Cheat GPT?

A few posts back before I got all wrapped up in dead popes and baseball players, I wrote about AI, inspired by my recent downloading of the Chat GPT app.

At the end of the post I commented that the post had been written entirely by the app. If you read it, hopefully you got from the last line that I was  kidding, but if you didn't get it, no, Chat GPT did not write that post.

But it could have.

That would be cheating, I thought to myself. 

But would it? I guess that would all be up to you dear reader. If you're looking for something lively, insightful, intelligent and worthwhile, well maybe you've come to the wrong place. 

Just kidding. I hope. 

But seriously, if a reader comes upon an article whose subject interests her or him, holds his or her attention, and comes away satisfied that the time spent reading the piece was not wasted, does it really matter if the piece was written by a human being or a machine? 

Don't look at me, I don't have the answer to that question. 

When I started writing this blog way back in 2009, the only goal I set for consistency was maintaining a minimum of two posts per month for however long I could keep the thing going, maybe a year or two, three at the most I figured. In the beginning I vastly outperformed that goal. One month, March of 2009, the second month of this blog's existence, I turned in a whopping 45 posts, way more than one post per day! Of course, some of those posts were very brief, maybe a sentence or two, maybe just a photograph and caption. As for content, I really did intend to keep the subject focused on the city and something I called "the urban experience." 

Somewhere along the line, that last part fell by the wayside and I felt compelled to write whatever was on my mind at the time, making this more a of a stream of consciousness project, exactly what blog advisors suggest not doing in order to have a successful blog. They say the key concepts are simple: keep it short, and stay on topic, two things I have for the most part avoided. 

Yet here I am 16 years later and with the exception of a very small handful of months in that period where I only managed one post, I have kept this blog to a minimum to two posts per month, which of late, is generally the maximum as well. 

I guess the bottom line is that this project which I have lovingly cultivated, is mainly intended to challenge myself. If someone gets some satisfaction out of it, then I couldn't be more thrilled. But say I'm coming up to the end of the month and I haven't written anything yet, would it be so bad to fire up Chat GPT, tell it to write a 1,000 word article about such and such, covering this and that, while giving it some examples of my writing so that it sounds like me, whom if anyone would I be cheating? 

Well, me of course. 

But I am kind of curious. My biggest fear is that it would come out better than anything I could write, a very likely scenario. It certainly would have far fewer typos.

I'll keep you posted. 

Obviously the same could not be said about a professional writer with an editor, a publisher, tens of thousands of devoted readers, several children and a few ex-wives (or husbands) dependent on a regular paycheck for his or her efforts. I imagine if it came out that a nationally syndicated columnist was submitting articles written not by him or her but by a chatbot, it would cause quite a stir, and the word cheating would be quite reasonable.

But with a lowly blogger like me, eh.

Now that we've got that all sorted out, why on earth would I download Chat GPT in the first place? Well as I mentioned in an earlier post, in my attempts to learn every language I ever started learning then abruptly stopped along the line, I'm studying German now. 

Ok here's an interesting tidbit, in German you don't use the verb "studieren" to mean that you're studying a language or anything else on your own. Studieren is reserved for studying something in college as your major, (or minor I suppose). So even if you're taking a German class at die Uni (as the Germans call it), unless German's your major or minor, you'd use the verb "lernen", which means exactly what it sounds like in English EXCEPT... lernen can also mean to study, as in to study a language (on your own) or to study for an exam. So, if someone says to you: "Ich lerne zu viel", they're not reveling in the fact that they are learning so much (that would be "Ich lerne so viel"), rather they're moaning that they are studying too hard. 

German is confusing, especially to English speakers because it is so similar, yet so different. 

