1887 N172 Comiskey vs 1973 Topps

[trdcrdkid]

Oh, come on, you guys. The stories about Comiskey being a skinflint owner who underpaid his players range from objectively false to highly misleading. They originated with Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell, who wrote accounts of the Black Sox scandal that were distorted by their leftist political views, and were uncritically passed on to a broader audience by Eliot Asinof in Eight Men Out, which was basically a historical novel. People who have researched Comiskey through documentary evidence and contemporary sources (including salary data that was unavailable to Asinof, who didn't cite sources in any case) have found a picture that's almost diametrically opposed to the caricature depicted by Asinof. Comiskey was generally well-liked within the game, even beloved by many. The stories that Asinof told about Comiskey's cheapness and deception are all provably false, with one very arguable exception. See the following link, and Tim Hornbaker's 2014 biography of Comiskey, "Turning the Black Sox White".

http://scoopyballpark.blogspot.com/2...t-v-commy.html