DC Sports Premium Auction Volume 105

Lot #6:

Harry Grabiner Signed 1911 Gate Receipt (Key 1919 Black Sox Figure)

This receipt shows the profit splitting on a game played on July 4, 1911. Full Beckett Letter of Authenticity. As team secretary and top aide to Charles Comiskey, Grabiner was a management eyewitness to the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, in which eight White Sox players were accused of conspiring with gamblers to lose the 1919 World Series. Eighteen years after Grabiner's death, Veeck revealed in The Hustler's Handbook (1966) that during his first stint (1959–61) as owner of the White Sox, he had discovered hidden in a Comiskey Park storeroom a diary Grabiner kept during the 1919 season and during subsequent investigations and legal actions in 1920–21. In the chapter "Harry's Diary," Veeck quotes from Grabiner's document and writes, "Beyond any doubt, the White Sox front office had more than some inkling of what was going on from the very first game of the 1919 World Series." Some accounts state that Grabiner warned Comiskey, American League president Ban Johnson and National League president John Heydler of a possible game-fixing scandal after Game 2 of the Series, but he was ignored.