The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball

by Charles Fountain,
Tulsa World, November 15, 2015

Soon after the heavily favored Chicago White Sox lost the first game of the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, baseball writer Ring Lardner drafted a new lyric to a then-popular song: “I’m forever blowing ball games/ Pretty games in the air/ I come from Chi,/ I hardly try/ Just go to bat/ And fade and die/ Fortune’s coming my way/ That’s why I don’t care/ I’m forever blowing ball games,/ And the gamblers treat us fair.”