1911 T205 Gold Border Ed Cicotte (Sovereign back)
Cicotte as a young Red Sox pitcher, years before the shine ball, the 29-win season and the fix.
- Issue
- 1911 T205 Gold Border
- Year
- 1911
- Variation
- Sovereign
- Subject
- Eddie Cicotte
- Grade
- Raw (ungraded)
1911 T205 Gold Border
The American Tobacco Company's follow-up to T206, known for its fragile gold borders and detailed backs with player biographical and statistical lines. Eddie Cicotte appears here as a young Boston Red Sox pitcher, eight years before he became the central figure of the 1919 fix. SABR's card researchers note his T205 is one of the more attainable vintage Cicotte cards.
More on this issue →Eddie Cicotte
Ace of the 1919 White Sox and, with Chick Gandil, a primary mover in the fix. Cicotte went 29–7 with a 1.82 ERA that season, then hit Cincinnati leadoff man Morrie Rath with his second pitch of Game One — long told as the signal that the deal was on. He took a large advance before the Series and was among the first to confess to the grand jury on September 28, 1920, breaking the scandal open. Indicted, tried in Chicago in the summer of 1921, and acquitted by the jury on August 2, he was banned for life the next day by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis anyway. He never returned to Organized Baseball.
More on Eddie Cicotte →