“All I know is Joe was exonerated in the trial. It irks and irritates me when people rant and rave about Pete Rose not being in the Hall of Fame – not until Joe gets there first,” says Maggi Hall of Savannah, the 87-year old niece of baseball legend “Shoeless Joe” Jackson.
Few stories are as bitter sweet as Jackson’s rise to baseball stardom and his subsequent banishment from the game he played so well.
Jackson was a baseball enigma from an early age. Born into relative poverty just outside of Greenville, S.C., he was working 12-hour days in the local textile mill by the age of 13. With no other opportunities, Joe took to the field. He starting playing for the mill team as a boy, then played semi-pro ball and by the age of 19 got his first break. A Greenville sportswriter spotted the gangly 6-foot-one-inch Jackson in a game, noticed his talent and penned a story for the Greenville paper.
Jackson signed with the Class D Greenville Spinners of the Carolina Association for $75 a month in 1908. By the end of the season, he led the league in hitting with a .354 average, drawing the attention of Connie Mack, owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics. Mack bought Jackson’s contract for $325 at the end of the 1908 season and called him up to play for the A’s. In his first big league debut, Jackson smashed three hits.
PLAYING FOR SAVANNAH
In 1909, Jackson traveled south to play for the Savannah Indians, a Class C minor league club in the Sally League. (Professional baseball in Savannah was initially played at Bolton Park on Henry Street, then Municipal Stadium from 1927 to 1940, and Grayson Stadium since 1941.)
The Indians opened the season in Jacksonville, but lost their first game. Fans in Savannah, however, anticipated the return of their team and the premier of the heralded Jackson. For his part, Joe didn’t let Savannah down.
In his first 80 plate appearances, he blasted 36 hits, for a .450 batting average. He even pitched in a game against the Macon Peaches, going three innings, giving up only one hit and striking out three batters.
Not only did Joe become a Savannah favorite, but made the Sally League all-star team, a unanimous pick for center field. One local sportswriter wrote: “Joe is a sensation in all departments of the great American game – and that’s saying a whole lot.”
The right handed, center fielder batted .358 in 118 games, leading the Sally League in hitting, and endearing himself to a generation of Savannah baseball fans.
After playing a handful of games for the A’s during the last part of the 1909 season, Jackson spent the next year in the Southern League with the New Orleans Pelicans. In July, however, Connie Mack traded Jackson to Cleveland, where the Carolina native hit .387 in 20 games, drawing national attention.
JOE COMES OF AGE
In 1911 Jackson came of age, posting a blistering .408 batting average in his rookie season -- second only to Ty Cobb’s .420 average. Called a natural phenomenon with a swing that Babe Ruth admittedly emulated, Joe played three more seasons for the Indians, hitting .395, .373 and .338, before being traded mid way through the 1915 season to the Chicago White Sox.
Jackson led the White Sox to the World Series in 1917, capturing the Series four games to two over the New York Giants. He hit .307 in six games, with seven hits, two RBIs and spectacular play in the field. Savannah, where Joe and wife Katie bought a house on the Savannah waterfront a year before, honored Joe’s heroics with spontaneous celebrations.
With American entrenched in the war in Europe in 1918, Joe opted for the “work or fight” order and secured a job at a shipbuilding company in Wilmington, Del. By 1919, with the armistice in effect, Joe was back on the baseball field. But, unbeknown to him, his troubles were just starting.
PRELUDE TO DISASTER
Professional baseball in 1919 was problematic. Due to the war, attendance was poor in 1918, resulting in reduced salaries the next year. And baseball – already America’s favorite past time -- was becoming intertwined with professional gambling.
President and owner of the Chicago White Sox Charles Comiskey was a hard-hitting, tight fisted miser who slashed his players’ salaries even lower. The White Sox, arguably the best team in baseball, earned 30 percent less than the average baseball salary, ripe picking for professional gamblers. Still, they won the American League pennant with a 88 - 52 record.
The Sox entered the 1919 World Series, heavily favored over their National League counterparts, the Cincinnati Reds. A group of gamblers, however, had other intentions.
They approached several White Sox players with propositions to throw the Series. For each lost game, $20,000 would be divided among the eight consenting players. But the gamblers lost most of the cash on others bets and failed to come through when the Sox entered game six trailing the Reds four games to one. The Sox retaliated, winning games six and seven. The gamblers persisted, resorting to death threats if the players refused to stay in line. Lefty Williams, starting pitcher for game eight was told his wife would die if he didn’t lose the game. He complied. The White Sox lost the Series five games to three. It was a black day in baseball.
The White Sox opened the 1920 season with a bang, and by late summer were in a three-way pennant with the Indians and New York Yankees. But as the team jockeyed for the pennant, rumors persisted.
In September, a Chicago grand jury convened to investigate. They indicted eight White Sox players – ace pitcher Eddie Cicotte, hurler Lefty Williams, third baseman Buck Weaver, second stringer Fred McMullin, first baseman Chick Gandil, shortstop Swede Risberg, and outfielders Happy Felsch and Joe Jackson for conspiracy. The event was deemed the Black Sox scandal and the name has stuck ever since.
