SOLD! Black Sox Hotel Key - Shoeless Joe Jackson

[Shoeless Moe]

For sale is a vintage Hotel Sinton skeleton key, this was the Hotel where the Black Sox: Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Chic Gandil, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, Happy Felsch, and Fred McMullin met with the gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series

SOLD

Room # 651 - (RARE because I've seen 3 other keys over the last 10 years watching Ebay and this is from one of the upper 2 floors and the upper floors were where the players and team officials stayed), the hotel consisted of 7 floors of rooms. The hotel was demolished in the 1960's.

Now we'll never know for sure if this key was used by a member of the Black/White Sox, or a gambler, or some member of the media or league official or who, but it sure is fun to think who may have used it.

Was it Eddie Cicotte's room? Did he use this key to enter the room and find the money under his pillow, was it Comiskey's Suite key? Shoeless Joe's room? A great & unique addition to any Black Sox display or vintage baseball collection.
Quote from: Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series
The book outlines Roush's theory that the White Sox were playing to win after Game 1. This theory is developed with Roush's story of Jimmy Widmeyer, the "Million Dollar Newsboy" who ran a newsstand at the Walnut and 5th in Cincinnati. Widmeyer, who was alerted about a possible fix, rented room 712 of the Sinton Hotel, the room next to Black Sox stars Ed Cicotte and Happy Felsch. Widmeyer "with his ear pressed against the wall with a water glass" overhead arguments between White Sox players and the gamblers, presumably Abe Attell, about getting their pay-off for tanking Game one of the 1919 World Series.
The craziness of the gambling activities in and about the Cincinnati Hotels around Game 1 and Game 2 are particularly insightful in the missing links of the Black Sox story and correspond to the trial testimony that Sleepy Bill Burns late gave in the 1924 Milwaukee trial of Joe Jackson versus Charles Comiskey

From the Trial transcipts:

Frustrated and angry at getting only $10,000 from Sullivan, seven of the players (only Joe Jackson was absent) met on the day before the Series opener at the Sinton Hotel in Cincinnati with Abe Attell. Attell refused to pay the players any cash in advance, offering instead $20,000 for each loss in the best-of-nine Series. The players complained, but told the gamblers that they would throw the first two games with Cicotte and Williams as the scheduled starting pitchers.
Q. [What players were there at the meeting at the Hotel Sinton]?
A. There was Gandil, McMullin, Williams, Felsch, Cicotte, and Buck Weaver.
Q. What about Jackson?
A. I didn't see him there.
Q. Did you have any conversation with them?
A. I told them I had a $100,000 to handle the throwing of the World Series. I also told them that I had the names of the men who were going to finance it.
Q. Who were the financiers?
A. They were Arnold Rothstein, Attell, and Bennett.
Q. Did the players make any statements concerning the order of the games to be thrown?
A. Gandil and Cicotte said the first two games should be thrown. They said,however, that it didn't matter to them. They would throw them in any order desired, it was a made-to-order Series.
Q. What else was said?
A. Gandil and Cicotte said they'd throw the first and second games. Cicotte said he'd throw the first game if had to throw the ball over the fence [at Cincinnati's park...]
Q. Who left the room first?
A. Attell and Bennett [alias of gambler David Zelcer of Des Moines, a defendant in the case]. I asked the players what I was to get. Gandil said that I would get a player's part....After the first game, I met Attell...and then we met Maharg. Attell said he bet all the money and couldn't pay the players until the bets were collected. I told the ballplayers and told Williams that Attell wanted to see them. Williams, Gandil, and I went to see Attell at a place on Walnut Street about a block and a half from the Sinton Hotel.

[Bpm0014]

I'll take it. Again. Haha.

[Chris999]

Really neat item, curious how much it went for.

[RelicSports]

Cool piece!

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by Bearfan4

Cool piece!

+1