MLB Narrative History: The Cleanest Black Sox

What Did Buckie Know and When Did He Know It?

At a minimum, it can be shown that Buck Weaver was at least initially aware of what became quicksand-like negotiations between the team and the gamblers, but he wasn’t present at the meetings, and his play belied any hint he was “throwing” anything.

A telling photograph of Weaver’s effort exists. It appeared in the New York Daily News during the Series, and shows Cincinnati’s catcher about to tag Buck out at home. This is a point at which a play can be thrown. The camera froze the moment just before Weaver hits the dirt in what will clearly be a fade-away slide. The attitude of Weaver’s blurred figure suggests that he is running hard. Obviously, the play was close, and Weaver was out, but he could have ensured this by taking a straight route to the catcher, who had to tag him. A minimal argument would be that this still photo appears to be of an honestly-made play.

He made no errors in the Series. (By contrast, in his previous World Series in 1917, he had made four. Those were at short, but Weaver had played most of his early career at short. It wasn’t unfamiliar to him. Of course, the 1917 team was not the Black Sox – they won. No one questioned four errors when the errant player was a world champion.) In 1919 Weaver had nine putouts, 18 assists, and five extra-base hits in the eight games played. He got no money from the gamblers.

But Buckie would be caught in the cogs of machinery both legal and uniquely personal to Judge Landis’ mind, and as a professional athlete he was ground into a large meat patty. Although acquitted by a jury in a fairly crooked state trial featuring disappeared player confessions (not including any by Weaver), Buck and the other seven Black Sox were banned for life from baseball by Landis, the newly-minted first commissioner.

That decision followed close upon the heels of their actual acquittal by a jury, and near the heels of Weaver’s .333 effort in 1920.  Oddly, a good deal of the language of the fateful, labored sentence that became Landis’ decree about the Black Sox seemed specifically aimed at Weaver (italics):  “Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player that sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball!” We’ll return to this later.