On hearing of the indictment, Jackson and Eddie Cicotte were persuaded to sign statements granting them immunity from prosecution. But it was a ruse. The two ball players didn’t know they were signing confession statements. Neither were represented by counsel.
Sketchy, unconfirmed details of the so-called grand jury confessions made the papers and to this day add to the confusion surrounding the case.
In 1921, the eight were charged with conspiracy and brought to trial. On Aug. 8, a jury acquitted them of any wrongdoing. But newly appointed baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, setting a no tolerance policy on gambling in professional baseball, suspended the eight from the game, then banned them for life.
“Regardless of the verdict of juries,” he said, “no player that throws a ball game; no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ball 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 planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.”
Since that time enough contradictory material has been complied to offer support for varying theories, many using the leaked and unconfirmed grand jury reports as evidence.
Several concrete facts remain, however. Except for Jackson’s signed “confession,” which he was led to believe would grant him immunity from prosecution, no where did Joe indicate what he had done, if anything, to help throw the Series. His play certainly proved his point. He hit the only home run of the Series, batted .375 and played flawlessly in the field.
Other players also testified on his behalf. They confirmed that Joe had not attended any meetings between the players and professional gamblers.
Though Joe knew of the fix, he refused to accept cash on two separate occasions: $10,000 prior to game one, and $20,000 during the Series.
Not only did Joe refuse the pay off, but asked to be benched to avoid any suspicion that he was involved in the scheme; his request was denied.
After the Series, pitcher Lefty Williams offered Joe an envelope containing $5,000 cash; Joe refused it. After arguing, Williams threw the money at Joe’s feet and left. Joe took the money and tried to turn it in to White Sox owner Charles Comsikey, but was turned away. Later that night Joe left for Georgia to spend the winter.
After the Black Sox scandal, Jackson returned to Savannah with his wife and lived in an apartment at 143 Abercorn Street, then moved to a new bungalow on 1411 East 39th Street that Hall’s father built.
Jackson opened and ran a dry cleaning business at 119 Drayton Street. It didn’t take long, however, before Joe was offered money to play ball again. He first played semi-professional ball in New Jersey in 1922 under an alias, but his identity was quickly discovered after brilliance performance at the plate. The next year he played for an Americus, Ga. team in the South Georgia League, a semi-professional league not under Landis’ jurisdiction.
UNCLE JOE
Maggi Hall’s memory of Joe Jackson, who she still affectionately calls “Uncle Joe,” has little to do with baseball, other than a firm belief that he was unjustly banned from the game. Instead, she remembers a kind, gentle man. “I would go to his store on Drayton Street after school,” Hall said, “ and he’d give me a quarter to clean up for him.”
Jackson also spent considerable time at Hall's child hood home at 409 East 49th Street, just across the street from where Hall currently lives.
According to Hall, East 49th Street in the ‘20s sat at the edge of town. Her family had a yard full of chickens, a chicken coup on one side of the yard and a duck yard on the other.
“One Saturday, Joe was supposed to clean the duck yard and me the chicken yard,” Hall said, “but we always fought about who would clean which part of the yard.”
In 1929, Joe and Katie retuned to Greenville, S.C., where Joe continued to play semi-pro baseball. In 1932, he signed with the Greenville Spinners, earning $100 a game during the throes of the Great Depression. He also ran a barbeque restaurant and a liquor store. He suffered his fourth heart attack in 1951 and died. He was 62.
FINAL VERDICT
Joe hit over .300 eleven out of thirteen major league seasons, and batted .382 his last year in the big leagues. His .356 lifetime batting average ranks third on the all time list, but he remains ineligible for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
To that effect, a movement to re-instate Jackson has recently surfaced. The South Carolina General Assembly passed a resolution in 1998, requesting that Joe Jackson be re-instated as a member in good standing in professional baseball, thereby qualifying him for induction into Cooperstown.
In 1999, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., petitioned baseball commissioner Bud Selig to reinstate Joe. And a growing number of web sites have been recently posted, arguing on Joe’s behalf.
After all is said and done, it appears that Joe’s worst sin was knowing of the fix and not reporting it. Perhaps baseball’s grand old man, Connie Mack, had it right when years after the scandal, he said: “Jackson’s fall from grace is one of the real tragedies of baseball. I always thought he was more sinned against than sinning.”
» Timothy Daiss writes a weekly historical feature for "Connect Savannah," a weekly news magazine in Savannah, Georgia, is a freelance journalist and is the author of "In the Saddle: Exploits of the 5th Georgia Cavalry During the Civil War," (Schiffer Publishing, 1999), and "Rebels, Saints & Sinners: Savannah's Rich History and Colorful Personalities," release date 2002.
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Copyright © 2001 by Timothy Daiss. Posted June 18, 2001.
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