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In October 1919, eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw five games in the best-of-nine World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The players implicated in the conspiracy - including Eddie Cicotte and Shoeless Joe Jackson - were banned from baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, though a movement is under way to have Jackson posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. Arnold Rothstein, the syndicate boss who bribed the players with $10,000 apiece, got off scot-free, as did the dozens of his associates who also were involved. Ten years later, Rothstein was gunned down for not paying up after losing $322,000 in a three-day stud marathon. That game may well have been fixed by a team of sharps led by the dapper Joe Bernstein, who won a gold bracelet in the 1973 World Series and was inducted 10 years later into the Poker Hall of Fame at Binion's Horseshoe.
Before Rothstein's couriers would hand over the $80,000 in 1919, he demanded a clear signal that the fix was in. Cicotte provided it by hitting Cincinnati leadoff man Morrie Rath in the back with the second pitch of the Series. Left fielder Jackson eventually misplayed three singles into triples, which normally result, of course, from balls hit to right or right center. Cicotte made three fielding errors in the fifth inning of Game Four alone. Having confidently bet on the Reds, Rothstein and his partners made millions.
When the conspiracy began to unravel, Rothstein testified before a Cook County grand jury that he was an innocent businessman and baseball lover. "The whole thing started when [Abe] Attell and some other cheap gamblers decided to frame the Series and make a killing. The world knows I was asked in on the deal and my friends know how I turned it down flat. I don't doubt that Attell used my name to put it over. That's been done by smarter men than Abe. But I was not in on it, would not have gone into it under any circumstances and did not bet a cent on the Series after I found out what was underway." And as Michael Corleone was forced to ask Fredo, "You believed that story?" The grand jury apparently did. The truth was that so many gangsters had been trying to fix the Series, Rothstein found it easy to cover his tracks. As he told one of his protégés, "If a girl goes to bed with nine guys, who's gonna believe her when she says the tenth one's the father?"
Born in Manhattan in 1882, Rothstein was a math whiz and junior conniver who learned to love the rackets before he turned 9, even while his older brother, Harry, was studying to become a rabbi. "Who cares about that stuff?" Arnold spitefully asked his disappointed father. "This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew." By 1910 Arnold owned several brothels and a prosperous casino in Manhattan, for which he hired the most talented mechanics as dealers, and part of the Havre de Grace track in Maryland, where he and his jockeys fixed a goodly percentage of the races. In 1919 he fixed the biggest sporting event in America. The luck factor in square baseball, as in poker and racing, he knew, was simply too great to risk betting large sums, even on what was clearly the better team that season.
During the Roaring Twenties he branched out into bootlegging and narcotics, working with Meyer Lansky, Legs Diamond, Lucky Luciano, and Dutch Schultz. Rothstein's nicknames included Mr. Big, The Fixer, The Man Uptown, The Big Bankroll, and The Brain. Whatever they called him, he effectively served as the intermediary among the various Jewish, Irish, and Italian outfits and levied handsome fees for this service. His office was Lindy's Restaurant, at Broadway and 49th Street. To foil eavesdroppers, he conducted business while standing on the corner surrounded by bodyguards. At night, to relax, he played in the biggest poker games in the city.
On Saturday, Sept. 8, 1928, he sat down in a stud game hosted by bookie George "Hump" McManus. The other players were California stud artist "Nigger Nate" Raymond, golf and poker hustler "Titanic" Thompson, up from Arkansas, and New Yorkers Joe Bernstein, Meyer Boston, and Martin Bowe. Though much less an underworld force than Rothstein, McManus was well-connected in the city, with one brother serving as an NYPD lieutenant and another as a Catholic priest. The Hump's floating stud action in and around Times Square was a prototype of the Executive Game run by Junior and Johnny Boy Soprano and later by Tony. As host, the Hump was responsible for security, meals and drinks, and for making sure the game was on the level and all debts were settled up afterward.
One version of events is that the New Yorkers, the road gamblers, or some combination of the two colluded against Rothstein, perhaps to avenge losses they'd suffered in rigged games on Rothstein's home turf. Whether it was due to collusion, mechanical manipulation, or plain old bad luck, Rothstein began to lose early and kept getting second-best hands as the stakes, at his insistence, were steadily raised. As the weekend wore on, he chased his losses by playing more and more recklessly. Long after the others wanted to quit, Rothstein demanded the action continue, which made his opponents nervous for a number of reasons. One was that, instead of cash or chips, Rothstein made his larger bets using chits, small pieces of paper with dollar amounts scribbled above his "A.R." By dawn on Monday, A.R. owed Thompson $30,000, Bernstein $73,000, and Raymond $219,000 in chits.
"I think, my friends, that some of you play cards with more skill than honesty," he said, getting up. "I think I've been playing with a pack of crooks." The clear implication, that cheaters didn't have to be paid, seemed confirmed when he left the room without signing any IOUs. Some say he even had $19,000 in cash in his pockets.