contested since 1903 between the American League champion team and the National League champion team. The winner of the World Series championship is determined through a best-of-seven playoff, and the winning team is awarded the Commissioner's Trophy. As the series is played during the fall season in North America, it is sometimes referred to as the Fall Classic. Since 2017, it has been officially known as the World Series presented by YouTube TV for sponsorship reasons.
  Prior to 1969, the team with the best regular-season win-loss record in each league automatically advanced to the World Series; since then each league has conducted a championship series preceding the World Series to determine which teams will advance, while those series have in turn been preceded by division series since 1995 and by wild card games in each league since 2012. The World Series has been contested 115 times as of 2019, with the AL winning 66 and the NL winning 49.
  Until 2002, home-field advantage in the World Series alternated from year to year between the National League and American League.
context_section_description: Gambling and game-fixing had been a problem in professional baseball from the beginning; star pitcher Jim Devlin was banned for life in 1877, when the National League was just two years old. Baseball's gambling problems came to a head in 1919, when eight players of the Chicago White Sox were alleged to have conspired to throw the 1919 World Series.
  The Sox had won the Series in 1917 and were heavy favorites to beat the Cincinnati Reds in 1919, but first baseman Chick Gandil had other plans. Gandil, in collaboration with gambler Joseph "Sport" Sullivan, approached his teammates and got six of them to agree to throw the Series: starting pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams, shortstop Swede Risberg, left fielder Shoeless Joe Jackson, center fielder Happy Felsch, and utility infielder Fred McMullin. Third baseman Buck Weaver knew of the fix but declined to participate, hitting .324 for the series from 11 hits and committing no errors in the field. The Sox, who were promised $100,000 for cooperating, proceeded to lose the Series in eight games, pitching poorly, hitting poorly and making many errors. Though he took the money, Jackson insisted to his death that he played to the best of his ability in the series (he was the best hitter in the series, including having hit the series' only home run, but had markedly worse numbers in the games the White Sox lost).
  During the Series, writer and humorist Ring Lardner had facetiously called the event the "World's Serious". The Series turned out to indeed have serious consequences for the sport. After rumors circulated for nearly a year, the players were suspended in September 1920.
  The "Black Sox" were acquitted in a criminal conspiracy trial. However, baseball in the meantime had established the office of Commissioner in an effort to protect the game's integrity, and the first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned all of the players involved, including Weaver, for life. The White Sox would not win a World Series again until 2005.
  The events of the 1919 Series, segueing into the "live ball" era, marked a point in time of change of the fortunes of several teams. The two most prolific World Series winners to date, the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals, did not win their first championship until the 1920s; and three of the teams that were highly successful prior to 1920 (the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs) went the rest of the 20th century without another World Series win. The Red Sox and White Sox finally won again in 2004 and 2005, respectively.  The Cubs had to wait over a century (until the 2016 season) for their next trophy. They did not appear in the Fall Classic from 1945 until 2016, the longest drought of any MLB club.
caption: The 1919 Chicago White Sox outfield
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