100 years ago in Spokane: The World Series live in Spokane? How residents ‘saw’ the action

Baseball was in the news – but not all of it was good news.

On one hand, the Spokane Daily Chronicle had set up bleachers on Monroe Street near the newspaper building so that fans could “see” the 1920 World Series games between the Cleveland Indians and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In this case, “seeing” the game meant that fans in the bleachers could hear a Chronicle representative announce the Associated Press wire reports of “every detail of play in every inning,” as soon as it happened.

This was the 1920 version of a live broadcast, in the days before broadcast radio or TV.

The bad news was contained in a dispatch from Chicago, where evidence was growing that a betting scandal had tainted the 1919 World Series.

An attorney for Chicago White Sox players said he “believed that more players were ready to tell what they know.” Even the wives of some of the players were likely to be called before a grand jury.

This is what came to be known as the Black Sox scandal.

From the drug beat: Spokane was working on a new narcotics law that would make it a crime to possess “dope,” as well as to sell it.

The current law had no penalty for possession and was termed “lamentably weak” by the city prosecutor.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

2017: A gunman opened fire from a room at the Mandalay Bay casino hotel in Las Vegas on a crowd of 22,000 country music fans at a concert below, leaving 58 people dead and more than 800 injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.