COLUMN: In search of 'Shoeless Joe'

Editor's note: This is the first of two parts.

Joseph Jefferson Jackson (1887-1951) — best known as “Shoeless” Joe — was one of baseball's legendary characters. I had heard of him but did not become really interested in his career until I saw the 1989 movie "Field of Dreams," starring Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Amy Madigan and Ray Liotta as the ghost of "Shoeless” Joe. Although I knew he was buried in Greenville, S.C., my interest in the man rose when I found out that a museum to him had been opened there.

Born on July 16, 1888, in Pickens County, S.C., Jackson was the oldest son in a sharecropper's family. The 10-member family later moved to a cotton mill community on the western outskirts of Greenville called Brandon Mill. Instead of going to school, young Jackson got a job as a sweeper in the cotton mill when he was 6 years old to help feed his family. In 1901, at the age of 13, he had started playing on the mill-sponsored baseball team for a reported wage of $2.50 a Saturday.

He played in various pick-up games in the area whenever he had the chance. His professional baseball career began with a short stint with the Greenville Spinners of the Carolina Association in 1908. In case you are wondering, Jackson received his nickname during a doubleheader in Anderson, S.C. By the second game he batted in his socks because the cleats on his new shoes were giving him blisters. No one noticed that he was shoeless until he slid into third base. He never played unshod again, but the moniker stuck with him.

Professionally, his major league career was short. He made his debut in the majors on Aug. 25, 1908, for Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics, but played in only 10 games in two years. Next he was with the Cleveland Naps (later renamed the Indians) where he played his first complete rookie season in 1911 and set a rookie batting record of .408, a record that still stands a century later. George Herman "Babe" Ruth, who knew something about our national pastime, had this to say about Jackson’s batting abilities: "I copied Jackson's style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He's the guy who made me a hitter."

Ty Cobb, called "the Georgia Peach" and other things, reportedly once told Jackson, "Whenever I got the idea I was a good hitter, I'd stop and take a look at you. Then I knew I could stand some improvement."

Jackson was traded to the Chicago White Sox in August 1915 for $31,000 (another source says $50,000) and three players, and two years later, in 1917, the Sox won the American League pennant and went on to beat the National League’s New York Giants in the 1917 World Series. Jackson didn't play much baseball in 1918 after the U.S. entered World War I, but was again in the World Series in 1919. The Cincinnati Reds won the best-of-nine series 5-3. The White Sox had been heavily favored to win.

Jackson, who usually played left field, and seven other White Sox players were accused of involvement in a gambling scheme to throw the 1919 World Series in favor of the Reds. Although a 1920 Chicago jury acquitted them on all counts after just two hours of deliberation, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the nation's first commissioner of baseball, went against the court's decision and banned Jackson and the seven others from baseball for life in 1921. This episode is known in baseball as "the Black Sox scandal." Jackson's last major league game was played on Sept. 27, 1920.

The extent of fixing the 1919 Series is still disputed by some. Some say Jackson took money, others say he did not. Some say he knew of the fix — as did most everyone on the team — but was not personally in on it. There is a stubborn movement among fans to have Jackson reinstated into professional baseball, posthumously, to make him eligible to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Jackson has been quoted as having said, "God knows I gave my best in baseball at all times and no man on earth can truthfully judge me otherwise."

In an interview in the October 1949 Sport Magazine, he said, "I can say that my conscience is clear and that I'll stand on my record in that World Series. I'm not what you call a good Christian, but I believe in The Good Book, particularly where it says, 'what you sow, so shall you reap.' I have asked the Lord for guidance before, and I am sure He gave it to me. I'm willing to let the Lord be my judge."

Said baseball's Connie Mack, a player, team owner and the longest-serving manager in Major League Baseball history, "Jackson's fall from grace is one of the real tragedies of baseball. I always thought he was more sinned against than sinning."

If Jackson deliberately tried to lose against Cincinnati, he did a poor job of it. His 1919 World Series batting average was .375, the highest for either of the teams. He had 12 hits, which at that time was the highest ever in World Series play. He hit the only home run of the series and was responsible for 11 of the Sox's 20 runs. As a left fielder, he made no errors in eight games.

Guilty or not, his short 13-season career remains impressive: He set the rookie batting average at .408. He batted .340 or better in eight seasons. He is ranked third in all-time batting average at .356. Playing in a total of 1,332 games, he batted 4,981 times and had 1,772 hits, of which 54 were home runs.

Following the ban, Jackson ended up back where he had begun, playing and managing minor league baseball for mill teams in South Carolina and Georgia. In 1922, Jackson moved to Savannah and began a successful dry cleaning business. In 1933, during the Great Depression, he and his wife, the former Katie Wynn — they had no children — moved back to Greenville. After trying a barbecue restaurant on Augusta Street, Jackson and his wife opened "Joe Jackson's Liquor Store" on Pendleton Street, not far from Brandon Mill where Joe and Katie grew up. He couldn't stay away from the sand lot for long. As late as 1937 Jackson was a volunteer manager for Woodside Mills semi-pro team. As long as he was able, he coached and advised local boys on the finer points of the game he loved.

He and Katie operated the liquor store until Joe's death in December 1951 at the age of 63. He was buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Greenville. Katie died in April 1959 and is buried beside her husband.