Is This Heaven? Nope, but Shoeless Joe Called It Home

To the world, Shoeless Joe was a legend. In the old row houses of Brandon Mill where he grew up and first showed his baseball prowess, Joe Jackson was just a man.

Jackson’s story of fame and sudden banishment as an alleged conspirator in the 1919 Chicago Black Sox gambling scandal has been told with passion, righteousness and bits of fantasy in movies and books.

In recent years there has been a push to get Jackson into the Hall of Fame, supported by baseball stars like Ted Williams and Bob Feller, and politicians like U.S. Sens. Strom Thurmond and Ernest “Fritz” Hollings of South Carolina and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Until this decade, though, about the only tangible evidence of Jackson’s life here was his burial plaque at Woodlawn Memorial Park.

He was born on Greenville’s west side and grew up a “linthead,” sweeping the cotton dust that fell like snow in Brandon Mill, where he worked from age 6. He returned in 1929, a successful businessman driving a big blue Packard, with a dry cleaning business in Savannah, Ga., and a liquor store near the mill.

In between, he became one of the most celebrated and disgraced players in baseball’s history, although he repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Jackson’s old store, about 2 1/2 miles from downtown, is now a furniture store. Across the street, trash blows in an empty lot.

In Bolt’s Drug Store, where Jackson used to line the neighborhood kids up for ice cream, are two 8-by-10 framed photos of him in his White Sox uniform. But they are dwarfed by posters of the Atlanta Braves.

Some of those neighborhood kids say it is time to recognize his memory in this city in the northwest corner of the state.

“Greenville needed to realize Joe Jackson was a famous person, a celebrity,” said Arlene Marcley, the unofficial spokeswoman for Jackson’s local supporters.

They have made some progress. The Brandon Mill field where Jackson honed his near-perfect swing and powerful arm is rededicated for him. Signs at the Greenville County border welcome you to “The Home of Shoeless Joe Jackson.”

For the second straight year, City Hall dedicated July, his birth month, to Joe Jackson, displaying museum treasures tracing his life. Petitions there urging his reinstatement into baseball contain hundreds of signatures.

“Joe would have never taken part in it. He would have been embarrassed,” said Mike Nola, who manages the Shoeless Joe Jackson Society and runs “Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Virtual Hall of Fame” on the Internet.

Jackson was a quiet man who never learned to read and write in school but played on the Brandon Mill team at age 13. Five years later, Connie Mack brought him to the majors and a career with Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago.

Jackson became one of baseball’s best, finishing with a career batting average of .356 and possessing a swing Babe Ruth said he tried to copy. But he will always be associated with the 1919 World Series, in which he and several teammates were accused of taking money to let the Cincinnati Reds win.

Jackson, who earned his nickname for once playing a game in Greenville without shoes, hit .375 in the Series and made no errors in the outfield. He was never convicted in court, but commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis said he’d heard enough to ban him from baseball.

“If you look at the way he played, it just doesn’t make sense that he cheated,” said Joe Thompson, 79, one of the neighborhood boys who flocked around Jackson after his return to the city.

Jackson taught them about baseball and doing good works. He would show them his trophies, and Joe Anders, 76, another neighborhood kid, said Jackson once introduced him to Ty Cobb.

If Jackson was in the mood, he would tell his wife, Katie, to mind the shop, and he would drive to the sandlot and pitch to the kids until dark.

“He said, ‘You kids need to get some exercise; you don’t need to be spending precious nickels on pinball machines. You need to start learning how to throw and catch,’ ” Thompson said.

Every so often folks would start a movement to reinstate Jackson. In 1922 a New York promoter for a semipro team that Jackson played on sent Landis a reinstatement petition. Landis ignored it.

In 1933 Greenville Mayor John Mauldin collected more than 5,000 signatures supporting Jackson’s case. “This application must be denied,” Landis wrote back.

In February 1951, the South Carolina Legislature passed a resolution asking then-baseball Commissioner Albert “Happy” Chandler to reinstate Shoeless Joe. Chandler never replied.

Jackson died of a heart attack in Greenville on Dec. 5, 1951. Hundreds attended the funeral, Anders recalled. The Chicago White Sox sent a flower arrangement shaped like Comisky Park.

Jackson didn’t talk much about the Black Sox scandal or his banishment, Anders said. On April 24, 1947, he wrote to Cobb: “Good of you not ask about the raw deal the crooks gave me. I think my playing proved all that I done was to win for the Sox.”

Anders got the letter from Jackson’s niece.

He and Nola say people really took notice of Jackson after the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams,” in which Jackson’s ghost joins others of baseball’s past to play in the diamond carved from an Iowa cornfield.

Seven years later, the Brandon Mill field was dedicated “Shoeless Joe Jackson Memorial Ball Park.” The same year, State Highway 123 was renamed “Shoeless Joe Jackson Memorial Highway.”

There’s now a brochure, “Greenville’s Goin’ Shoeless--On the Road to Cooperstown,” with Jackson’s history and maps to his shop, field and grave.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has promised to review Jackson’s case, and West Greenville, its mills mostly gone, hopes the revived interest revitalizes the area of boarded-up stores.

Thompson says he never doubted Jackson. But many in Greenville had to be completely convinced before supporting him.

“It has been oozing, blossoming and fading since 1951,” Thompson said. “This is as close as we’ve come to seeing him back.”