A Canadian filmmaker has unearthed rare footage of the 1919 World Series -- as in the "Black Sox" scandal -- between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds.
"I'm not aware of there being any other footage of the 1919 World Series," Bill Morrison, who found the black-and-white clip in the Canadian national archive, told the Columbus Dispatch recently, "yet it's inspired who-knows-how-many Hollywood movies."
Members of the White Sox were accused of throwing the series. Eight players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, were subsequently banned from baseball for life after being accused of accepting money from gamblers.
The footage was found in 1978 in Dawson City, a remote town in Canadian Yukon. The Libraries and Archives Canada and the US Library of Congress restored 500,000 feet of footage from a variety of films and transferred it onto stable media.
The "1919 World Series" label on one reel caught the attention of Morrison, who was raised in Chicago. Although the edges of the film have deteriorated, most of the frames are visible, showing action and crowd shots at Comiskey Park in Chicago.
