“Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.”
George Will
Historical news from the baseball world erupted recently. Two players, Pete Rose and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, among others, were reinstated by Major League Baseball. Both had received lifetime bans from the MLB. It makes these two sports legends eligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Pondering Pete and Joe this week, I realized some may not know the stories behind this story. Let me tell you about Joe…
The iconic baseball movie Field of Dreams stars Kevin Costner as an Iowa farmer, who at the prompting of a mysterious voice, builds a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield. As a result, ghosts of former baseball greats show up to play. The first player to emerge from the corn is “Shoeless Joe” Jackson.
Jackson was born in Pickens County, South Carolina on July 16, 1887, the son of a sharecropper. One of eight children, he went to work at the age of seven in a textile mill to help support his family. As a result, he didn’t attend school and never learned to read or write. But he could play baseball.
He acquired the nickname “Shoeless Joe” while he was playing semi-pro ball in the South Carolina mill leagues. In one game, wearing a new set of spikes that gave him blisters, he removed them and played in his stockings. After hitting a triple and sliding into third base, a loud-mouthed opposing fan shouted, “You shoeless son of a gun, you!” A reporter for the Greenville newspaper heard it and wrote about “Shoeless Joe” Jackson. The name stuck. Joe hated the nickname and throughout his life bought lots of shoes in an effort to prove he was not shoeless.
Joe was a natural ball player and is considered one of the best to ever play the game. His .356 lifetime career batting average is still the fourth highest in MLB history. Recognizing his genius, baseball legend Babe Ruth said that he modeled his swing after Joe. After two partial seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1908-1909, Joe played his first full season in the majors with the Cleveland Naps, batting .408 (still one of the highest batting averages ever recorded for a rookie). In 1915, Joe was traded to the Chicago White Sox. Two years later they won the World Series, with his help.
Despite his amazing career, Jackson is best known for his role in the Black Sox Scandal, where members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox conspired to fix the World Series, losing on purpose to the Cincinnati Reds. Eight White Sox players, including Jackson, were indicted and charged with conspiring to defraud the public and accepting payment from gamblers to throw the games. The jury in their 1921 trial found the players not guilty, but baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis still banned the players from the game for life because of their alleged involvement.
The ban from baseball crushed Joe. He was never the same. Although he admitted to accepting some payment, he maintained that he had not taken any on-field actions to jeopardize the games and had “tried to win all the time.” During the series in question, Joe hit a record of 12 base hits that set a Series record not broken until 1964. He also led both teams with a .375 batting average for the Series.
Broken-hearted without baseball, Joe spent the last years of his life running a liquor store on Pendleton Street in Greenville, South Carolina. There is a story that Joe’s friend Ty Cobb came in to the store to see him one day. After Joe acted like he didn’t know who he was, Ty Cobb asked, “Don’t you know me, Joe?” Joe responded, “Sure, I know you, Ty, but I wasn’t sure you wanted to know me. A lot of them don’t.”
As he aged, Joe struggled with heart trouble. At the age of 64, on December 5, 1951, “Shoeless Joe” Jackson died of a heart attack. He was buried at Woodland Memorial Park in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. Fans still love him. You can always find baseballs left at his grave.
I hope they have baseball in heaven…
© 2025 Jody Dyer
typewriterweekly.com