Bizuayehu Tesfaye, Associated PressThe Buckminster Hotel in Boston, to the right of Fenway Park, was where Chicago White Sox first baseman Chick Gandil met with a gambler bidding to fix the 1919 World Series and promised him: "I think we can put it in the bag."
Click photo for larger image.
BOSTON -- Tucked into Kenmore Square, between Fenway Park and the Citgo sign that provides the backdrop for so many baseball highlights, is another, lesser-known landmark with a place in history of its own.
It was here, at the Hotel Buckminster, that Chicago White Sox first baseman Chick Gandil met with a gambler bidding to fix the 1919 World Series and promised him: "I think we can put it in the bag."
No plaque marks the start of what might be the most notorious cheating scandal in the history of American sports. But the Buckminster is still around, being host to baseball fans instead of players and giving them a view of Fenway and the history it has yet to make.
"During the baseball season, a lot of people ask where the Black Sox scandal happened," Ed Sheppherd, the hotel's front desk manager, said yesterday. "But the only people that would know what room they were in have long since passed away."
The Buckminster staff can expect more inquiries this week, when the White Sox play the Houston Astros and try to win Chicago's first World Series since the 1919 team gave one away.
In "Eight Men Out," the 1963 book about the fixing scandal that was made into a 1988 movie, author Eliot Asinof recounts the meeting at the Buckminster between Gandil and bookie Joe "Sport" Sullivan. The gambler arrived in a taxi, called Gandil's room from the house phone and was asked to come up.
Once inside, Gandil delivered the news and the price: $80,000.
Little else is known about the meeting or the exact room where it took place. The date of the meeting also is in dispute: Asinof puts it "exactly three weeks before the World Series was to begin," but the White Sox were in Washington that day, according to retrosheet.org; more likely, it was during their three-game Boston trip of Sept. 19-20.
The White Sox arrived in Boston with a 61/2-game lead over the Cleveland Indians and just eight to play in the 140-game season. They beat the Red Sox 3-2 Sept. 19 to clinch a tie for the AL pennant; Cincinnati, with a 101/2-game lead over the New York Giants, had already clinched the NL title.
With no playoffs, the White Sox and Reds were headed for the Series.
Chicago opened as 8-5 favorites to beat the Reds before losing the best-of-nine set in eight games. The fix was soon exposed; eight White Sox players were banned for life, sports had its first modern commissioner and virtually every league adopted a prohibition against associating with gamblers.
The Buckminster earned its place in cheating history honestly.
With no room service or concierge, it is the kind of place professional baseball teams don't stay in now. Even then, it had a "subdued, conservative, old-lady atmosphere," Asinof wrote.
According to Asinof, the White Sox wound up there for the late-season series because they had trashed their usual Boston hotel during a night of carousing on a previous trip.
"Chairs, lamps, tables, even beds had been dumped out of the windows into the courtyard below," Asinof wrote. "The Hotel Buckminster was the result."
The lobby these days has a fresh coat of gold paint on the rotunda trim and plywood over the original floor tiles to protect them from the current renovation. Outside, the marble-and-brick facade is well-pointed.
In room 615, Sullivan would have been able to sit and look out the window, over what is now the Massachusetts Turnpike, and watch his accessories play at Fenway Park. Rooms on the other side of the building look out over Kenmore Square and the Citgo sign that television viewers see when home runs sail over Fenway's Green Monster.
Today, the 94-room hotel's only connection to White, Black or Red Sox is the Chicago-style pizza place, complete with baseball memorabilia, occupying part of the street level. "You never hear about that," said Sean Gibbons, a construction worker who stopped in for lunch.
Across the bar sat Billy Murphy, a passable copy of Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek but more of a hockey fan than a baseball fan. He didn't know about the connection to the 1919 Series, either, but he knew everything he needed to know about this year's.
"We're not playing today," he said, "because we lost."
First Published: October 22, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
