The Main Event
- August 31, 1920 – After learning of suspicious gambling activity tied to the day’s game, Cubs president Bill Veeck scratches scheduled starter Claude Hendrix in favor of Pete Alexander; the Phillies win 3-0 anyway. Veeck later reports receiving telegrams suggesting the game had been fixed in the Phillies’ favor, and a resulting grand jury investigation helps uncover the plot to fix the 1919 World Series.
On the afternoon of August 31, 1920, the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs took the field at Cubs Park for a game that, on paper, meant nothing. The Phillies sat in eighth place in the National League. The Cubs were mired in fifth. Neither club had anything left to play for.
Yet that forgettable matchup between two also-rans set off a chain of events that would expose the 1919 World Series fix and permanently alter the trajectory of Major League Baseball.
Suspicious Money Pours In on the Phillies
Trouble started before the first pitch. A telegram landed on the desk of Cubs president William Veeck Sr. warning him that “commissions of thousands of dollars” were being bet on the Phillies, and that rumors were circulating that the game was fixed. More calls and wires followed with the same warning.
Veeck started asking questions and did not like what he found. Gamblers were suddenly pouring money onto Philadelphia, and the betting odds had flipped overnight from 2-to-1 on the Cubs to 2-to-1 in favor of the last-place Phillies. For a game with no pennant implications, that kind of money made no sense unless something crooked was happening.
Veeck moved fast. He had manager Fred Mitchell scratch scheduled starter Claude Hendrix, who had already drawn gambling suspicion in Chicago, and replace him with ace Grover Cleveland Alexander, a 22-game winner that season. As an added incentive, Veeck promised Alexander a $500 bonus for a win, worth more than $7,000 in today’s money.
Alexander, a former Phillies great before being traded to Chicago in 1918, pitched well but got no help from his defense. In the second inning, Cubs second baseman Buck Herzog let a ground ball skip through his legs on what should have been an inning-ending double play. The Phillies cashed in the mistake, and outfielder Bevo LeBourveau drove in the difference with a triple and, later, a home run.
Philadelphia won, 3-0, behind a five-hit outing from Phillies starter Lee Meadows. Gamblers who had bet on the whispered fix collected.
Ironically, Alexander himself had a personal tie to the world of gambling that swirled around the sport. His close friend and former teammate on the Phillies, Billy Maharg, doubled as the team’s trainer, chauffeur, and a well-known figure among Philadelphia bookies. Nothing ever tied Alexander himself to wrongdoing, but the connection shows how small the world around the team really was.
Veeck Demands an Investigation
Unsatisfied, Veeck hired the Burns Detective Agency to dig into the game and its betting patterns. When his internal inquiry stalled, he went public, telling reporters he suspected the contest had been compromised.
Chicago sportswriters picked up the story and pushed for an official investigation. Cook County Judge Charles A. McDonald, a friend of American League president Ban Johnson and White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, took notice. On September 7, 1920, McDonald brought the Cubs-Phillies game before a newly empaneled Cook County grand jury.
What began as a narrow look at one late-August game quickly grew into something much larger. By September 10, McDonald had broadened the grand jury’s mandate to cover “baseball gambling in all its ramifications.”
Several Cubs players, including Hendrix and Herzog, testified. None were ever charged, though all were quietly released by the team before the following season.
As the inquiry expanded, attention pivoted toward a bigger, year-old mystery: persistent rumors that the underdog Cincinnati Reds’ upset of the heavily favored Chicago White Sox in the 1919 World Series had been rigged by gamblers.
A Philadelphia Ex-Boxer Breaks tells his story
The grand jury might have stalled there if not for another Philadelphia connection. Billy Maharg, the same man tied to Alexander and the Phillies, had been the go-between who helped connect Chicago players to gambler Arnold Rothstein during the 1919 Series fix.
In late September 1920, with the investigation closing in, Maharg decided to tell his story to James Isaminger, a sportswriter he knew at the Philadelphia North American. Maharg detailed how three of the eight Series games had been thrown.
His account hit the national wires, and the dam broke. The very next day, White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte and outfielder “Shoeless” Joe Jackson admitted to the grand jury that they had taken money from gamblers, followed shortly by pitcher Lefty Williams.
Indictments, a Trial, and Lifetime Bans
On October 20, 1920, the grand jury indicted eight White Sox players and several gamblers. All eight players, forever remembered as the “Black Sox,” were acquitted at trial in 1921.
Newly installed baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned them from the game for life anyway, declaring that no player who conspired to fix a game, or who sat on knowledge of such a fix, would ever play organized baseball again.
Aftermath: A Stabbing and a Standing Ovation
The fallout reached even further. Weeks after the scandal broke, Cubs infielder Buck Herzog, whose second-inning error had helped fuel suspicion about the August 31 game, was attacked and slashed with a knife by an angry fan at an exhibition game in Joliet, Illinois. The fan had mistaken Herzog for one of the accused White Sox players. It marked the end of Herzog’s major-league career.