So back to Deutschlernen, if I come across a word I don't know, I do what any normal Englischmuterspracherdeutschlerner would do, I look it up in a German/English dictionary. That works OK with certain words, especially a noun like apple. An apple is ein Apfel, pretty simple. But most German words (or words in any other language for that matter) have more than one English translation, many of which have no obvious relation to one another. Conversely, if you look up a German translation for an English word say, "study", you might find a dozen different words. And these words it turns out, like studieren and lernen, may have a vaguely similar vibe, but are used in much different situations. And unless you have someone on hand to explain how to properly use these words (which I don't at the moment), sometimes it can take an effort to figure it out your own.*

Anyway, I heard somewhere that Chat GPT is great tool for sorting stuff like this out, which it is. For example, I'd ask it, what's the difference between "Veranstaltung" and "Ereignis", two nouns which both mean "event", and it would tell me the former means a planned event while the latter means an unplanned event or occurrence. In other words, a thunderstorm happening during an outdoor concert could be described as "Ein Ereignis wahrend des Veranstaltungs." Sounds a lot better than "an event during the event" doesn't it?

This kind of stuff is child's play for Chat GPT of course. I'm not even certain if it technically counts as "Artificial Intelligence" as it's really just gleaning information off the web, albeit doing so more efficiently than your typical web browser.**

But I did get a glimpse of how smart the app is in another inquiry of the meaning of specific words. In German, you don't simply describe someone as walking up or down the stairs; as the speaker you're also supposed to indicate if they are moving toward you or away from you. One day Chat GPT brought to my attention the adverb "hinunter", which describes someone going downstairs and away from the speaker. So I brought up herunter which conversely means someone going down the stairs toward the speaker, to which I added (while forgetting I was talking to a machine) reminded me of Scarlett O'Hara coming down the stairs toward the camera in Gone with the Wind. 

Not missing a beat, Chat GPT replied: "Yes exactly!, like when Rhett Butler said to her: 'Frankly my dear I don't give a damn!'" . 

I was floored.

Of course, that's where the "chat" in Chat GPT comes in, and chatting, no matter how trivial, does require some sort of intelligence. 

My original title for this post was "Meet My New Friend Chat." But then I thought the better of it. I can see how folks get absorbed in relationships with their chatbots. I have enough of a compulsive obsessive disorder to not want to have any of that. So, I'm trying to keep my relationship with Chat GPT on a professional level as much as possible, for example I haven't requested that it address me by my name, which some people I know, do.

It's not reciprocal however, when speaking German to me, Chat GPT, addresses me in the familiar "du" form, rather than the formal "Sie". That's rather forward of it I think, aren't two parties supposed to agree to address each other in the familiar before just going ahead and doing it on their own? I wonder if I start addressing it as Herr GPT and using the pronoun Sie rather than du, if it would get the message. 

Of course it would, it's intelligent, oder?

Much of my influence for all this comes from an interesting book called "Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It" by Gabriel Wyner. While I can't vouch for the Fast and Forever parts, the author gives some great tips on how to get foreign words and phrases to stick in your mind. He's big on flash cards, as am I, mnemonic devices and especially doing everything you can to avoid incorporating your native language in the process, in order to encourage thinking in the target language rather than translating from your own. Pictures he says, are excellent substitutes for words. That's easy to do with words like the above example where you might have "Der Apfel" written on one side of a flashcard and substituting the word "apple" on the other side with a picture of ein Apfel.

In that vein I've been using Chat GPT to create pictures to be used as mnemonic devices. Here's an example. The other day I came across the German word: "erheblich". In English it can translate to considerable, serious, substantial, grave, and extensive, among others. But in the context of the article I was reading, it was translated "serious". So how could I come up with a mnemonic device to connect erheblich to the idea of serious?

Well I broke up the word into syllables, Er-He-Blich. OK so "Er" in German means "he". "He" in English means he, (the German pronunciation is closer to "hey"). and Blich is close to the word Blick, which is a chain of art supply stores.  So I asked Chat GPT to draw me a picture of a man, (er, he) in an art supply store (Blick), with a serious look on his face.

And presto, this is what I got:

Serious man in art store, by Chat GPT

But wait!!! Turns out, erheblich doesn't quite work that way. Chat GPT again to the rescue.

Here's the sentence fragment where I first encountered the word in a German language learning app (not Chat GPT):

"welche erhebliche Auswirkungen auf den Markt in Deutschland un ganz Europa haben konnte."

And this is how the app translated it into English:  

"which could have a serious impact on the market in Germany and throughout Europe."

