Background
Edward Victor Cicotte was born on June 19, 1884 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. He was the son of Ambrose Cicotte, a railroad foreman, and Archangel Cicotte.
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Edward Victor Cicotte
Edit ProfileEducation
He completed eight years of schooling at St. Anne's Elementary School in Detroit and then worked as a plumber's helper and a furrier and pitched sandlot baseball in the Detroit area.
Career
A promising pitcher and right-handed thrower, he was signed by the Detroit Tigers in 1905, but spent most of that season in Augusta, in the South Atlantic League. There he played with Ty Cobb, whom he recommended as a good prospect to the Tiger management. Late in the 1905 season, Cicotte pitched for Detroit but was released after appearing in three games; his size (five feet, five inches) was a factor in his release. Cicotte spent the next two seasons pitching in the minor leagues. In 1908 Cicotte was acquired by the Boston Red Sox and thus began a thirteen-year major-league career. His four seasons with the team produced a 51-45 win-loss record, but his low earned-run average (ERA) was excellent. The Red Sox were en route to a world championship in 1912 when Cicotte was traded to the mediocre Chicago White Sox. Five years later, however, owner Charles Comiskey assembled a championship White Sox team with Cicotte as its ace pitcher. A crafty pitcher, Cicotte mastered a variety of deliveries, including a spitball and his mysterious "shine ball. " Opposing batters like Ty Cobb feared the shine ball, which Cicotte delivered after first rubbing the ball on his flannel uniform. According to Cobb, the pitch "arrived at the plate looking like nothing. . Yet it was almost impossible to get the bat on the pitch. " Cicotte also enjoyed excellent control; only once in his major-league career did he issue as many as 80 bases on balls in a season, and during the seasons of 1918 and 1919 he issued only 97 walks in 556 innings. In 1917 and again in 1919, with Cicotte winning fifty-seven games, the White Sox won two American League pennants and a World Series. Cicotte's lifetime pitching record, compiled over fourteen seasons, included a 210-148 win-loss record, a 2. 37 ERA, 36 shutouts, and 1, 374 strikeouts. In his two World Series appearances he won two games and lost three. Were it not for Cicotte's involvement in the notorious 1919 "Black Sox scandal, " such feats might have won him a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame. However, Cicotte admitted to being one of eight White Sox players who were involved in a conspiracy with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the opposing Cincinnati Reds and were thereafter stigmatized as "Black Sox. " For his motive, Cicotte blamed owner Comiskey's stingy salary policy; he had received less than $6, 000 in salary in 1919. After Comiskey rejected a plea from some of the players for more money, White Sox first baseman Charles ("Chick") Gandil used his contacts with gamblers to hatch the plot. Cicotte joined Gandil's conspiracy in July and helped to recruit others. Eventually Gandil, Cicotte, Joe Jackson, Swede Risberg, Lefty Claude Williams, Buck Weaver, Happy Felsch, and Fred McMullen were involved. Cicotte admitted getting $10, 000 of the $100, 000 put up by the gamblers and said he used his share to pay off a $4, 000 mortgage on his farm. The scandal came to light only after the heavily favored White Sox lost the series. The plot was a poorly kept secret and rumors were rife. Investigations frightened Cicotte into admitting his role and naming others. Late in September 1920, Cicotte told a Cook County, grand jury how he helped to throw the first game of the series, which the White Sox lost 8-1, by pitching ineffectively and how his two costly errors helped lose the fourth game by a 2-0 score. Cicotte's confession was followed by teammate Jackson's and led to the suspension of the eight accused players. At the time of the suspensions the White Sox were in the thick of the 1920 pennant race and Cicotte's pitching record was 20-10. The highly publicized scandal rocked baseball, prompting officials to replace the game's governing national commission with a high commissioner. Federal District Court Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis accepted the post and took office in January 1921, charged with the task of cleaning up the game's tarnished image. During the following summer seven of the eight accused White Sox players were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit a confidence game and tried in Chicago. During the much-criticized proceedings, Cicotte and others repudiated their confessions after those and other grand jury records were mysteriously lost. As a result, the jury returned not-guilty verdicts for the seven indicted players. Commissioner Landis immediately barred the eight men from organized baseball, but over the years his ruling has been much criticized. His harsh edict deprived the players of their civil rights and cast them as lifelong pariahs; as such, they became a part of American folklore. Cicotte lived most of the rest of his life in semiseclusion on his small farm near Detroit. He worked as a game warden and in the Service Department of the Ford Motor Company. Retiring from Ford in 1944, he spent his last years growing strawberries. In one of his rare interviews, he admitted his guilt, adding, "I've tried to make up for it by living as clean a life as I could. . Everybody who has ever lived has committed sins. " He died in Detroit.
Achievements
Connections
On May 19, 1905, he married Rose Freer; they had three children.
References
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Born
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Died
May 5, 1969 (aged 84) -
Nationality
American