[Sean Deveney]The Original Curse Did the Cubs Throw the 1918 World Series to Babe Ruths Red Sox and Incite the Black Sox Scandal(pdf){Zzzzz} torrent

IN THE GRAND TRADITION OF EIGHT MEN OUT . . .
the untold story of baseball’s ORIGINAL SCANDAL

Did the Chicago Cubs throw the World Series in 1918—and get away with it?

Who were the players involved—and why did they do it?

Were gambling and corruption more widespread across the leagues than previously believed?

Were the players and teams “cursed” by their actions?

Finally, is it time to rewrite baseball history?

With exclusive access to surprising new evidence, Sporting News reporter Sean Deveney details a scandal at the core of baseball’s greatest folklore—in a golden era as exciting and controversial as our sports world today. This inside look at the pivotal year of 1918 proves that baseball has always been a game overrun with colorful characters, intense human drama, and explosive controversy.

"The Original Curse is not just about baseball. It is a sweeping portrait of America at war in 1918. . . . In the end, the proper question is not, ‘How could a player from that era fix the World Series?’ It’s, ‘How could he not?’”
—Ken Rosenthal, FOX Sports, from the Introduction

"Sean Deveney plays connect-the-dots in this intriguing account of a possible conspiracy to throw the 1918 World Series. Thoroughly researched and well written, The Original Curse is a must-read for baseball fans and anyone who loves a good mystery. Is Max Flack the Shoeless Joe of the 1918 Cubs? Deveney lays out the case and let's readers decide if the fix was in."
—Paul Sullivan, Cubs beat writer, Chicago Tribune

"This book gives the reader a fun and honest look at baseball as it used to be-- the good guys, the gamblers, the cheaters, the drunks, the inept leaders. But, more than that, it puts those characters into the context of Chicago, Boston and America at the time of World War I, and you wind up with a unique way to explain the motivations of those characters."
—David Kaplan, host, Chicago Tribune Live and WGN's Sports Central

“Deveney’s painstaking study of the 1918 World Series between the Cubs and Red Sox argues that the Black Sox scandal was not an aberration and might have had an antecedent. Deveney’s scholarship does not detract from his ability to spin a good tale: his tendency to imagine players’ conversations will remind readers of Leigh Montville’s The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth…. A welcome companion to Susan Dellinger’s Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series, Deveney’s book contributes greatly to our understanding of this decisive period in baseball and American morals."
—Library Journal

Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (September 2, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0071629971
ISBN-13: 978-0071629973

Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Sean Deveney has been with The Sporting News since 1999, covering all major sports. Deveney has covered dozens of major championships: the NBA Finals, World Series, Super Bowl, the NCAA Tournament, college football's championship game and the PGA championship. He has written about icons such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, and less-than-iconic topics including Roger Clemens and the inside world of sports agents. He is the Sporting News' baseball insider. After graduation from Northwestern University in 1997, Deveney worked as the sports editor for The Sentry-News in Slidell, LA, where he won a Louisiana Press Association award for best feature story. A native of Lynn, Mass., who grew up with a passion for the Red Sox and limited talent as a second baseman, Deveney also has been honored in The Best American Sports Writing anthology for a story about Pedro Martinez. He has been a regular guest on ESPN2's First Take, ESPN Classic, Comcast Sports Chicago Tribune Live, with appearances on Fox News, CNN, CBS and MSNBC. He appears on numerous radio shows around the country each week.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Entertaining and educational account of the year baseball almost died and two curses may have begun
By cs211 on December 6, 2009
"The Original Curse" dives deep into the 1918 baseball season, the year before the Black Sox World Series-throwing scandal, and poses the provocative question: is it possible that the White Sox were not the first and only team to throw a World Series - and could their crosstown rivals, the Cubs, have done so the previous year? What sounds, at first blush, like a White Sox fan's fantasy, appears to be plausible or even likely after reading Sean Deveny's book. There's not nearly enough evidence to conclusively prove Deveny's hypothesis, but if the case Deveny assembles were to be heard by a grand jury, they would certainly call for further investigation. Unfortunately, too much time has passed and there is no smoking gun (such as a deathbed confession) to conclusively prove Deveny's case.

A good history book shatters myths and provides a much more detailed, nuanced, complex picture of a particular situation. Deveny certainly achieves this in "The Original Curse". Almost all baseball fans know of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, and think of that White Sox team as committing the biggest possible sin against the game, for purely selfish reasons. 1918 is also wistfully known by Red Sox fans as the last World Series won by their dominant early-twentieth century team before an 86-year drought. However, what Deveny shows is that 1918 was one of the strangest, most dysfunctional years in all of major league baseball history. Yes, the Red Sox did win the World Series that year, but it was anything but a competition between the best, most talented teams and players

No smoking gun, but plenty of questions
By Barry Sparks VINE VOICE on March 28, 2010
Author Sean Deveney raises some interesting questions about whether the 1918 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs was played on the up-and-up.

Although the circumstances were right for crookedness in baseball and some regular season games were definitely fixed in 1918, according to Deveney, he admits that it's debatable if the World Series was fixed.

Given the circumstances, however, no one should be shocked if the World Series was fixed. Gambling was one of baseball's greatest negatives and rumors persisted about players throwing games. Gamblers were active and open at the ballparks. But baseball refused to confront the problem, choosing instead to sweep it under the rug. If a player was suspected of throwing games, he most likely was quietly traded.

The Cubs had a number of players with shady pasts, including Lee Magee, Claude Hendrix, Fred Merkle and Phil Douglass.

Uncertainty dominated baseball and the World Series in 1918. The advent of World War I siphoned the talent from many teams. Secretary of War Newton Baker declared the season would end on Sept. 1. The World Series was scheduled to begin Sept. 5, yet no one was quite sure if it would be allowed to be played.

The 1918 World Series suffered from reduced fan interest and limited projected revenues, based on lower ticket prices and 10 percent of the gate receipts slated to go to charity. For the first time, players in the World Series were to split 60 percent of the revenue from the first four games (with a $2,000 per man cap for the winners and $1,400 per man for the losers), while the remainder was to be split among the teams that finished second, third and fourth in the two leagues

So much for Yankees fanChanting 1918
By Henry Arthur on October 1, 2009
Up until 2004, a favorite chant of Yankees fans was "1918", reminding Red Sox fans about the last year they had won the Series. Now, we learn that even the 1918 series win was probably bogus! Here's a most convincing tale - a great blend of sports and U.S. /world history and coming at a perfect time when the stars are once again aligned ... with the Yankees taking the East, the questionable Red SAWX heading to the post season as the Wild Card. The Cubs end up in 2nd place and the Wrigley faithful are sadly licking their season ending wounds! All is not lost, because we have books like THE ORIGINAL CURSE to get fans through the long winter months. But, first an exciting postseason that the serious fan - despite not having a team in the running - will embrace,but with a more objective, less frenetic point of view.