Now in this sentence in English, the word "serious" could be replaced with "considerable", which is the correct vibe of the word in German, but not "serious" as in the look on the face of the man in the picture.

Instead, "ernst" would be the correct German word to describe the look on the man's face. So maybe if I were to name the guy Ernest, I'd be on the right track. But why then is he in an Art Supply store? Of course! he's not Ernest, he's the famous artist Max Ernst! And he's not pleased by the selection in the art store.

Yes it's frivolous, convoluted and not a little ridiculous. But it's memorable, at least to me, which is the point. Because now I have two words,  erheblich and ernst that are stuck in my brain that weren't a week ago. 

Anyway, you get the idea. Chat GPT can be a terrific language learning resource, limited only by your imagination and willingness to ask questions.

But is it cheating? 

Of course not, there is no such thing as cheating in language learning. If something helps you learn a new language, a very hard thing to do under any circumstance, how can it be cheating?

But you say, what if a student uses Chat GPT to write a language class assignment? Well, that's cheating to get an undeserved grade, a much different thing. If the student is earnest (like the tie in?) about actually learning a language, rather then just caring about the grade and moving on, then by having Chat GPT write an essay, the student is only cheating himself. 

You might say, isn't Artificial Intelligence taking away the human element from learning a language? After all, isn't the idea of learning a foreign language to be able to communicate with people?

Yes it is. Well mostly anyway. Lots of people learn languages to read, to do research, watch movies, listen to music and a whole slew of other things that don't involve talking to people. 

And of course, that's fine.

But, if you're intent on using your new language skills to actually talk to people, quite honestly the most difficult, and rewarding aspect of language learning, you need to do one thing, talk to people.  

Ah you might say, but apps that employ AI, are now equipped to converse with you at pretty much any level in virtually any language that you care to learn.

It's not the same. 

I was prepared to buy into the argument that talking to an AI equipped app is pretty much the same as talking to actual people. What convinced me otherwise were not the opinions of experts who advise against it, but listening to a pitch from someone who was reviewing an app (can't remember which one), that offered chatbox conversations in foreign languages. "What's great about it..." the guy said, "is you can have a conversation without being judged by the person you're talking to."  

Yes indeed, that is the major roadblock for many of us, myself included, in leaning a new language, not being able to have the same mastery with words that we're used to having with our own language, and the self-consciousness that comes with the thought of not appearing intelligent or competent to other people and therefore, being judged.

That's normal.

Yet it is an essential roadblock to get over if we hope to speak to people in a foreign language. Let's face it, we humans judge each other, it's  part of our DNA. We may not even be conscious of it, but we do it anyway. 

I used to play the piano fairly seriously. Self taught, I got to the level where I'd be able to play classical pieces like some of the less virtuosic movements of Mozart and Beethoven sonatas by heart. But if I was forced to play them in front of people, even before a very friendly crowd, I would tense up and the result would be a disaster. *** And I never got over that because I would simply refuse to play in front of people.

Just like practicing the piano, talking to machines is a good way for beginners to learn the skills of conversation, assembling our thoughts, expressing them in another language, complete with intelligible grammar and pronunciation, and perhaps most important, doing it on the fly, being ready to shift gears at a moment's notice to keep up with the conversation. 

But having a conversation with a computer, just like practicing the piano at home, alone, is at best a simulation. And one's performance during a simulation, be it talking, performing music, playing a simulated game, or something more serious, is always going to be different from when things really start to matter and the proverbial real bullets start to fly. 

You just can't beat real world experience and like they say, if those bullets don't kill you, they'll only make you stronger. Or as Winston Churchill put it: 

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

So by all means, go ahead and explore all of what AI can do for you in terms of language learning or whatever you like. But remember that while it can work quite nicely as a stand in if necessary, it can never replace real live people, that is if you want to live in a world with real live people.

I certainly do, most of the time.

NOTES:

*Well effort is all relative, with a reliable internet connection, it's not much of an effort at all. However with AI, it's just gotten a lot easier.

