by David Fleitz

Comments? Send e-mail to
dlfleitz@wcnet.org

On Sunday, December 15, New York Times sports columnist Murray Chass mentioned Shoeless Joe Jackson (in a column dealing with the Pete Rose question) and made a widely-repeated, but completely inaccurate, observation about Jackson's degree of guilt in the 1919 World Series scandal.

I wrote a letter to the editor pointing out Chass' misstatement, but they didn't print it.  I post that letter here for everyone to see, mostly because I don't want the 15 minutes that I spent writing it to go to waste.

To the Editor:

In the sports section of the December 15 issue of the Times, columnist Murray Chass compared Pete Rose’s quest for reinstatement to baseball to the case of another banned player, the late “Shoeless Joe” Jackson.  Chass stated that Jackson, who was suspended from baseball for life in the wake of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, “was cleared of throwing games or taking money from gamblers.”

This assertion is erroneous.  On September 28, 1920, Jackson admitted to a Chicago grand jury that he agreed to help his teammates lose the World Series and accepted $5,000 for doing so.  The relevant part of his testimony appears as follows, with questions asked by assistant district attorney Hartley Replogle:

 Q.  How much did he (chief fixer Chick Gandil) promise you?

A. $20,000 if I would take part.

 Q.  And you said you would?

A. Yes, sir.

 Q.  When did he promise you the $20,000?

A.  It was to be paid after each game.

 Q.  How much?

A.  Split up in some way.  I don't know just how much it amounts to, but during it would amount to $20,000.  Finally (pitcher Lefty) Williams brought me this $5,000, and threw it down.

 Q.  What did you say to Williams when he threw down the $5,000?

A.  I asked him what the hell had come off here.

 That evening, Jackson told a group of reporters that he and the other conspirators had purposely tried to lose the third game of the Series, though they won the game anyway.  “Let me tell you something,” said Jackson, as quoted in the New York Times of September 29, 1920.  “The eight of us did our best to kick it and little Dick Kerr (a non-conspirator) won the game by his pitching.” 

 Jackson later denied that he gave less than his best effort on the field, but the fact remains that he received $5,000 from gamblers after the fourth game of the eight-game Series.  He was never “cleared” of anything, and no commissioner of baseball has ever seen fit to reconsider the lifetime suspension that Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis issued against Jackson and seven of his teammates in 1921.

 Sincerely,

 David L. Fleitz

As I stated in the last chapter of my book, Jackson:

(1) agreed to help his teammates throw the 1919 World Series, and

(2) accepted money for doing so.

Most people, including Murray Chass, still think that Joe was an innocent man, unfairly railroaded out of the game.  In truth, Jackson was more guilty than Pete Rose.  Though I recognize that Rose has to come clean about his gambling before he can be reinstated, I believe that Rose deserves more consideration than Jackson.