Joe
Jackson was a simple man, but hardly the ignorant rube portrayed in the
sports-page caricatures of his day. He never played barefoot because he couldn't
afford shoes, or because he was unused to shoes, having grown up without them
as many newspaper fantasies had it through the years. He did once playa couple
of innings of one game without shoes, because a new pair had left his feet
blistered. This happened while playing in Greenville, South Carolina, either in
city's Textile League or for the Greenville Spinners during his first year of
organized ball in 1908. He took at least one at-bat in his stocking feet,
either tripled or homered, depending upon the account being rendered, and when
he arrived or passed, third base, a fan was alleged to have shouted: "You
shoeless son of gun, you!" Carter "Scoop" Latimer of the
Greenville News, himself then just teenage reporter, overheard (or invented)
the shout, and Joe Jackson was forever after "Shoeless Joe." It was a
nickname befitting humble rural roots and an uncomplicated personality.
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By
that point in his young career, Jackson was already fashioning a baseball
reputation deserving of a memorable nickname. Baseball had been his deliverance
from an otherwise Dickensian boyhood. He was born in Brandon, a mill town just
outside Greenville, in July 1889.'
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The
oldest of eight children, he had not a day's schooling his entire life. By six,
when he might have been in the first grade, he was sweeping floors in a mill in
Brandon. By thirteen he was working twelve-hour days in the mill alongside his
father. What daylight hours were not spent on the cotton-mill floor were spent
on the ball field. He was a big kid; by sixteen he was six foot two and gangly,
not yet anywhere near his major league weight of 185 pounds. Still, he already
had those Pop eye forearms and hands the size of skillets, and, gangly teenager
or not, he could hit a baseball half again as far as anybody else in town and
throw it like it had been shot from a cannon.
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He
was playing for the Brandon Mills baseball team by the time he was thirteen.
There were thirteen mills ringing Greenville, and Saturday afternoon games in
the Textile League would attract crowds of several hundred to a couple thousand
or more, and the players became objects of great affection and celebrity in
their local mill communities. And nobody was more celebrated than the
marvelously gifted teenager from Brandon. "Joe's Saturday specials"
-line drive home runs that were still rising when they sailed over the
outfielders' heads-became the talk of Brandon, and every time he hit one, his
younger brothers would scramble up into the stands to pass the hat so that the
Brandon fans might show their gratitude. There were times the fans showed their
gratitude to the tune of $lO or so, as much as a full week's wages at the mill.
Such a phenomenon was Jackson that he was recruited away from Brandon Mills by
the rival Victor Mills team, with the promise of a softer job in the mill and
time off to practice.
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Greenville
got its own team in organized baseball in 1908, and Jackson was one of the
first players signed, to a contract paying him a princely $75 a month. Pros or
semipros, it was all the same to Jackson; he had a great year, batting over
.350 to lead the Carolina Association in hitting. On an off day in July he
married his Greenville sweetheart, Katie Wynn-he was nineteen, she fifteen. And
in August, he got the news that the Philadelphia Athletics had bought his
contract. He was going to the big leagues, as soon as the Carolina Association
season was over.
?
By
that point in his young career, Jackson was already fashioning a baseball
reputation deserving of a memorable nickname. Baseball had been his deliverance
from an otherwise Dickensian boyhood. He was born in Brandon, a mill town just
outside Greenville, in July 1889.
?
The
oldest of eight children, he had not a day's schooling his entire life. By six,
when he might have been in the first grade, he was sweeping floors in a mill in
Brandon. By thirteen he was working twelve-hour days in the mill alongside his
father. What daylight hours were not spent on the cotton-mill floor were spent
on the ball field. He was a big kid; by sixteen he was six foot two and gangly,
not yet anywhere near his major league weight of 185 pounds. Still, he already
had those Pop eye forearms and hands the size of skillets, and, gangly teenager
or not, he could hit a baseball half again as far as anybody else in town and
throw it like it had been shot from a cannon.
?
He
was playing for the Brandon Mills baseball team by the time he was thirteen.
There were thirteen mills ringing Greenville, and Saturday afternoon games in
the Textile League would attract crowds of several hundred to a couple thousand
or more, and the players became objects of great affection and celebrity in
their local mill communities. And nobody was more celebrated than the
marvelously gifted teenager from Brandon. "Joe's Saturday specials" -
line drive home runs that were still rising when they sailed over the
outfielders' heads - became the talk of Brandon, and every time he hit one, his
younger brothers would scramble up into the stands to pass the hat so that the
Brandon fans might show their gratitude. There were times the fans showed their
gratitude to the tune of $lO or so, as much as a full week's wages at the mill.
