0301 - Jacob Pomrenke
Jacob Pomrenke is the Director of Editorial Content at the Society For American Baseball Research, and the chairman of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. During our conversation, he referenced a handful of things and people upon which you may want to do more research. Consider this page to be your “liner notes” for the episode so you can follow along.
Me and Jacob Pomrenke after getting to see a game used baseball from Game 5 of the 1919 World Series during a private tour of the Chicago Sports Museum at Harry Caray’s 7th Inning Stretch in Chicago.
Root For The Home Team
Jacob saw Cal Ripken, Jr. hit a home run in his 1,500th straight game. A young Edgar Martinez homered that night, too.
Brooks Robinson’s Favorite Carrot Cake
Jacob still has an old Baseball HOF yearbook from the '80s that included Brooks Robinson's wife's carrot cake recipe.
Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum
Located just a couple blocks away from Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the museum is absolutely worth a visit if you’re ever in Baltimore.
Listen to my interview with Executive Director Shawn Herne HERE
Jacob’s Grandfather
He grew up in Detroit in the 1940s and 50s, and once faced pitcher Billy Pierce just after he was signed by the Tigers.
He moved to Baltimore in the 1960s where he continued his love of baseball.
Tom Glavine
Tom and Jacob, each pictured here in 1996 (Jacob is on the right).
1991 Atlanta Braves
While they may have lost to the Minnesota Twins in Game 7 of the World Series, the 1991 Braves are still Jacob’s favorite team of all time.
Francisco Cabrera’s dramatic home run off Rob Dibble came in the 9th inning of the game on August 21st, 1991.
Tomahawk Chop
Jacob has been advocating for the retirement of “The Chop” for years, both publicly and privately.
"I think it's a misrepresentation of the Cherokee people or Native Americans in general,'' Cardinals pitcher Ryan Helsley said. "It's not me being offended by the whole mascot thing. It's not. It's about the misconception of us, the Native Americans, and how we're perceived in that way, or used as mascots.”
1997 SABR Convention
The 1997 Convention was held in Louisville, Kentucky. Convention organizer co-chairs were Harry Rothgerber and Henry Mayer. A total of 440 members and guests were in attendance. Pee Wee Reese and the Congressman Jim Bunning were the featured speakers, with Bunning giving the keynote address.
There were several interesting player panels. One consisted of Reese, Carl Erskine, Don Lund, Ed Stevens, and Tot Presnell.
Branch Rickey III and Louisville Redbirds General Manager Dale Owens also spoke.
The membership had a tour of the Louisville Slugger Museum and Bat Factory and also attended an American Association game between the Louisville Redbirds and the Iowa Cubs.
Len Levin
Len Levin was best known as a grammar/usage/style guru. For 30 years, he served as The Providence Journal’s news editor, overseeing the copy desk with a velvet fist.
Len was a teacher - he trained scores of copy editors who went on to work at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and many other metro papers.
He also taught copy editing and news writing courses as an adjunct professor at the University of Rhode Island.
After retirement, he helped organize and run the SABR Research Exchange.
SABR Research Committees
Covering a wide range of topics, the SABR Research Committees are a great way to get involved and dig deeper into a particular topic in which you may be interested.
With more than 30 different committees, there’s something for everyone. Any SABR member can join any of the committees, and any SABR member can be a member of as many committees as they choose.
SABR Biography Project
Probably the most ambitious project SABR has ever created, its goal is to write a biography of every single person to have ever played a game in the Major Leagues and the Negro Leagues.
Of the more than 24,000 players who qualify, SABR has written biographies on more than 6,000 of them.
The Negro Leagues Data Base at Seamheads.com is the most comprehensive data base of Negro Leagues players.
Fred McMullin
Until his fateful involvement in the plot to fix a World Series, Fred McMullin was known as the Chicago White Sox’ “lucky man.” His addition to the starting lineup coincided with late-season surges to win the American League pennant in 1917 and 1919.
Lefty Williams
After he was banned from baseball, Lefty Williams and his wife Lyria lived here, on Granville Ave. in Chicago, from 1927-36 until heading west to California.
John “Lefty” Sullivan
Lefty Sullivan had everything a pitcher could want: a blazing fastball, a knee-buckling curve, a disappearing spitball, and pinpoint control. The one thing he couldn’t do was field.
Joe Jenkins
Just ten days after the 1919 World Series ended, Joe Jenkins learned that his brother William, a prominent businessman in Mexico and a US consular agent there, had been kidnapped by revolutionary rebels. The incident set off an international furor between the two countries that stained William Jenkins’ reputation for the rest of his life.
