A 1919 baseball scandal with a Minnesota connection

CHRIS FARRELL: This is Minnesota Now. Time is 12:39. I'm Chris Farrell, and I'm in for Cathy Wurzer. The Texas Rangers, they are the World Series champions. They took home the title last night with a 5-0 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Now, as far as we know, this game was played fair and square, but that wasn't the case at the 1919 World Series. It's maybe the most famous or infamous baseball scandal in history. It was known or is known as the Black Sox Scandal, when eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the 1990 World Series in exchange for money from a gambling syndicate.

It ended up being a subject of a 1998 film Eight Men Out. Did you see it? I liked it. And one of those men was Charles "Swede" Risberg. He, along with his teammates involved in the scandal, were kicked out of the league-- no surprise there-- and he ended up in southern Minnesota.

So for more on this slice of baseball history, we have Randy Anderson. He's the executive director of the Faribault County Historical Society. Glad you could join us.

RANDY ANDERSON: Hey, Chris, it's a pleasure.

CHRIS FARRELL: Now, I think everybody has in the back of their mind the Black Sox Scandal. But how did the White Sox players-- how did they get caught? And I don't know the story in as much detail as I should probably, but one of the players gave up the story to some investigators right before the following season was about to finish. And the White Sox were actually just about ready to win the American League pennant again in 1920.

So they were immediately suspended, and it took about a year for this to go through the court system. They actually were charged and prosecuted. They were acquitted. But there was a new commissioner of baseball installed named Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and he was a hard hand.

And so he banned them all for life. There still speculation that some of the players weren't really in on it, Shoeless Joe Jackson, in particular. But the evidence seems to lean towards the guilt of all of these guys.

CHRIS FARRELL: So what was Swede Risberg's role in the scandal?

RANDY ANDERSON: Well, he apparently was-- he was not the main instigator of it. The first baseman, Chick Gandil, was the person who really came up with the idea. And I'm not sure if he was approached first by the gamblers, or he went to them.

But Risberg was the second in command, and he was also the enforcer. He's the one who was obliged to get the other six men to go along with the plan to throw the World Series. They had to be, obviously, a bit careful about it. They couldn't be too obvious.

And apparently, Swede was a man to be reckoned with. When Joe Jackson apparently complained later that he didn't get his full share of the payout, Swede threatened to kill him, and Joe took it seriously. He was quoted as saying, "Swede is a hard guy." So Swede was the strong arm to get the other players to toe the line.

CHRIS FARRELL: So how did Swede end up in Minnesota? Well, right after they were banned from baseball, interestingly enough, they were brave enough or proud enough to barnstorm Wisconsin and Minnesota, especially the Arrowhead section of Minnesota. They even call themselves the Mesabi Black Sox when they were playing up in the Arrowhead, but they somehow wound up or stuck around the Midwest. They dispersed a bit.

But Risberg had some connections to Minnesota. He his first wife was divorcing him in California, and he apparently found a second wife here in Southern Minnesota. And the story is a bit convoluted. It's unclear whether she was a woman from Blue Earth or a woman from Rochester. But anyway, he found his way here to the 507 area code by the middle of 1922.

CHRIS FARRELL: So what was the state of baseball in Minnesota in the 1920s? I mean, was there a lot of games going on? Were there a lot of teams?

RANDY ANDERSON: It was incredibly robust. I know there was just a recent celebration of the centennial of organized town baseball. But actually, Blue Earth had the first historian at Faribault County, mentions the first baseball game played in Blue Earth was in 1867. And he went on to say ball clubs have been formed in all the villages and in most of the townships of the county and match games between the various clubs were quite frequent, especially on public days, such as the 4th of July.

But by the 1920s, town pride and civic pride really was underpinning some of these contests. And the teams were allowed, effectively, to pay one or two players. So they were really semi-pro. They weren't purely amateur. And there were some hurt feelings among some of the smaller towns here who couldn't afford to pay someone, or the person they did pay wasn't the equal of, for instance, a former Major League Baseball player.

