Maybe it ain’t so, Joe. For 90 years the reputation of Chicago White Sox outfielder "Shoeless" Joe Jackson has been tarnished by the belief that he and seven of his teammates threw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The Black Sox scandal was seemingly validated by Eliot Asinof’s historical account, Eight Men Out.
This short article casts doubt on the allegedly definitive book on the subject by Asinof and is worth your time: American Bar Association
it is difficult for me to ignore these 2 facts:
(1)
In 1921, a Chicago jury acquitted [Joe] and his seven White Sox teammates of any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the newly-appointed Commissioner of Baseball, banned all eight accused players, claiming baseball's need to clean up its image took precedence over legal judgments. As a result, Jackson never played major league baseball after the 1920 season.
(2)
During the series, Jackson had 12 hits and a .375 batting average — in both cases leading both teams. The 12 hits were a World Series record. He committed no errors and even threw out a runner at the plate. Jackson did bat worse in the five games that the White Sox lost, hitting .286, with no RBIs until the final contest, Game 8, when he hit a home run in the 3rd inning and added two more RBIs on a double in the 8th, when the White Sox were way behind. This does not appear to be a valid argument, since Jackson only hit .066 in the four games of the 1917 World Series in which the White Sox either lost to or did not tromp the New York Giants. It is often said that the Cincinnati Reds hit an unusually high number of triples to left field where Jackson played during the series. This is not supported by the contempory newspaper accounts. According to first hand accounts, none of the triples were hit to left field
Source: Wikipedia
1 comment:
Georgie, the problem has always been that he took money. He dealt with criminals who fixed the series(or at least tried to.) I think a life-time ban may have been harsh, but it wasn't uncalled for.
Everyone has heard he was the star of the series, but that stuff about Asinof's sources definitely makes you question Eight Men Out.
And comparing his stats to the '17 series, and the fact that no triples were hit to left field, makes it all the more likely that he gave it his all throughout the series.
Good post.
Utah
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