Such a phenomenon was Jackson that he was recruited away from Brandon Mills by
the rival Victor Mills team, with the promise of a softer job in the mill and
time off to practice.
?
Greenville
got its own team in organized baseball in 1908, and Jackson was one of the
first players signed, to a contract paying him a princely $75 a month. Pros or
semipros, it was all the same to Jackson; he had a great year, batting over
.350 to lead the Carolina Association in hitting. On an off day in July he
married his Greenville sweetheart, Katie Wynn - he was nineteen, she fifteen.
And in August, he got the news that the Philadelphia Athletics had bought his
contract. He was going to the big leagues, as soon as the Carolina Association
season was over.
?
The
problem was that he didn't want to. He was terrified of leaving home, of being
away from his parents and his new bride, and he only got on the train after his
Greenville manager, Tommy Stouch, was hired by Athletics manager Connie Mack to
make sure the reluctant rookie made it to Philadelphia. Stouch and Jackson got
as far as Charlotte, a hundred miles from Greenville, when Jackson's panic got
the better of him. When the train stopped at the Charlotte station, Jackson got
off, without telling Stouch, and caught the next train back to South Carolina.
Back home, he exhibited no interest in going to Philadelphia. Mack sent injured
outfielder Socks Seybold, who had formed a bond with Jackson when he had
scouted him earlier in the year. Seybold succeeded where Stouch had failed in
getting Jackson to Philadelphia. But neither Seybold nor Mack could make
Jackson comfortable in the big, strange, northern city.
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The
newspapers had made him a celebrity of the first order well in advance of his
arrival. He came bearing an outsized reputation, as well as his personal bat,
handcrafted by a Greenville woodsmith, stained black by rubbed-in tobacco
juice, wrapped carefully and lovingly in cloth for the trip, and nicknamed
"Black Betsy" In his first big league game against Cleveland, Jackson
and Black Betsy singled in his first at-bat to drive in a run. He had no more
hits, but hit the ball hard twice more that day, made an over-the-shoulder
catch back by the centerfield flagpole, uncorked a couple of strong throws from
the outfield, and altogether impressed the writers, who made him the focal
point of their stories. "Jackson looked extremely good in his first game,
and as if he didn't possess a single weakness: good at bat, good on fly balls,
good on the bases and fast on his feet" wrote one.
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Cleveland
left town after that game, and Ty Cobb and the Tigers came in.
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Newspaper
stories were full of anticipation, as Jackson would now be matched against the
player to whom he was most often being compared. Two days of rain made the
hyperbole particularly heavy, as the writers had nothing else to write. Two
days of rain meant that Jackson had two days away from the ballpark, the only
place he might possibly have felt comfortable in the large, unwelcoming city.
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Major
league clubhouses could be cruel places in the early years of the game.
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Every
rookie was a threat to a veteran's job, and they were hazed and bullied
unmercifully; every rookie who cracked and went back to the bushes was another
who wouldn't be taking somebody's job. Never mind what that rookie might bring
to the lineup; self-preservation nearly always trumped team chemistry in this
hardscrabble world. When the rookie was particularly naive and vulnerable, or
particularly celebrated-and Jackson was all of these-the abuse could be
unrelenting and brutal. Years after the fact, Jackson confided to a friend that
in those first days in Philadelphia his Athletics teammates had made him feel
as bad as he had ever felt in his life. They mocked his illiteracy and his
country-bumpkin ignorance. In their most famous prank, they convinced him to
drink the water from the dining-table finger bowl, then laughed loudly and
derisively as he left the hotel dining room in shame.
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Before
the rains had cleared and Jackson could square off against Ty Cobb, he was back
on a train for Greenville. This time he stayed ten days, as newspapers reported
that he had left because he was afraid of life in the big city – true - and
afraid of facing Ty Cobb on the ball field - certainly not true. The newspapers
flat-out called him a coward, an unfair pejorative that would dog him for
years. Under threat of suspension from Connie Mack, and at the urging of his
mother, Jackson returned to the Athletics on September 7. He stayed less than a
week, his vulnerability exacerbating his teammates' insensitivity. After going
0 for 9 in a double-header against Washington, he was once again back on the
train to Greenville. And this time he wouldn't budge. Mack reluctantly
suspended him. The local paper reported, "JOE JACKSON HAS BEEN SUSPENDED
BY MACK: BRANDON BOY CAN NEVER PLAY ORGANIZED BALL AGAIN:'
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Like
so many newspaper headlines of the day, that overstated the situation.