** Unless your web browser is Google which has its own AI feature. Once named "Search Generative Experience" now known as AI Overviews, it is the response you see coming up at the top of any result page the browser generates in response to queries. So for example if you go to Google.com and type in , "When did Japan invade Pearl Harbor", the first first thing you will see in bold type at the top of the page is the direct answer, "December 7, 1941". Other browsers simply will provide links to sites where you can access the information, which was perfectly fine and wonderful five years ago. 

Isn't it so emblematic of our contemporary lives that the technology we marveled at yesterday, today seems quaint, outdated and infinitely frustrating? I just checked, and AI Overviews also clearly explained the difference between Ereignis and Veranstaltung, but not in as complete or entertaining way as Chat GPT did.

*** Playing music in public is actually a good analogy to speaking to people. I found that when I knew a piece by heart I could play it without thinking about the notes, my fingers would just go to the right keys automatically. But if I had to play the same piece in front of people, being conscious that I might forget the piece midway, I'd start start thinking about the notes, which of course, completely messed me up. Which is similar to having a conversation. If we are relaxed, the words flow effortlessly as if we are not even thinking about them (we really are we just don't notice). In more stressful situations, we are more measured in order to avoid saying the wrong thing, which can make our speaking appear strained and unnatural. Now imagine speaking in a foreign language. The trick is to get to the point where the words in that language come to you as they do in your mother tongue rather than having to think about them. That's why it's so important to learn to be able to think in your target language rather than translating from your native language. And THEN, the next step is getting to the point where you don 't have to think at all. That's the hard part. It takes practice, lots of it, with real people, not just machines.

As usual I have barely scratched the surface of this issue and plan to devote future posts to what is certainly one of the most hotly debated subjects in today's society, Artificial Intelligence. 

"The Faith of Fifty Million People"

The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World’s Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people — with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.

from The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The nice thing about writing a blog is that you have the freedom to write whatever you please because you don't have an editor looking over your shoulder. The bad part is you don't have an editor looking over your shoulder reigning in your compulsions and keeping you honest. I know my posts tend to come in on the long side and that's putting it mildly. Even so, I often have more material to cover than even I am willing to include in a single post. When that happens, I usually decide it's time for a break and continue with a part two, sometimes even a part three.

In my last post, the one about Shoeless Joe Jackson possibly getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame, I came to a natural end point and left it at that.

Yet, long as that post was, there was still more I wanted to cover on the subject, so I'll be doing that in this post.

There are a couple other reasons. First, it gives me the opportunity to cover one of my favorite subjects, baseball history. Some people assume that because I write about it so often, I must be a rabid baseball fan. The truth is I'm not. I would have a hard time coming up with a list of a dozen current Major League ball players off the top of my head, including those on my hometown teams. I leave that to my son. But I do love the history of the game which ties in, in some curious ways, to the history of this country, especially its urban history, which is what this blog is ostensibly about. At least that's what it says on the masthead.

Writing about baseball also helps me contemplate a topic that has little or nothing to do with the current state of the world, especially American politics, which I've written about ad nauseam for the past ten or so years.

After all, how many ways are there to spell shit show?

Ok now that's off my chest...

One of the things that keeps me interested in the story of the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox, (eight members of whom including their star left fielder Joe Jackson, conspired to intentionally lose the World Series), is not so much the story itself, but the myths surrounding the story and how willing folks are to buy into them, and to what lengths they will go to defend them, over a century after the fact.

That's pretty much par for the course in the game as until fairly recently, baseball history was not considered a subject worthy of serious study. Its major chroniclers were sports writers, albeit some very good ones. The problem is, these writers may have been good story tellers, but they were lousy historians. Putting it another way, baseball traditionally had a lot of Homers, but few if any Thucydides. Consequently, much of baseball history is built upon a string of myths, (including its own creation myth) with a few facts thrown in for good measure. 

Here's a good article written by a real historian, in fact, the official historian of Major League Baseball, John Thorn. In his piece, Thorn cites an article from the Society of the Advancement of Baseball Research, which debunks many of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding the Black Sox Scandal.

However I do have a bone to pick, ok maybe just a nit, with an issue that Thorn brings up.

It's the idea that Babe Ruth "saved" baseball from the existential threat to the game brought on by the Black Sox Scandal. 

