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September 28,1920: At the law office of Alfred Austrian, Lefty Williams admitted he helped fix the 1919 World Series. Williams is being questioned by Alfred Austrian.

"My name is Claude Williams. I am the same Claude Williams who lately has been a member of the Chicago American League Baseball Club. I am making this statement of my own free will and volition...."

 

Austrian:        I want you to mention the names of the gamblers, the places, the times, and everyone you talked to about the whole subject.

Williams:       This situation was first brought up to me in New York. Mr. Gandil called me to one side, out in front of the Hotel Ansonia, and put this thing to me.... After coming back to Chicago, I was called down to the Warner Hotel where the eight members that are named -not eight, I will take that back: I will name them for you: Eddie Cicotte, Chick Gandil, Buck Weaver, and Happy Felsch, and two fellows introduced as Brown and Sullivan.

Austrian:       They were the gamblers?

Williams:       They were supposed to be the gamblers, or fellows that were fixing it for the gamblers-one of the two, they didn't say which.

Austrian:       Sullivan was from Boston, wasn't he?

Williams:       They didn't say. They said they'd come from New York. They introduced themselves as Brown and Sullivan from New York.

Austrian:       And you would know them if you saw them?

Williams:       I would, sure. I would know them.

Austrian:       Go on.

Williams:       I was informed that whether or not I took any action, games would be fixed.

Austrian:       Who informed you of that?

Williams:       Chick Gandil.

Austrian:       Right then and there?

Williams:       No, not right then and there. Just right after that. Just as I got in the hall. So I told them anything they did would be agreeable to me: if it was going to be done anyway, that I had no money. I may as well get what I could. I haven't seen those gamblers from that day to this. We were supposed to get-Gandil told me we were supposed to get . . . what was it? ... I was supposed to get ten thousand dollars after the second game, when we got back to Chicago, but I did not get this until after the fourth game; and he then said the gamble had called it off: and I figured then that there was a double cross someplace. On the second trip to Cincinnati, for the sixth and seventh games, Cicotte and I had a conference. I told him we were doubled-crossed and I was going out to win if there was any possible chance. Cicotte said he was the same way. Gandil had informed me in Cincinnati (before the Series began) that Bill Burns and Abe Attell was also fixing where we would get one hundred thousand dollars, making twenty thousand dollars more. That I never received.

Austrian:       You had a meeting in Cincinnati with the ballplayers? Where was that?

Williams:       That was in the hotel.

Austrian:       Who was there?

Williams:       In Chick Gandil's room? We never had a meeting. We just went up there. We just dropped in one at a time; there was Buck Weaver, Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, and myself.

Austrian:       Was Weaver there?

Williams:       Yes.

Austrian:       And what conversation did you have there?

Williams:       We asked him [Gandil] when he was going to get the hundred thousand that Burns and Attell was supposed to give us. He says 'They are supposed to give me after each game, supposed to give me twenty or thirty thousand dollars after each game,' which, if they gave him that, I know nothing of at all.

Austrian:       When did he say you would get some money?

Williams:       He didn't say. He didn't make no statement. I was supposed at first to get so much, get ten thousand dollars after the second game [Williams lost it 4-2]. I didn't receive it until the fourth game. I got only five.

Austrian:       Did you ever ask Gandil or anyone else-----

Williams:       (interrupting) I never even talked to Gandil from that day to this.

Austrian:       Did you ever talk to any of the other ballplayers?

Williams:       I never talked to no one.

Austrian:       I mean about it.

Williams:       I never talked to no one.

Austrian:       Did any of the other ballplayers talk to you about it?

Williams:       They never mentioned it to me.

Austrian:       Do you know how much Weaver got?

Williams:       I could not say.

Austrian:       Did he tell you how much he got?

Williams:       He never did.

Austrian:       Or Felsch?

Williams:       None of the boys ever told me a word of what they got-whether they got a penny or not.

Austrian:       Did you know what games the Sox were to lose for all this money they were getting?

Williams:       Why, they were supposed to lose the first two to Cincinnati, and I never did hear whether they were to lose or win the one with Kerr [third game].

Austrian:       Now, is that all you know about the whole thing?

Williams:       That is all I know.

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