Philadelphia, however, responded to the scandal with unexpected grace. Days after the Black Sox story broke, Connie Mack‘s Athletics took the field at Shibe Park, and roughly 15,000 fans rose to give Mack a hero’s ovation as he entered the dugout. It was, Mack said, a reminder that fans still believed in baseball.
A century later, the connection remains one of the sport’s strangest footnotes. An inconsequential late-season game between two losing teams, and two men with deep Philadelphia ties in Grover Cleveland Alexander and Billy Maharg, helped pull back the curtain on baseball’s most notorious scandal.
Philadelphia Baseball Events for August 31
- August 31, 1894 – Billy Hamilton steals seven bases in an eight-inning victory over Washington, swiping second base four times and third three times.
- August 31, 1912 – The Red Sox beat the A’s 2-1, running Boston’s record to 87-37; afterward Connie Mack concedes the pennant, saying he never realized how strong the Red Sox were, with 30 games still left on Boston’s schedule.
- August 31, 1932 – The Tigers end Athletics pitcher Tony Freitas‘ 10-game winning streak, beating him 5-4 behind two home runs from Detroit’s Chief Hogsett.
- August 31, 1950 – The Phillies take their first charter flight, a TWA Constellation from St. Louis to Boston that hits turbulence in a thunderstorm, scaring a team full of first-time flyers and prompting a concerned call to the hotel from TWA head Howard Hughes.
- August 31, 1956 – With scheduled starter Harvey Haddix sidelined by back spasms, infielder Granny Hamner steps in as emergency starter, going 4 1/3 innings and taking the loss.
- August 31, 1979 – The Phillies fire manager Danny Ozark, who went 594-510-1 with three division titles, and replace him with Dallas Green, the club’s farm director and a former Phillies pitcher.
- August 31, 1981 – Released Nino Espinosa.
- August 31, 1983 – Traded four players to be named to San Diego for Sixto Lezcano and a player to be named.
- August 31, 2003 – Traded Eric Valent to Cincinnati for Kelly Stinnett.
- August 31, 2006 – Ryan Howard takes Pedro Astacio deep for his 49th home run of the season at RFK Stadium, breaking Mike Schmidt‘s single-season franchise record.
- August 31, 2007 – Kane Davis becomes the 28th pitcher used by the Phillies that season, setting a new team record.
- August 31, 2007 – Traded Russell Branyan to St. Louis for a player to be named.
- August 31, 2011 – Cliff Lee earns the win in a 3-0 shutout of Cincinnati, closing out a month at 5-0 with a 0.45 ERA — only the third pitcher ever (with Walter Johnson in 1913 and Bob Gibson in 1968) to post two sub-0.50 ERA, 5-win months in a season.
- August 31, 2013 – Traded John McDonald to Boston for Nefi Ogando, and sent Michael Young and cash to Los Angeles for Rob Rasmussen.
- August 31, 2014 – Traded John Mayberry Jr. to Toronto for Gustavo Pierre.
- August 31, 2017 – Claimed Juan Nicasio off waivers from Pittsburgh.
Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for August 31
- Monte Cross (born 1869) – A shortstop who anchored the Phillies infield from 1898-1901 — hitting the first home run of the 20th century in an 1900 win over Boston — before jumping crosstown to the Athletics in 1902 and helping them capture AL pennants.
- Buster Brown (born 1881) – A right-handed pitcher who spent three seasons with the Phillies (1907-1909), posting his best mark in 1907 at 9-6 with a 2.42 ERA, before finishing his career with the Boston Braves.
- Frank Pearce (born 1905) – A right-handed pitcher who appeared in 32 games for the Phillies from 1933-1935, going 5-6 with a 4.77 ERA in a brief major league career.
- Danny Litwhiler (born 1916) – An outfielder for the Phillies from 1940-1943 who in 1942 became the first MLB outfielder to play a full season without an error, a glove now housed in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- Bill Nahorodny (born 1953) – A catcher who made his major league debut with the Phillies on September 27, 1976, before being dealt away and spending the bulk of his career with the White Sox and other clubs.
- Von Hayes (born 1958) – An outfielder/first baseman acquired before the 1983 season in a five-player trade that earned him the nickname “Five-for-One”; he made the 1989 All-Star team and once became the first player to hit two home runs, including a grand slam, in the same first inning.
- Mike Hartley (born 1961) – A right-handed relief pitcher who spent parts of the 1991-1992 seasons in the Phillies bullpen during a seven-year career split among six clubs.
- Juan Nicasio (born 1986) – A right-handed reliever claimed off waivers from Pittsburgh by the Phillies in 2017, who returned to pitch for the club again in 2019.
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