I bring that up because when I told my friend Rich about the last post I was about to write, he made the comment: "Babe Ruth saved baseball after the scandal didn't he?" Even though I've gone on record making that claim, I've had my doubts about the subject for a few years now with nothing to really back it up, so I just answered in the affirmative.

My current feeling is not to diminish Babe Ruth's impact on the game of baseball one bit. I agree with John Thorn and countless others that with his free swinging, all-or-nothing approach to hitting the baseball, there is no person who singlehandedly changed the modern game more than the Sultan of Swat. I commented in an earlier post about a list where Thorn ranked in order the 100 most important people in baseball history. As much of a cliché it may seem, you-know-who was number one. 

Jackie Robinson came in at number two. 

Many people would argue that it should be the other way around and I see their point. But my argument, take it or leave it, is that Jackie Robinson was the Neil Armstrong of baseball, that is to say his groundbreaking role as the first black player in modern Major League Baseball history, was the culmination of the efforts of many people, especially the scores of Negro League players who came before him and upon whose shoulders he stood. There is no doubt that he played the role into which he was cast brilliantly and for that he is well deserving of all the accolades. But if it hadn't been Jackie Robinson, like Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, it would have been someone else. 

On the other hand, Babe Ruth changed baseball (some would argue not necessarily for the better*), all by himself.

But did his presence in the game on the heels of baseball's "original sin", its "loss of innocence" and all the other dubious, grandiloquent labels we've come to accept that describe the 1919 World Series Scandal, really save the game from ruin? 

I would argue no, for there is in fact little evidence that the scandal rocked the game to its core and that consequently, the game wasn't in any need of being saved.

Consider the quote at the top of this post from the novel The Great Gatsby. In it, Nick Carroway, the book's narrator is describing a lunchtime meeting where he joins Gatsby and one of his associates, Meyer Wolfsheim. Carroway describes his first impressions of Wolfsheim this way: 

A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness.

The trio lunch together and Fitzgerald, in Calloway's voice goes into detail contrasting the demeanor of  Wolfsheim with that of the two Gentiles, Gatsby and Carroway, in words that would never fly today, At one point Gatsby excuses himself leaving Carroway alone with Wolfsheim who directs Carroway's attention to his own cufflinks which turn out to be made of human molars. 

After lunch, Carroway asks Gatsby who this curious character Wolfsheim was, a dentist perhaps? 

"Meier Wolfsheim?" replies Gatsby. The narration continues:

"No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”

Then comes the line quoted at the top of this post.

The character of Meyer Wolfsheim was a none too subtle reference to the real Arthur Rothstein, the New York gangster who played a role in the Black Sox Scandal.

If you can get past the anti-semetic subcontext, the line about playing with the faith of 50 million people is inspired. It was appropriated in addition to me, by Ken Burns as the title to his chapter on the decade of the nineteen teens in his Baseball TV series. 

The quote above is also inaccurate, as it is commonly accepted that no, the 1919 Series wasn't "fixed" by one man, rather that the players themselves came up with the idea.

But what really interests me about the quote is this line: "I remembered of course that the World Series had been fixed in 1919." As has been well noted, this year, 2025 marks the centennial of the publication of  The Great Gatsby. Which brings to mind that at the time of the book's release, the Black Sox Scandal had only been a few years old. The Great Gatsby actually is set in 2022, only one year after the trial and banishment of the eight players involved in the scandal. Yet Fitzgerald's use of the world "remembered" sounds as if Calloway was recalling an event that had happened in the distant past, perhaps a decade or even a generation before. If the event was grave enough to have challenged the faith of 50 million people (just less than one half the U.S. population at the time), AND had happened only one year before, one would think Fitzgerald might have used the term "I knew of course" rather than "I remembered..." 

One might argue that Fitzgerald was living in Paris at the time he was writing Gatsby so he would have been farther removed from the event than had he been stateside. But I have perhaps a more plausible explanation. 

