I posted this at a baseball message board called Baseball Fever. I'm reproducing it just in case anyone's interested.

Let me preface this by saying it's a wild, far-out suspicion based on no proof whatsoever. I came across an online book called In the Reign of Rothstein by a New York reporter named Donald Henderson Clarke, which came out in around 1930. It is about, of course, Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series, and of interest to anyone who likes that period.Here's the link:http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text...EV7523.0001.001I'm about halfway through the book, and some guy, one of Rothstein's buddies, testified that he lost some $35,000 to Rothstein betting on Pittsburgh in the NL and Cleveland in the AL to win the pennants sometime "in September 1921", and they seemed like pretty good bets because they were several games ahead. Both teams folded and the Giants won the NL and the Yankees won the AL. Rothstein was known around New York as "The Man Who Backs the Giants", which might mean betting on and might mean part-owning, since it looks like Horace Stoneham, the Giants' owner, was all mixed up in stinky stuff with AR.Were those teams, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, in the tank? I went back and took a quick look at the 1921 Pirates. They sure did fold up at the end of the season, and they lost five straight and then two out of three to the Giants. I'm going to do some more research on my own, of course, but I wondered if any of you were interested in this one.