Published: October 29, 2009 09:00 am      

Batter up...!

Carl Keith Greene

OK, I’m not much of a sports fan but here’s a sports teaser for you.

What significant event has happened in Major League Baseball since the last time the Yankees met the Phillies in the World Series?

I have no hints, runs or errors (How’s that for word usage?) for you, and please don’t slide to the base of this column for the answer.

So let’s discuss something else and come back to the teaser in the ninth inning of this column.

There was a short time when I kind of got into baseball on television and radio. I remember when I was maybe in the sixth grade and had gotten a tiny, pocket-sized transistor radio. It was made by Mitsubishi and had a tiny ear plug.

I took it to school to listen to a World Series game in class. And, guess what? I pulled it off. Could have been because my teacher was also a baseball fan.

That was back when the series was in October, I mean early October, not so late that the Rockies (the mountains, not the team) were already seeing snowfall.

Baseball seems now to be in the back seat, what with the development of professional basketball and football beginning in the 1950s. The steroid scares have also perhaps put the brakes on for many former baseball fans who thought for so long that the baseball heroes would never take any kind of performance enhancing drugs.

The MLB players of today have violated the sacred rules of the game, as have other professional athletes, but baseball fans seemed to take the steroid use by their heroes a bit harder than the basketball and football fans.

The sacredness of baseball has been soiled and even in light of previous scandals, baseball was still sort of thought of as lily-white until the Pete Rose gambling incident. Then the steroid revelations were reported.

Perhaps the 1919 scandal wasn’t thought of as dreadful.

The Black Sox Scandal was the most famous scandal in MLB history.

Seems that eight players from the Chicago White Sox (who were nicknamed the Black Sox) reportedly threw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

Investigation of the incident has revealed only controversial details.

The story came to light late in the 1920 season. The players were acquitted of the charges, mainly because in those days throwing a baseball game was not a crime.

The eight were banned from organized baseball for life.

Gambling on baseball was previously an ongoing problem, but it reached a head in 1920.

The scandal prompted appointing a Commissioner of Baseball who was a former federal judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who tried to rid the game of gambling influence.

The players involved were “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, “Lefty” Williams, “Buck” Weaver, “Chick” Gandil, Fred McMullin, “Swede” Risberg and “Happy” Felsch.

Interestingly, London had a baseball club as early as 1895.

In a pamphlet published that year, the club was described this way, “This club is famous throughout the State as the undisputed champions of the mountains, always ready to meet all comers at the bat and in the field.”

The summer before, London had defeated Pittsburg, Corbin and Manchester, “the three strongest teams in Eastern Kentucky, out of London.”

The year before, the pamphlet says, London “defeated Williamsburg by such a large score that the team has never fully recovered from the shock.”

London tried to get the Barbourville team to play them, but the Barbourville captain wrote back saying there was no use for his club to go to London, “as there could be only one result — the defeat of the Barbourville club.”

London’s players in 1895 were: W.R. Hackney, manager; George Riley, catcher; Layton Moore, pitcher; George Wren, shortstop; Lot Reid, first base; James Williams, captain and second base; Bob Carrier, third base; Jim Wren, left field; Sam Wren, center field; Con Wren, right field; John Ewell, Warren Scoville and Will Hardin, substitutes.

Now, the answer to my baseball question. The World Series that last saw the Phillies take on the Yankees was the last “all white” World Series.

Carl Keith Greene is a writer for the Times-Tribune. He can be reached at cgreene@thetimestribune.com