Joseph Walker (Shoeless Joe) Jackson
Philadelphia Athletics—Cleveland—Chicago White Sox, 1908-1920
One of the greatest pure hitters in baseball history, Shoeless Joe hit .356 in his career, third highest in baseball history behind only his great rival Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby. Babe Ruth copied his swing. Became a movie icon long after his death. “The thrill of the grass.” Took money from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series.
In one of my early attempts to do the Baseball 100, I included Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell
— “Johnny B. Goode,” Chuck Berry
Joe Jackson could play baseball just like a-ringin’ a bell. Nobody knows how he learned to play. Nobody knows who coached him. He shows up in his story a complete ballplayer, 13 years old, entirely unschooled, already a veteran of the Brandon Mill textile factory in his hometown of Greenville, S.C.
He can throw so hard the mill team makes him a pitcher — and he breaks a batter’s arm by plunking him with a fastball.
He hits so well the people in town chant his name and throw coins at him.
He is so beloved a local artisan named Charlie Ferguson decides Joe Jackson deserves the grandest and most beautiful baseball bat ever made. He sculpts and whittles a perfect 48-ounce bat, then darkens it with tobacco juice. Joe falls in love with the bat and would use it for the rest of his baseball life, even after it broke (he sent it to a bat company to fix). Joe calls it “Black Betsy.”
This is a folk hero’s story. I think that’s why so many people are drawn to it even now, more than 100 years later. Joe Jackson’s baseball life starts with the innocent exuberance of a boy who plays ball for the pure joy of it. Every minute on the field is a minute spent in the sunshine and on the grass, far outside the dank and gloomy confines of Brandon Mill. He plays baseball with boundless talent; there is nothing he cannot do in the game. He swings Black Betsy with such force and rhythm — “I copied my swing after Joe Jackson’s, it is the perfectest,” Babe Ruth once said — that people come from all over South Carolina to see him play. They call his longest home run drives “Saturday Specials.”
And here’s the heart of the story: All of this was enough for Joe Jackson. He would always think of this as the best time of his life. He is getting paid $2.50 a game — double his pay sweating at Brandon Mill — and opportunities are endless. Other mills hire him to play ball, too. Crowds chant his name. He plays ball and drinks corn whiskey and lives a bigger life than he ever could have hoped for, a bigger life than his father, George, who toils unhappily in the factory every day with no baseball to brighten things.
Three days after his 21st birthday, Joe Jackson marries Katie Wynn, and for the rest of his life, Katie will read to him, write for him, protect him, defend him. It would have been enough for Joe.
But you couldn’t play ball like Joe Jackson and stay a secret. Even before he marries Kate, a man named Tom Stouch — who had played ball for almost two decades from Philadelphia to Atlanta, Providence to Selma — offers Jackson a joy playing baseball full time for his team, the Greenville Spinners. Jackson turns him down. He is making 45 dollars every month playing for all those factory teams, more than he ever expected to make, and he is blissfully happy.
“I will pay you $75 a month,” Stouch said.
You can imagine Joe Jackson’s eyes opening wider than they ever had before.
“I’ll play my head off for $75 a month,” Jackson said.
He signs the contract with an X.
And that’s when the story of Johnny B. Goode ends and the story of Shoeless Joe begins.
Joe Jackson insisted all his life he only played one game without shoes, and that was when he played for Tom Stouch’s Greenville Spinners. Jackson developed agonizing blisters while wearing a new pair of cleats. He asked to sit out a game in Anderson, S.C., so his feet could recover. Tom Stouch wasn’t paying Jackson 75 bucks a month to sit, and he reminded Jackson of his promise to play his head off. So Joe Jackson played in his stocking feet.
“You shoeless bastard, you!” one fan shouted at him as Jackson slid into third for what might be professional baseball’s only shoeless triple.
Jackson hated the Shoeless Joe nickname for the rest of his life.
Tom Stouch knew before anybody else just how good a baseball player Joe Jackson was; he knew Jackson was destined to become a big-league star. He almost immediately began writing letters to the biggest man in baseball, Philadelphia manager Connie Mack himself, and described Jackson’s greatness. Mack was intrigued enough to send two scouts to watch Jackson play, and they both immediately wired back: Sign Jackson no matter the cost.
