Baseball history has endured its share of myths.  Here is a popular one:

The 1919 White Sox threw the World Series because they were poorly paid and mistreated by their miserly owner, Charles Comiskey.

The truth:  The White Sox had one of the highest payrolls in baseball and most players were paid better than their peers in the American League.  The Hall of Fame has the player contract cards to prove it.  The myth could not be further from the truth.

The next general meeting of the Smoky Joe Wood (CT) Chapter of SABR will host a panel of highly regarded Black Sox experts for a discussion that will start with Black Sox Mythology (Eight Myths Out) and potentially identify the direction for future discoveries.

Our All Star panel includes the following historians:

JIM MARGALUS has been writing about the White Sox since 2006, first at SoxMachine.com, then at SB Nation’s SouthSideSox.com. He wrote a series of White Sox annuals, White Sox Outsider, from 2009 through 2013. In 2017, Jim marked the 1917 White Sox-Giants world barnstorming tour by writing a stop-by-stop account. That same year, he wrote a daily recap of the White Sox’ second championship season of 1917 – back before throwing World Series became a good idea to some of them. Jim grew up in the Thomas-Ventura-McDonald era in Chicagoland, and thinks highly of Harold Baines.  He now lives in Troy, New York, where he’s an online producer for the Albany Times Union.

BILL LAMB spent more than 30 years as a state/county prosecutor in New Jersey. Now retired, he serves as editor of The Inside Game, the newsletter of the Deadball Era Committee, and is the author of Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation (McFarland, 2013).   Once a Yankee-hater, Jim reversed course when he was won over by the magnetic Bombers of the 1990’s. He lives with his wife Barbara in Meredith, NH.

JACOB POMRENKE is SABR’s Director of Editorial Content. He is the chairman and newsletter editor for the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. He is the editor of Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox.  (SABR, 2015). He has moderated panel discussions on Shoeless Joe Jackson and on the 50^th anniversary of Eight Men Out.  Jacob has written for the Hall of Fame’s Memories and Dreams magazine, The National Pastime Museum, Seamheads.com and has appeared on the MLB Network. Raised in Atlanta, Jacob was present for the Braves renaissance that commenced in 1991. His team is looking pretty good these days, too.  He currently lives and works near Phoenix, AZ.

More details to come to you soon on plans for this meeting.

It’s sure to be a special one.  Steve, Stan, Alan and I hope to see you there.

11 A.M.

Sat., March 23

Middlesex Community College

Chapman Hall

Room 605

100 Training Hill Rd.

Middletown, CT 06457

Best,

Karl