Scandal

Half the people in Chicago were jammed on the sidewalk in front of the People's Gas Building. Upstairs, in the office of the baseball commission, Charles ("Swede") Risberg, banned shortstop, told how Detroit threw a series of games to the Chicago White Sox in 1917. He spoke for an hour and five minutes, repeating, in front of the 29 famed players he accused of giving and taking bribes, the charges he had already expressed to Judge Landis. The baseball commissioner listened with a foxlike expression. He had on a wing collar and he chewed a derelict cigar. Sometimes he glanced at a figure lolling obscurely in the back of the room. It was Will Rogers, Mayor of Beverly Hills, who refused to sit in a more conspicuous place because "he had been able to keep out of this thing so far." When Risberg got through, the accused players spent four hours denying everything he had said about them. It was true, they said, that the White Sox had paid some money to Detroit, but that was "as a reward for beating Boston. . . ." Donie Bush shook a fist in Risberg's face. Eddie Collins, with a catch in his voice, said the story was "all a damned lie. . . ." Risberg smiled. The players dropped cigaret butts on the carpet. Commissioner Landis withdrew to consider his decision.