Connie Mack paid Stouch $900 — about $25,000 in today’s money — for the rights to Joe Jackson. Stouch was thrilled, not only for the money but because he loved Joe and believed he was fulfilling the young man’s dreams.
But he was wrong: Joe Jackson was already living his dream.
And he wasn’t going to Philadelphia.
“I hardly know as how I’d like it in those big Northern cities,” Jackson told Stouch. Joe had never left South Carolina. He had no interest in leaving South Carolina. He had no interest, as the newspapers reported, going up North and “bumping into strangers by himself.”
Stouch remained adamant Jackson was just having a little stage fright. He’d get up to Philadelphia and realize he had made the big time. Stouch even took the train up North with Jackson. As David Fleitz wrote in his book “Shoeless,” they met at the train station. Stouch made sure Jackson got on. Stouch made sure Jackson got seated comfortably. Stouch explained the plan a few times: When they got to Philadelphia, he would take Jackson to the ballpark and personally introduce him to Mack, and make sure he was settled.
Then, Stouch left Jackson alone to enjoy the ride. When the train reached Philadelphia, Joe Jackson was gone.
Stouch rushed to the ballpark in a panic; he worried Jackson had been kidnapped or worse. Mack shook his head and showed him the telegram he had just received.
“AM UNABLE TO COME TO PHILADELPHIA AT THIS TIME. JOE JACKSON.”
Joe Jackson had jumped the train in Charlotte and returned home.
Mack was outraged. He sent an injured ballplayer, Socks Seybold, down to South Carolina with the orders of bringing Jackson to Philadelphia even if it meant “his whole family to come back with you.”
Jackson did go to Philadelphia with Seybold … and he immediately showed off his great talent … and he hated every minute of it. Jackson’s teammates cruelly mocked him for being Southern, for being odd and, mostly, for being illiterate. Of all the Shoeless Joe images, the one I find most touching and haunting is of him pretending to read magazines on the train, sometimes even shouting out, “Wow, that’s some story!”
In all, Joe Jackson tried three times to sneak on a train and go back to the safety and warmth of his South Carolina home.
“Shoeless Joe Jackson has returned to his home in Greenville,” The Washington Post reported. “Big league life wasn’t just to the young man’s liking. … Joe had just about one week of mingling with city folk when he concluded he was never cut out for the Major League. He told Connie Mack so, and added that he’d rather be a star in the bushes than struggle for a regular place on a big-league team.”
Mack tried to win over Jackson. He offered everything he knew to offer, including a chance to go to school and learn how to read and write. “But the boy refused every inducement,” the Post wrote. “Promises of big salary, education, fine clothes for his girl wife and many other things were ignored.”
In the end, Joe Jackson played only 10 games for the Athletics and wasn’t about to play any more. Mack, at a loss, traded Jackson to Cleveland in 1910. It altered Joe Jackson’s baseball life, but Mack never quite got over it. In 1941, Ted Williams entered his final games against the Athletics in position to hit .400. He famously went 6-for-8 in a season-ending doubleheader to finish at .406, and Mack watched from the other dugout thinking of another lefty hitter.
“I wish I had a Williams,” Mack said. “I had one once. And I lost him.”
Shoeless Joe Jackson never forgot that they came sweet-talking him. Once he accepted he couldn’t go back to South Carolina, that he was going to be a big-league ballplayer, he focused on two things: One, playing extraordinary, even unprecedented, baseball; and two, keeping an eye on the bastards to make sure they weren’t cheating him.
He hit .408 in his first full season with Cleveland. His friend and nemesis, Ty Cobb, won the batting title by hitting .420. Cobb used his fellow Southerner as a muse to bring out his own best baseball. Cobb had never before hit .400, but faced up against a new rival, he set career highs in doubles, triples, runs, hits and RBIs.
Even though their numbers look similar, Jackson and Cobb played the game differently. Cobb was a man of his time. He hit with hands held apart, and he bunted, slashed, intimidated, and willed his way forward. He had no use for Babe Ruth’s slugging baseball when it was thrust upon him, and he never stopped railing against it. He saw baseball as a sweet science, much in the same way pugilists of the time saw boxing.
