Perhaps the most dishonorable episode in Major League Baseball was the Black Sox scandal of 1919. It is the subject of hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, books, television programs and movies. Eight Chicago White Sox ballplayers became infamous for conspiring to take money to throw the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. They were banned for life by Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis. Claude “Lefty” Williams, born in Aurora, Missouri, one of two pitchers in the group, derailed his promising pitching career. Without baseball, Williams had two decades of dead-end jobs, marital and alcohol problems before he reconciled with his wife and settled down to operate a garden nursery.

Claude “Lefty” Preston Williams was born March 9, 1893, to William and Mary Williams. His father w

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