In the 1919 World Series the Cincinatti Reds took on the Chicago White Sox, later to be known as the Chicago Black Sox for what happened during the Series. The Chicago White Sox had finished the season 88-52, which was the best record in the American-League that year, and were heavily favored to win the Series against the Reds. Most everybody at the time knew that the White Sox were the better team and possibly one of the best teams baseball had ever seen. Not only had the White Sox won the American League Pennant but they also had legendary Joe "Shoeless" Jackson and Chick Gandil. This is why it shocked everybody when the White Sox lost the World Series to the Reds, three games to five.

It wasn't until the next year during the pennant race that rumors started flying around that the White Sox had purposely thrown, or lost, the World Series against the Reds the year before. Big money gamblers and gangster, Arnold Rothstein were said to have paid eight players large amounts of money on the White Sox roster to purposely lose the World Series. These eight players included Shoeless Joe Jackson, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, Happy Felsch, Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams. The whole controversy went to court and all eight men were cleared by the grand jury. Even though the case was cleared by the grand jury nobody seemed to believe that this was the truth. This was most likely the reason that all eight players were thrown out of Major League Baseball for life the following year.

A person might ask why would such a great team purposely lose the most prestigious title in sports, just to get paid a lot of money. The truth is that the players weren't very happy with their manager, Kid Gleason, because he wasn't paying them very well and was extremely controversial when it came to making the right decisions for the team. After all of this, the money that all eight players were supposed to recieve from the gamblers never got fully paid. In the end the decision made by the players on the Chicago Black Sox turned out to be a bad one, for they would not recieve their money and would become banned from America's pastime forever.

http://www.mrbaseball.com/history/teams/chicago_whitesox.htm

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