The Sacrifice of Shoeless Joe
Saving Baseball from the Black Sox Scandal
Banning eight "Black Sox," including the immortal Joe Jackson, helped save baseball regardless of the still disputed innocence or guilt of the accused.
The 2005 World Series victory of the Chicago White Sox was heralded as the long-delayed redemption of the franchise from the most notorious scandal in American sports history. But that scandal continues to reverberate although the guilt of the accused "Black Sox" remains in dispute.
The unquestioned facts are that an initially heavily favored White Sox team was beaten five games to three by the Cincinnati Reds. The erratic play of some of the Sox stars and word of last-minute heavy betting on the Reds prompted a criminal investigation which lasted well into the 1920 baseball season. Eight of the players were indicted for accepting payments to arrange to lose the Series and were acquitted in 1921. The prosecution claimed to have confessions which were mysteriously removed from their files, and the confessions were recanted.
Outfielder "Shoeless Joe" Jackson was the most prominent of the accused. Possessor of the third-highest all-time lifetime batting average at .356 and having hit .408 in his very first full season, he was also a phenomenal fielder. In the World Series, his .375 batting average was actually slightly higher than his season's level of .351 and he threw out five base runners. But in a legendary scene outside the courthouse, he is said to have hung his head when a young fan prompted him with the poignant words, "Say it ain't so, Joe." Jackson subsequently maintained his innocence throughout his life, and efforts to rehabilitate his reputation and make him eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame have continued to this day.
After the 1920 season, the baseball club owners created the position of Baseball Commissioner and hired a respected federal judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, as the first incumbent with a mandate to clean up the game. His own investigation of the "Black Sox" case satisfied him that there was enough indisputable evidence of links to gamblers to justify the banning of the accused players from baseball. "Regardless of the verdict of juries," he stated, "no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball."
Landis was likely motivated by the need to take dramatic action to establish organized baseball's firm position against the influence of gambling on the game. Whatever the extent of guilt of the eight, his first major decision banning them permanently and his service as Commissioner until his death in 1944 helped restore public confidence in the sport. It probably influenced the decision more than half a century later to permanently ban Pete Rose, ironically another batting record-holder, for betting on his own team.
Ironically, the integrity of baseball is again in question today, not for connections to gambling, but rather for the influence of performance-enhancing drugs. Will there be a Kenesaw Mountain Landis to deal with this challenge?
