Sad Story of Shoeless Joe Jackson
Who
Belongs In the Baseball Hall of Fame
This year of 2019 is the 100th
anniversary of the “Black Sox” scandal. This article comes from the Frommer
vault
On July 16,
1889, Joseph Jefferson Wofford Jackson was born into a poor family in
Greenville, South Carolina. He never learned to read or write. By the time he
was six years old, he worked as a cleanup boy in the cotton mills.
By age 13,
he labored amidst the din and dust a dozen hours a day along with his father
and brother. It was hard and back-breaking employment. Playing baseball on a
grassy field was his way of escape. It was there where Joe’s natural ability
stood out. Baseball was his game, and he loved it. The youth had such passion
and skill that he was recruited to play for the mill team organized by the
company.
One humid
and hot summer day, Jackson was playing the outfield. His shoes pinched. He
removed them and played in his stocking feet. An enterprising sportswriter gave
him the nickname: "Shoeless Joe." Even though it was reported that
was the only time Jackson ever played that way in a game—the “Shoeless” moniker
stuck. He hated the name, feeling it cruelly referenced the fact that he
could not read or write.
From the
mill team, Jackson moved on to play with the Greenville, South Carolina
Spinners. It was there in 1908 that a scout recommended him to Philadelphia Athletics
owner/manager Connie Mack, who purchased his contract for $325.
The youngster made his Major League
Baseball debut on August 25, 1908. The more he played the more his potential
impressed everyone. An article in the Evening Times noted: “He
has justified early predictions of his abilities. With experience and the
coaching of Manager Mack, he should turn out to be…the find of the
season.”
Sadly, Jackson was unable to read what
the Philadelphia newspaper wrote about him. He could not even read menus. In
restaurants, he usually ordered what another player did. Sadly, he did not fit
in with his teammates or the big city. Homesick, he jumped the team and took a
train back home.
Mack sent
Jackson down to a minor league team in Georgia in 1909, where he won the
batting title. In 1910, Mack called him up to the big league team but decided
that Jackson lacked the disposition to play in a big city like Philly. In one
of the worst trades in baseball history, the 6'1'', 190-pound Jackson was
shipped to Cleveland for a player named Bris Lord (Bristol Robotham Lord,
nicknamed "The Human Eyeball") and $6,000.
Shoeless Joe
fit in quite nicely in Cleveland, where he batted .408 in 1911. In mid-season
of 1915, after compiling a .375 career batting average with the Ohio team,
Jackson was traded for three players and $15,000 to the White Sox.
It
was in Chicago that Jackson made a point of wearing alligator and
patent-leather shoes—the more expensive the better. It was as if he were
announcing to the world, "I am not a Shoeless Joe. I do wear shoes. And
they cost a lot of money!"
With the White Sox, Jackson became one of
baseball’s storied stars. His defensive play was at such a remarkable level
that his glove was called "the place where triples go to die."
On offense, he was one of the most
feared hitters of his time. Babe Ruth copied his swing, claiming Jackson was
the greatest hitter he ever saw.
Then along
came 1919!
The 1919
Chicago White Sox were one of the greatest teams of their era. Paced by Jackson
who batted .351, they won the American League pennant. They were 3-1 favorites
to win the World Series as they prepared to face off against the Cincinnati
Reds.
Prior to the
series, betting odds started to shift to even money. The word on the street was
that New York gambler Arnold Rothstein was behind the swing and that the series
was fixed.
Hearing the rumor, the 31-year-old Jackson asked Chicago
manager Kid Gleason and owner Charles Comiskey to bench him. But they insisted he
play. They would have been crazy to put down their best player.
During the
series, Jackson hit the only home run. He posted the highest batting average.
He committed no errors. He established a new World Series record with 12 hits.
Nevertheless, the Reds won the Fall Classic.
Edd Rousch,
who played for the Reds, insisted that charges that the series was fixed was
nonsense. "We were just the better team," he said.
"Maybe I'm a dope but everything seemed okay to
me," said umpire Billy Evans, who worked the series.
But the rumor of a fix persisted as the 1920 season got
underway. The White Sox were driving hard to their second straight pennant when
a petty gambler in Philadelphia broke the news that a Cubs-Phillies game had
been fixed in 1919.
That led to
a gambling investigation—its focus the 1919 World Series. With only a couple of
days left in the 1920 season, a Grand Jury was called to determine whether
eight White Sox players should stand trial for allegedly throwing the 1919
World Series. Jackson was one of the eight players.
