Lynn native, author releases first book

LYNN – Any baseball buff will tell you that the White Sox were the first baseball team to “throw” a World Series, but it takes a true insider to make the case that this legend is not entirely true and it, in fact, was the Chicago Cubs throwing the 1918 World Series to the Boston Red Sox.This insider is award-winning Sporting News reporter and Lynn native Sean Deveney, who recently released his first book, The Original Curse, on Oct. 2, just in time for the 2009 Major League Playoffs and the 90th anniversary of the Black Sox Scandal, in which eight members of the 1919 White Sox were banned from baseball for life for intentionally losing games and handing the series to the Cincinnati Reds.For Deveney, the desire to write, fueled by the excellence of his English teachers throughout the course of his education in the Lynn public schools, was actually a secondary dream and a means of staying involved in sports.”I was about 12 or so and I was intent on being the second baseman for the Red Sox. Then the pitchers started throwing curveballs and I just could not hit them,” said Deveney. “So I figured out early that I had better find another way to stay in sports if that was what I wanted to do. Sports writing made sense. My first paycheck actually came from The Item. I think I covered a girl’s soccer game as a stringer.”Deveney’s love of sports and baseball is something he considers to be innate in native New Englanders.”Doesn’t everyone who grows up in New England love baseball? If you live near Boston and you can’t talk about the Red Sox, is there anything else to talk about? That’s one of the great things about sports in that part of the country – the way it is handed down from generation to generation,” said Deveney, who currently lives in Chicago near Wrigley Field.While talking about the book, Deveney admits that there is no way to directly say that the 1918 World Series was thrown, but there is enough evidence, in his opinion, to make the case. He started thinking that the Cubs might have thrown the World Series after Chicago Historical Museum curator Peter Alter showed him a deposition that was given by White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte, a key conspirator in the Black Sox Scandal.”Cicotte was talking about how the idea to throw the series got started,” said Deveney. “He said that a bunch of the White Sox had heard that the Cubs had thrown the World Series the previous year, so they figured they could do it, too.”The Original Curse paints a historical picture of America in 1918 and pinpoints World War I as one of the main factors that inspired players to throw the World Series. The draft pulled men away from jobs throughout the country and the war was hurting the nation’s economy as well as increasing inflation. Players were labeled as slackers because they were not fighting. Sportswriters were declaring that baseball was dead.”No one expected there to be a 1919 season. A lot of these guys had no training in other trades, so the 1918 World Series was probably going to be the last chance they had to make money off baseball. And, once the series got started, attendance and revenue was so bad, it was revealed that the players would not get nearly as big a players’ share as expected,” said Deveney. “The players felt they were getting ripped off by baseball – in fact, at one point, they even delayed a game with a strike. All the conditions that would have led players to throw the series, or some of the games in the series, were there.”According to Deveney, most people do not realize that the Black Sox never would have been caught in the fix if it weren’t for the Cubs.”On Aug. 31, 1920, the Cubs were accused of throwing a game to the Phillies and the press made a big stink about it. That’s when a grand jury was called to investigate gambling in baseball, but rather than investigate the Cubs allegation, the grand jury turned to the 1919 White Sox and their focus stayed there. The Cubs game was just sort of forgotten. But the lesson there