Why I Want Both Teams to Win the World Series
The 2005 World Series represents Houston’s first appearance in the fall classic. The franchise was formed in 1962 as the Houston Colt .45s, but when the team moved to the Astrodome in 1965, their name was changed to the Astros, seeking to establish a more modern image for the team and city. Gone was the frontier image of blazing six-guns to be replaced with a futuristic logo identified with the space program. This futuristic imagery, however, was unable to propel the Astros into the World Series, as the franchise experienced heart-breaking playoff defeats in 1980, 1986, and 2004.
The history of the White Sox presents a considerably different story. The White Sox and their owner Charles Comiskey played a leading role in the formation of the American League in 1901. They won the World Series in 1917, and the White Sox were favored to defeat the Cincinnati Reds in the 1919 fall classic. However, the Reds triumphed, and rumors swirled that prominent Chicago players had conspired with gamblers to “fix” the World Series. As the White Sox battled for another American League pennant late into the 1920 season, a Chicago grand jury, looking into allegations of gambling in the sport, indicted eight members of the White Sox, who were suspended for the remainder of the season. Al Cicotte, Joe Jackson, Chick Gandil, Happy Felsch, Swede Risberg, Fred McMullin, Lefty Williams, and Buck Weaver were acquitted in a jury trial after their previous “confessions” disappeared. But they were not allowed to return to the playing field. Afraid that gambling allegations would undermine box office receipts, baseball franchise owners tapped federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis to serve as the sport’s first commissioner. Landis banned the eight players from organized baseball for life, and despite numerous efforts to clear their names; the official ban persists to this day.
The classic study of the “fixed” World Series is Eliot Asinof’s Eight Men Out, adapted for the silver screen in a faithful rendition by independent filmmaker John Sayles. In Asinof’s account, greatly influenced by novelist James T. Farrell who was a White Sox fan throughout his life, the eight players are assumed guilty, but there are extenuating circumstances. Comiskey was a miserly owner who exploited his players. For example, star pitcher Al Cicotte was promised a bonus if he won 30 games for the team, but when he approached this mark, Comiskey ordered his manager to limit the pitcher’s starts. Frustrated White Sox players, led by first baseman Chick Gandil and pressured by gamblers, then conspired to “fix” the Series and seek revenge against Comiskey. Thus, the Black Sox scandal may be placed within the historical context of the labor unrest sweeping the nation during the post World War I period. In addition, Landis was also known for his judicial decisions silencing such voices of dissent as the Industrial Workers of the World. Landis also supported ownership efforts to keep blacks out of the game.
Some baseball scholars dispute the assumption that all of the players were guilty. Don Gropman insists that Shoeless Joe Jackson’s outstanding performance in the 1919 Series provides evidence that he did not attempt to throw games. There is also a well-orchestrated effort to clear the name of Buck Weaver, whose guilt may consist of simply not informing on the other players. Accordingly, a 2005 victory by the Chicago White Sox may at last lift the curse of the Black Sox, an even more damning indictment than that of the Red Sox who sold the Great Bambino, Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Exorcising the ghosts of 1919, which the White Sox tried to do in their 1959 World Series appearance, might also provide impetus for the campaigns to clear Weaver and place Jackson in baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Thus, a White Sox victory might be construed as a progressive restoration and triumph for these historical victims of capitalist greed. And the White Sox also offer greater diversity than the Astros. The 2005 Chicago squad is led by Latino manager Ozzie Guillen and features Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras, who was once the pitching hero of Fidel Castro. Houston, on the other hand, is an almost exclusively white team. They feature one Hispanic starter in rookie center fielder Willie Taveras and include no African Americans on the team, a reflection of baseball’s continuing failure to elicit interest and support within the black community.
There are few progressive reasons for me to support the Astros, but sometimes the heart overrides political considerations. When Houston entered the National League in 1962, I was in the seventh grade, living in a small Texas Panhandle community right out of Larry McMurtry’s Last Picture Show. My family was poor, and my father was basically illiterate, having dropped out of school to work during the Great Depression. We survived by picking cotton and chopping weeds in the cotton fields. School offered little of interest beyond an emphasis upon football, and during the evenings I tired of watching endless Westerns on television. A new window on the world opened for me when I discovered that every night I could listen to a Houston ball game on the radio. Saving a few dollars, I ordered my first scorebook, and late into the evening I tracked the progress of my heroes as they traveled throughout the country. My obsession with the sport and scoring the games was similar to that described by Doris Kearns Goodwin in Wait Till Next Year, except that my experience was a more solitary one. But my evenings with the Colt .45s, and later the Astros, allowed me to survive some difficult days during junior high and high school. I will be forever grateful.
During my college days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was discovering progressive politics, I maintained my allegiance to the Houston franchise. Often the fate of the Astros was the only safe topic which I could discuss with family and members of my Panhandle farming community. As I pursued a career in teaching and scholarship, my interest in the Astros never waned, even in the face of crushing play-off defeats.
When Houston clinched its first World Series appearance after 44 long agonizing years, tears of joy poured down my face. Let’s face it, Houston, Texas, and the Astros do not represent the most progressive forces in the nation, even if one is able to make the argument that Jeff Bagwell, 15 years with the team, and Craig Biggio, an Astro for 19 years, constitute hard-nosed working-class baseball millionaires. But sometimes, as Carson McCullers suggests, the heart is a lonely hunter, and one has to follow the more emotional and sentimental path. So here’s to both the Astros and White Sox, and a traditional World Series full of squeeze plays, defense, and great pitching.