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Jackson
reported to spring training in 1909 and showed well, playing together with a
team of rookies that included Eddie Collins, Frank Baker, Stuffy McInnis, and
Jack Barry, players that would form the corps of the Athletics' championship
teams of the next half decade. But while Jackson had shown as well as any of
them, and at nineteen going on twenty was probably physically ready for the big
leagues, it would take two more years of playing in the South before he was
emotionally ready for his big league career to take root. Mack tried to nurture
the young, insecure prodigy. He offered to hire an off-season tutor to teach
Jackson to read and write. Jackson declined. "It don't take no school stuff
to help a fella play ball" he said.
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What
did help a fella play ball - at least a deer-in-the-headlights player like
Jackson - was to play it among friends, and for Jackson that meant playing in
the South. According to the Jackson legend, the Athletics were paused at a
Reading, Pennsylvania, train station at the end of spring training when Jackson
caught sight of a line of milk cans on the platform, their southern-city
destination labels in plain view. "I wish you'd put a red tag on me and
ship me along with the milk cans down South" Jackson supposedly told Mack,
which is how he ended up playing the 1909 season with Savannah of the South
Atlantic League. That story was first told by Fred Lieb, as much a legend in
the newspaper game as Jackson was in his game. It made for wonderful newspaper
copy when Jackson became a star, and a wonderful historical insight later still
when Jackson became the subject of histories and biographies. Neither Lieb nor
apparently anyone else ever once questioned how the illiterate Jackson was able
to read the milk labels to know they were headed south. As a movie newspaperman
once noted: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
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Jackson
led the Sally League in hitting in 1909 with a .358 average, and had five hits
in seventeen at-bats when called up to Philadelphia in September. Though Katie
Jackson came with him to Philadelphia this time, her support could not
penetrate the dugout; the taunts of his teammates continued, and Jackson
continued to be uncomfortable in their presence. "My players didn't seem
to like him," Mack admitted years later. In 1910, still hoping to buy some
time to find a way to make Jackson comfortable in Philadelphia, Mack assigned
Jackson's contract to the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern League, where
Jackson again flourished, batting .354 and winning his third batting title in
as many minor league seasons. The Pelicans had a close working relationship
with the Cleveland Indians - still known then as the Naps, after their captain
Napoleon Lajoie - and played a number of spring training games against the big
league club. Cleveland management came away very impressed with the young
outfielder on loan from Philadelphia, and team owner Charles Somers began
asking Connie Mack what he would take to trade Jackson to Cleveland. In
midsummer Mack relented, trading Jackson for outfielder Briscoe Lord, a player
forgotten to history, to be sure, but a steady major leaguer at the time, who
would hit .278 for the Athletics that summer and help them win the 1910
pennant.
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Whether
it was because Jackson was now two years older or because Cleveland had a
wholly different zeitgeist than Philadelphia, Jackson came to Cleveland and
immediately became one of the game's biggest stars. He batted .387 in twenty
games in 1910 and hit .408 in his first full season in the big leagues in 1911,
then .395 and .373, before falling to .338 in 1914. He never won a major league
batting title; it was his misfortune to play in the time of Ty Cobb. The year
Jackson hit .408, Cobb posted a career-best .420 to win the fifth of his
eventual twelve batting titles. Jackson's lifetime average of .356 is third
all-time, trailing only Cobb's .367 and Rogers Hornsby's .358. Jackson was the
original five-tool player. In the dead-ball era, his career slugging average
was .518; he was a speedy and intuitive base runner, and a gazelle in the
outfield with that cannon for an arm.
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He
was happy and comfortable in Cleveland. Home, and frequently away as well,
Katie Jackson was a regular at the ballpark, always sitting in the last row of
the grandstand, directly behind home plate. The newspapers took notice. At
home, however the game might be unfolding, she would always leave at the end of
the seventh inning, so that supper would be on the table when Joe walked home
to the apartment they shared in the shadow of League Park.
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Charles
Somers treated his players well, and unlike in Philadelphia, Jackson was
accepted and well liked by his teammates. He was never as happy in his major
league life as he was during his four and a half years in Cleveland.
