[gregndodgers]

Does revenge constitute moral turpitude? If you had a provision in your employment contract that would grant you an additional $10,000 for achieving a certain performance level, and your boss deliberately stopped you from achieving that level, would you be mad?

There is evidence that Eddie was deliberately held out of games so that he would not win 30 games and get his $10,000 bonus. Hmmm. It’s interesting that his take in the scandal was $10,000.

In 1919, Eddie pitched every fifth day of the season (and sometimes every 3rd day), so by pitching that often and pitching extremely well, he was able to amass 29 wins that season.

In fact, on September 5, 1919, he won his 28th game. At that point, the White Sox still had 19 games left to play. Those 19 games would allow Cicotte to start five more games. Inexplicably, he did not pitch again until September 19, a game in which he won his 29th game. But the long absence caused him to miss two starts.

Anyway, he still had two games after his 29th win to win one game. What happened next? After routinely pitching all nine innings of his starts (he pitched at least 9 innings in 26 of his 40 starts that season), he was pulled early and only pitched a total of 9 innings in his final two starts.

So of the final five games he was scheduled to start, he started and pitched in only three of those games. Then after wining his 29th game, he started two more games but was taken out early in both of those games.

So the theory is that since Comisky deliberately prevented Eddie from getting his bonus, Eddie decided to stick it to Comisky and prevent him from winning the World Series.

If this theory is true, was Eddie justified? Does the injustice of being prevented from receiving what is justly yours a valid reason for this type of revenge? I think many would say yes. So the nature of Eddie’s act may be wrongly placed. Instead of committing an act to gain money by throwing a game it becomes an act of revenge!