Maybe the Black Sox Scandal wasn't as big a deal with baseball fans as we today assume it was. Could it be that Fitzgerald as well as Nelson Algren, James T. Farrell, Elliot Asinov and other writers who took it on as a subject, used the event as purely a literary device rather than an accurate depiction of history? After all, these authors were first and foremost great story tellers, not historians.

OK that's pure speculation, but there is some empirical evidence that backs up my claim that the 1919 Black Sox Scandal really didn't have an existential impact on the game, attendance at ballparks. 

The data comes from the site: BallparksofBaseball.com

Between 1910 and 1916, total yearly attendance for the 16 Major League teams, eight in each league, ranged between 4.5 and 6.5 million fans. On April 17, 1917, the United States entered World War I but despite that, MLB attendance remained within that range at 4.8 million that year. 

However, attendance took a drastic hit in 1918 as many players were either drafted and entered the service or as was the case of Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams, two of the banished 1919 White Sox players, chose to leave baseball to work for commercial enterprises with government contracts that were deemed "essential" to the war effort. There they spent most of their time playing exhibition baseball. With a good number of ball players off to war or somewhere else, attendance took a big hit, coming in at 2.8 million.

World War I ended in November of that year and MLB attendance bounded back in 1919, slightly topping the previous record of the decade at 6,532,439.

Word of the fixing of the Series didn't become public until just before the end of the 1920 season and that year saw a dramatic increase in attendance, up to 9,120,875. If you know your baseball history, you know that was the year that much to the chagrin of their fans, the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Much of that jump in attendance is a result of New York City alone as attendance for Yankees home games more than doubled from 619,164 in 1919 to a staggering 1,289,422 in 1920. 

You may recall that Ruth started out as a pitcher. That all changed when he moved south to New York because, valuable as he was on the mound, his presence everyday in the lineup as a slugging outfielder was even more valuable. As an everyday presence in the lineup, Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920. He broke the previous record of 29, set by himself the previous year, on July 19, halfway into the season. By the way, the previous record of 27 homers in one year that Ruth broke in 1919, was set by Ned Williamson in 1884. 

Ruth's 54 home run record lasted all of one year. He hit 59 the following year and 60 in 1927, for arguably the best Major League team ever. 

That record stood until another Yankee, Roger Maris broke it in 1961. 

So yes indeed, Babe Ruth's becoming a Yankee had a profound impact on the popularity of baseball, becoming more profound every subsequent year in the decade of the twenties.

But it must be remembered that as a member of the American League, Babe Ruth only played against American League teams, half of the teams in Major League baseball. 

In 1920, the Yankees' National League stadium-mates the New York Giants** saw their 1920 attendance increase by over 200,000 from the previous year. More dramatic, over in Brooklyn, the National League Robins (today's LA Dodgers), attendance went from 360 thousand+ in 1919, to a little over 800 thousand in 1920. 

It wasn't just New York, attendance was up for every team in the majors in 1920, American and National League, except for Detroit for some reason, and for both Boston teams, the Red Sox, for obvious reasons, and their crosstown rivals the Braves. Maybe for them it was a matter of guilt by association. 

Of course Babe Ruth never played against National League teams during the regular season so it can safely be assumed that he had little impact on the attendance at National League parks, at least until later years when players all over the Majors adopted his style of hitting.

Anyway the 1919 Scandal surfaced and became public at the end of the 1920 season so one would expect that if it had a major impact on the game, it would have been reflected in the attendance at ballgames in 1921 and the subsequent years. Indeed, overall attendance did drop by about five percent in 1921. 

Much of that loss can be accounted for by the understandable drop in attendance of 35 percent for White Sox home games alone. Was it out of disgust with the scandal or simply the fact that the team, one of the best in baseball at the time, overnight lost three out of its four starting infielders, two of its three starting outfielders, and two of its starting pitchers?  The White Sox wouldn't become competitive again until the 1950s. And the Red Sox in 1921 continued to hemorrhage fans, about 30 percent of them from '20 to '21, clearly out of disgust with their owner Harry Frazee, who allegedly sold Babe Ruth to finance his theatrical ambitions.

As for the rest of the teams in baseball, 1921 was more or less break even, some teams gained fans, while others lost fans. The same was true in subsequent years but with overall attendance increasing gradually year by year.