Nevertheless, the most gifted of ballplayers cannot make a team a winner if he
is surrounded by clods, and so it was with Jackson in Cleveland. After a
third-place finish in 1913, the Indians tumbled into the American League cellar
in 1914, losing 102 games. They would lose ninety-five more in 1915, and by
midseason the Cleveland fans had lost interest, and the Indians' balance sheet
was as troubled as its won-loss record. The team's finances were placed in the
hands of receivers, and owner Charles Somers was forced to sell his liquid
assets to save his business. His most valuable liquid asset was Jackson's
contract, which went to the White Sox in August. Technically it was a trade;
the Indians received three forgettable players in return. But the key to the
deal was the large check that Comiskey sent Somers's way, the amount never
revealed but reported at the time to be somewhere between $15,000 and $31,500.
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Happy
though he had been in Cleveland, Jackson was glad to be going to Chicago. To
begin with, the White Sox were a wealthy franchise, and Jackson had every
reason to hope his salary might improve in Chicago, a misreading of Charles
Comiskey, who could be generous when it suited him and earned him headlines,
and cheap when no one was looking, which was most of the time. Comiskey had
made headlines when he spent $50,000 to acquire Eddie Collins from the
Athletics prior to the start of the 1915 season and signed him to a fiveyear
contract at $15,000 per year. He was just as proud of his acquisition of Joe
Jackson, calling him "the best straightaway hitter in the game" and
boasting to the newspapers that he was paying his new outfielder a $10,000
salary, a baldfaced lie; Jackson's salary was $6,000 per year from 1915 to
1919.
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Beyond
the hope for more money, Jackson had sound baseball reasons to welcome the move
to the White Sox, a team on the cusp of moving into the ranks of the American
League elite. In addition to Collins and Jackson, Comiskey had bought the minor
league contracts of Happy Felsch, Buck Weaver, and Lefty Williams. The
newspapers were saying throughout 1915 that Comiskey was in the midst of
assembling the best team money could buy. It would take a couple of seasons for
the Sox to prove the prophecy correct, but they ultimately would, and Jackson
was one of the main reasons why. His stats slipped a bit from his Cleveland
years, but not so much that anyone noticed. He remained among the league
leaders every year in batting average, hits, runs batted in, and runs scored.
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Chicago
marked a transition in Jackson's life. He was no longer the country bumpkin;
quite the opposite, he had turned into a big-city dandy. He had his teeth
fixed. He developed an affinity for bespoke suits and thirty-dollar pink silk
shirts, which he often wore with patent-leather shoes from an extensive
collection of showy, expensive footwear. It was almost as if he was saying to
the world:
?
"Shoeless?
Hardly," He could be seen behind the wheel of a new Oldsmobile, both on
the streets of the South Side and in the ads in newspapers and magazines, where
Jackson endorsed the Olds. He did not, however, become completely citified.
When he traveled, he always brought along a jug of corn liquor.
?
He
was a magnet for kids. The young boys of the South Side would seek him out, and
he them. Boys would gather as he left Comiskey Park and scramble to carry his
bats. Or he would stop by a sandlot with a baseball he'd taken from the
clubhouse and offer to have a catch, and sometimes take a swing or two with the
young boys.
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But
among the older lads, his teammates on the White Sox, Jackson remained very
much a loner. He roomed with Lefty Williams on the road, and sometimes the two
players would socialize together with their wives in Chicago. But in a
clubhouse filled with cliques, jealousies, and mistrust, Jackson coped with the
interpersonal dysfunction by withdrawing. His clique was, as always, a clique
of two, himself and his wife, Katie.
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During
his time in Chicago, Jackson admitted to his wife and a few close friends that
some of the fun had gone out of the game. He and Katie began to save and invest
their money. They bought a home for Joe's parents in Greenville, and after the
1916 season they bought an elegant waterfront home for themselves in Savannah.
The city had charmed the couple ever since Joe's minor league season there in
1909, and it would remain their home for more than fifteen years.
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Joe's
first business venture had been a vaudeville show called "Joe Jackson's
Baseball Girls", with which he toured in the offseason. The show made him
some money but almost cost him his marriage. There were rumors in the winter of
1915 that Jackson was involved with one of the girls from the show, rumors with
enough credibility to cause Katie Jackson to consult a divorce attorney. The
marriage - from all accounts a forty-three-year love story - survived that
single rough patch, and Jackson's subsequent investments were more suited to
domestic tranquility. He invested in pool halls in Chicago and Greenville, as
well as a farm, and later a liquor store, in Greenville. Most lucratively, and
most enduringly, he opened a dry-cleaning and valet business in Savannah after
he and Katie had bought their home there. Jackson gave his wife credit for his
investments. "I've been blessed with a good banker;' he said in 1949,
"my wife. Handing the money to her was just like putting it in the
bank."
