GEORGE UHLE: I grew up on the west side of Cleveland. My father was an engineer on the New York Central at that time. I was crazy about baseball as a little youngster. When I was only seven or eight years old, my parents bought me a glove and ball. No one could get hold of them -- I put them under my pillow at night.

I followed the Cleveland ball club in the papers. They were called the Cleveland Naps then, after Nap Lajoie, the great second baseman. I didn't get to see them very often at League Park, just once in a while when someone would take me. Joe Birmingham was the manager and played center field. Addie Joss and Joe Jackson were there, too, but Vean Gregg was my favorite because of the curveball he had. He was a lefthanded pitcher, though. That was the funny part. I was a righthander. I got started by playing semipro ball after graduating from high school. I went up the ranks, through D, C, and then B leagues, and then with a class Double-A team. This was at a time when companies hired ex-ball players and paid them to play ball for them. These were the days when they were getting crowds of seventy thousand at Brookside Park, this big, circular park in Cleveland. You may heard of when White Motor played Omaha in a game at Brookside Park around 1915 or so that drew more than a hundred thousand people.

I played for Standard Parts, which later was bought by Eaton. This was 1918, the year before I joined Cleveland. We had two Delahantys on the team.* Del Young played right field and he was our manager. He was formerly with Cincinnati. We had a fellow by the name of Young on second base who had played a little bit with St. Louis. Our catcher had been sold to Chicago, reported, and, well, that's about all. But at least he'd had that advantage. Our third baseman had been in the American Association. Then we had a center fielder who had been sold to the big leagues twice out of the Central League, and each time in the fall of the year he was unlucky enough to slide and break a leg. So we had a pretty fair -- pretty fair -- amateur team.

Glenn Liebhardt and Heinie Berger, both ex-major-league pitchers, were our pitching staff at Standard Parts. Liebhardt recommended me to the Cleveland club, and they called me over for a conference. I made them sign an agreement that if I didn't make good with them right off of the rail, that they would have to give me my release, not send me to the minor leagues. Dough back in those days was real tough. I was working during the week at Standard Parts and also getting paid for two games a week, a Saturday and a Sunday. Then we cut in on the gate receipts when we went out of town to play. We made fairly good dough, more than what the Cleveland ball club offered me to play for them. What did they offer me? Nothing, or next to nothing, let's put it that way.

Tris Speaker was my manager when I joined Cleveland. He also played center field. A marvelous player. He'd play a shallow center field and make these shoestring catches, sliding on his knees; many times you didn't know whether he had trapped or caught the ball.

"You didn't catch that ball, did you, Spoke?" I'd ask him. "They called it out, didn't they?" he'd say.

Joe Jackson was on the Cleveland team before I got there. Shoeless Joe. Somehow or other he got over to Chicago. He was a terrific hitter. My first year in the league, 1919, was when the Black Sox threw the World Series. But Joe was too dumb to get involved in that. He didn't get into it, he really didn't. He wasn't that smart. I mean, they may have talked to him about it and all, but it didn't sink in. He didn't try to do anything to lose. He had a hell of a series. In fact, he didn't have anything to do with the planning of it. I know that from conversations with other players at the time, some of who knew some of the stuff.

Jackson and Eddie Cicotte and the rest of the Black Sox weren't suspended until the 1920 season was just about over. But they had a good ball club, I'll say that. It's too bad. It was one of those things where they weren't making any money, I guess, and they were going to try to make a few bucks extra. Hard way to do it. But you know, back in my day, if a fella was making five thousand dollars a year, he was getting a big salary from most of those owners.

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