SABR Games Project
A complement to the Biography Project, the SABR Games Project is a way to tell stories about individual games, usually ones which are historically significant in some way.
Follow the SABR Games Project HERE
July 21, 1919 - White Sox vs. Yankees Doubleheader
White Sox fans in certain sections of Comiskey Park may have caught a glimpse in the distance of the Wingfoot Express on its second excursion around downtown, which lifted off about a half-hour after the first game began at 2:00 p.m.
Soon after the start of the second game, many more fans could see the blimp in the air as it began to make its way south toward the White City Amusement Park at 63rd Street. If it had finished its voyage, Goodyear’s airship likely would have passed directly over Comiskey Park around the fourth or fifth inning.
Society for American Baseball Research
The Society for American Baseball Research is a membership organization dedicated to fostering the research and dissemination of the history and record of baseball, primarily through the use of statistics.
The organization was founded in Cooperstown, New York, on August 10, 1971, at a meeting of 16 “statistorians” coordinated by sportswriter Bob Davids. The organization now reports a membership of over 7,000. Become a member today!
Local Chapters
For most members, their primary chapter is the regional group closest to their physical location. But members also have the option to join any other SABR chapter and receive email newsletters, stay updated on upcoming events (both virtual and in-person), and connect with other like-minded members.
With more than 80 chapters worldwide, SABR chapters reach every corner of the baseball world.
Black Sox Scandal Research Committee
Jacob has been the chairman of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee since 2010. Amazing discoveries have been made since he has taken the reins, and he has coordinated many incredible events.
This photo, taken at the historic Mercantile Library in Cincinnati, shows Jacob moderating a panel discussion during the 2019 symposium for the 100th anniversary of the 1919 World Series.
Player Salaries
One of the groundbreaking discoveries of recent years is that of the player contract cards, which tell us exactly how much the players on the 1919 White Sox were being paid, and how that compared to other players in the American League.
The truth paints a very different picture than what we have been led to believe all these years.
There aren’t many known game balls that have survived from the 1919 World Series, but this game used ball from Game 5 was authenticated by Chicago Tribune sports editor Harvey Woodruff before being placed in a 1920 time capsule and buried in the walls of the old Chicago Tribune printing plant. It is now on display at the Chicago Sports Museum.
SABR Games Project article about that game
Black Sox In The Courtroom by Bill Lamb
A comprehensive, non-partisan account of the judicial proceedings spawned by the corruption of the 1919 World Series was badly needed. This book by Bill Lamb provides it.
The narrative of events was crafted from surviving fragments of the judicial record, contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the proceedings, museum archives and, occasionally, the literature of the Black Sox scandal.
Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof
Like many others, reading the book Eight Men Out is what got Jacob interested in the Black Sox Scandal.
Scandal on the South Side
This book, which Jacob edited, was published by SABR in 2015. It isn’t a rewriting of Eight Men Out, but it is the complete story of everyone associated with the 1919 Chicago White Sox.
Scandal on the South Side has full-life biographies on each of the 31 players who made an appearance for the White Sox in 1919, plus a comprehensive recap of Chicago’s pennant-winning season, the tainted World Series, and the sordid aftermath.
Burying The Black Sox by Gene Carney
In 2006, Gene’s book Burying The Black Sox: How Baseball's Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded was published.
By 2008, he had founded the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee.
FIRST MYTH OUT
This is the central thesis of Eight Men Out: Charles Comiskey’s “ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst,” as Eliot Asinof wrote. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
SECOND MYTH OUT
Eddie Cicotte and Chick Gandil were already conspiring with gamblers to fix the World Series several weeks before Charles Comiskey would have had the chance to renege on a bonus payment. And if Cicotte had pitched better in the pennant clincher, he would have earned his 30th win regardless.
THIRD MYTH OUT
Fixing the World Series was a total “team” effort and the White Sox players did most of the heavy lifting. Chick Gandil and Eddie Cicotte, separately and together, first approached Sport Sullivan, a prominent Boston bookmaker, and Sleepy Bill Burns, a former major-league pitcher, to get the fix rolling.
The Des Moines Connection to the Black Sox Scandal
FOURTH MYTH OUT
The primary source for the claim that Williams’ life was in danger is an anecdote by a neighbor boy — first told four decades after the fact — who claimed Lefty’s wife Lyria once told him the pitcher had been threatened.
FIFTH MYTH OUT
As the historians Dr. Harold and Dorothy Seymour wrote, “The groundwork for the crooked 1919 World Series, like most striking events in history, was long prepared. The scandal was not an aberration brought about solely by a handful of villainous players. It was a culmination of corruption and attempts at corruption that reached back nearly twenty years.”