Jackson was a man of the future. It’s no accident Ruth copied his swing. Jackson kept his hands together, his stroke was fluid and powerful and, yes, modern. As Fleitz wrote, people heard a different sound when the ball came off Joe Jackson’s bat. If Ruth was Elvis, Joe Jackson was the country blues singer who got there first.
Jackson hit .395 and led the league in hits and triples in his second year. He hit .373 and led the league in hits and doubles in his third.
But make no mistake, he wasn’t happy. Years later, in the movie “Field of Dreams,” Shoeless Joe lamented his life and talk about how he loved baseball so much he would have played it for free. This was probably never true of the real Joe Jackson, but it certainly wasn’t true after he made it to the major leagues. By 1913, he was entirely convinced the bastards were cheating him. Cleveland’s owner was a man named Charles Somers who had spent a lot of his money just keeping the American League afloat in its early years.
Jackson felt sure Somers was underpaying him. Cobb was making more. The owners were making more. Everybody was making more. He’d had enough.
Jackson threatened to quit baseball to go into vaudeville. He threatened to quit the American League and go play in the Federal League. Finally, he demanded Cleveland deal him to a winner so he could get “some of that sweet World Series money.”
Somers, who once was among the richest men in America but had lost everything, had no choice but to give in and trade Jackson to the Chicago White Sox.
And now, the story starts to become familiar, right? The White Sox owner was that famed cheapskate, Charles Comiskey, and everybody knows he treated his players poorly, backed out of giving them bonuses they were promised, made them launder their own uniforms, etc.
Only … it’s not clear any of that is quite right. In studying the Black Sox scandal, and uncovering countless myths about it, the Society for American Baseball Research discovered Comiskey was actually
Shoeless Joe Jackson never forgot that they came sweet-talking him. Once he accepted he couldn’t go back to South Carolina, that he was going to be a big-league ballplayer, he focused on two things: One, playing extraordinary, even unprecedented, baseball; and two, keeping an eye on the bastards to make sure they weren’t cheating him.
He hit .408 in his first full season with Cleveland. His friend and nemesis, Ty Cobb, won the batting title by hitting .420. Cobb used his fellow Southerner as a muse to bring out his own best baseball. Cobb had never before hit .400, but faced up against a new rival, he set career highs in doubles, triples, runs, hits and RBIs.
Even though their numbers look similar, Jackson and Cobb played the game differently. Cobb was a man of his time. He hit with hands held apart, and he bunted, slashed, intimidated, and willed his way forward. He had no use for Babe Ruth’s slugging baseball when it was thrust upon him, and he never stopped railing against it. He saw baseball as a sweet science, much in the same way pugilists of the time saw boxing.
Jackson was a man of the future. It’s no accident Ruth copied his swing. Jackson kept his hands together, his stroke was fluid and powerful and, yes, modern. As Fleitz wrote, people heard a different sound when the ball came off Joe Jackson’s bat. If Ruth was Elvis, Joe Jackson was the country blues singer who got there first.
Jackson hit .395 and led the league in hits and triples in his second year. He hit .373 and led the league in hits and doubles in his third.
But make no mistake, he wasn’t happy. Years later, in the movie “Field of Dreams,” Shoeless Joe lamented his life and talk about how he loved baseball so much he would have played it for free. This was probably never true of the real Joe Jackson, but it certainly wasn’t true after he made it to the major leagues. By 1913, he was entirely convinced the bastards were cheating him. Cleveland’s owner was a man named Charles Somers who had spent a lot of his money just keeping the American League afloat in its early years.
Jackson felt sure Somers was underpaying him. Cobb was making more. The owners were making more. Everybody was making more. He’d had enough.
Jackson threatened to quit baseball to go into vaudeville. He threatened to quit the American League and go play in the Federal League. Finally, he demanded Cleveland deal him to a winner so he could get “some of that sweet World Series money.”
Somers, who once was among the richest men in America but had lost everything, had no choice but to give in and trade Jackson to the Chicago White Sox.
