Gambling was so widespread in the country that many of its higher-rolling practition­ers were looked upon as respectable men. Indeed, before baseball became more discrim­inating about who it let through its executive turnstiles, ball clubs were occasionally con­trolled by men euphemisti­cally known as sportsmen. Frank Farrell, one of two partners who were the first owners of the New York Yankees franchise, was one of the city's best-known gamblers. His partner, William (Big Bill) Devery, was long remembered as New York's most corrupt police commissioner, quite a heady status to have achieved in those rip-roaring gas-lit days.

Gambling at the ball parks became so flagrant after the turn of the century that some clubs began circulating private detectives through the stands to stop the practice and eject the gam­blers. While this gave the game a cleaner appearance, it did not prevent betting on games in pool halls, barbers shops, taverns, and other places where venture capitalists gathered.

In his book of memoirs, Baseball As I Have Known It, veteran baseball writer Fred Lieb re­calls an episode that occurred in 1913. Yankees manager Frank Chance dis­gustedly told Lieb and another writer that his first baseman, Hal Chase, was "throwing games on me." When Lieb reported this to his editor, he was told to "pass it up." Lieb suggests that Chase's shenanigans were common knowledge around the American League, but that nothing was done, except for Chase being dealt away from New York to the White Sox.

The notorious Hal Chase was a scintillating talent, so magical around first base that one team after another was willing to risk hiring him, probably figuring that a Hal Chase that gave you his all even 80 percent of the time was preferable to anybody else. This is another way of emphasiz­ing how rare and how prized exceptional talent is. If you're tem­peramental, eccentric, abrasive, alcoholic, ethically dubious, but you can hit or pitch, your continued presence will be rationalized.

For those who saw him play first base, Hal Chase was forever the standard, some­times approached, never equaled. He seems to have had mongoose qualities when it came to fielding bunts. Lieb claims Chase was quick enough to pick up bunts on the third-base side of the mound and nab runners at any of the three bases. Chase must have possessed remarkable agility (for fielding bunts and for staying out of jail, too). He was also something of an innovator in the field, being one of the first to play wide of the bag and one of the few who could execute the 3-6-3 double play with unerring skill. He was apparently good enough, too, to dump a game and leave behind suspicions that were clouded with doubt. You've got to be pretty damned adept at what you're doing to deliberately fluff a play and not leave your teammates squinting too sharply at you. Roger Peckinpaugh, then a young shortstop with the Yankees, recalled one of Chase's dubious maneuvers.

Like many notable rogues, Chase could be a charmer. He was, by all accounts, witty, intelli­gent, and personable, eminently likable. He was also described as having a "cork­screw brain." Given his apparent inability to think straight, New York, where he began his big-league career in 1905, was probably not the most ethically healthful place for Chase. The 22-year-old Californian hit the sidewalks of the big city running: along with his un­precedented glides and whirls around first base and an engaging personality that was animated by a winning smile, Prince Hal (yes, they did call him that) knew how to box, was a virtuoso with a pool cue, and a dead shot with a rifle. This suggests that whatever education he had included some time spent on the other side of the tracks, places where, if discussion of ethics ever came up, they centered on how best to live one's life around them.

So this was no ingenuous rookie hitting the big time, no gullible bumpkin unstrapping his suit­case in the big city. Chase soon became a drawing card by dint of his spectacular glovework. And the young Californian with the bright smile but guarded eyes soon re­vealed his penchant for gambling. As a baseball celebrity and as one of the pets of high-stakes gambler and club owner Frank Farrell, he was made welcome. What intrigued the boys around the dens where optimism blows forever hot was Chase's predilection for betting on ball games, including some in which he was a participant. Now it would take a man with the moral fiber of a saint to whack out base hits and spear crucial grounders and pegs in a game in which his money was riding on the other team, as Chase's some­times was. Occasionally, it was said, Hal shored up a sure thing by giving a teammate a piece of the action and then letting the man decide for himself where his best in­terests lay. Some teammates cooperated, some did not. Among the latter was a young right-hander named Jimmy Ring, a rookie teammate of Chase's on the 1917 Cincinnati Reds. When before a game that Ring was starting Chase offered to increase the weight of Ring's wal­let if Jimmy would dilute his best efforts, Ring told him, "If you ever say anything like that to me again, I'll beat the livin' shit out of you." Jimmy was one tough bruiser from the hard-fisted precincts of Maspeth, Long Island, and so Chase just smiled and walked away.

