This is the 90th anniversary of the biggest scandal in the history of sports. The baseball commissioner found that eight players on the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. One of those eight, Charles "Swede" Risberg, lived the remaining years of his life in Red Bluff, and his son and daughter-in-law who lived with and cared for him, still live there today.
Robert Risberg showed Action News photographs of his father when he was a member of the 1919 Chicago White Sox. History knows them as the Black Sox. Charles "Swede" Risberg was one the eight players that history says threw the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.
Many books have been written, including the landmark "Eight Men Out" that detail the scandal. Like the book, the film version of "Eight Men Out" shows Risberg as one of the central figures in the plot. He was played by actor Don Harvey.
Shortstop Swede Risberg played poorly in the series and reportedly took home at least $10,000 dollars from gamblers. His son, Robert, now 83, was born six years after the scandal. Swede never spoke with him about it. But his mother did when he was 10.
Robert Risberg said "Mother explained some of the guys had thrown a ballgame, that my dad and all of them got charged by the grand jury, but they were acquitted." But some say the jury was sympathetic to the Sox. Newly-appointed commissioner Kenasaw Mountain Landis was not. Risberg said "Landis decided to be a smart guy and he threw them out of baseball, and that fixed that."
Risberg says the scandal was never a topic of father/son discussions. "No, he never talked about it at all, one way or another. He didn't want to talk about it. I figured he didn't want to. I figured if he wanted to he would have. So I just figured the thing is dead for years and leave it alone."
Banned from the big leagues, Swede Risberg played and managed semi-pro ball. A native of the state, he moved back to California for good, where he worked in a factory in the town of Weed before owning a tavern called Risberg's. His son told us, "I can recall lots of guys in Weed sitting at the bar talking to him about baseball, but no one brought up the scandal thing at all."
It's a touchy subject for Robert and his wife Audrey, who took care of Swede in their Red Bluff home during the last 13 years of his life, even as they raised their own children. Audrey Risberg said "I've resented all of the talk that he did anything wrong because when you live with a man every single day for 13 years you know him. And there was never I time I doubted him, never. I absolutely believe he did nothing wrong because of the man he was. He never had any indication of being a dishonest person."
Swede Risberg died at a convalescent home on Luther Road in Red Bluff, in 1975 on his 81st birthday. His daughter-in-law says she cried for six months. "Because I loved him and missed him very much."
In part two of the Swede Risberg story on Tuesday, we'll show you where Swede Risberg is laid to rest, and how 90 years after baseball's biggest scandal, baseball fans still have a curious fascination with the Black Sox and Swede Risberg.
