Hapes, Filchock Suspended Indefinitely By Bell for Part in Pro Football Fix
On April 3, 1947 Merle Hapes and Frank Filchock, New York Giants’ ace backfleld players who became entangled in gamblers’ attempts to fix the National Football League’s Championship game last Dec. 15, today were suspended indefinitely in the latest chapter of the biggest sport scandal since the 1919 World Series. League Commissioner Bert Bell announced that he had found the two “guilty of actions detrimental to the welfare of the National League and of professional football,” The commissioner’s ruling all but wrote finis to the playing days of Hapes, who once roamed the backfield at the University of Mississippi, and Filchock, pro star since leaving Indiana University. The decision came just 24 hours after three New York men had been sentenced for attempting to bribe the players to throw the game. David K. Krakauer, Harvey Stemmer and Jerome Zarowitz
were given prison sentences while a fourth man, Alvin Paris, will be sentenced Monday. Testimony at the trial of the four showed that neither Hapes nor Filchock accepted the offered bribe.
Sources:
https://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/?a=d&d=CDS19470404.2.32&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN——-#
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