The Tragedy of Shoeless Joe Jackson

if I were to ask you to think of the greatest hitter ever you'd probably have a few ideas maybe it's Ruth maybe it's bonds maybe neither in any case I bet you didn't think of Joseph Jefferson Jackson that's probably not even a name you've heard before Joe was in fact one of the greatest hitters to ever play baseball but to this day remains locked out of Cooperstown Jackson's story is definitely one worth talking about so let's talk about how a poor cotton mill worker rose to greatness from nothing before falling straight back into oblivion Joseph Jackson was born in late nineteenth-century South Carolina to George and Martha George found work at a cotton mill making a dollar 25 a day which is about 36 dollars a day by today's standard I don't know if it was by choice but Joe never went to school and instead began working in the same mill as his father at age 6 Joe's family had always been poor I'm just guessing he was sent to work instead of school just to help put food on the table now being a mill worker isn't really the kind of job anyone would get too excited about let alone a young boy at age six but the silver lining here is that at this job the future star was able to learn how to play baseball the mill he worked for sponsored a team that played against other mills and factories a team which Joe Jackson began starting for when he was 13 I'm not really sure what this team was called so from here on out I'm just gonna call them the mills and Jackson couldn't read he couldn't write but he could play baseball he quickly became a rising star for the mills and word about his talents quickly spread through the Carolinas a few years down the line Jackson was eventually set to get a raise joining a team with the Carolina Association one of the lowest levels of organized baseball available but hey he was getting to leave his job at the mill he got a raise all was good for our tragic hero being the guy I threw into the ring for the best hitter in baseball history not too long ago I bet you could guess that Jackson made quick work of this new league he was making incredible defensive plays left and right and tore it up at the plate with a 346 batting average it's a shame there was no baseball savant equivalent for a 19th century Class D baseball league but if it did exist I'd be able to really show you how good he was something Joe got from his days playing in the Carolina organization and something that stuck with him forever was a new name his sort of superhero alias if you will there was this one time when Joe had to play with no shoes because he was still working in his new baseball cleats and a reporter from the Greenville News took note of this and decided to grant him a new nickname from that day forward he would be forever known as Shoeless Joe Jackson word about Joe Jackson got around pretty quickly so much so that the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics purchased Jackson's contract in 1908 he was really nervous about joining a major league team Joe was a local boy who hadn't really been exposed much to the outside world and this was definitely a huge step for him as it would be for most people he eventually went to join the team but missed his wife and didn't feel like an illiterate country boy fit in in a big city like Philadelphia so three days after his first major league appearance he immediately boarded a train and went right back home he eventually did go back to the team in September but I thought his decision to go back home gives you guys some pretty good insight into who Joe was as a person in his first season he got 23 big league at-bats and was up-and-down from the minors in 1909 and then 1910 with the Cleveland apps organization after he was traded from the Athletics like I said he was uncomfortable in Philadelphia and to make matters even worse he was constantly hazed and heckled by his A's teammates for being illiterate his trade was definitely for the best on his new team there were a bunch of players that had grown up down south and Jackson felt much more welcomed with this team and the city of Cleveland as a whole now that we've made it to Jackson's Cleveland days we can finally talk about just how good this man was at the major-league level let me load up some stats here from his first full season in 1911 BAM 408 batting average for 68 OBP 193 o-p-s plus 233 hits in 147 games Joseph Jackson was hitting balls left and right and finally found his stride at the major league level even though Ty Cobb was the only thing standing between shoeless joe and a batting crown in his rookie season he did take home a fourth place MVP finish which ain't too shabby for a rookie at this point it's all about showing up those in Philadelphia and you can bet that Joe is feeling pretty good about himself right now to this day Jackson still has three single-season franchise records for Cleveland two of which coming from that incredible 1911 performance Joe continued to rake it up in Cleveland for the next three and a half years or so leading the league in stats like triples o-p-s hits doubles and even slugging percentage one year he was getting the highest of praises from the game's best Walter Johnson called him the greatest natural ball player he had ever seen Ty Cobb had praised Jackson superior abilities and he the Bambino himself mimic part of his batting stance Ruth was on record saying that quote his is the perfect dist in 1915 the owner of the Cleveland naps decided to trade Jackson to the White Sox desperately needing to shed salary and worried that Jackson would leave for this new professional baseball league that had just started leaving him with nothing to gain so at this point shoeless joe was now a member of the Chicago White Sox if you know a thing or two about baseball history