“Shoeless“ Joe Jackson
“Shoeless“ Joe Jackson
(1888 – 1951)
Joseph Jefferson “Shoeless Joe” Jackson was a Major League Baseball player, know today as one of the eight Chicago White Sox players banned forever from MLB for his role in the 1919 “Black Sox” Scandal. Here is where it gets sticky: In the fixed World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, all eight players were acquitted, but still banned for life by baseball’s first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Shoeless Joe’s stats for the series:
12 hits (a series record, Lead both teams)
.375 average (Lead both teams)
Fielded 30 balls with NO ERRORS
Hmmmmmmmm………….doesn’t sound like a guy throwing some games…….. Like everything else, the rumors fly…..Some contemporary news accounts say he admitted his participation in the fix….. But no direct quote to this effect appears in the actual stenographic record of his grand jury appearance, casting doubt on how much truth there was to these accounts.
The debate continues………
He is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Greenville, South Carolina.
Trivia:
The “Say it ain’t so, Joe” story never happened……..