That Chase's machinations were no secret was amply borne out later. After Frank Chance sent him to the White Sox, Hal jumped to the Federal League, and when that foredoomed en­terprise folded up, joined Cincinnati in 1916. He led the league in batting that year with a .339 average and continued on as the Nijinsky of first base, when he felt like it, as teammates sigh­ed, sportswriters chuckled or shook their heads, and fans went on buying tickets and going through the turnstiles with the faith of churchgoers. This time, however, Chase was performing his capers in the lengthening shadows of Judgment Day. The first of these shadows was cast by his Cincinnati, skipper, none other than the game's first genuine icon, Christy Mathewson himself. Hal was about to get his head caught in a couple of slamming Sinai tablets.

When George Stallings, Frank Chance's predecessor as Yankee manager, came right out and accused Chase of throwing games, Ban Johnson chastised him for staining the name of a top drawing card. When Frank Chance said the same thing, he was ig­nored. (Indeed, when Chance traded Chase to the White Sox, Frank Farrell was so outraged he soon canned Chance.) But when Christy Mathewson questioned Chase's honesty, people had to listen. Demigods speak in thunder. By 1918 the demigod had seen enough and reported to National League president John Heydler that Chase was throwing games. Hal got a reprieve on this occasion, however, for just as Heydler began his investigation of the matter, Mathewson joined the army and went overseas. With his chief accuser in the trenches of France, Chase was able to survive for another year. Baseball writer Fred Lieb reported that in an off-the-record conversa­tion with Heydler, the league president said he believed Mathewson but lacked the proof to make the charge stand up.

Interestingly enough, Chase's final big-league year, 1919, was spent playing for John McGraw. Why McGraw decided to hire the shady rascal is a mystery, particularly in light of Mathewson's charges. It's true that the Giants needed a first baseman, and perhaps McGraw, with his sense of omniscience, felt that his mere presence would be injunction enough to intimi­date Chase into honesty. But even John J. must have felt at times that having Chase on the team was like carrying around a parcel handed to you by an anarchist. As a reformer and a deterrent, McGraw failed. Not only was he unable to stop Chase from "funnying" up a game, but Hal's virus was apparently infectious. In mid-August, the Giants announced that both Chase and 3B Heinie Zimmerman had been suspended indefinitely. "Indefinitely" in this case meant permanently. Neither Chase nor Zimmerman, whom Hal may well have cajoled into some dubious invest­ment opportunities, ever played in organized ball again, though no formal charges were ever filed against either man, nor did either man try to get back into the game.

Chase continued playing baseball, semipro, in Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico until well into his forties, and those dazzling skills began to fade. One can only speculate what thoughts wwent through that "corkscrew" brain as he moved from one dusty town to another, being Hal Chase, Prince Hal, incomparable darling of New York fans, upon the rocky, hard-surfaced diamonds of mining towns and waystations, performing his 3-6-3 whirligigs for a few dollars under the broiling sun of the Southwest. If he had any re­grets, he left them unrecorded. He died on May 18, 1947, in Colusa CA, age 64, leaving behind a legacy of smiles, charm, wizardry, and deceit–the Benedict Arnold of baseball.

Had baseball been more vigilant and decisive when it came to dealing with the Hal Chases in its midst, the greatest scandal in the history of American sports - the Chicago White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series - might never had happened.