User:Merlinderhindergrinder/Jeff Jackson (baseball)/Bibliography

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Bibliography

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Annotated Bibliography

I started with a Google search using “Jeff Jackson” baseball. The Haugh article was the first I found, and it led me to some of the others, namely the Bruton and Didinger pieces. These are from reputable news sources, mostly local news.

Blanco, Lauren. “Jeff Jackson Shares His Baseball Experiences in a Candid Interview.” Fox Sports 1340AM, 18 Aug. 2021, https://foxsports1340am.com/jeff-jackson-shares-his-baseball-experiences-in-a-candid-interview/

This article describes a radio interview that Jeff Jackson did with Fox Sports 1340AM/96.9 FM host Kelsey Nicole Nelson. This interview gave a very interesting detail that Jackson’s performance his junior year in high school was good, but that he did not make the list of Chicago’s top 100 prospects that year. Jackson claims that motivated him to work much harder, which contributed to his stellar performance in his senior year, hitting .512, making the top 100 prospect list, and winning the Gatorade National Player of the Year Award for Baseball.

This interview also mentions that Jackson had a really hard time acclimating to life as a professional baseball player. Jackson mentions that he felt like a “target” because he was a first-round draft pick. In the interview, a radio listener asks a question about how he knew his baseball career was over, to which Jackson replies: “‘From the first day I got there, like the very first day I ever showed up, I was done…’” His experiences did not match his expectations and he characterizes his 9 seasons in the minor leagues as “‘basically going through the motions.’”

While the Chicago Tribune article said that Jackson was making a documentary about his baseball career, this more recent interview tells a different story - Jackson instead wrote a book called The Gift and The Curse with Dana Jones.

Bruton, Mike. “Phenom Jeff Jackson's Rude Rookie Awakening.” The Washington Post, 25 July, 1989, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1989/07/25/phenom-jeff-jacksons-rude-rookie-awakening/251fd9c1-32b1-4afb-8574-1c0d0dd07480/

This article also expresses the disappointment and frustration with Jackson’s low batting average in his rookie year with the Martinsville Phillies, especially in contrast with his outstanding .512 senior year average. This article further illustrates Jackson’t own bad attitude about his performance, depicting him pouting after being able to run down a couple of balls in the outfield that the journalist describes as being “nearly impossible” to catch, and throwing his bat and helmet after striking out. There’s a great quote from Jackson in the article: “‘It's real frustrating,’ said Jackson, who won't be 18 until January. ‘It's almost to the point that I tell myself I don't belong here. After each bad outing, I think I've got to live up to myself. I get out there, and I can't touch these guys. In high school, I was a superstar.’” This article seems to put less emphasis on Jackson’s struggle to adapt to the culture and lifestyle of playing baseball professionally, such as being away from family and friends and the fact that he wasn’t able to drive at the time, according to the Chicago Tribune article. That might be in part because this article is contemporary to his playing career, and even expresses some hope that Jackson’s performance might improve, that he might possibly live up to expectations.

This article also contained the detail that he played in the Little League World Series when he was 13.

Didinger, Ray. “Jackson Hasn’t Been a Hit.” Philadelphia Daily News, 20 July, 1989, p. 80. Newsbank.

The Chicago Tribune reporter was not lying; this journalist is brutal! In addition to the “Clueless Joe Jackson” nickname, the reporter calls Jackson’s stats “gruesome,” and he paints him as both cocky and easily frustrated, especially at the beginning of the article. Later in the article, the reporter describes the many adjustments Jackson had to make, not only to hitting faster and better pitching, playing baseball professionally, and being scrutinized by the media, but also to moving from Chicago to small-town Virginia, living with a couple who were not his family, the social isolation of being alone in the house all day, without a car, and without much to do but worry about what was going to happen later that day at the ballpark. Here he sounds more sympathetic to what Jackson was going through, and even ends on a more hopeful note, which conveys the idea that maybe Jackson could improve and be the kind of level the Phillies were expecting from a first-round pick.

Haugh, David. “Jeff Jackson’s First-Round Draft Story a Cautionary Baseball Tale.” Chicago Tribune, 8 June 2016.

This is a rather frank and unforgiving newspaper story profiling Jeff Jackson’s career. It’s unforgiving because Haugh calls Jackson “one of the biggest busts in the history of the baseball draft.” Ouch! Worse, Haugh writes “One unforgiving Philly paper dubbed the Chicagoan ‘Clueless Jeff Jackson.’” I will have to try to track that down, although it might be a little challenging because it likely appears in a paper that wasn’t digitized. (I did track it down!)

The article is useful because the journalist interviewed Jackson, as well as Jay Hankins, who was the scouting director when they drafted Jackson. Hankins told Haugh: “‘Jeff was a mistake on my part, a big duck in a small pond (in high school). Good kid, a five-tool player, but he just didn't understand the game of baseball.’”

Jackson was hitting over .500 in his senior year of high school, so it must have been both surprising and disappointing that his batting average in the minor was just over .200 - both for him and for the Phillies and the subsequent organizations that he played for. This article discusses the trouble he had adjusting to life in the minors just out of high school, his struggles with public scrutiny and pressure when his minor league performance proved underwhelming, and his subsequent effort to build a normal life for himself after professional baseball. This article says that he runs a company called First Round Sports and Entertainment Agency.

Kohl, Ron. “Prospects Sorted Out.” The Morning Call, 11 August, 1995, p. B04.

This article focuses on profiling Rob Kell, who was in his third year playing in the minor leagues at the time. The article’s main claim is that when a first-round pick turns out to be unable to compete at the major league level, that has a negative effect on players that were drafted in later rounds and then find themselves having to work harder to get noticed and have the opportunity to move up through the system. The author puts forth the idea that this is because a major league club may be reluctant to give up on a first-round pick’s prospect, because they often spend large sums to acquire those player. According to Didinger’s article, Jeff Jackson is an example of this, since he received a $180,000 signing bonus.

Pinto, Greg. “MLB Draft 2012: Ranking 25 Worst Draft Busts in Philadelphia Phillies History.” Bleacher Report, 1 June, 2012, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1202350-mlb-draft-2012-ranking-25-worst-draft-busts-in-philadelphia-phillies-history

Pinto ranks Jackson the all-time worst Phillies draft bust and calls the mistake “embarrassing.”

Outline of proposed changes

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I plan to add that the media covered Jeff Jackson's underperformance negatively both at the time and in subsequent years. I will also add that over time, in life after baseball, Jeff Jackson built a new career and has since published a book about his time as a professional baseball player. This will require careful wording and tact to adhere to the rules regarding Biographies of Living People.