It took the jury a single ballot to acquit all eight
accused players. Incredibly, the very next day, baseball's first
commissioner—Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who came to power in the fall of
1920 with a lifetime contract and a mandate to clean up the game using whatever
methods he saw fit—banned all eight players from baseball for life. The bigoted
Landis was brought into organized baseball with a reputation of being a
vindictive judge, a hanging judge.
He was all
of that.
Was there a
plan to throw the World Series in 1919? Was a plan carried out? If
so, which games were dumped? What role did each banned player
have? Why was there a total banning of the players?
Buck Weaver was banned not for dumping but for allegedly
having guilty knowledge that there was a plot. Fred McMullen was banned,
though he came to bat twice and got one hit. And Joe Jackson was banned,
although his performance exceeded his own standards.
Most
importantly, the eight players were found not guilty in a court of
law. Yet, they were found guilty by a brand new baseball commissioner.
At the
trial, Joe Jackson was asked under oath:
"Did
you do anything to throw those games?"
"No
sir," was his response.
"Any
game in the series?"
"Not a
one," was Jackson’s response. "I didn't have an error or make no
misplay."
With the
banning from baseball for life of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson and the
seven other White Sox players, it seemed the sport was saying: "Now we are
clean. Now we have purged ourselves of the dishonest ways of the past in the
national pastime." And if Jackson in the prime of his baseball career and
the others were sacrificed, that was the way it had to be.
Shoeless Joe
Jackson maintained that he had played all out in that World Series of
1919. Nevertheless, Major League Baseball was done with Jackson and his
seven teammates. It was a miscarriage of justice, a field day for slander on
parade. Powerless players were punished, scapegoated.
For a couple of decades, Jackson attempted to play the
game that he loved, the game that he had learned so well back in the days of
his youth. He made an effort to play with outlaw barnstormers, mill teams,
semi-pro outfits. Aliases and disguises did him not much good; his unmistakable
talent brought the spotlight to bear on him. Relentless, unforgiving,
prejudiced Judge Landis, to keep Jackson from playing, threatened baseball team
owners and league officials.
In 1932, Jackson applied for permission to manage a minor
league team in his home town of Greenville, South Carolina. Landis denied the
application.
In 1951,
Joseph Jefferson Jackson died of a massive heart attack a week before he was to
appear on the Ed Sullivan television show. He was scheduled to receive a trophy
honoring him for being inducted into the Cleveland Indians Baseball Hall of
Fame.
It is an old
story.
The roster
of Hall of Famers includes personalities with much shabbier credentials and far
more soiled reputations. Attempts to get Joe Jackson into the Baseball Hall of
Fame failed during and after his lifetime. Yet, Jackson's shoes are at
Cooperstown. Yet, his life-sized photograph is there. So is a baseball bat he
used, along with the jersey he wore in the 1919 World Series. So is the last
Major League Baseball contract he signed.
Prominent attorneys like Alan Dershowitz and F. Lee Bailey
have argued that Jackson should go into the Hall. There have been petitions,
Congressional motions, letters sent to baseball Commissioners through the
years—all to no avail.
Commissioner
Bart Giammatti said:"I do not wish to play God with history. The Jackson
case is best left to historical debate and analysis. I am not for
reinstatement."
Commissioner
Faye Vincent said, "I can't uncipher or decipher what took place back
then. I have no intention of taking formal action."
Commissioner
Bud Selig did not stand up for Joe Jackson even though he met with Ted
Williams, who pushed for Jackson's admission to the Hall of Fame.
Four times
Jackson batted over .370. His lifetime batting average was .356, topped only by
Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby. Ruth, Cobb, and Casey Stengel all placed him on
their all time, All-Star team.
Joe Jackson
was vilified through the decades by many who never knew or didn’t care to know
the full story. His, however, is a story that just will not go away.
ABOUT
HARVEY
FROMMER
One of the most prolific and
respected sports journalists and oral historians in the United States, author
of the autobiographies of legends Nolan Ryan ,Tony Dorsett, and Red
Holzman, Dr. Harvey Frommer, a professor
for more than two decades in the MALS program at Dartmouth College, was dubbed
“Dartmouth’s Mr. Baseball” by their alumni magazine. He’s also the founder
of www.HarveyFrommerSports.com and has
written extensively about Shoeless Joe Jackson. Signed, mint condition
copies of his book on Jackson and other books can be obtained from his site.