But these games would draw in our part of the state as many as 1,500 spectators. That would be the entire population of Blue Earth roughly is in the 1920s. So they were incredibly popular and played. Like I say, there was a lot of civic pride and teams played-- other communities that were very close by. So there were a lot of bragging rights at stake, I think, during that period.

CHRIS FARRELL: So do you have a sense of what was his time like on the Blue Earth team? Did he have fun?

RANDY ANDERSON: He was the star. I don't know if he was having fun. I'm not even sure what he was getting paid. But he was-- I noted that he played under his own name here in Blue Earth, and the Blue Earth post was bemoaning the fact that had been losing to teams that had the paid professionals.

There was one quotation where the post says the all home boys years ago made up a town's team for whom its citizens would enthuse over and fight for, if need be, is a thing of the past. Before any town can have a team these days, it is necessary to hire two pitchers, a catcher, and a shortstop. And Risberg was actually the shortstop on the White Sox, primarily the shortstop. But he was called into service to be the pitcher for the Blue Earth town team, primarily.

And apparently, he could throw hard. And he immediately changed the tune of the Blue Earth season. And there's a nearby town called Amboy, just north of us a little bit, and their newspaper complained that when Blue Earth hired Risberg, if our information is correct, they paid him more money than it cost the entire village of Amboy to put a winning team in the field for the entire season.

CHRIS FARRELL: Wow.

RANDY ANDERSON: So it wasn't a secret that you paid these players, but there definitely was some competition, and there were no salary caps, apparently. So that's how the game was played in the 1920s.

CHRIS FARRELL: So if I were on one of the opposing teams, or maybe on the team, but I'd worry about this guy's reputation, were there fears that he was going to cheat?

RANDY ANDERSON: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know that there would have been any good reason for him to throw a game where there was no money on the line with the outcome. Did he doctor the ball when he pitched? I wouldn't be surprised if he did. But who didn't?

CHRIS FARRELL: I was just going to say-- I think that was like routine.

RANDY ANDERSON: Yeah. You had to. You weren't playing hard if you weren't cheating. But I don't-- I think he only played here for about three months, four months, and then he moved on to the next year. He played for the team in Rochester.

And then he appears to left Minnesota, at least in the summers, to play in Montana, the Dakotas, and in Manitoba. And he did play, actually, in 1932 for the Sioux Falls Canaries, which is still a minor league team today but under a different-- certainly different ownership. But he stayed in baseball for about a decade after he was banned.

So he must have-- he certainly made money at it, but he must have still loved it. I would say a bit like the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams. He maybe would have played for nothing, but he certainly enjoyed getting the compensation.

CHRIS FARRELL: And in your research, I mean, any sense of what he was like as a teammate because Shoeless Joe Jackson said he was a hard man, and I don't want to cross this guy?

RANDY ANDERSON: Yeah. My guess is, he was-- I'm sure he was no nonsense. I bet he showed up just in time to play the game, and I would imagine he took off right afterwards. But I don't really know for sure.

He doesn't seem like the farming type to me, and his second wife was either the daughter of a dairy farmer or a dirt farmer. And so he was-- although he may have been obliged to do some chores when he got home. So maybe he did stay in town and enjoy himself a little bit afterwards.

But interestingly enough, there is no reflection in the news record of his personality. It's just that it was clear that people knew who he was. They didn't have to explain who he was. And he must have cut quite a figure in the Blue Earth uniform for those few months that summer of '22.

CHRIS FARRELL: I would think so. Plus he was a good player, so he was probably enjoyable to watch. Well, thank you very much.

RANDY ANDERSON: He was a good player. Certainly, I know about this only because there was the-- Minnesota's great baseball historian, Stew Thornley, was here in Blue Earth about 35 or 40 years ago, and I happened to be at the talk. And there was an older fellow who was growing up in Blue Earth in the '20s, and he remembered playing catch with Risberg and another one of the Black Sox, Happy Felsch, before one of the Blue Earth games.

So if anything that maybe gives you a little insight into his personality, if he was willing to toss the ball around with the 10-year-old, he probably wasn't the worst guy in the world.

CHRIS FARRELL: No. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate your taking your time. Randy Anderson is the executive director of the Faribault County Historical Society.