1920 W516-1 #21 Eddie Cicotte Card SGC 3 (40 Very Good). Cicotte nicknamed "Knuckles", was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball best known for his time with the Chicago White Sox. He was one of eight players permanently ineligible for professional baseball for his alleged participation in the Black Sox scandal in the 1919 World Series, in which the favored White Sox lost to the Cincinnati Reds in eight games. The "fixing" of the 1919 World Series is the only recognized gambling scandal to tarnish a World Series. The book Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof and the movie based on the book does record that Cicotte, despite being grossly underpaid for a pitcher of his ability, resisted repeated attempts by Chick Gandil to get him to throw the series until just days before the World Series opened when it became clear that Comiskey would never pay him even part of the promised bonus. In the 1919 World Series against the Reds, Cicotte pitched in three games, winning one but pitching ineffectively and losing the other two. Cicotte was the first of the eight players to come forward, signing a confession and a waiver of immunity. He later recanted this confession and was acquitted of all charges at trial by jury. Despite this, Cicotte and his alleged co-conspirators were subsequently made permanently ineligible for baseball by Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Major League Baseball's new commissioner, recently hired to restore the integrity of the game in the wake of the 1919 scandal.