For love or moneyby Tom Viney
oneweekatatime.com.au
September 26th, 2013 Mahatma Ghandi once wrote a different spin of the Seven Deadly Sins and his first was, “wealth without work.” Dustin Martin and the Richmond Football Club and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the 1919 Chicago White Sox sprung to mind when I recently stumbled across Ghandi’s quote.
In 1919, eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspired to ‘throw’ the World Series versus Cincinnati, a series they were expected to win 5-0. The story goes the players were angry at their owner Charles Comiskey, who didn’t look after them financially while he pocketed large amounts of cash himself. Each player was to be paid the princely sum of five thousand dollars for his part in the fix, double the salary most of them were paid. They lost the series and so much more that October nearly one hundred years ago. The ’19 Chicago team are still referred to as ‘The Black Sox’.
One of the players indicted and banned for life was the legendary “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. Babe Ruth famously said he modelled his swing on Jackson’s. He still has the third highest career batting average of all time (.356), and the sixth highest single season average (.408). Jackson always maintained his innocence and pop culture movies “Eight Men Out” (1988) and “Field of Dreams” (1989) certainly support this view of the scandal. There has been more than one attempt to remove “Shoeless Joe” from the ineligible list for the Baseball Hall of Fame, such is the love for him and belief in his innocence, but at the time of writing Joe Jackson is still the greatest player not inducted in the Hall of Fame.
Jackson’s raw stats for the 1919 series suggested that even if he took the money from the gamblers, he didn’t act on his promise. During the series Jackson led all players in hits (12) and batting average (.375), and he committed no errors from his usual position at left field. He also hit the only home run in the series. Legend has it that outside the court house after the trial of the players, a young White Sox fan was heard to say with tears streaming, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”
Thankfully, stories like the “Black Sox” have not rocked Australian sport too often. There has been the odd bet that has landed the perpetrator in hot water for a while, Damien Oliver being the most recent case. But overall, our sports are pretty clean (or perhaps I’m a bit naïve?).
In the last twenty years or so however, there has been an American infiltration into Australian sport that has me worried. It is a monster that may be worse than gambling on sports. It is unpredictable and it is set the rock the world of many more young fans, like the lad outside the courthouse waiting to ask his hero a question in 1920. It is the player manager who is the new breed of gambler. They are perfectly legal, but some consider them immoral.
When Dustin Martin decided to “field other offers” despite not walking out on the club, it caused everyone from tiger legend Matthew Richardson to league boss Andrew Demetriou to talk or tweet. Everyone had an opinion and social media was in a frenzy. I read on a Richmond fan forum that it was akin to saying to your wife, “I’m going out tonight honey to see if I can pick up a hotter lady, but if I can’t I’ll be home at 11!” Dustin himself tweeted for patience and understanding, but they are two things society is short of these days.
The odd thing is, Martin is nowhere near being a free agent (another new term for Aussie sports fans), but coming out of contract is just as powerful in 2013. Player manager Ralph Carr, who was also in charge during Travis Cloke’s drawn out negotiations last year, seems to care only for the number of zeros in the contract and little else. He plays hard ball for his clients. He takes no prisoners and that trait is admirable and one to be respected until he plays hard ball with the brightest young star at your club, too bad if you’re a young tiger fan with number four on your jumper and tears streaming.
‘An extra fifty thousand here, a lucrative endorsement there, and whatever you do, don’t sign too early kids. Loyalty is dead anyway!’
The interesting thing is, in 1919, Major League Baseball had a reserve clause which meant if a player refused the contract his club offered, he was not permitted to sign for another team, effectively ruling him out of the game. A system Ralph Carr would struggle to operate in I’m sure.
There is another rather sad similarity between Dustin Martin and “Shoeless” Joe. Jackson was illiterate and some say he was “tricked or bullied” into signing the papers to fix the World Series. I’m not saying Martin is in anyway illiterate but the constant suggestion that he needs “looking after” off-field rings alarm bells. Some clubs have baulked at recruiting him apparently because of the extra resources required to keep him on track. I don’t know Dustin personally and have no knowledge of his movements after the final siren of games and I wonder if he is an easy target because of the way he looks and where he comes from (Dustin left high school in Year 9 to work with his father). I just hope his decision, whatever he chooses, is his own and not Carr’s.
I wondered what had happened to the Chicago Black Sox after the trial and Commissioner Landis’ decision to ban them from playing Major League Baseball for life despite the players being acquitted by the grand jury. The team would not win the American League championship for forty years, spawning the “Curse of the Black Sox”. Comiskey died in 1931 with the reputation of being a frugal owner who failed to earn the respect of his players. Joe Jackson would never play organised baseball again, although in “Field of Dreams” he is said to have turned up in a much lower level league under an assumed name, because he loved to play and couldn’t keep away from the game. The image of him swinging the bat with a smile on his face is a haunting image.
I haven’t seen Dustin Martin smile with that same level of satisfaction and confidence since he came into the league. Perhaps his mate, Dan Connors got it right when he tweeted “…let the kid live…” Would a young star like Dustin Martin be able to derive pleasure from the game if he played every Saturday at 2pm at a suburban ground? Does he love the game or is he thinking only of the dollars on offer?
Dustin has done four years of work and now wants the wealth but is he worth the extras? Only time will tell. It might be worth heading down to a suburban ground like, hmm, I don’t know, maybe Aberfeldie in ten years time and asking one or two of the players why they play the game.
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