SIXTH MYTH OUT
Just about everyone in the sport’s inner circle, including White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, who admitted in a 1930 interview that he heard reports about the fix before any games were played. But Comiskey and other baseball officials allowed most of the 1920 season to be played without publicizing what they had learned.
SEVENTH MYTH OUT
The Black Sox criminal trial, which resulted in the acquittal of the players, is often depicted as an example of Chicago-style corruption and shady courtroom shenanigans. But the theft of key files, including the players’ grand jury testimony transcripts, was a minor incident that played no significant role in the jury’s decision.
EIGHTH MYTH OUT
The players did not, as is commonly believed, hang their heads in shame and “drop out of sight” or “quietly vanish” after they were banned from baseball. Some of the players expressed remorse (especially Eddie Cicotte and Felsch), while others remained defiant or claimed innocence.
I’ve included many of the links in these liner notes, but there are dozens more on the proper SABR link. Go down the rabbit hole.
Abe Attell
Interviewed for the October, 1961 issue of Cavalier Magazine, Abe Attell may not have been the most reliable source for Eliot Asinof to have used for his research leading up to writing Eight Men Out. But he was the one who was willing to talk.
Joseph J. “Sport” Sullivan
Black Sox researcher and historian Bruce Allardice has done lots of writing on this gambling “Sport” Sullivan, not to be confused with the fight promoter named Martin J. Sullivan, who also was nicknamed “Sport.”
Sport Sullivan’s SABR Biography
The Boxer, The Ballplayer, and the Great Black Sox Manhunt
SABR Biographies of many of the gamblers, players, and other characters involved in the Black Sox Scandal, conveniently collected for you on THIS PAGE
Shoeless Joe Jackson
An Ever-Changing Story: Exposition and Analysis of Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Public Statements on the Black Sox Scandal by Bill Lamb
Eddie Collins
“Eddie Collins was not only one of baseball's most consistently good batters, but perhaps also its best bunter and hit-and-run man, as well as one of its craftiest base runners and finest defensive second basemen.” - Rick Huhn
Eddie Collins was quick to go on the record soon after the Black Sox Scandal was exposed. In an interview with Collyer’s Eye on October 30, 1920, he said “there wasn’t a single doubt in my mind” as early as the first inning of Game One that the games were being thrown. He added, “If the gamblers didn’t have Weaver and Cicotte in their pocket, then I don’t know a thing about baseball.”
But Collins’ tone changed over the years and he began to back off from his comments that he had known much about the scandal. “I was to be a witness to the greatest tragedy in baseball’s history — and I didn’t know it at the time,” he told The Sporting News in 1950.
Buck Weaver
Jacob’s online namesake. When Buck Weaver applied for reinstatement in 1953, he said, “Even a murderer serves his sentence and is let out. I got life.”
Vintage Base Ball
Jacob has been playing 1860s style Base Ball for over a decade now. If you follow him on twitter, @BuckWeaver, you probably already knew that.
Warren Ballpark in Bisbee, AZ
Jacob’s favorite place to play vintage ball, Warren Ballpark is one of the few adobe brick ballparks to have ever hosted professional baseball games.
It was originally built in 1909, and is one of the oldest ballparks in America. Dozens of major leaguers have played there, including a number of Sox, both Black and White.
Possibly the closest any of us will ever get to being able to see the 1919 World Series, a remarkable newsreel featuring nearly five minutes of game action from Games One and Three was recently discovered and is now available, thanks to the Library and Archives Canada and the Dawson City Museum in Yukon, Canada.
September 6, 1912 at Fenway Park
"Smoky Joe" Wood of the Boston Red Sox warms up prior to facing off against Walter Johnson, one of the most heralded pitching duels in baseball history.
“My regular pitching turn was scheduled to come on Saturday, and they moved it up a day so that Walter and I could face each other,” said Wood. “Walter had already won 16 in a row and his streak had ended. I had won 13 in a row and they challenged our manager, Jake Stahl, to pitch me against Walter, so Walter could stop my streak himself.”
Jackie Robinson at the Polo Grounds
If you’re going to go to a game at the Polo Grounds to watch Jackie Robinson play, you might as well pick one of the most famous games ever played, right?
Black Sox Trial production
The Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission and the DePaul University Theatre Department put on a reproduction of the Black Sox trial in Springfield and in Chicago, which Jacob helped keep factually accurate.
No Betting Allowed In This Park
Jim "Death Valley" Scott at Comiskey Park. The signs were everywhere, if you know how to look.
