Shoeless Joe Jackson's Bat and the Invention of Baseball History

Abstract

Joe Jackson, one of the most talented baseball players ever, has figured more prominently in newspaper and magazine articles, books, and movies than most great ballplayers. Sadly for his reputation, the interest in Jackson is due less to his achievements as a hitter and fielder than to his alleged participation in the so-called Black Sox scandal, a scheme to throw the 1919 World Series. Jackson’s story is a Horatio Alger narrative turned on its head. Jackson was born in a textile town in South Carolina and raised in poverty. He played baseball for a local textile mill team, entered the Major Leagues, rose to fame as a powerful hitter for the Chicago White Sox—and then lost it all by purportedly entering into a conspiracy to let the Cincinnati Reds take the 1919 baseball championship. Found not guilty in a court of law along with seven of his teammates, he and the others were nevertheless thrown out of professional baseball by the baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. As details of the prosecution emerged, public opinion became divided on the question of Jackson’s guilt. Some saw his punishment as the just reward for his betrayal of the great American pastime and the boys who worshiped him. Others, particularly those who viewed Jackson as a small-town boy, saw him as an innocent victim of city slickers, a greedy baseball owner, and a baseball commissioner in need of a scapegoat. These views of Jackson are reflected in two kinds of narratives that offer histories of the man and his role in the gambling conspiracy. These books tend Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Bat and the Invention of Baseball History