Sunday, May 15, 2005

Man's baseball lineage a point of pride, not shame

By Neal Rubin / The Detroit News

Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

You have to be a fairly serious baseball fan for the name to make an impact, but every once in awhile, Greg Cicotte of Ann Arbor sees an eyebrow elevate and he knows what's coming next.

The last time was three weeks ago on a business trip to Las Vegas. He signed into the health club at the Bellagio Hotel and the guy handing out towels did a double take: "Are you related to ... "

Yes, Cicotte said, "and away we went." He's related, and proud of it, to two major-league pitchers -- one of them his dad, and the other the most infamous figure in baseball history.

Cicotte, 46, was a pitcher himself, for three unproductive seasons in the minor leagues. Now he's a high-ranking, hard-charging, staircase-running executive with Jackson National Life Insurance.

When he's not on the road, where he sprints up and down hotel stairwells to spike his energy level, he oversees the national sales team from an office in Livonia. Two baseballs sit on his desk -- one in pewter that stays put and one in brown leather that he can't help but toss in the air.

Across from him, framed, are some astonishing and astonishingly expensive mementos of the great-great uncle he never met. History says Eddie Cicotte was a villain. To Greg Cicotte, he's just family, and his heavy gray woolen jersey and 1919 contract are the equivalent of an heirloom Bible.

The 1919 Chicago White Sox won the American League pennant and were widely expected to blow past the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series, even though the Reds had a better record during the season.

Instead, the White Sox lost -- on purpose. Gamblers bribed seven players to kick the series away. Along with an eighth player who knew about the fix and kept his mouth shut, they wound up banned from baseball.

The most sympathetic figure in the bunch was Shoeless Joe Jackson, the first player to step from the cornfield in "Field of Dreams." Though he took money, he might not have played to lose.

The role of chief heel has been assigned to Eddie Cicotte, a 5-foot-9 knuckleball pitcher from Detroit who lost two games, one of them clumsily. He was by far the best pitcher in baseball that year, he pocketed $10,000 cash, and no one ever made him the hero of a novel or a movie.

Greg's dad, Al, knew him well. Al pitched for six teams in five big-league seasons, including the Tigers in 1958. As a rookie with the Yankees the year before, Greg says, Al roomed with Mickey Mantle.

Al was out of the major leagues by the time Greg started kindergarten, and by the end of elementary school, when Greg started paying attention to baseball, Eddie was dead. "It's a sad thing for me," he says, that Eddie never got to nod in approval as Greg's fastball thumped into a catcher's mitt.

When Eddie's 1917 White Sox jersey came up for auction a few years ago, Greg was intrigued but cautious. High-level memorabilia is frequently bought with resale in mind, "but I knew this would be mine for life."

The gavel fell at $46,000. The contract -- for $952.50 a month, or about $6,000 for the season -- cost $35,000. "It's not for the weak-hearted," Cicotte says, or for the faithless. He also has photos, tobacco cards and a firm belief that his great-great-uncle has been misunderstood.

In the Cicotte clan, and in baseball lore, the story goes that Eddie had been promised a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games. When he reached 29, the White Sox's notoriously stingy owner, Charles Comiskey, ordered him benched for the last 2 1/2 weeks of the season.

Cicotte had committed the bonus payment to a farm near Detroit, Greg says, and he needed the gamblers' money to provide a home for his family. In fact, reports baseball researcher David Marasco, Cicotte had already met with the gamblers when he won his 29th game on Sept. 19, and he took his regular turn on the mound twice before the end of the season.

The scandal broke in 1920. Eddie Cicotte told a grand jury that "I must have been crazy." He agonized about what his wife and children would think and said he'd "lost everything, job, reputation, everything."

Acquitted of fraud by a Chicago jury but booted from baseball, he came home to Detroit, worked quietly as a paymaster for Ford and farmed strawberries. His great-nephew, Al, went into the insurance business, had a stroke 23 years ago and died at only 52.

Greg Cicotte, tanned and lean with a shaved head, says it's up to him to preserve their legacy. Among those who share the name, he says, Eddie is "revered. Not only for being a great pitcher, but for making this commitment to his family."

Eddie wasn't proud of what he did, Greg says, and neither are they, but they understand and accept it because that's how families play the game.

Neal Rubin appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at (313) 222-1874, nrubin@detnews.com, or 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226.