Baseball Gods in Scandal: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and the Dutch Leonard Affair

Is it an ironic coincidence or natural development that perhaps the second greatest gambling scandal in baseball history occurred a mere six days before the start of the 1919 World Series?

On September 25, 1919, a seemingly meaningless game was played between the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians, a game that should have faded to a tiny line item on MLB s historical ledger.

But Hubert "Dutch" Leonard had other ideas, and nearly seven years later he presented letters written by Ty Cobb and Smoky Joe Wood implicating them in the fixing of and wagering on that game, setting off a chain of accusations, denials, resignations, player transactions, and a power struggle at the top of baseball s power hierarchy that would change the game forever.

Baseball Gods in Scandal is three stories in one, and author Ian Kahanowitz tells them all with the art of a storyteller and the precision of an historian:

--The pervasiveness of gambling and crooked dealings in the early days of baseball, all the way through to the Black Sox Scandal

--The relationship between the affair s complex protagonists Cobb, Tris Speaker, Smoky Joe Wood, and Dutch Leonard with detailed profiles and ample color from baseball s rough-and-tumble Dead Ball Era

--The epic battle for control of the game between the long-time Czar of Baseball, Ban Johnson, and the game s new sheriff in town, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who cared not to share even a whiff of power with anyone

Capping off the book is a never-before-published interview with Smoky Joe Wood (told to Lawrence Ritter for The Glory of Their Times) in which Wood recounts a vastly different version of the affair from his original testimony.

It is safe to say that had Wood testified to this version originally, the fates of Baseball Gods Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker may well have turned out very differently.

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