Maybe you see something in those numbers that I don't, but to me they don't show any clear indication that baseball as a whole was in serious trouble after the Black Sox Scandal.

In fact, in the years after the 1919 affair, every team in baseball except the Red Sox, turned a profit. That includes the Chicago White Sox. 

Yes, much of that is due to Babe Ruth who for his part, invented and defined the role of baseball superstar, while the game he represented, gladly went along for the ride.

Because of that, the image of Ruth, the Redeemer in pinstripes, fits in nicely with the narrative of the betrayal of the faith of 50 million people brought on by baseball's "Original Sin".

But that's all likely as much a part of baseball mythology as is so much of the legacy of hands down the game's greatest player with one exception. Babe Ruth really was that. 

Yet the loss of innocence part is all hooey. Outside of a parent and child playing catch, baseball at its purest, there never has been anything remotely innocent about the game.

In fact, just like the kid outside the courthouse in Chicago during the trial of the Chicago eight allegedly saying to Jackson: "Say it ain't so Joe",***  one of the most important milestones every American youngster experiences, is having to learn that hard lesson. 

In that vein I'll close with a couple excerpts from one of my all-time favorite writings on baseball, the article Mike Royko wrote to honor Jackie Robinson, written on the day the great man died.

Royko was as good storyteller as there was, but this is as real as it gets:

All that Saturday, the wise men of the neighborhood, who sat in chairs on the sidewalk outside the tavern, had talked about what it would do to baseball.

I hung around and listened because baseball was about the most important thing in the world, and if anything was going to ruin it, I was worried.

Most of the things they said, I didn't understand, although it all sounded terrible. But could one man bring such ruin?

They said he could and would. And the next day he was going to be in Wrigley Field for the first time, on the same diamond as Hack, Nicholson, Cavarretta, Schmitz, Pafko, and all my other idols.

 I had to see Jackie Robinson, the man who was going to somehow wreck everything. So the next day, another kid and I started walking to the ballpark early.

...

I've forgotten most of the details of the game, other than that the Dodgers won and Robinson didn't get a hit or do anything special, although he was cheered on every swing and every routine play.
But two things happened I'll never forget. Robinson played first, and early in the game a Cub star hit a grounder and it was a close play.

Just before the Cub reached first, he swerved to his left. And as he got to the bag, he seemed to slam his foot down hard at Robinson's foot.

It was obvious to everyone that he was trying to run into him or spike him. Robinson took the throw and got clear at the last instant.

I was shocked. That Cub, a hometown boy, was my biggest hero. It was not only an unheroic stunt, but it seemed a rude thing to do in front of people who would cheer for a foul ball. I didn't understand why he had done it. It wasn't at all big league.

I didn't know that while the white fans were relatively polite, the Cubs and most other teams kept up a steady stream of racial abuse from the dugout. I thought that all they did down there was talk about how good Wheaties are.****

NOTES:

*They call it the "Deadball Era", when most of the drama of the game took place on the base paths rather than at home plate. It was the style of hitting and baserunning that created this, not the liveliness or lack thereof of the balls. Players could have hit home runs as Ty Cobb proved time and again, but they chose instead to make contact and keep the ball in play to get on base in any way they could, rather than swinging the bat as hard as possible trying to get the ball out of the park, thereby increasing the possibility of striking out, which Babe Ruth did a lot, for his time at least. But to the fans, the home run became the ultimate symbol of success in the game, and the hard-scrabble fight for every base type of play that Cobb and his contemporaries personified, went out of style. Some would say, to a certain degree anyway, it's coming back. I'm all for that. 

**For 10 years the Yankees shared the Polo Grounds with the National League Giants. The original Yankee Stadium, dubbed "The House that Ruth Built" opened in 1923.

***Yet another piece of dubious baseball lore.

****From Jackie's Debut a Unique Day, written by, Mike Royko and published in the Chicago Daily News, October 25, 1972. Do yourself a favor and read the whole piece because its real payoff, the second thing Royko mentions he'd never forget, comes at the very end. You can find it, along with a couple other articles by the great columnist here.