, which was prohibited through the reserve clause located within every players contract, then this tragic story in baseball lore would have never come about. The second theme to which Asinof speaks is of the series itself. Before the series ever even began the gamblers were seemingly stringing the players along, all except for Arnold Rothstein. He was the only participant in the fix to uphold his end of the deal, and give the players the money they agreed upon. But as was the case so often, a fellow gambler, and the man the players trusted skimmed money off the top and only delivered the players $10,000 of the $40,000 provided up front.When the series started, the players were prepared to fulfill their end of the deal, even though they didnt receive their payment in advance. In fact the first two games of the series went exactly according to plan. The superior White Sox team of Chicago successfully threw the first two games of the series. The third game was a turning point for the players morale. After being overly frustrated with the treatment they were receiving from their partners in the fix, they decided to strike back. The third game was an overwhelming victory for the White Sox. The interesting part of this is that the players set out to lull the gamblers into a false sense of security by assuring them the third game would go just as the first two.This was the beginning of the players reluctance to go through with the fall. This game started a chain of events that lead the players to win the sixth and seventh games to bring the series record to 4-3 in favor of the Reds. And if it had not been for the threat on Lefty Williams and his wife, the White Sox quite possibly would have turned the series around and ended it with a world championship. The White Sox lost the eighth game of the series, even though their will to come out with a victory was great, the pitching of Williams put them in a hole, that even for this gre...
