“This clannishness would eventually break down were it not for the deliberate efforts of Jewish leaders who are determined that Israel shall remain an imperium in imperio. If the Jews persist in maintaining a distinct ethnic consciousness and an exclusive community life, anti-Semitism will thrive in America as it has thrived in Europe. The American nation, itself the result of fusion, will not tolerate without protest a foreign element in it.”
—Herbert Adams Gibbons in the Century, September. Page 789.
There are men in the United States who say that baseball has received its death wound and is slowly dying out of the list of respectable sports. There are other men who say that American baseball can be saved if a clean sweep is made of the Jewish influence which has just dragged it through a period of bitter shame and demoralization.
Whether baseball as a first-class sport is killed and will survive only as a cheap-jack entertainment; or whether baseball possesses sufficient intrinsic character to rise in righteous wrath and cast out the danger that menaces it, will remain a matter of various opinion. But there is one certainty, namely, that the last and most dangerous blow dealt baseball was curiously notable for its Jewish character.
Yet only lesser Jews were indicted. Inevitably the names of other Jews appeared in the press accounts, and people wondered who they were. A Jewish judge presided. Jewish lawyers were prominent on both sides of the cases. Numerous strange things occurred.
But strangest of all is the fact that although American fans felt that something epochal had happened in baseball, few really know what it is.
There has been time enough for others to tell the truth if they were so disposed. Many sport editors have come as near telling it as their newspapers would permit them. But it becomes daily more evident that if the whole matter is to be laid bare, so that Americans may know where to look for danger, THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT will have to do it.
And this is not of our own choosing. Baseball is a trivial matter compared to some of the facts that are awaiting publication. Yet it is possible to see the operation of the Jewish Idea in baseball as clearly as in any other field. The process is the same, whether in war or politics, in finance or in sports.
To begin with, Jews are not sportsmen. This is not set down in complaint against them, but merely as analysis. It may be a defect in their character, or it may not; it is nevertheless a fact which discriminating Jews unhesitatingly acknowledge. Whether this is due to their physical lethargy, their dislike of unnecessary physical action, or their serious cast of mind, others may decide; the Jew is not naturally an out-of-door sportsman; if he takes up golf it is because his station in society calls for it, not that he really likes it; and if he goes in for collegiate athletics, as some of the younger Jews are doing, it is because so much attention has been called to their neglect of the sports that the younger generation thinks it necessary to remove that occasion of remark.
And yet, the bane of American sports today is the presence of a certain type of Jew, not as a participant, but as an exploiter and corrupter. If he had been a sportsman for the love of sport he might have been saved from becoming an exploiter and corrupter, for there is no mind to which the corrupting of a sport is more illogical and even unexplainable than the mind of the man who participates in it.
There will be a very full case made out in justification of the use of the above terms “exploiter” and “corrupter” with regard to baseball. But it would be just as easy to make out the same sort of case with regard to wrestling and horse-racing. Wrestling is so completely ruled by Jews as to have become an outlawed sport. The story of wrestling is not only the story of the demoralization of a sport, but also the story of the wholesale bunkoing of the public.
The same is true of horse-racing. The whole atmosphere of this sport has been tinged with dishonesty. The horses remain almost the only well-bred creatures connected with it. Yet why should the art of breeding and training and testing fine horses be debasing? Only because a certain class saw in it a chance to play upon the weaknesses of men for the sake of gain.
That, indeed, explains the presence of the Jew in modern sports and it also explains why the Jewish Idea in sport, instead of being preservative, is corruptive. The Jew saw money where the sportsman saw fun and skill. The Jew set out to capitalize rivalry and to commercialize contestant zeal.
This is not necessarily the only course the Jew could have taken with regard to sports, but it is the course that he most notably has taken, and as scandal follows scandal it would seem to be high time that organized Jewry should undertake to control or repudiate those Jews who have been most instrumental in corrupting and nearly destroying our cleanest, most manly public sports.
It is worth noting that in Chicago, where the Jewish Anti-Defamation League has its headquarters, there was not a word of reproof sent out from Jews to the Jewish culprits, chiding them for their activities. Not a word. But at the same time the pressure of the Anti-Defamation League was heavy on the whole American newspaper press to prevent the public statement that the whole baseball scandal was a Jewish performance from end to end.
Baseball had a close call for its life back in 1875. Rowdyism, gambling, drinking and general disorderliness on the baseball fields brought the sport very low in public estimation, so low that attendance at the games fell heavily.
