The Tragedy of Shoeless Joe Jackson

“He (Shoeless Joe Jackson) was the finest natural hitter in the history of the game.” – Ty Cobb

“I copied (Shoeless Joe) Jackson’s style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He’s the guy who made me a hitter. -Babe Ruth

” (Shoeless Joe) Jackson’s fall from grace is one of the real tragedies of baseball. I always thought he was more sinned against than sinning.” -Connie Mack

“Everything he hit was really blessed. He could break bones with his shots. Blindfold me and I could still tell you when Joe hit the ball. It had a special crack.” -Ernie Shore

“My father said he saw him years later playing under a made-up name in some tenth-rate league in Carolina. He’d put on fifty pounds, and the spring was gone from his step, but he could still hit. Dad used to say no one could hit like Shoeless Joe”. – Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams by Phil Alden Robinson

While I still believe Pete Rose should be in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, I would argue that his exemption from the hall is not the biggest insult to the game; that spot belongs to Shoeless Joe Jackson. Joseph Jefferson Jackson was born on July 16, 1887 in Pickens County, South Carolina to George and Mary Jackson, immigrants of Scottish descent who spent their whole lives as farmers and laborers. Jackson’s mom played a huge role in Jackson’s early life, as she was always extremely supportive of her son’s passion. Joe was the oldest of eight, as he had five brothers and two sisters. He grew up a sickly child, as he suffered from various health issues, including frequent bouts of illness that affected his physical development, but in the process gave him long, lanky arms that helped his playing ability. Alongside these struggles, it is widely know that Shoeless Joe never attended school, and never learned how to read or write. Most likely because the Jacksons grew up poor, Joe started working with his father in a South Carolina textile mill at age 6. At this time in America, these workers had to work long and weary hours, but luckily for Joe, the mill hosted a weekly baseball game. By the time he was just 13 years old, Joe was already a star, as he had such a naturally wonderful swing that he would crush homers that would be known to be called “Saturday Specials”. Joe used his homers to make cash from riled up spectators in the process.

In 1908, while playing for a Class D team in the Carolina League called the Greenville Spinners, Joe got the nickname that would stick with him until his death and beyond. After tearing it up on the diamond once a week during his youth, Jackson caught the attention of countless scouts in the area, Joe got an offer, and signed a contract with the Spinners for $75 a month. Jackson was already making almost $45 a month between working at the mill and playing ball, but according to the Spinners’ coach Tom Stouch, Shoeless exclaimed “I’ll play my head off for $75 a month.” Joe was so agile, speedy, hit the cover off the ball and made incredible throws from the outfield, thus emerging as a true five-tool ballplayer. One day, an article emerged from the Greenville News; a reporter who watched the game noticed the star in the outfield, and wrote the story that has been told for generations since. You have probably heard the story from the movie Field of Dreams, but the full story goes like this: Joe had just picked up a new pair of cleats a couple of days prior, and he had gotten blisters all over his feet. A couple days later, he complained to his manager and asked to sit out, but Stouch pointed out Jackson said he would “play his head off” for the team. By around the fifth inning or so, Joe decided to take his cleats off and play the outfield in just stockings, and in the bottom of the seventh, he stepped to the plate and cracked a triple. The next part comes fromJackson’s perspective, when he claimed: “As I pulled into third, some big guy stood up and hollered: “You shoeless sonofagun, you!” They picked it up and started calling me Shoeless Joe all around the league, and it stuck. I never played the outfield barefoot, and that was the only day I ever played in my stockinged feet, but it stuck with me.” People claim the heckler yelled “You Shoeless Son of a B****!!” but really it is thought he actually said “Oh you Shoeless wonder”. The funny thing is, you may notice Joe says this was the only time he played the outfield barefoot, and that it was the lone time he played in stocking feet, but Joe playing barefoot had actually happened many times before. In his teenage years, Joe was a pitcher, and would actually occasionally pitch with his bare feet against the wood plank placed on the mound. He also had to retire as a pitcher after plunking a batter in the arm and breaking it. On July 19, 1908 he married his wife, 15-year-old Katie Wynn who had at least some education. Since she could read and write, she wrote his letters, managed his money, and read his contracts in and out of baseball. She remained married to Joe for 43 years, and until the day Joe died, despite some periods of separation.