And now, the story starts to become familiar, right? The White Sox owner was that famed cheapskate, Charles Comiskey, and everybody knows he treated his players poorly, backed out of giving them bonuses they were promised, made them launder their own uniforms, etc.
Only … it’s not clear any of that is quite right. In studying the Black Sox scandal, and uncovering countless myths about it, the Society for American Baseball Research discovered Comiskey was actually among the highest-paying owners in baseball (his team had a significantly higher payroll than the Cincinnati Reds, who they faced in the World Series). This is not to say he wasn’t cheating the players; of course, he was. He just wasn’t cheating the players any more than other owners.
In any case, Comiskey was extremely popular in the press. So when Jackson got into those now-familiar battles with Comiskey over salary, back pay, and other things, reporters sided with Comiskey. They played up Jackson’s greed, his ungratefulness and, just to add color to the story, his inability to read. In 1918, with World War I raging on, Jackson — as the sole support for his wife and mother — was given the option to work for a shipbuilding company rather than going to fight.
Comiskey cruelly called Jackson a coward. “There is no room on my club for players who wish to evade the army draft by entering the employ of ship concerns,” he snarled. It was the harshest insult imaginable, and Joe Jackson would not forget.
Then came the end. Jackson, feeling cheated and betrayed and angry, took $5,000 from gamblers to help throw the 1919 World Series. There is no question he took the money. Not only that, but he admitted later he threatened to reveal the whole plot unless he got paid. He famously hit .375 for the series with a homer and did not commit an error, but a close look at the play-by-play showed he went hitless with runners in scoring position and didn’t really start hitting until after gamblers failed to come up with the money and the White Sox players decided to try to win.
Jackson always insisted he did not do anything to lose the actual games — which is dubious considering his insistence on getting paid later — but even if it’s true, his agreement was a big reason the fix ever got going in the first place. Once they had the team’s best pitcher in Eddie Cicotte, and the team’s best player in Jackson, the gamblers had what they needed to inspire faith the White Sox were going to lose.
Jackson returned to play ball in 1920 and even while the Black Sox investigation raged on, he had his best season in years. He hit .382, slugged .589, and led the league in triples at age 32.
And then he was banned for life.
After he was banished from the major leagues, Joe Jackson returned to the small Southern towns where his baseball life began. He played ball until he was almost 50. This has been played off as sad — a larger-than-life figure, now out of shape, playing in the sandlots against townsfolk.
But the truth is, those sandlots, that’s where he was happiest. He had known that instinctively, right from the start, even while supposedly smarter people had told him what he wanted. Jackson opened a liquor store a few blocks from where he grew up. He and Katie never had any children, but Shoeless Joe would spend much of his later years teaching the kids in the neighborhood how to play ball. Sometimes he would buy them ice cream.
Late in his life, Cobb and Jackson crossed paths. The story is quite famous, an older Joe Jackson looking away as the legend approached.
“Don’t you know me?” Cobb said.
“Sure I do, Ty,” Joe Jackson said. “But I didn’t think you knew me.”
My favorite part of the story, though, is less known. At one point, Ty Cobb told Shoeless Joe: “Whenever I got the idea I was a good hitter, I’d stop … and take a good look at you.”
Joe Jackson died four years later. He was 63. Nearly four decades later, Ray Liotta played Shoeless Joe Jackson in the movie “Field of Dreams.” In the movie, he threw left-handed and batted right-handed, the opposite of real life. All of it was the opposite of real life, though.
Should Joe Jackson be in the Hall of Fame? Like with every player in this list, it depends on what you think the Hall of Fame represents. If you are one who believes all the greatest players, regardless of their more human flaws, regardless of how they might have hurt the game, belong in the Hall, then yes, Jackson should be in there.
If you believe the Hall of Fame is, instead, an honor meant for those great players who are, above all else, a credit to the game, then no, you can’t vote for him. Joe Jackson helped throw a World Series and, along the way, endangered the game’s very future. There aren’t many things you can do on the field that are worse than that.
My own view is Joe Jackson is an integral part of baseball history. There are others I’d put in first. But, eventually, yes, I would get to Shoeless Joe.
“If I had been the kind of fellow who brooded when things went wrong,” Jackson said, “I probably would have gone out of my mind … I would have been bitter and resentful because I would have felt I had been wronged. But I haven’t been resentful at all. … I gave baseball my best.”