In this year 1921 there is another public rebuke being administered baseball by the same means—a very heavy reduction of public support in attendance at the games.
The storm began to be heard as far back as 1919. The Cincinnati Nationals had defeated the Chicago Americans in the World Series of that year, and immediately thereafter the country became a whispering gallery wherein were heard mysterious rumors of crooked dealing. The names of Jews were heard then, but it meant nothing to the average man. The rumors dealt with shady financial gains for a number of Jew gamblers of decidedly shady reputation.
But “they got away with it,” in the parlance of the field. There was not enough public indignation to force a show-down, and too many interests were involved to prevent baseball being given a black eye in full view of an adoring public.
However, not everyone forgot the incident. Some who had the interest of honest sport at heart, and a regard for facts as well, kept on the trail—long after the trail grew cold, long after the principal wrongdoers forgot their early caution. Where money had once been taken successfully, the gang would be sure to return.
Time went on until the 1920 season began to wane. One day when the Chicago and Philadelphia National League teams were engaged in a series at Chicago, strange messages began to reach the office of the Chicago club. The messages were dated from Detroit and informed the Chicago club and management that several “well-known” Jews were betting heavily on Philadelphia. The bets involved large sums of money, and as the contest was only the ordinary run of daily game, not an important contest at all, the unusual interest of Jewish plungers attracted attention. At the same time it was observed that money began rolling into the pool rooms on Philadelphia.
Chicago club officials called a hasty conference on receipt of the messages. They called in Grover Cleveland Alexander, explained the situation to him, and told him it was up to him to save the game. It was not Alexander’s turn to pitch, Claude R. Hendryx having been chosen for that day; neither was Alexander in training to pitch that day. However, he did go to the box, and although he hurled his heart out to beat Philadelphia and thwart the Jew gamblers, he failed.
Then came the big scandal. A Cook County grand jury was called into session at Chicago and asked to investigate. When the grand jury had completed its labors, eight members of the Chicago American League team were under indictment for throwing the World Series of 1919, the previous year, to the Cincinnati Reds. And all along the line of investigation the names of Jews were plentifully sprinkled.
It was discovered that the indictments brought by the first grand jury were faulty; a second one was called and it was under the second group of indictments that the famous trial at Chicago was held.
One difference in the work of the two grand juries was that the second indicted five Jews who had escaped the first one. Two of these men were Carl Zork and Benny Franklin, who were just as much implicated at the time of the first grand jury as the second, but the prosecutor’s office did not try to secure their indictment. Why? Because Replogle, the attorney representing the prosecution, said there were enough men indicted without Zork and Franklin. These two St. Louis Jews were represented by Alfred S. Austrian, a Jewish lawyer, of Chicago.
This second grand jury also indicted Ben and Louis Levi and their brother-in-law, D. A. Zelser, gamblers from Des Moines. Their indictment was not secured at the first grand jury investigation directed by Replogle, assistant to Hoyne, who was then acting for the state of Illinois. Between the first and second grand juries a political change had occurred, and the public interests in the second grand jury were in the care of a new prosecuting attorney, Robert Crowe, a former judge.
It becomes necessary at this point in the narrative to give a brief “Who’s Who” of the baseball scandal, omitting from the list the names of the baseball players, who are sufficiently known to the public. This list will comprise only those who have been in the background of baseball and whom it is necessary to know in order to understand what has been happening behind the scenes in recent years.
For the first name let us take Albert D. Lasker. He is a member of the American Jewish Committee, was recently appointed by President Harding to be chairman of the United States Shipping Board, and is known as the author of the “Lasker Plan,” a widely heralded plan for the reorganization of baseball, which practically took the sport out of non-Jewish control. He is reputed to be the second richest Jew in Chicago and was head of the advertising agency which became famous under the Gentile names of Lord & Thomas. Moreover he is a heavy stockholder in the Chicago Cubs—the Chicago Nationals.
The so-called “Lasker Plan” has been attributed to Mr. Lasker, although it is not here intimated that he has specifically claimed to be its originator. The intimation is not made for the reason that to do so might be putting Mr. Lasker in the position of claiming what is not true. Until he makes the claim, the term “Lasker Plan” must remain merely a designation, and not a description of its origin.