?
?
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But
it was Jackson who worked the businesses, managed a dozen or so people in
Savannah, dealt with the public, and saw the business through to profitability.
Newspaper stories in the later years of his life-always given to exaggeration
when it came to Jackson-reported that his investments and business had made him
a millionaire. That was far from true. Nonetheless, by the end of his playing
career, he was making at least as much money from his business investments as
he was from his baseball salary. And when the end of that baseball career came
so suddenly in the fall of 1920, the unschooled, unlettered, so often ridiculed
Joe Jackson was far better positioned than any of his Black Sox brothers to
make a living in the life that would come after.
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***
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After
the trial verdict, Jackson returned to Savannah and the dry-cleaning and valet
businesses. During baseball season, however, the businesses were mostly Katie
Jackson's responsibilities, for Joe continued the peripatetic life of a
baseball player. He played ball until he was in his late forties, all over the
country, for a game or two here and there, maybe for a full season. He often
played under assumed names in the early years, right after the banishment, yet
word would get around Joe Jackson was scheduled to play, and grandstands and
foul lines would be packed with fans. By the 1930s he was playing and coaching
under his own name, mostly in semipro leagues in Georgia and South Carolina,
where the crowds had ebbed and he was playing for the joy and the memories.
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In
1933, he sold his business in Savannah, and he and Katie moved back to
Greenville. They built a pleasant brick bungalow in West Greenville, and Joe
opened a liquor store. There he lived out his years among his people, buying
ice cream cones for the young boys who would stop by his home for some stories
and some tips on hitting, enjoying a wide and loyal circle of friends who never
asked about Chicago and 1919.
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Now
and again, others would ask. And Jackson's story as always the same - he was an
innocent man. Recovering from a heart attack in the summer of 1942, Jackson
gave a lengthy interview to the Sporting News. The writer was Scoop Latimer of
the Greenville News, Jackson's original Boswell, the man who had given him the
"Shoeless Joe" moniker back when only Greenville had heard of either
of them. The result was a flattering page-one story that was said to have
earned Sporting News editor Taylor Spink an upbraiding from Commissioner
Landis, who was upset that one of baseball's outcasts was being celebrated so
by the "Bible of Baseball." The story was heavy on atmosphere;
Latimer describes trophies, mementos, and scrapbooks from a long career; shows
Jackson surrounded by those neighborhood boys seeking advice on hitting; and
lets Jackson summon memories of a certain home run off Walter Johnson and talk
of his admiration for players like Eddie Collins and Ty Cobb. It is short on
any detail on 1919. In a 3,500-word story, Jackson and Latimer spend fewer than
three hundred words talking about the Black Sox, and all of that is given over
to Jackson's second newspaper denial of the say-it-ain't-so exchange, and
another assertion of his innocence. "I think my record in the 1919 World's
Series will stand up against that of any man in that Series or any other
World's Series in all history," he said, pointing to his acquittal in the
criminal trial as further evidence of his innocence.
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"If
I had been guilty of 'laying down' in the Series, I wouldn't be so successful
today," he continued. "For I'm a great believer in retribution. I
have made a lot more money since being out of baseball than when I was in it.
And I have this consolation - the Good Lord knows I am innocent of any
wrong-doing."
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Latimer
didn't press Jackson with any hard questions. Neither did Atlanta writer Furman
Bisher, who ghosted a Sport magazine article that appeared under Jackson's name
in October 1949, the thirtieth anniversary of the Black Sox Series. It is
unclear how many of the facts in the stories in the Sport article were
Jackson's memories and how many were stories Bisher had unearthed, but what is
clear is that the article was never fact-checked the way a modern magazine
article would be. There are facts presented for the first time - Jackson's
claim that he went to Comiskey the night before the Series began and begged him
to keep him out of the lineup - that have since become a part of the Black Sox
legend but have been neither verified nor recorded anywhere else in the
voluminous Black Sox history. Jackson and Bisher get some facts wrong, such as
the name of the judge in the criminal trial, and there are smaller
inconsistencies with history, too. But overall the voice that emerges from the
piece is one of dignity and pride, bereft of bitterness, rancor, or the wish to
blame others for what had befallen him. Joe Jackson came across as a
sympathetic figure, deserving to have his life judged on more than simply the
events of 1919.
