Inning 3 - The Faith of Fifty Million People: 1910-1920
"The faith of fifty million people" comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" to describe Arnold Rothstein, the gambler behind the Black Sox scandal of the 1919 World Series. This third volume of Ken Burns classic "Baseball" documentary, a true rite of spring, traces the history of the sport in the Roaring Twenties, knowing full well that the decade would end with the game's lowest moment. The success of Connie Mack's Athletics is countered by stingy Charles Comisky's miserly treatment of the Chicago White Sox who would throw the series against the Reds. The creation of the Federal League keeps the labor issue alive and Burns keeps tabs as well on Branch Rickey, always with an eye out for baseball's greatest moment when Jackie Robinson would walk onto Ebbett's field (which was built in 1912). But at the end of the decade, it is the figure of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the game's first Commissioner who most dominates the game by banning the Black Sox for life. However, that was off the field. What was needed on the field was a player who could once again make fans love and trust the game of baseball. While Shoeless Joe Jackson was playing outlaw ball on several Southern teams under assumed names, Commissioner Landis approved the sale of George H. Ruth from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees for the sum of $125,000. Burns makes it very clear in this episode, it is often darkest before the dawn.