you may realize what laid ahead for the superstar just a few years down the line he was now on the Chicago White Sox in 1915 it was the beginning of the end for Joe Jackson the white socks at this point in time were a winning team they were really good and Jackson was about to get a pretty good taste of what being on a championship caliber club was like and he got just that in his second full season with them in 1917 the 100 win White Sox won the World Series that year and Jackson was a world champion for the first time unfortunately during the following season a lot of those championship players were getting drafted into the military to fight in the final months of World War one Joe ended up getting to work in a shipyard instead of getting to fight on the front lines it was part of another makeshift factory League called the Bethlehem Steel League really gives you those Lord of the Rings vibes he of course won the League batting title which makes it I think four crazy leagues now but he's absolutely dominated that's got to be some kind of record although sports writers and ownership weren't that happy that he had essentially gotten out of fighting in the war but as good as Joe was the team took him back for the 1919 season the 1919 Chicago White Sox a team involved in one of the biggest baseball scandals ever so this team was different they were really good but a lot of people on the team didn't really get along there were these different cliques in the clubhouse it was essentially high school with grown men but despite their differences this team was good enough to make it back to the World Series and a few players in one of these cliques created a grand scheme in which they would just throw it this is where the story gets a little convoluted there are different ways to look at Shoeless Joe his role in all this I looked at a bunch of different resources for this video and it doesn't look like there's any definitive consensus but I'm gonna try and explain sue and why that doesn't really matter so the White Sox and Reds are facing off in the World Series the Reds would eventually take the series five games to three and there were already suspicions of them throwing the series suspicions which would be floating around the league for the next several months towards the end of the following season those suspicions capped off with a newspaper article coming out featuring gambler Billy McHargue accusing eight players on the White Sox for throwing the 1919 World Series Jackson being one of them White Sox personnel advised three of the accused Jackson included to testify in front of a grand jury a jury which actually ended up acquitting the players involved even with that result the new Commissioner decided to ban each of the players for life and just like that Joe Jackson's professional baseball career was over Joe's involvement in the scandal is the only one we really care about here I'm gonna try and make a cohesive summary of the important bullet points here for his case including their respective sources according to Seaborg jackson had apparently admitted to accepting an offer from one of the players for $20,000 to take part in throwing the 1919 World Series he'd signed a confession saying that he did indeed accept money but said that he was manipulated by a team lawyer into signing it because he didn't know how to read after the World Series he had gone to see the White Sox owner to tell him exactly what happened and to try and return the money which was now only five thousand dollars he waited to see him for a few hours to speak with him but eventually left after he didn't show he played the best out of anybody in that entire series he went 12 for 32 and didn't commit a single error that's not really the level of play you'd expect from someone throwing a series Joe tried to get reinstated several times over the next several decades but didn't get it he died on December 5th 1951 with an asterisk next to his name and banished from the world of baseball clearly Joe's case isn't that simple but like I said before I don't think the complex nature of all this really makes a difference in terms of Joe's reinstatement in my opinion there really isn't any good reason why Joe Jackson shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame right now for one he was given a lifetime ban and his life's been over for 69 years now that's the technical side of it on the more logical side of it there isn't any definitive proof that he did in fact throw the 1919 World Series it already fell through in a court of law so that proved at that point and let's say for a second that he did throw it right I don't believe that's something that should keep somebody out of the Hall of Fame if we're still allowing steroid users on the Hall of Fame ballot then people that have thrown a World Series should be on the ballot - that's not a jab at steroid users but it's just a relative comparison between the two quote-unquote crimes he played over 1300 games in his professional career tallied over 1700 hits a 356 batting average of 432 on-base percentage he averaged 216 hits per full season and has the ninth highest career Oh PS plus in the history of Major League Baseball in my opinion Shoeless Joe Jackson should no doubt be reinstated and put on the Hall of Fame ballot and I hope that those of you that have watched this far feel the same a player as good as Joe was shouldn't be locked out of greatness and I really think it's time to change that [Music] you [Applause]

Channel: Stark Raving Sports

Views: 184,116

Keywords: Stark Raving Sports, Baseball, Sports, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Major League Baseball, Baseball Content, MLB, Chicago White Sox, Black Sox Scandal, MLB Highlights

Id: 4ZW251YEUo0

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020