I suspect my addled quarantine brain will not allow me to write about this clearly, but I sure am having a lot of thoughts about what life was like during a pandemic in 1918-19 and how that must have felt when baseball finally resumed. (Too bad no one ever asked these guys ...)

Not that I think the pandemic played any direct role in the Black Sox Scandal — except perhaps in adding to a general post-war attitude of “let’s have fun and get what we can while we’re still alive.” But the perfect storm was already in place to fix the World Series regardless.

Chick Gandil and Fred McMullin were in the infamous “flu mask” game in Pasadena in January 1919. See: https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/03/09/coronavirus-baseball-history. If only we could know what they thought about life under quarantine. Both players were educated and intelligent, with young families in California.

No other White Sox were said to be sick (h/t @ww1baseball) and none of the Black Sox players’ family members died with the flu, either. But they did live under quarantine most of the offseason, just like we are today.

Anyway, lots of questions swirling around that we’ll probably never know the answers to. But wearing a mask and feeling my stress level rise every time I go out into the world sure is making me think about life during that other pandemic. Stay safe, y’all.

The White Sox’s direct connection to the 1918-19 pandemic seems to be minor, as far as I can tell. I’ve written before about Red Faber getting sick and losing 20 lbs before the season, then missing the WS. But it’s unclear if he actually had the H1N1 “Spanish” flu.

How did they feel when they left their families back home a month later and headed to spring training in Texas? We know how Clayton Kershaw feels about playing baseball right now during a pandemic. But no one asked Shoeless Joe Jackson or anyone else 100 years ago.

Fred McMullin, in particular, often asked the White Sox to trade him back to the Pacific Coast League. His son William turned 2 years old in the fall of 1918. How did he feel when he left home in L.A. to play baseball during a pandemic? https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/7d8be958

Swede Risberg and Eddie Cicotte both had pregnant wives (“pandemic babies”?) during the 1919 season. Their kids were born within 10 days of each other just after the World Series ended.