Shoeless Joe Jackson: a Myth of Dangers of Innocence, Ignorance

Sixty-eight years after he left baseball in disgrace, Shoeless Joe Jackson is becoming as much of a legend as the game’s most celebrated heroes.

The story of how the third-leading hitter in major league history was banned from the national pastime has long been a favorite of baseball scholars. Now, more than three decades since he died in relative obscurity in South Carolina, Hollywood is retelling the tale as a myth about the dangers of innocence, ignorance and greed.

Jackson and his 1919 Chicago White Sox teammates are the subject of “Eight Men Out,” a film about the players banned for throwing the World Series in the “Black Sox” scandal. “Shoeless Joe,” William Kinsella’s novel about an Iowa farmer who builds a stadium in his cornfield for Jackson’s ghost, is also currently being made into a movie.

Jackson’s story has endured mainly because of his swing, which Babe Ruth himself acknowledged copying. Only Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby compiled better averages than the left fielder’s lifetime .356, and both finished their careers in the Hall of Fame while Jackson wrapped up his in the beverage business.

In “Eight Men Out,” directed by John Sayles, Jackson sticks out for more than his batting stroke. While Sayles clearly sympathizes with all the players, the story of the introverted southern boy who is duped by big-city gamblers seems saddest.

Baby-faced actor D.B. Sweeney presents a Jackson as innocent as his nickname would suggest. Illiterate and ignorant, he talks to his bat and signs his name with an X. While his teammates conspire with gamblers for the cash, Jackson joins the scam just to be one of the guys.

And in fact, Jackson was apparently too innocent to do anything but his best on the field. He hit .375 and did not make an error in the 1919 Series, but earned a lifetime suspension in 1920 when Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis decided even knowledge of the conspiracy merited one.

Jim Mattos, a member of the South Carolina House from Jackson’s home town of Greenville, pointed to Jackson’s series batting average when he sponsored a 1986 resolution asking baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth to reopen the case.

“I think it’s a miscarriage of justice what they did to him and nobody seems to give a damn,” Mattos said.

Ray Allen, the head of the Shoeless Joe Jackson Historical Sociey, says Jackson’s story seems made for Hollywood’s myth-makers.

“He was like a caricature of a baseball player, with all the idiosyncrasies of a Little Leaguer,” says Allen, an elementary school teacher. “He even used to take all his bats home south every year to keep them warm.

“It wasn’t only what he did; it was the way he did things. He was the stereotype of the early ballplayer who plays for love of the game.”

Allen took this summer off in anticipation of the release of the movie. He hopes the movie will provide the publicity boost his group needs to get a meeting with Ueberroth, in which he says he will present proof Jackson told White Sox officials about the fix.

“In all fields there are people that have been slighted, but there’s something almost magical about this case because what happened to him is so glaringly wrong,” Allen says. “The thing refuses to die.”

Jackson always said that, as he left grand jury testimony, no child ever begged him, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

No one listened, and Sayles kept the scene in his film. It’s tough being a myth sometimes.