By the latter part of that same season, Joe garnered so much respect that he actually raised the attention of scout from Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics, who ended up buying Jackson’s contract for $900. This would be nothing but excitement for most places, but Joe was extremely nervous. See, Jackson grew up a poor mill boy, was illiterate, and overall not the brightest, and a transition to a big city like Philadelphia, a city of two million people, was a huge step for the youngster. Manager Stouch went with Joe on the train north, and he made his first major-league appearance on August 25, and on queue crack a line drive single in his first trip to the plate. However, Joe was already homesick, and three days later, he spontaneously boarded a train back to Greenville. He returned in early September, but Philly was frightening to the illiterate country boy. Jackson abandoned the team again before the 1908 season ended, finishing his first major-league stint with three hits in 23 at-bats. Most scouts in the Athletics’ organization wanted simply cut Jackson, but Mack saw true potential in the young man. Jackson played a few more games for Philadelphia in 1909, but spent most the season in Savannah Georgia in the minor leagues, and 1910 played for a team New Orleans and won the league championship. For good measure, he also won batting titles both years. Later in 1910, he left the Athletics organization when Mack sent Joe and Morrie Rath to the Cleveland Naps for Bris Lord.

In his small stint with the Naps, Joe hit .387, a little foreshadow for what was to come. Napoleon Lajoie’s team in Cleveland was a much better city for Shoeless Joe, as a majority of the players on the team were from the south, just like Jackson. He fit in very well, and in 1911, at 23 years old… he went ballistic. He hit an astonishing .408 as a rookie, both a rookie and Cleveland franchise record. He had an OPS+ of 193, led the majors in OBP at .468 and smoked 19 triples, 45 doubles, and seven long balls. If it wasn’t for the Georgia Peach himself, Ty Cobb, who was just a few months older than Joe, he would have won the batting title and led the American lead in WAR. Ty Cobb hit .420 and won the Most Valuable Player award. 1912 brought much of the same for Jackson, as this time he led the majors with 226 hits and 331 total bases, and the American League with 26 triples. This time, he fell just short of .400, hitting .395 and had an OPS+ of 191. In 1913, Jackson this time finished second in MVP voting, narrowly losing to Walter Johnson, who statistically had one of the best pitching seasons in MLB history. Joe led the AL in doubles and slugging percentage, and the majors in OPS and hits.

By the time 1914 rolled around, Joe had built a status of a superstar. at the beginning of the season while signing a contract for the Naps, Joe was without his wife Katie and signed the contract with simply an “X”, showing Joe ignorance in these situations. Joe had another good season and finished fifth in MVP voting. In 1915, Cleveland’s owner Charles W. Somers had to choose to keep only one of Cleveland’s two stars, Joe or Ray Chapman, who would later become the only player to be fatally wounded during an MLB game. Joe left the Cleveland organization midway through the season and finished the year with Charles Comiskey’s Chicago White Sox. In his first full year with the Sox in 1916, Jackson led the league in triple with 21, and immediately became a fan favorite. Comiskey’s team was made a true force by the time 1917 rolled around, as players like Eddie Cicotte and Happy Flesh helped power the Sox to the World Series title in six games over the New York Giants. During the same season, in a charity all star game that feature players like Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, Zack Wheat an Harry Hooper, a few of the guys had a throwing competition. During said competition, Joe launched a ball and incredible 396 feet, and won without much of a contest. Europe featured some of the bloodiest battles at this time, and while president Woodrow Wilson wanted to keep baseball stagnant, many of the players enlisted in the Great War. Players like Grover Cleveland Alexander and Christy Mathewson travelled across the pond to places like Britain, France, and Germany, but Joe stayed in the U.S. He received criticism from other players and the media, but he did go work for wartime help in the shipyard. As expected, Joe played baseball and won the batting title. The beginning of the end for the Sox came by the start of the 1919 World Series.

