The 1919 World Series was infamous because of the Black Sox scandal, where eight members of Chicago’s American League baseball team conspired to throw the postseason series. It’s ingrained in pop culture. There’s the immortal quote — real or made up — by the boy pleading with “Shoeless” Joe Jackson at the courthouse steps, “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” which was later preserved on film in the movie Eight Men Out. In The Godfather Part II, mob character Hyman Roth tells Michael Corleone that “I loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919.”
