Chicago White Sox players "Shoeless Joe Jackson", Charles "Swede" Risberg and Buck Weaver played in their final professional major league baseball game of their career.
Joe Jackson.
The next day they were to be indicted due to the Black Sox Scandal.
Risburg, left and Weaver, right, during their trial.
Risburg, a shortstop, had received $15,000 for his role in fixing the World Series. He played semi pro baseball for a decade and ended up owning a bar in his later years. During his career he'd been spiked during a game and the injury never healed, resulting in the eventual amputation of his leg. He remained a baseball fan throughout his life and died in California at age 81 in 1975.
Buck Weaver.
Weaver wasn't part of the scandal and fought, unsuccessfully, to be reinstated. He was bitter about receiving the same penalty as the players who were guilty. He successfully sued to receive his 1921 pay, but he never got back into professional baseball even though he tried for years to do so. Often missed in his story, however, is that he knew that the fix was going on and, while not part of it, he didn't report it.
1919 White Sox.
Like other Black Sox team members, Weaver did play semi pro ball for years. He remained in Chicago and also worked odd jobs to support a large extended family. At one point he owned a series of six drug stores with his brother in law in Chicago and both men were offered partnerships in Walgreens, which they declined. All the stores were lost in the Great Depression. Weaver died at age 65 in 1956 in Chicago.
Joe Jackson in 1919.
Often portrayed as a simple man, and he was indeed illiterate, Jackson twice refused the bribe money before another player threw the money on his hotel floor, after which he attempted to do what Weaver did not, get an audience with Cominsky, the team owner. Cominsky refused to see him. He was never present at any of the conspirators meetings and he played a good World Series. Because of his illiteracy its difficult to tell what his view was of what was occuring, but it does seem to be likely that he knew the conspiracy was going on, and tried to do something about it, after which he may have refused to participate by playing a good Series.
Jackson and his wife Katie on their wedding day in 1908.
Jackson would manage and play in semi pro baseball for some time before moving to South Carolina where he and his wife ran a number of small businesses, including a dry cleaning shop, a barbecue restaurant and a liquor store. He died of a heart attack at age 64 in 1951, making him the first of the Black Sox players to pass away.
On the same day some dignitaries from the French Army arrived in New York.
Major General Robert Lee Bullard and Marshal Marie Émile Fayolle at Fayolle's arrival at Governors Island, New York, September 27, 1920.
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