Shoeless Joe’s Bat Being Sold
Embedded in the sad story of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson is another legendary tale: that of his beloved bat, “Black Betsy,” which he used throughout his career, even after being banished from the game.
For decades after Jackson’s death in 1951, few knew the fate of the warped hickory bat. Now, the man who inherited Black Betsy--and quietly stowed it on a bookcase in South Carolina--has decided to see what it can fetch at auction.
The Internet auction begins July 27 on eBay with a minimum bid of $500,000. Executives at Real Legends Inc., the company consigned to sell the bat, believe it could challenge the record $3.05 million a collector paid for Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball.
“How many times have you heard a player use a bat his entire career?” said Vince Malta, a bat expert in San Francisco who authenticated Black Betsy. “It must have been extremely special. And to have that player be Joe Jackson, it’s just a mythical story. ... For a bat collector, this is the Holy Grail.”
Peter Clark, curator of collections at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., said Jackson items tend to be rare and have extra “charisma” because he was exiled from the game.
“There’s been over the years so much talk about a Black Betsy that one has to wonder that it’s the real thing,” he said. “It is one of a kind, if it is indeed the bat.”
Jackson used other bats as well, but Black Betsy was his favorite, and his trademark. Bat companies made copies to be sold in stores. Malta authenticated it by comparing old newspaper pictures of Jackson holding the bat and articles about how Jackson cracked its handle and fixed it with nails and tape.
Barry Halper, a prominent baseball collector and a member of Real Legends’ board, stands behind the authenticity of the 40-ounce bat.
“It’s got as much clarification as anything that’s ever been offered,” Halper said. “This one, believe me--I stake my reputation on it--is real.”
Parting with such a treasure wasn’t easy for the seller, Lester Erwin, 54, of Easley, S.C., who works as a district delivery manager for the newspaper in nearby Greenville.
Erwin’s mother and Jackson’s wife, Katie, were cousins. Erwin remembers being a young child playing in Shoeless Joe’s yard -- even using Jackson’s legs as a make-believe base and sliding into them -- and looking around a small trophy room at his house in Greenville. Jackson kept Black Betsy propped up behind the desk in that room, Erwin recalls.
Jackson had no children, so Erwin inherited Black Betsy when Mrs. Jackson died in 1959.
He said he reluctantly decided to sell it after talking with Halper and realizing that his two sons “can’t cut the bat in half if something happens to me.” Erwin said the sale would “afford my family a little more security.”
He also hopes publicity about the auction rekindles support for Jackson’s admission to the Hall of Fame. Despite lobbying by members of Congress and revered slugger Ted Williams, baseball officials have refused to overturn Jackson’s ban.
“I’m just a common man. They don’t have to listen to me,” Erwin said. “I’m hoping with the auction of this bat, indirectly they will hear my voice.”
Even in a sport laced with myth and nostalgia, Shoeless Joe Jackson stands out as one of baseball’s most fabled characters. The haunted quality of his life infused W.P. Kinsella’s novel “Shoeless Joe” as well as “Field of Dreams,” the Kevin Costner movie based on the book.
Born on July 16, 1888, in Pickens County, S.C., Jackson began working in a textile mill at age 6 or 7 and started playing baseball in the mill’s league at age 13, according to Joe Thompson, author of “Growing Up With ‘Shoeless Joe’: The Greatest Natural Player in Baseball History.”
When Jackson was in the minor leagues, he took off a pair of shoes that were giving him blisters, and played a game in his socks. The nickname “Shoeless” stuck.
Illiterate and terrified of big cities, Jackson reluctantly entered the majors. But in 13 years as an outfielder with the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Naps and Chicago White Sox, Jackson hit .356 -- still third all-time. Babe Ruth copied Jackson’s batting style.
In the 1919 World Series thrown by the White Sox to the Cincinnati Reds, he hit .375 and the series’ only home run, and didn’t make an error. Jackson said he rejected bribes from the gamblers who fixed the series and was ignored when he tried to report the fix to team officials.
But although Jackson and seven other members of the “Black Sox” were acquitted by a Chicago jury, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned them for life. Stunned and angry, Jackson returned to the South and played in semipro leagues for years.
He brought his favorite weapon with him. Black Betsy had been given to Jackson around 1908 by a friendly streetcar driver, and Jackson later sent it off to the Spalding sporting goods company, which refinished it, stained it and stamped its brand on it.
Though today’s players might go through several bats in a week, Jackson was able to keep Black Betsy for years because the ball used early in the 20th century was softer. Home runs--and broken bats--were rare in the period, now called the “Dead Ball Era.”