Hello to all my loyal readers out there! Sorry, I missed you last month. My family and I have moved from Broadway to a beautifully restored former general store on Little Dry River Rd in Fulks Run! We are very excited to be somewhat settled into our new digs in time for Christmas and I am honored to be part of the history of this building. Looks like another opportunity for a Chimney Rock article.
This is the 5th different house for my wife and I in 25 years of marriage and we aren’t even a military family. Amid lifting more heavy furniture than I ever want to see, I proclaimed for the 5th and hopefully final time, I am never moving again…… This month, we will look at one of baseball’s greatest and most infamous players, Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Joe Jackson was born in South Carolina in 1887, the oldest of eight brothers and sisters born to Sharecropper parents. When he was 6, he started working in a cotton mill sweeping floors to help feed his family. Joe never got to attend school and was illiterate. He started playing baseball at an early age and by the time Jackson was 13, he was playing on the textile mill’s men’s team. Joe was what we call a 5-tool player in today’s terms. Hitting, hitting for power, running, fielding, and throwing, he was well above average in these specialties.
Babe Ruth patterned his swing after Jackson, calling him the best pure hitter he had ever witnessed. Ty Cobb, who would end his career with the highest batting average of all time was quoted as saying “Whenever I got the idea I was a good hitter, I’d stop and take a look at you. Then I knew I could stand some improvement.” Joe Jackson got his famous nickname of Shoeless one day when he was playing for his semi-pro textile workers team. His brand-new cleats hadn’t broken in properly before that day’s game and had caused painful blisters on his feet. He shed the cleats in the 7th inning and took his stance in the batter’s box in his socks. Jackson belted a fastball way up in the right field stands for a home run. As he trotted around the bases in his stocking feet, a fan of the other team allegedly shouted “Look at that shoeless SOB go!”
Jackson made it to the major leagues in 1911 and immediately lit up the American League, setting a record that I am very confident will never be broken. He hit an astounding .408 for the season. He followed that up with a .395 average in his sophomore campaign. He was traded to the Chicago White Sox in 1915 and continued to be one of the very best baseball players of his time. There was no such thing as the Hall of Fame yet, but there was little doubt he would have been in the inaugural class along with Ruth and Cobb if he hadn’t ended up with the team and owner that no one wanted to play for, Charles Comiskey of the White Sox.
Comiskey was a very frugal man, to put it mildly. He maximized his profits by paying his players the lowest salaries in the league. One of his most infamous instances of taking advantage of his players is when he started charging the players to clean their uniforms after games. The White Sox revolted, and for two weeks refused to launder them and they started emitting a funk that could be smelled several rows up in the stands. The White Sox quickly became the Black Sox. Eddie Cicotte was the best pitcher on the team and had negotiated a 5000 bonus if he won 30 games in 1918.
When he got to 29 wins with two weeks left in the season, Comiskey ordered the manager to sit him for the remainder of the year. Cicotte still went to Comiskey about the bonus to which Comiskey replied, “A deal is a deal, you only won 29.” The following year in 1919, the White Sox were in the running for the American League pennant. Comiskey promised them a “bonus” if they won the pennant and advanced to the World Series. When Chicago took down Cleveland and won the American League, the bonus was waiting in the locker room. One case of champagne that was devoid of any fizz. This was an angry team that was ready to take revenge on Comiskey the cheapskate. Some very powerful men in the gambling underworld were quick to take advantage.
Chick Gandil was the White Sox 1st baseman and was fed up with Comiskey and his chronic underpayment of players. He let it be known to a gambler from Boston named Sport Sullivan, who was an associate of one of the United States’ most notorious gangsters, Arnold Rothstein that he and a group of players would throw the 1919 World Series to Cincinnati for 80,000 dollars. Rothstein agreed to front the money to the players in exchange for all the money he would make betting on the Reds. Gandil recruited Cicotte, Swede Risberg, Fred McMullin, Happy Felsch, Buck Weaver, and Lefty Williams, who was also Shoeless Joe’s best friend and roommate. Cicotte and Williams were pitchers, especially helpful in fixing a game.
The gamblers were impressed with the number of players that were in on the fix but they wanted one more player to join in just to be sure. They wanted Jackson, the best player on the team. Lefty Williams went to Joe to explain to him what was going on and that he would receive 5000 now and the promise of more after the Reds won the World Series. Jackson wanted no part of it. Williams finally threw the money at Jackson, telling him he had to take part. Jackson tried to meet with Comiskey to warn him of the plot but was not allowed to speak of it. Jackson ended up with the highest batting average of any player of both teams and didn’t make a single error in the field.
With the crooked players making costly errors in the field and the normally reliable pitchers throwing lollypops right over the plate, Cincinnati won the first two games easily. In the best 5 of 9 games series, Chicago was down 4 games to 1 and a game away from losing the title. The gamblers promised money had not been paid, which angered the players and they now gave their best. They won the next two and going into Game 8, Lefty Williams, one of the fixers, was scheduled to pitch. Williams had still not received this payment and was going to try his best until he got a visitor after Game 7 telling him that he better throw the game or his family would be in danger. Williams gave up 3 runs in the first without getting one out and the rout was on. The Reds were World Series champions.
Many sportswriters were covering the series who could see that a fix was obvious and began writing articles to alert the public that the National Pastime was not on the up and up. A great outcry ensued, forcing Comiskey to investigate. Jackson tried once again to meet with Comiskey to tell what he knew. The owner was busy trying to control the damage and needed a scapegoat. Jackson was finally granted an audience and requested that a lawyer be present. Joe didn’t realize he was being set up. The lawyer, employed by Comiskey, gave Jackson copious amounts of moonshine before the meeting. He signed a confession that he couldn’t read stating that he and other players had colluded to throw the World Series.
All 8 players went on trial in 1921 and were acquitted in court after the jury concluded that some of the confessions were coerced. However, the first commissioner of baseball, brought in to “clean up the game” permanently banned the 8, including Jackson, from ever playing in the major leagues again. There is no proof that Jackson committed any wrongdoing during the 1919 World Series. Furthermore, the fix would have never been approved by the gamblers without Jackson being “involved”. One of the greatest players of all time was forever banned. Jackson went home to South Carolina and barnstormed for a while in independent leagues where he heard the whispers. “It’s him isn’t it, Shoeless Joe.” “ No way, it can’t be!”
Jackson opened a liquor store in Greenville, and one day, Ty Cobb and the famous sportswriter Grantland Rice stopped in for some refreshments. Cobb recognized Jackson right away but Joe rang him up and said nothing. After making his purchase, Cobb finally asked Jackson, “Don’t you know me, Joe?” Jackson replied, “Sure, I know you, Ty, but I wasn’t sure you wanted to know me.” I will leave you with a quote from the great Babe Ruth “I copied (Shoeless Joe) Jackson’s style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He’s the guy who made me a hitter.”
