With baseball season completely underway, another great year is in store for fans, and while the weather warms up and thoughts turn toward homeruns and 6-4-3 double plays, many of you may be making the trip to the game’s shrine at some point this year.
If you go, you’ll make your way across the bridge over the Susquehanna River as you travel into Cooperstown, N.Y. and head down Main Street. On your left, you’ll soon see the National Baseball Hall of Fame, home to the game’s most memorable and greatest players. Inside its storied walls, you’ll find many items symbolizing the rich history of the nation’s pastime, such as ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson’s glove, cleats and a famous bat known as ‘Black Betsy.’ Search the walls for his plaque, however, and you won’t find it, for Mr. Joe Jackson is not allowed to have his likeness grace this sacred space. This sad fact is a travesty much worse than hitting into a double play or getting picked off at first base, but like any error committed in the game of baseball, the innings are long and there is always an opportunity to redeem yourself.
Joe Jackson was banned from the game for life for his involvement in the 1919 Black Sox scandal, where eight Chicago White Sox players were fingered for conspiring with gamblers to throw the World Series. The Sox lost the series to the Cincinnati Reds and the fix was discovered the next year, but that said, Joe Jackson was never directly involved in the situation and in fact did everything in his power to make sure the Sox won that series.
Judge Kenesaw ‘Mountain’ Landis banned Jackson and the seven other players from baseball despite a grand jury ruling that acquitted the ballplayers of the charges. Joe Jackson was acquitted in a ruling conducted by his peers, but the game of baseball could not accept that.
If you think Jackson did something on the field during the series to purposely lose any of those games, then you have to be sniffing a little bit too much pine tar because there’s absolutely no evidence of this whatsoever, and I challenge you to find it. Jackson’s on-field performance in the World Series was on par with the rest of his career – it was phenomenal. In those games, he batted .375 to lead all players, had 12 hits to set a series record, and hit the only homerun in the eight games played between Cincy and Chi-town. Of the 20 runs that Chicago scored, Jackson accounted for 11 of them, scoring five and knocking in six runners. On top of all that, for the player whose glove was known as the ‘place where triples went to die,’ he lived up to the name playing errorless ball in the field.
Jackson even asked not to play before the series because he had knowledge of the fix and while he chose not to participate in it, he didn’t want to be considered part of the scandal. Many people were against Joe Jackson, even White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, who knew about the fix and chose to cover it up. Jackson tried to tell Comiskey about what was going on, but he refused to see his star outfielder.
‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson played to win every time he stepped out onto the field, and the 1919 World Series was no exception. In the field and at the plate, he played his best for his teammates, and never once took it easy. His career was one of the memorable ones from the glory days of baseball, before the juiced ball, steroids, arbitration and multi-million-dollar contracts. A pure ballplayer like Jackson deserves a better tribute than being listed on major league baseball’s ineligible list.
Jackson had a lifetime ban from the game of baseball, but ‘Shoeless’ Joe passed away in 1951, so considering that, his shackles should be removed. If baseball thinks that Jackson took part in any wrongdoing, so be it, but now that he is gone from this earth, Jackson’s sentence can and should be forgotten and the man should be honored in the hall. Major League Baseball doesn’t have to overturn any decision, but rather just say that the punishment has run out and let the Veteran’s Committee make Jackson what he deserves to be; a hall of famer.
The mistake of Judge Landis can be corrected, and it starts with the fans. Get some postcards ready, letters, emails, carrier pigeons, what have you and send them to the current commish Bud Selig, and let him know that you think Joe Jackson was robbed of a proper remembrance and deserves a plaque along the rest of the game’s greats. Through the mail you can get in touch with Selig at this address:
Office of the Commissioner
245 Park Ave., 31st Floor
New York, NY 10167
Don’t tell Joe Jackson ‘it isn’t so,’ instead say, ‘it is so’ and lift the ban and bring one of baseball’s early heroes and the game’s most neglected and cheated star to a place where he can finally find some rest and respect. If the Hall of Fame truly is the temple of baseball, it’s time now that the game’s purest hitter should take his rightful spot up on the wall.