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Posted By: Bob

For a close and introspective look at how Judge Landis operated, meting out illogical and unforgiving punishments on some and looking the other way on others, you need to read The Great Baseball Mystery by Victor Luhrs. It is a compelling novel of the 1919 WS and the Black Sox and is a necessary companion to 8 Men Out by Asinof but also takes a look at gambling and cheating in baseball before and after the '19 Series. I guarantee you will never look at Landis the same way again. His banning of Ray Fisher, Joe Gedeon, Benny Kauff, and many others exhibited illogic, cruelty, callousness and in the case of Fisher, stupidity. It looks at the kid-gloves treatment of Hal Chase and Heinie Zimmerman. Lastly it depicts the most damaging baseball game ever played, a seemingly ho-hum affair in the NL between a 5th and 7th place team which was alleged to have been fixed and resulted in the grand jury being called to investigate it and which subsequently spiralled in to the Sox WS performance being investigated instead.
A great summer read.