In this week’s St. Louis Cardinals Blast from the Past, we remember a former Cardinal whose career in St. Louis was marked by controversy with ties to one of the biggest stains on major league baseball in its history. This first baseman played three seasons for the Cardinals, and his career ended ignominiously several years later as a result of conduct with its genesis in the underbelly of St. Louis in the early decades of the 20th Century.
Eugene Edward Paulette was born on May 26, 1891 in Centralia, Illinois, the 11th of 12 children born to Joseph and Marguerite DeServe Paulette. Gene’s parents were French-Canadian immigrants. During Gene’s childhood the family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Joseph’s career as a railroad engineer took them. Unlike many of his peers in the early years of the 20th Century, Gene was able to graduate from high school in Little Rock and finish one year of college.
Paulette began his baseball career on the sandlots of Little Rock, where a New York Giants scout found him in 1911. Gene was a catcher with a good arm when he was signed to play for manager John McGraw’s Giants, but he never made an appearance behind the plate in New York, instead making his debut on June 16, 1911 as a third base defensive replacement. Gene appeared in only 10 games during the regular season and saw no action in the 1911 World Series, which the Giants lost to the Philadelphia A’s in six games.
Gene came to the Giants’ spring training camp in 1912 but did not continue his major league career at that time. Instead Paulette was sent to play for the Class AA Providence Grays of the International League. Gene spent the next two seasons with the Class A Mobile Seagulls, then was sold to the Cleveland Naps in 1914, and sent to play for the Class AA Cleveland Bearcats. During this period in the minor leagues, Gene played all over the infield but was weak at the plate. When Paulette was sent to the Nashville Volunteers in 1915, he showed some defensive chops at first base and his hitting also improved. He was hitting .286 with the Memphis Chickasaws in 1916, when his contract was bought by the St. Louis Browns.
Back in the big leagues, Paulette appeared in only five games for the Browns during the remainder of the 1916 season. In the first half of 1917, Gene was a utility man who appeared in only 12 games. In June, he was placed on waivers and was picked up by the St. Louis Cardinals. Paulette became the starting first baseman for St. Louis and hit a creditable .265 with 34 RBI.
Paulette’s career renaissance with the Cardinals also had its dark side. His visibility in St. Louis brought him into contact with some disreputable characters in the local gambling scene. The big boss of St. Louis gambling at that time was a man named Henry “Kid” Becker. Two associates of Becker, Elmer Farrar and Carl Zork, entered Gene’s life during this time. The two gamblers approached the cash-strapped first baseman early in the 1919 season with the idea of engaging in game-fixing, reinforced by the reward of an indeterminate amount of cash. Paulette communicated by letter with Farrar that he could persuade two other Cardinal players to join him in the scheme.
After two decent seasons with the Cardinals, Gene began the 1919 season poorly at the plate, hitting only .215 in 43 games. In mid-July, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. Paulette’s batting numbers improved while with the Phillies and he had his best career season in 1920, hitting .288 with 36 RBI.
Paulette’s association with Farrar and Zork appeared to be known to both the Cardinals and Phillies organizations. At some point while Gene was in Philadelphia, Phillies owner William Baker came into possession of Gene’s letter to Farrar about the potential game-fixing scheme, one that did not come to fruition because of the trade in 1919. The two additional Cardinals Paulette promised to recruit were never identified.
In September 1920, a grand jury was called to investigate suspicions that the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds was fixed by a group of White Sox players led by Chicago first baseman Chick Gandil, in cahoots with the gambling syndicate of Arnold Rothstein of New York. The players were indicted but later acquitted by jurors in July 1921. The “Black Sox” scandal led to the appointment of the first Commissioner of Baseball, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, in January 1921. Shortly after that, the Phillies owner turned the Farrar letter over to Landis.
Landis demanded that Paulette come to meet him in March 1921, at which time Gene denied he had engaged in any misconduct with respect to Farrar, insisting he only accepted a loan from the bookmaker. Landis was not convinced and told Gene he would require a second meeting. In the interim, the trial for the White Sox players met with delays and other issues and Landis became otherwise occupied. These frustrations infuriated Landis and three weeks after the first meeting, the second meeting was scheduled. Paulette failed to appear for the required subsequent meeting, provoking Landis to take the unprecedented step of banning Gene permanently from the game of baseball.
Carl Zork, the other gambler with whom Paulette planned the game fix, was swept up in the Black Sox scandal and there were rumors that Farrar and Gene would also be charged. Paulette was spared this further indignity, however, and managed to get himself signed to an Industrial League team in Massillon, Ohio. He lasted only a month due to the public uproar and the threatened boycott of Massillon by other teams in the league. Gene was released by Massillon and was done with baseball at the age of 30.
Paulette returned to Little Rock and found employment with the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Gene passed away of a heart attack on February 8, 1966 at the age of 74. He was survived by his wife Mary, and two children, daughter Mary and son Eugene Jr.
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