Charles "Swede" Risberg was a very good baseball player. That would be his legacy if not for the 1919 Black Sox scandal that banned him and seven others permanently from baseball. But Swede Risberg had two lives. The first is the young man that history knows, the one baseball says was involved in scandal. The second is the older and wiser one that surviving family members who live in Red Bluff remember best.
There are reminders of the man in the Red Bluff home of Swede's son and daughter-in-law, Robert and Audrey Risberg. That's where Swede Risberg lived the last years of his life. Memories of the baseball player include photos, a biography and even the book "Eight Men Out" which explains in excruciating detail Risberg's involvement in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.
Audrey Risberg told Action News " we got "Eight Men Out" from the library in our house and I haven't been able to read it yet." Swede's daughter-in-law, like his son, Robert, choose to remember the man as they knew him while living in their Red Bluff home during the last 13 years of his life. They remember his as a good father and grandfather. Audrey Risberg said "he threw the ball to our son. And it was beautiful, like music."
Robert remembers how his father, the former major league shortstop, taught him how to play the game of baseball. "Mostly, he'd teach you how to throw a curve ball." Now and then, he'd take in the scenery outside the patio. But baseball was always on Swede's mind. Robert Risberg said "from morning until night. If not TV, he (would listen) on the radio for hours."
As a young man, Swede Risberg had a reputation as tough and quick-tempered, once getting into a tussle with Ty Cobb after the fiery Cobb spiked him in the leg. Robert said "the next time Cobb slid in, my dad took the baseball and cold-cocked him, and when Cobb came to they were real good buddies." Robert says that injury left scar tissue, which years later became infected and near the end of his life cost Swede Risberg his leg. Audrey Risberg remembers "it was really a terrible thing for a giant athlete to go through."
Audrey saw her father-in-law's courage, and admired him. Even 34 years after his death she still bristles when people bring up the Black Sox. "It's very unfair. But human nature is such that these are the kind of things that stay in the memory and history books."
Charles Swede Risberg was the last of the eight Black Sox to die. He's buried at the Mount Shasta Cemetery. His grave is visited by family and curious onlookers who want a glimpse of history. Some even leave artifacts in his memory. When we visited we found an old baseball glove on his grave marker. Every year, the cemetery receives about a dozen inquiries for directions to Risberg's gravesite, including one that came in last month from a man in Pennsylvania. Mount Shasta Cemetery Funeral Director Robert Quillin said "I think it's just the history. Baseball buffs that want information, to take pictures of the marker."
To baseball fans and historians, Swede Risberg was nothing more than a Black Sock, a player who tarnished the game. But Robert Risberg says he was simply a great father.
