Re: Shoeless Joe Being Banned from the Game is a Disgrace, IMO.
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2009/10/12/sports/doc4ad273ab703f4592735051.txt
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</TD><TD vAlign=bottom align=right>Monday, October 12, 2009 3:17 AM EDT</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR><TR><TD>
Case for 'Shoeless' Joe grows stronger
By Joe Palladino
The famed Black Sox scandal, the throwing of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago White Sox, is a story often told but never truly appreciated by the modern fan of the greatest of games. Romanticized in literature (?The Great Gatsby?) and recounted in minute detail in the book by the late Eliot Asinof, ?Eight Men Out,? it is something of a minor miracle that baseball survived into our lifetimes.
But nine decades after a small boy said the legendary line, ?Say it ain't so Joe,? there is a groundswell of opinion to re-examine the fix, and to ask if legitimate evidence exists to continue the lifetime ban on Shoeless Joe Jackson, a ban that keeps him out of the Hall of Fame. The man considered the game's greatest hitter staunchly professed his innocence throughout his life. Is it time to reinstate Jackson back into baseball's good graces? Does he truly belong in baseball's Hall of Fame?
Two Chicago attorneys, Dan Voelker and Paul Duffy, along with the Jackson museum in Greenville, S.C. (
www.shoelessjoejackson.org), and other Web sites, like Shoeless Joe Jackson's Virtual Hall of Fame (
www.blackbetsy.com), believe that Jackson was wronged, and that belief may be gaining momentum.
Is there new proof of Jackson's innocence? Voelker and Duffy flip that statement and say there is no proof of Jackson's guilt. They say that court documents and trial transcripts contain little or no evidence against him. Alleged confessions by Jackson, such as those that appear in Asinof's book, are absent from court transcripts.
That legendary moment, when a small boy asked Jackson that immortal question, to which Jackson purportedly answered, ?Yes, kid, I'm afraid it is,? probably never happened, Voelker and Duffy contend. This new view comes after Voelker and Duffy reviewed Asinof's notes, acquired by the Chicago History Museum after the author died in 2008.
They cite the lack of footnotes in ?Eight Men Out,? which was published in 1963 and is often called a landmark in investigative sports journalism. Voelker and Duffy say the book used hearsay, secondhand accounts, and 1920 newspaper stories that printed whatever information could be dredged out of the gutter. Here is what they wrote in the September issue of Chicago Lawyer:
?The public's broad-based acceptance of Asinof's retelling of the 1919 scandal is reflected by the fact that few people are aware that ?Shoeless? Joe's performance during the 1919 World Series was superb, with a .375 batting average (better than his lifetime average of .356 over 13 seasons), six runs batted in, the only home run in the Series, five runs scored, 12 hits, and not a single error. ? There is nothing new in Asinof's notes and research of the writing of 'Eight Men Out' that can directly implicate Jackson or any other player in contributing to the White Sox loss of the 1919 World Series. ? Asinof, who writes in great detail about the gambler-fixers, may have, himself, been playing the ultimate bluff. He did not release his research during his lifetime and also suggested in 'Eight Men Out' that his story was based upon exclusive, never-before-seen evidence. In reality, the lack of any solid, direct evidence in his notes, as well as the lack of a single footnote in 'Eight Men Out,' strongly suggests that his story was largely fiction.?
Jackson did accept payment of $5,000 from a teammate, but only after the Series ended. Jackson did not act smartly, but did he tank? In an Associated Press article, Baseball Hall of Fame librarian Jim Gates said numerous researchers have examined the Asinof papers and nothing there exonerates Jackson. No ?smoking gun? exists in the papers and notes, adds Peter Alter, curator of the Chicago History Museum.
Baseball has its villains, and villains they will remain. Baseball stat maven Bill James once wrote about the game's ?22 men out,? citing the many players accused of throwing games, among them Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, members of baseball's Hall of Fame. Here is the most interesting fact of all: The American legal system acquitted all eight players. They forever remain guilty in the court of public opinion. The newly ordained baseball commissioner and former federal judge, Kenesaw Landis, acted fast to save baseball. The judge ignored what happened in the courtroom and banned them all [Dash] Eddie Cicotte, Claude ?Lefty? Williams, Oscar ?Happy? Felsch, Charles ?Swede? Risberg, the alleged mastermind, Arnold ?Chick? Gandil, Buck Weaver, Fred McMullin, and ?Shoeless Joe? [Dash] for life.
If minds have changed in the court of public opinion, should we revisit the case against the most notorious athletes who ever lived? As the Black Sox centennial draws near, baseball's darkest hour will likely have a lot of present day light cast upon it.
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