This matter brings us to the name of Alfred S. Austrian, a Jewish lawyer of Chicago, who is a warm friend both of Mr. Lasker and of the Replogle aforementioned. It is said that Mr. Austrian was really the originator of the “Lasker Plan” which for certain reasons was handed to Mr. Lasker, who was not averse to publicity and who knew the art of self-advertising. Now, it appears that Austrian was also the legal representative of Charles A. Comiskey, owner of the Chicago Americans, and that he was also, if he is not now, the legal adviser of William Veeck, president of the Chicago National League Club, in which it has just been said that Lasker is a heavy stockholder. It was this club which was touched by the questionable game of August, 1920, and which afterward released Hendryx, the pitcher chosen for and withdrawn from that game. The Chicago National League Club has never explained why it released Hendryx and he has never demanded redress.
Mr. Austrian’s further activities will appear when the narrative of the investigation and trial is resumed.
Then there is Arnold Rothstein, a Jew, who describes himself as being in the real estate business, but who is known to be a wealthy gambler, owner of a notorious gambling house at Saratoga, a race track owner, and is reputed to be financially interested in the New York National League Club.
Rothstein was usually referred to during the baseball scandal as “the man higher up.” It is stated that in some manner unknown he received the secret testimony given before the grand jury and offered it to a New York newspaper. However, the fact is this: the grand jury testimony disappeared from the prosecuting attorney’s safe-keeping. It is stated that, when Rothstein found out it did not incriminate him, he then offered it for publicity purposes. The price which it is said to have cost is also stated. It is further stated that the New York paper to whom the secret stolen testimony was offered, in turn offered its use for a larger sum to a Chicago newspaper, and that the Chicago newspaper, to protect itself, called up Robert Crowe, the new prosecutor, who advised that, in printing it, the newspaper would incur an unpleasant risk. Other Chicago editors were warned, and the testimony was not printed. Even the New York newspaper thought better of it, and did not print it.
In this connection, Rothstein threatened suit against Ban Johnson. of the National Commission, the big-bodied, big-minded, honest director and protector of straight baseball—but the suit, like others of the kind, has not been brought.
Rothstein is known on Broadway as “a slick Jew.” That he is powerful with the authorities has been often demonstrated. His operations on the turf have led to suggestions that he be ruled off.
Alfred S. Austrian, herinbefore mentioned, was the legal adviser of Rothstein during the baseball scandal.
Hugh S. Fullerton, the able sport writer of the New York Evening Mail, writing on July 28, 1921, made a plea that “a person guilty of crooked work on a race track should be expelled not only from the race track but from ball parks, tennis courts, football fields and every place where sport is promoted. These sport spoilers must be barred from every sport.”
And in the same paper, referring specifically to Rothstein, Mr. Fullerton writes:
“There is in New York a gambler named Rothstein who is much feared and much accused. His name has been used in connection with almost every big thieving, crooked deal on the race track, and he is openly named in this baseball scandal. There has been no legal proof advanced against him beyond the fact that he is the only man in the entire crowd who had money enough to handle such a deal. At least $200,000 was used in actual cash, and no one concerned could command that much money excepting Rothstein, who is either the vilest crook or the most abused man in America.
“Rothstein sits in the box with the owner of the New York Giants. He has the entrée to the exclusive clubhouses on race tracks; he is prominent at fights.”
Then, after naming Abe Attell and Bennie Kauff, who also enjoy exceptional privileges around the New York club, Mr. Fullerton makes his plea for the exclusion of “sport spoilers” from every ground where sport is promoted.
Then there is Charles A. Comiskey, who is one of the most impressive examples in the country today of a good Irishman being entirely eclipsed by a Jew. Comiskey was one of the staunchest supporters of honest baseball in this country and he gave great assistance in erecting the major league game to the position it occupied just before the scandal. He used his best endeavors, also, to get the truth about the “throwing” of the World Series by his men. But his efforts were thwarted and even he, perhaps, has not the ghost of a suspicion how it was done.
So that, instead of Mr. Comiskey, we look at the Jew behind him who is Harry Grabiner. With Comiskey in failing health, Grabiner is in charge at Comiskey Park. More than that, he appears to be in charge of Comiskey himself, preventing him from making public statements and otherwise dictating to him—pushing himself forward in a manner that has indelibly and unpleasantly impressed nearly every sport writer in America.
Chicago’s support of the White Sox began to slump even before the scandal and it was helped on by the unpopularity of Grabiner’s methods which were wholly characteristic of what the Americanized Jew calls the “kikes.” As secretary of the club, Grabiner has grabbed the headship and if Comiskey had power enough to unseat him he would do more than the courts have done to purge the White Sox from its most serious remaining blemish.
