Shoeless Joe Jackson
Template:Mlbretired Joseph Jefferson "Shoeless Joe" Jackson (July 16, 1888 – December 5, 1951) was a left fielder in Major League Baseball who played for the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox. One of the greatest hitters of his era, he was one of eight players made permanently ineligible for Major League Baseball for his alleged participation in the Black Sox scandal. No player banned from baseball, including Jackson, has been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and once Pete Rose was placed on the permanently ineligible list, the Hall of Fame changed its bylaws to prohibit induction of banned players.
Early life and career
Born in Pickens County, South Carolina, Jackson came from a poor family living in a mill town, and he was unschooled as a child, remaining illiterate well into middle age. He is considered to be one of the most outstanding hitters in the history of the game, to the point that Babe Ruth claimed that he modeled his hitting technique after Jackson's. Jackson is the only rookie to have batted over .400; he hit .408 for Cleveland in 1911 (although he would not be considered a rookie by today's definition). His career .356 batting average is the third highest in history, after Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby.
Nickname
He obtained the nickname "Shoeless" when he played the second game of a doubleheader against the Anderson (South Carolina) Electricians in 1908. Joe had bought a pair of new spikes and wore them the first game of the doubleheader, and they caused blisters on his feet. Joe wanted to sit out the second game of the doubleheader, but they didn't have enough players that day, so Joe had to play. He played the first inning in the new shoes, but they hurt his feet badly, so he took them off and played the rest of the game in his stockinged feet. During the 7th inning of that game, Joe hit a triple; as he was sliding into third base, on the Anderson side of the stands, one of the Anderson fans stood up and hollered "You shoeless son of a bitch." There was a cub reporter for the Greenville News present that day, who heard the comment and wrote the next day about "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. Joe only played one game in his stockinged feet, but the nickname lives on. Joe did not care for the nickname, but it is how the world knew him and continues to know him.
The nickname was used for the character of "Shoeless Joe" Hardy in the Broadway show Damn Yankees, and as the basis of a song in the musical ("Shoeless Joe from Hannibal Mo").
Black Sox scandal
After the White Sox unexpectedly lost the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, eight players, including Jackson, were accused of "throwing" games. In September 1920, a grand jury was convened to investigate. Jackson admitted under oath that he participated in the fix, and accepted $5,000 as part-payment for his cooperation (a sum he claimed to have attempted to return twice). He also admitted to complaining to other conspirators that he had not received his full share. The then-current owner of the Sox, Charles Comiskey, encouraged Jackson to admit these things. A jury, however, acquitted him of criminal charges related to the scandal, although the trial itself has been the subject of suspicion, with key evidence purportedly having gone missing from the prosecutor's office shortly before the trial.[citation needed] Jackson was found guilty of not reporting the scandal.
Jackson always publicly maintained his innocence and insisted until his death that he was playing his best in the Series. He asserted that he had a .375 batting average, threw out five baserunners, and handled thirty chances in the outfield with no errors during that series. The evidence, however, is that he threw out only one baserunner, an assist to homeplate after catching a fly ball in the 6th game and that the misperception about five assists began when Jackson claimed in a 1949 interview with Sport magazine that "I threw out five men at home and could have had three others, if bad cutoffs hadn't been made." He also batted far worse in the five games that the White Sox lost, totalling only one RBI, from a home run in game 8 once the game was 5-0 for the Reds. The Cincinnati Reds also hit an unusually high number of triples to left field during the series, far exceeding the amount that Jackson—generally considered a strong defensive player—normally allowed.[1] Arguably, this could be seen as Jackson attempting to fix the games through inaction, although another possible explanation could be simple game-to-game ups and downs in performance, typical of even the most elite baseball players.
One play in particular has been subjected to much scrutiny. In the fifth inning of game 4, with a Cincinnati player on second, Jackson fielded a single hit to left field and threw home. Eyewitness accounts say that the throw would have resulted in an out had pitcher Eddie Cicotte, one of the leaders of the fix, not interfered.[citation needed] The run scored and the White Sox lost the game 2-0. James C. Hamilton—the official scorer of the 1919 World Series—testified under oath in a later civil trial between Jackson and Charles Comiskey that the throw was honest and that Cicotte jumped up and knocked it down for an error.[citation needed] Chick Gandil, another leader of the fix, admitted to yelling at Cicotte to intercept the throw in his autobiography.[citation needed]
Aftermath
After being banned from the majors, Jackson played extensively in semipro leagues in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1929 he and his wife, Katherine, moved to Greenville, South Carolina.
In the 1940s, according to a story by Harvey Frommer, he was working at his liquor store when former adversary Ty Cobb and sportswriter Grantland Rice entered as customers. Following an impersonal transaction, Cobb asked, "Don't you know me, Joe?" "Sure, I know you," replied Jackson, "but I wasn't sure you wanted to know me. A lot of them don't." [1]
Joe Jackson suffered from heart trouble in his later years and died in Greenville in 1951 at the age of 63. He is buried in Woodlawn Memorial Park there. Jackson's last words before his death were reportedly "I'm about to face the greatest umpire of all and He knows I am innocent."
Career statistics
see: Baseball statistics for an explanation of these statistics.
| G | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | R | RBI | SB | BB | SO | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,332 | 4,981 | 1,772 | 307 | 168 | 54 | 873 | 785 | 202 | 519 | 158 | .356 | .423 | .517 | .940 |
His .356 batting average is the third-highest career batting average behind only Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby. His 1911 batting average of .408 is the sixth highest for a season in the twentieth century.
Despite being banned from baseball at what should have been roughly the two-thirds mark of his career, and being excluded from election to the Hall of Fame, in 1999, he ranked Number 35 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
Books
- "Shoeless: The Life And Times of Joe Jackson", by David L. Fleitz (2001, McFarland & Company Publishers)
- Shoeless Joe, a novel by W. P. Kinsella
- Eight Men Out, by Eliot Asinof, an account of the 1919 World Series fix
- Joe Jackson: A Biography, by Kelly Boyer Sagert
- Say It Ain't So, Joe!: The True Story of Shoeless Joe Jackson, by Donald Gropman, also includes the Ted Williams and Bob Feller Petition to admit Jackson into the Baseball Hall of Fame
- A Man Called Shoeless, by Howard Burman
- "Burying the Black Sox" (Potomac, Spring 2006) by Gene Carney.
- "Shoeless Joe & Me" (HarperCollins, 2002) by Dan Gutman
Songs
- Say it ain't so, Joe, by Murray Head, 1975 From the Album Say it ain't so
- Kenesaw Mountain Landis, by Jonathan Coulton, from the album Smoking Monkey
Films
- Eight Men Out, directed by John Sayles, based on the Asinof book and starring D.B. Sweeney as Jackson
- Field of Dreams, based on the Kinsella book, with Ray Liotta as Jackson
References
External links
- Career statistics and player information from Baseball Reference
- blackbetsy.com Shoeless Joe Jackson's Virtual Hall of Fame
- findagrave.com Shoeless Joe Jackson at Find-A-Grave
- hallyes.com Petition asking Bud Selig to reinstate Shoeless Joe
- shoelessjoejackson.com The Official Web Site
- See the letter written by Commissioner Landis banning Shoeless Joe Jackson from baseball