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And
people were starting to do that. One springtime in the late 1940s, Ty Cobb and
sportswriter Grantland Rice went up to Greenville just after the Masters
Tournament in Augusta, about a hundred miles away. The two men arrived
unannounced at Jackson's liquor store and found him behind the counter. A
flicker of recognition crossed Jackson's face, quickly suppressed when it
wasn't returned. Cobb rummaged about the store and finally approached the
counter with a bottle of whiskey. No one had said a word.
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"Don't
you know me, Joe?" Cobb finally blurted.
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"I
know you," Jackson replied, "but I wasn't sure you wanted to speak to
me. A lot of them don't."
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The
three men talked of old times after that, the subject of 1919 apparently not coming
up. Before he left, Cobb told Jackson: "Joe, you had the most natural
ability, the greatest swing I ever saw." Of course the vainglorious Cobb
couldn't leave it at that. Following Jackson's death in 1951, he backhanded the
compliment, telling Arthur Daley of the New York Times, "I used my brain
to become a great hitter. I studied the art scientifically. Jackson just swung.
If he had had my knowledge, his average would have been phenomenal"
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Rice,
the syndicated columnist with an enormous national influence, had been one of
the Black Sox players' shrillest critics back when the scandal first broke.
Perhaps still unsure of his feelings on Jackson and his legacy, he didn't write
about the visit until much later, when he was composing his memoirs in 1954.
Rice's reticence is telling of the overall attitude toward Jackson and the
other Black Sox at this point in the story. A quarter century was sufficient
time to begin reflecting and reconsidering what had happened; it was not
sufficient time for some to begin forgiving. It was a cautious dance that the
press and the public did in those last years of Jackson's life. The unbridled
scorn had softened, surely, but the public affection was not yet there.
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Still,
there were efforts to rehabilitate Jackson's reputation in the last years of
his life. In February 1951, the South Carolina legislature passed a resolution
calling upon the commissioner of baseball to "reinstate Shoeless Joe
Jackson as a member in good standing in professional baseball." The
petition made its way to the desk of Commissioner Albert "Happy"
Chandler, where he ignored it, thus establishing a precedent for Jackson
petitions coming before the commissioner of baseball.
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In
the summer of 1951, the Cleveland Indians, celebrating their fiftieth
anniversary and the fiftieth anniversary of the American League, reached out to
their fans for votes to name the best players at each position over the team's
first half century. The winners would be the first inductees into the Cleveland
Indians Hall of Fame. The first ballot was missing Jackson's name, and though
Jackson had left Cleveland thirty-five years before, the fans immediately
noticed its absence. After a number of complaints and write-in votes for
Jackson, the team reprinted the ballot, this time with Jackson's name; he was
an overwhelming winner. But while his support was broad and deep-seated, it was
not universal. At the induction ceremony in Cleveland in September, which
Jackson could not attend because of illness, a handful of newspaper articles
and letters to the editor decried the team for honoring a man of "impugned
baseball integrity."
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If
the honor comforted Jackson, the residual criticism that came with it wounded
him even more. When the Indians arranged an alternate tribute for Jackson - they
would present him with the gold clock representative of his place in the
Cleveland Hall of Fame during an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in New York
in December of 1951 - Jackson refused to go. It would give his critics another
news hook for again bringing up his past, he felt, and he lacked the strength
and will to face that again. But Katie Jackson and Joe's brothers, sisters, and
friends all pressured him to accept. It would be a chance to state his case and
clear his name before a national television audience, they argued. Jackson
finally relented and agreed to do the show. His health still frail from his
recent heart attack, he would travel in the company of his doctor and, of
course, Katie. The appearance was set for Sunday December 16. But on Wednesday,
December 5, at ten in the evening, Joe Jackson, in failing health since his
first heart attack seven years before, suffered another heart attack and died
in the bedroom of his West Greenville home. He was sixty-two. He was the first
of the Black Sox players to die.
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His
legacy upon his death, at least as seen through the prism of the newspaper
obits, was uncomplicated. Though most stories acknowledged Jackson's lifelong
claim of innocence, the headlines all trumpeted that he was one of the eight
White Sox players banished from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series.
The ensuring decades have proven it's not that simple.
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Charles
Fountain "The Betrayal: How the 1919 Black Sox Scandal Changed Baseball"
(2016)