There are shady spots at Chicago that neither the grand jury nor the court trial brought out, one of which is now related:
At all ball parks in the American League, and in the National, for that matter, officials of the “home club”—that is, of the club in whose home city the game is being played—“take the gate.” To “take the gate” is to collect the tickets and render a report of the attendance. Tickets are designed and numbered for the different gates—box gate, pass gate, grandstand gate, bleacher gate, and the rest. The accounts are made up showing the number of people who passed through each gate. When all the reports are in, it can be seen at a glance what the paid attendance is, and the shares of the contesting clubs.
In former times it was the custom for the visiting club to assign a secretary to watch the gates and thus insure an honest count, but years ago the “honor system” was adopted, leaving the entire accounting to the “home club,” and this “honor system” was strictly observed. No one suspected cheating. The count was made during the sixth and seventh innings of each day’s game, the officials of the home club visiting all the gates, taking the turnstile count, and making the record. Three slips were then prepared showing the home club’s share, the visiting club’s share, and the grand total.
Under Grabiner’s régime the “honor system” as practiced at the Chicago park began to be suspected. It began to be mysteriously suggested that visiting teams were not getting their full share. Through a system of false accounting, it was said, money was being held out. Naturally, with all the other secret investigations that were proceeding in baseball, this clue was not left untouched. Detectives were hired. Watchers were stationed. Secret counts were made. Not only one club nor only two clubs adopted secret methods of finding out what was occurring under Grabiner’s secretaryship. They discovered that the “honor system” was not in vogue at that park. Their suspicions were confirmed, the mysterious rumors were verified. It would probably be highly objectionable to pro-Jewish persons to mention the Jewish management with these methods—but there are the facts.
The White Sox of Comiskey’s palmy days have certainly ridden to a sorry finish under the Jewish control that has been foisted upon it. And it is typical; for there is no surer clue by which to trace a certain type of Jew than by the near certainty that even with honest money rolling in upon him, he will try to increase the flow by petty dishonesty which, once discovered, declasses him forever. It is typical. There is a lure in trickery that appeals to some men more than sound and satisfying achievement does. Think of a world-famous baseball club allowing a system that cheated the guest club of a few hundred admission fees!
Then next in this gallery of notables in the background of baseball is the Jew gambler, Abe Attell, whose connection with sports has been of a questionable character ever since his dethronement from his pugilistic pedestal. Attell is known as the “king bee” of the scheme to “throw the games” in the World Series. He knows all about underhanded “throwing” of contests, because he has “thrown” his own fights, now feigning to be beaten when it involved gambling bets and easily winning when the same reasons prompted. Attell is of such a character that he ought to be barred from the grounds of any sport, as Mr. Fullerton suggests. He is the Morris Gest of sport, without Gest’s success. All the players named Attell as the “fixer.” Even Rothstein named Attell as the “fixer.” It seemed unanimous—with perhaps Attell’s own consent—that he should be regarded as the “fixer”: it made it so much more comfortable for others. Attell went so far as to say that he approached Rothstein with the proposition to raise a pool to bribe the players to “throw the games,” but Rothstein declined. And yet Maharg, another Jew, whose name spelled backward is “Graham,” says that a telegram came through signed “A. R.” which promised $20,000. The “A. R.” was supposed by some to mean Arnold Rothstein, but others say he is too shrewd even to sign his initials. However, it was asserted that 10 gamblers, all Jews, cleaned up $250,000 on the games and that nearly as much money was used to manage it.
Attell was the “goat,” the unanimity being rather startling. It has been known, of course, that men have been so deep in sin that they have been chosen to bear the sins also of their friends on promise that “influence” would be exerted, or on threat that if they didn’t stand as “goat” certain past indiscretions would be advertised. Whatever Attell’s case might have been, he stood the gaff.
Attell told the ball players that Rothstein was putting up the money.
And Attell was never brought to book. It was even testified that Abe Attell was not Abe Attell at all. Certain moneys lost in a bet had been repaid and the expected testimony in a certain matter turned out to be other than expected. Attell was held in New York for an extradition hearing. Sammy Pass, a Jew, was one of the witnesses. So was Johnny Seys. The hearing resulted in New York refusing the extradition of Abe Attell.
Then came the Dempsey-Carpentier fight, in Jersey, which Abe Attell attended. Chicago officers were in attendance, too, with extradition papers signed by the governor of New Jersey. They intended to take Attell back with them, though without passing through New York. Attell attended the fight, but the underground wires, so active in this entire case, were working, and Attell eluded the western officers.
