Buck Weaver: Silent Partner

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - It became known TODAY in BASEBALL (1922) that Chicago White Sox third baseman Buck Weaver tried to get reinstated to baseball by appealing directly to the commissioner who banned him. Weaver was banned from the game for life for being part of a conspiracy to throw the 1919 World Series. Despite Weaver and seven other players being tried and acquitted of taking bribes from gamblers (mainly because their confessions were mysteriously lost), baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned them anyway for associating with gamblers. The evidence was Weaver refused to take part in the plan but never spoke up about it either.

Weaver hit .324 in the series and played errorless third base, which lent credence to his declaration that he wasn't involved, but Commissioner Landis wouldn't budge. This was the first of several unsuccessful attempts by George "Buck" Weaver during his lifetime to get his named cleared. He died in 1956 at age 65.

Contributing sources:
1919 World Series

Chicago Daily Tribune, January 13, 1922

[Photo in the public domain, source: www.wikipedia.org]