There are a million different version’s of the story, but my thought is it went something like this. First baseman Chick Gandil approached gamblers Benny Maharg and Bill Burns, and offered a proposal to throw the World Series. Maharg was a boxer, and Sleepy Bill Burns was a former MLB pitcher who actually spent some time with the White Sox. Gandil and a lot of the other players were sick of Comiskey being so cheap, and they wanted to stick it to them. Gandil got infielders Swede Risberg and Fred McMullin on board early, but the problem was that Burns and Maharg could never raise the money the players were looking for all by themself, so the went to boxer Abe Attell, the former featherweight champion, and Attell had connections to Arnold Rothstein, a big time Jewish gambling boss. Players started having meetings, and seven “Black Sox” players attended meetings: Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Lefty Williams, Eddie Cicotte, Fred McMullin, Happy Flesh, and Buck Weaver. Joe never attended meetings, but his good friend Lefty Williams and other of the players informally got him to agree, though he never fully grasped what was happening. Cicotte was offered ten thousand dollars, and in the first inning on October 1, 1919 in Game 1 of the World Series at Redland Field in Cincinnati beamed Morrie Rath on the second pitch he threw to him, signaling the fix. The Sox ended up dropping the series in eight games, yet the only players to be paid were Eddie Cicotte with ten thousand, Chick Gandil for an undisclosed amount and Shoeless Joe who inexplicably got an envelope with five thousand dollar with it. The rest of the Sox were still waiting to receive money, and thought they got away with it. Longtime Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton watched game one with Giants’ legend Christy Mathewson and after hearing rumors of a fix, they both decided to circle plays on the scorecard that looked suspicious. After the series, Fullerton came out with the accusations, and the examination was on. One a sidetone, it is worth mentioning that the fix most likely would have never happened if it wasn’t for the Spanish Flu. Star of the 1917 World Series, Hall of Fame pitcher Urban “Red” Faber was down for the season with the sickness, and most historians believe that if Faber played, Eddie Cicotte and the other players wouldn’t have budged because Faber was always known to be a straight arrow.

In 1920, Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams and Shoeless Joe all signed a confession in a courthouse in Chicago; Joe didn’t know what he was signing. While it was pure ignorance on his part, Joe signed the papers without the presence of his wife Katie, and got tricked into the confession. Shoeless Joe after receiving the money went to find Charles Comiskey return the money, but Comiskey refused to meet him, so Jackson went home. In one of the biggest folklore moments in baseball history, it was thought that as Joe walked out of the courthouse, a kid in the crowd yelled “Say it Ain’t So Joe!”, and while it makes for a good story, it was not true.  “There wasn’t a bit of truth in it,” Jackson told reporter Furman Bisher in 1949. “When I came out of the building, this deputy asked me where I was going, and I told him to the South Side. … There was a big crowd hanging around the front of the building, but nobody else said anything to me. It just didn’t happen, that’s all. Charley Owens just made up a good story and wrote it.” Jackson played almost the whole 1920 season and batted .382, and the players first appeared in court shortly before the season ended. This caused the Sox to lose the pennant.

By August 1921, none of the Black Sox played in the season up to that point. The Sox caught a mysterious break, as one day the confessions went missing. In a grand jury ruling, the Sox were acquitted in court, and pandemonium broke out. The celebration didn’t last long though, as the next day, newly appointed commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis said “Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball”.

For the next few years, Joe tried mercilessly to get back into baseball, and in 1923 in Milwaukee sued Charlie Comiskey for 16 thousand dollars. Jackson signed a three year contract before the 1920 season, and since Comiskey knew of the fix, the jury ruled in Jackson’s favor. The judge overruled and Comiskey paid an undisclosed amount. Shoeless Joe spent the next decades of his life playing in sandlots in the Carolina’s, New Jersey, Georgia and Louisiana. Joe put on a lot of weight in the next few years and lost a step or two on the field, but God could he still hit the stuffing out of the ball.

One story that has become synonymous with Joe’s character came in 1949, when traveling through Greenville Ty Cobb remembered Joe had a liquor store. Ty Cobb was with legendary sports writer Grantland Rice, and so they decided to walk in. It was just those three in the store, and the two legends were within a few feet of each other for several minutes. Finally, Cobb went to checkout, and asked “Well hell Joe, don’t you remember me?” Joe said “Well of course I remember you Ty, I just didn’t think anyone would want to remember me”. Obviously they did. Joe showed Ty around the town to his fiends and family, and of course brought him to the local sandlot that Joe visited frequently, where taught the kids baseball and bought the kids ice cream with his wife Katie.

Joe was inducted into the Indians Hall of Fame in 1951, and the support Joe received was immense. This inspired the public, and in late December of 1951 he was supposed to appear on Ed Sullivan’s show Toast of the Town, but unfortunately Jackson passed away on December 5, 1951 of heart failure at the age of 64. He was the first of the Black Sox to die. Hopefully one day Joe will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but until then, his story will remain a tragedy.

Written by Gavin Winkler