The next name in the roster will be that of Barney Dreyfuss, a Jew, owner of the Pittsburgh National League Club. Mr. Dreyfuss appeared in the public eye during the conduct of the grand jury inquiry into the shady games, with an insistent demand that the National Commission, the ruling body in baseball, of which Ban B. Johnson is the acknowledged leader, should be abolished, and another plan, the “Lasker Plan,” substituted. It was intended to discredit the National Commission under cover of the rottenness that had been discovered between the Jew gamblers and the venial Chicago players. It was primarily an anti-Johnson move and nothing else, and it was led by a Jew whose principal followers were the rapidly increasing group of Jewish controllers of American baseball. What they have against Ban B. Johnson, impartial investigators have been unable to discover. Mr. Johnson’s chief characteristic, with reference to the Jewish side, has been his implacable enmity to crookedness of any kind. That ought not to be a disqualification if baseball is to be saved. Yet the Jew-conceived, Jew-named and Jew-advocated “Lasker Plan” won out.
Carl Zork, the St. Louis Jew who was indicted, is variously described as a shirt-maker and a silk-broker. There are no variations, however, in his description as a gambler. He is part of the Jewish national net of gamblers which acts nationally and makes “killings” on a national scale.
It should be observed that the principal Jewish abuses are nation-wide. This was shown in the United States Government’s investigation of the white slave traffic; the bootlegging business is nation-wide; so is race-track gambling; baseball pools also are a national network for the catching of “suckers.” There is, therefore, nothing unusual that a shirt-maker from St. Louis and a horse-trader from East St. Louis, and a bootlegger from Albany—together with clever high-ups and hopelessly declassed low-downs—should all be involved in a baseball scandal that breaks in Chicago. They are all really part of a national group.
Carl Zork, for example staged the fight between Attell and a third-class boxer in which Attell welched in the sixth round in order to “throw” the fight, because his friends had all bet on the third-rate man, getting tremendous odds. His friends would never have made the bet, or having made it could never have won it, without Attell’s deliberate quitting and feigned whimpering. It was one of the rawest of many raw deals witnessed in Jew-controlled sports, but Attell is that kind of man. He is a servant for that kind of scheme. It was not by accident that Zork, the silk-broker, and Attell, an ex-prize fighter, should be linked together in the baseball scandal. They had been linked in crooked work before. They are part of the national machinery organized and operated for the purpose of separating “Gentile boobs” from their money.
If there were no “Gentle boobs,” or if the “Gentile boob” would only take a square look at the man behind the nation-wide spider web, the gamblers and the Jewish sport purveyors would be in another kind of business, with perhaps less money to flaunt in the faces of honest people.
If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball, they have it in three words—too much Jew. Gentiles may rant out their parrot-like pro-Jewish propaganda, the fact is that a sport is clean and helpful until it begins to attract Jewish investors and exploiters and then it goes bad. The two facts have occurred in pairs too frequently and under too many dissimilar circumstances to have their relationship doubted.
When you contrast the grandstands full of Americans supposing they are witnessing “the only clean sport,” with the sinister groups playing with the players and the managers to introduce a serpent’s trail of unnecessary crookedness, you get a contrast that is rather startling. And the sinister influence is Jewish. So patent was this that even newspapers could not cover the facts this time.
Years before this public scandal broke, involving a whole team, it was noticed that certain Jewish gamblers formed the habit of rooming with certain baseball players. It worried the managers. The fact that the gamblers coddled in among the players was fraught with a suggestion of disturbing unusualness. Managers tried the experiment of trading such players, getting them out of their teams as quickly as possible. However, the snuggling game was continued until it honey-combed the whole of baseball, with the result that it was with no trepidation at all that the Jewish gamblers could walk up and suggest to players that a game be thrown for a price. The occurrence which formed the basis of the investigation was not the first of the kind—far from it; the approach of the gamblers was too easy, the reception given them by the players was too casual, to warrant that view. Nor were the men whose names were given to the public the only men involved.
The only fact of value brought out of all the trouble is that American baseball has passed into the hands of the Jews. If it is to be saved, it must be taken out of their hands until they have shown themselves capable of promoting sports for sports’ sake. If it is not taken out of their hands, let it be widely announced that baseball is another Jewish monopoly, and that its patrons may know what to expect.
[THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, issue of 3 September 1921]