(his team had a significantly higher payroll than the Cincinnati Reds, who they faced in the World Series). This is not to say he wasn’t cheating the players; of course, he was. He just wasn’t cheating the players any more than other owners.
In any case, Comiskey was extremely popular in the press. So when Jackson got into those now-familiar battles with Comiskey over salary, back pay, and other things, reporters sided with Comiskey. They played up Jackson’s greed, his ungratefulness and, just to add color to the story, his inability to read. In 1918, with World War I raging on, Jackson — as the sole support for his wife and mother — was given the option to work for a shipbuilding company rather than going to fight.
Comiskey cruelly called Jackson a coward. “There is no room on my club for players who wish to evade the army draft by entering the employ of ship concerns,” he snarled. It was the harshest insult imaginable, and Joe Jackson would not forget.
Then came the end. Jackson, feeling cheated and betrayed and angry, took $5,000 from gamblers to help throw the 1919 World Series. There is no question he took the money. Not only that, but he admitted later he threatened to reveal the whole plot unless he got paid. He famously hit .375 for the series with a homer and did not commit an error, but a close look at the play-by-play showed he went hitless with runners in scoring position and didn’t really start hitting until after gamblers failed to come up with the money and the White Sox players decided to try to win.
Jackson always insisted he did not do anything to lose the actual games — which is dubious considering his insistence on getting paid later — but even if it’s true, his agreement was a big reason the fix ever got going in the first place. Once they had the team’s best pitcher in Eddie Cicotte, and the team’s best player in Jackson, the gamblers had what they needed to inspire faith the White Sox were going to lose.
Jackson returned to play ball in 1920 and even while the Black Sox investigation raged on, he had his best season in years. He hit .382, slugged .589, and led the league in triples at age 32.
And then he was banned for life.
After he was banished from the major leagues, Joe Jackson returned to the small Southern towns where his baseball life began. He played ball until he was almost 50. This has been played off as sad — a larger-than-life figure, now out of shape, playing in the sandlots against townsfolk.
But the truth is, those sandlots, that’s where he was happiest. He had known that instinctively, right from the start, even while supposedly smarter people had told him what he wanted. Jackson opened a liquor store a few blocks from where he grew up. He and Katie never had any children, but Shoeless Joe would spend much of his later years teaching the kids in the neighborhood how to play ball. Sometimes he would buy them ice cream.
Late in his life, Cobb and Jackson crossed paths. The story is quite famous, an older Joe Jackson looking away as the legend approached.
“Don’t you know me?” Cobb said.
“Sure I do, Ty,” Joe Jackson said. “But I didn’t think you knew me.”
My favorite part of the story, though, is less known. At one point, Ty Cobb told Shoeless Joe: “Whenever I got the idea I was a good hitter, I’d stop … and take a good look at you.”
Joe Jackson died four years later. He was 63. Nearly four decades
later, Ray Liotta played Shoeless Joe Jackson in the movie “Field of
Dreams.” In the movie, he threw left-handed and batted right-handed, the
opposite of real life. All of it was the opposite of real life, though. Couldn't be helped, thet had cast Liotta already, and he was a right handed thrower and left handed hitter.
Should Joe Jackson be in the Hall of Fame? Like with every player in this list, it depends on what you think the Hall of Fame represents. If you are one who believes all the greatest players, regardless of their more human flaws, regardless of how they might have hurt the game, belong in the Hall, then yes, Jackson should be in there.
If you believe the Hall of Fame is, instead, an honor meant for those great players who are, above all else, a credit to the game, then no, you can’t vote for him. Joe Jackson helped throw a World Series and, along the way, endangered the game’s very future. There aren’t many things you can do on the field that are worse than that.
My own view is Joe Jackson is an integral part of baseball history. There are others I’d put in first. But, eventually, yes, I would get to Shoeless Joe.
“If I had been the kind of fellow who brooded when things went wrong,” Jackson said, “I probably would have gone out of my mind … I would have been bitter and resentful because I would have felt I had been wronged. But I haven’t been resentful at all. … I gave baseball my best.”
