“Shoeless Joe” Jackson is certainly one of the most polarizing figures in baseball and sports history. A country boy from South Carolina born in 1887, Jackson had accomplished a decade of Major League Baseball excellence before the 1919 World Series “Black Sox” gambling scandal tarnished his reputation and he was banished from the game.
In 1919 Chicago White Sox fans were hoping for an encore performance of the team’s 1917 World Series crown, as Jackson’s Sox faced the National League champion Cincinnati Reds in the Fall Classic. Despite Jackson’s on-field heroics, getting a then-record 12 hits and batting .375 (which led both teams), the Reds prevailed 5 games to 3 in the “best of 9” format used at the time.
However, after the series concluded eight White Sox players, including Jackson, were accused of accepting significant sums of cash to “fix” the outcome of the series, and this mortal sin resulted in a quick end to their baseball careers. It remains in debate to this day Jackson’s actual role and guilt in the scandal. Among other places, the events of Jackson and his 1919 “Black Sox” teammates have been memorialized in the movies Eight Men Out and Field of Dreams.
Of course this scandal involving the credibility of “The National Pastime” was headline news and stories were splashed in newspapers across the country for years. One of the iconic images of Jackson used in these stories is presented here, a riveting Type I photo of “Shoeless Joe” in happier days wearing his White Sox uniform and cap. Adding to the drama and general public opinion at the time is an editor’s damning bold pencil inscription of JOE JACKSON BASEBALL CROOK 9-1920 written on the back side of the photo. We believe this is only one of two known copies in looking through all the auction archives with this being the superior in condition of the only two known. The front and back of this 5" x 7" PSA encapsulated treasure captures so much and gets your mind racing about all the details of “Shoeless Joe’s” story. A definite collectible masterpiece for the baseball historian!