Joseph "Shoeless Joe" Jackson Biography - Humble Beginnings, A Major League Player, Black Sox Scandal, Chronology, Awards And Accomplishments
1888-1951
American baseball player
Joseph Jefferson "Shoeless Joe" Jackson was one of the most talented baseball players of all time. Babe Ruth, who acknowledged that Jackson "was the greatest hitter I'd ever seen," copied his style, and Ty Cobb once called Jackson "the greatest natural hitter I ever saw." In a still-contested decision, Jackson was barred forever from baseball by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis over the "Black Sox" scandal of 1920, when Jackson and seven teammates from the 1919 Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Evidence that was to be presented to the grand jury in September 1920 mysteriously disappeared, and he was not prosecuted, but Jackson has never been honored by induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of
Shoeless Joe Jackson
the charge. However, sports figures and fans who believe him innocent, or at least not guilty enough to warrant the exclusion, continue to campaign to so honor Jackson.
Sketch by Sheila Velazquez
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Jackson was born to a poor family, the eldest of eight children. He had no formal education and worked from a very young age, beginning with a job cleaning up in the textile mill where most of the members of his family were employed. He played for the mill's team, but when he broke the catcher's arm with his powerful throw he was reassigned to the outfield. He next played for a semip…
Jackson's illiteracy haunted him for his entire career. When he first joined the Philadelphia Athletics, team members took him to an upscale restaurant and told him he could drink from the finger bowl, which he did. Humiliated upon learning of the trick, he jumped a train and ran away the next day. He left the team a second time in 1908, his first full season. Manager Connie Mack was sympat…
In 1915 the Indians traded Jackson to the Chicago White Sox for three players and $15,000. He was instrumental in the team's capture of the 1917 pennant, but there was unrest on the bench. White Sox owner Charles A. Comiskey was so cheap that he wouldn't even pay for the cleaning of the team's uniforms, thus leading the players to call themselves the Black Sox and wear their i…
The movie Field of Dreams was based on W. P. Kinsella's book Shoeless Joe and starred Kevin Costner and Amy Madigan as Ray and Amy Kinsella. The Kinsellas are Iowa farmers who sit on the porch and watch the corn grow, but when Ray hears a voice telling him, "If you build it, they will come," he carves a baseball diamond from a corn field, and the first to appear is Shoeless Jo…
At the end of the 1920 season, Jackson returned to the South, where he played semipro ball in order to survive, all the while hoping he would be reinstated. Ironically, he often made more money playing for unsanctioned teams than he had for the Sox. Jackson and his wife returned to Greenville and opened first a dry cleaning establishment, then a liquor store, which he ran until his death. They liv…
On December 16, 1951, Jackson was to be honored by the Baseball Writers Association of America in a ceremony held on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town television program. His former Cleveland teammate, Tris Speaker, was to present him with a gold clock. But Jackson died on December 5. "No ruling could bar Shoeless Joe from his fans' hearts," said Peter Ames Carlin and Lor…
Asinof, Eliot. Eight Men Out. New York: Holt, Rinehardt and Winston, 1963. Bildner, Phil, illustrated by C. F. Payne. Shoeless Joe and Black Betsy. New York: Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2002. Fleitz, David L. Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2001. Frommer, Harvey. Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball. Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1992. Garraty, …
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