SABR’s Interactive Maps
Charles Comiskey’s Grave
Jacob and I went on a search for a handful of graves and other baseball-related sites in the Chicagoland area together.
The Old Roman is buried at Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Evanston, Illinois.
Harry Caray’s Grave
Harry Caray is buried at All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines, Illinois.
“Big Ed”
Edward Holstrom and his dad, Ted, found this plaque honoring “Big Ed” Walsh on a road trip thanks to the SABR Interactive Baseball Map.
SABR Chapter Meetings
You can be a member of multiple chapters, and enjoy the benefits of having friends all over the country who share a similar interest.
Chicago Baseball Walking Tour
I don’t care how many times I’ve been on this walking tour, I will go every chance I get with Jacob and Tracy.
Jacob Leads The Way
It’s amazing how you can live in a place, drive past (or walk past) a building a million times, but not know its history or realize its significance until someone who lives across the country comes to visit and tells you all about it.
Billy Goat Tavern
The original Billy Goat Tavern location was “born” in 1934 when Greek immigrant, William “Billy Goat” Sianis, purchased the Lincoln Tavern.
One day, a goat fell off a passing truck and wandered inside. Sianis adopted the goat, grew a goatee, acquired the nickname “Billy Goat,” and changed the name of the bar to the Billy Goat Tavern.
It gained nationwide popularity after a Saturday Night Live sketch parodied its strict rules and limited menu.
Gene Carney
For more than 15 years, beginning in 1993, Gene Carney wrote a semi-regular column called “Notes From The Shadows of Cooperstown” from his home in Utica, New York. At first, it was an eclectic blend of essays, poetry, book reviews, and a little baseball history.
In September 2002, it took on a singular focus: the Black Sox Scandal.
Carrying The Torch
The way Gene Carney treated Jacob, that’s how Jacob has treated me. He has always gone out of his way to not only answer my billion questions, but to include me in the cool things that he does. He and Tracy have become friends for life.
Arnold Rothstein
He was the Kingpin in New York gambling circles and reputed financier of the World Series fix. In his 1920 grand jury testimony, he strongly denied any involvement and Chicago prosecutors publicly exonerated him. He was later accused by Ban Johnson of arranging theft of the grand jury transcripts.
And yet, somehow, Arnold Rothstein could remain as under the radar as he wanted to be.
Collyer’s Eye
Collyer’s Eye was a Chicago gambling periodical published weekly beginning April 10, 1915. Its vested interest was clear: gambling would thrive only if sports were on the up and up. Ironically, Collyer’s Eye was more interested in cleaning up baseball than baseball was.
In articles beginning a week after the final game, Collyer’s Eye said the 1919 World Series had been fixed, correctly named some of the gamblers who were behind it, and correctly named most of the players later indicted.
In the December 13, 1919 issue, White Sox catcher Ray Schalk named 7 names of teammates he felt had thrown the World Series, and said he didn’t expect them to be back with the team for the 1920 season.
Ray Schalk
Ray Schalk’s 1917 World Series uniform, which is housed in the archives of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The White Sox won the series 4 games to 2 over the New York Giants.
Notice how pristine the flag patch is on the sleeve, and how worn the S-O-X logo on the chest is, in comparison. That is due to his chest protector rubbing against the raised, color logo for 6 straight games.
Red Faber Museum
Located less than half an hour from the Field of Dreams, the Red Faber Museum honors Cascade, Iowa’s favorite son.
Joe Jackson vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club
Everyone knows the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black Sox. At least, everyone thinks they do. They’ve seen the famous movies. Maybe they’ve even read the books. But they’ve never read anything like this.
David J. Fletcher and Jacob Pomrenke uncovered the truth – as Joe Jackson and Charles Comiskey told the courts, straight from their own mouths – and have made it public for the first time ever. This book changes everything.
Black Sox Acquitted
Baseball's Trial of the Century ended August 2, 1921 when Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black Sox were acquitted of conspiracy charges. The eight men were banned for life the next day by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who had gone against his word from before the trial began.
September 6
1995: Cal Ripken, Jr. breaks Lou Gehrig’s “Unbreakable” Streak by playing in his 2,131st consecutive game
2009: Jacob marries Tracy on the anniversary
1860s Style Rules
Fun for the whole family!
Brooks Robinson
The lasting memory of Brooks Robinson for many remains his wizardry in the 1970 World Series. But countless others will remember the man behind the statistics, records, and awards.
He conducted himself with class throughout his 23 seasons in a major-league uniform, and fulfilled extraneous obligations with joy and enthusiasm.
