The Chicago Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908 through some convoluted combination of a goat and Steve Bartman’s sumo attack on a foul ball. That’s a horrible way to spend 103 years, but it might be worse; a 1920 court deposition in the Chicago History Museum features banned Black Sox player Eddie Cicotte mentioning offhand that a Cub or selection of Cubs were offered $10,000 to throw the 1918 Series they lost 4-2 to the Boston Red Sox. Whoops!
“The ball players were talking about somebody trying to fix the National League ball players or something like that … Well anyway there was some talk about them offering $10,000 or something to throw the Cubs in the Boston Series … Somebody made a crack about getting money, if we got into the Series, to throw the Series.”
It’s not the most obvious thing in the world — nobody forgot how to hit, and the pitching was great — but there were suspicious plays. In game 4, Max Flack was picked off twice and turned a catchable fly ball in the sixth and final game into an error that allowed two runs to score in the Red Sox’s 2-1 win. Flack also played too shallow and let a Babe Ruth triple fly over his head and score two runs. And then in game six Flack killed and murdered a goat on the field. [citation needed]
Apparently baseball didn’t investigate because they wanted the scandal to be about the Black Sox, and say “okay guys gambling’s gone continue playing normally.” There’s sort of a depressing air of indifference about the news bit now, with most Cubs fans (including ones quoted in the Associated Press article) just joking about how nobody cares and it would’ve just bumped the curse up a decade. Man, I hope the Cubs never win a World Series, because without the curse you guys don’t have anything, do you?
