SportsLit (Season 8, Episode 2) - Jacob Pomrenke (SABR) - Joe Jackson vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club

Gambling has become a new revenue stream for major sports leagues in the last few years, raising questions about how to protect competitive integrity. It also calls to mind the fallout from the Black Sox Scandal, the greatest game-fixing scandal in the history of North American sports.

 

In "Joe Jackson vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club: Never Before Seen Trial Transcript," the public can finally read about a civil trial 100 years ago that laid bare the inner workings of major-league baseball. Jacob Pomrenke, editorial director of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), joins us to explain why the great Shoeless Joe Jackson sued his former ballclub, the Chicago White Sox; why the trial largely fell off the public reader; what has been left out of mainstream accounts of the scandal; and why it still matters today.

 

As SABR writers have explained, the Black Sox Scandal remains a cold case, not a closed case.