Baseball Way Back: Did Joe say it was so?

More than a century after Joe Jackson played his last inning for the Chicago White Sox, his figure remains fresh in our minds.

Everyone remembers the player who couldn’t read or write but eloquently spoke with his bat, “Black Betsy.”

Hollywood’s rendering of Jackson in the movies “Eight Men Out” and “Field of Dreams,” as well as the famous phrase, “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” sealed his status as an American icon.

There are those who feel he was wronged and lobby for his long overdue induction into the Hall of Fame, while others say he got what he deserved because he took part in the fix of the 1919 World Series.

We all know about the mythological figure of Shoeless Joe, a central character in baseball’s Greek tragedy. But what about the real person Joe Jackson?

Jackson comes to life in a new book edited by Glenbard West High School alum David Fletcher and Jacob Pomrenke, “Joe Jackson, Plaintiff, vs. Chicago American League Baseball Club, Defendant: The Never-Before-Seen Trial Transcript,“ published by Eckhartz Press.

I recently spoke with the co-editors via Zoom, but I had seen their presentation on the subject at the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) convention in Chicago last year.

The book is the complete transcript of a 1924 trial in a lawsuit filed by Jackson against White Sox owner Charles Comiskey. Jackson was seeking payment for his remaining salary under the three-year contract he signed in 1920, his last year in baseball.

You get to read Jackson’s own version of what happened in 1919. Actually, you are given two versions, the incriminating grand jury testimony read to him by the defense attorney and Jackson’s complete denial of that testimony.

The truth of the matter is that Jackson provides fuel for those who view him as a hero and a villain.

As his attorneys pointed out in the transcript, his batting average in the World Series, .375, topped all players. His fielding average was a perfect 1.000. And he hit the series’ only home run.

On the other hand, Jackson did take $5,000 handed out by the gamblers. In the transcript we learn exactly what happened to it, with Jackson’s own wife testifying that it had been deposited in a bank.

“I think Joe’s personality really does come through,” Pomrenke said. “He was not as dumb or uneducated as people say. He was a very shrewd businessman, ran a lot of successful businesses in his life with his wife, Katie. So the idea that he was just kind of suckered into this entire scandal is one that I think really has to be debunked by now.”

Fletcher said the book also is important in putting Jackson’s wife front and center.

“She’s never emerged ever before,” he said. “No one’s ever really quoted Katie Jackson before.”

The story of how the transcript was unearthed is as compelling as the trial itself. Fletcher and the late Gene Carney, the founding chair of SABR’s Black Sox committee, visited Tom Cannon, grandson of Jackson’s attorney, Ray Cannon, who had a copy of the transcript.

Later, Fletcher was able to obtain a copy when he bought the late Chicago sportswriter Jerome Holtzman’s private papers and books.

The book offers testimony from several of the major players in the drama, including a somewhat combative Charles Comiskey and his secretary and de facto GM, Harry Grabiner, who went down to Savannah, Georgia, prior to the 1920 season to have Jackson sign his contract. Grabiner, the father of Ronald Reagan’s first leading lady, June Travis, later was an associate of Bill Veeck during Veeck’s time with the Cleveland Indians.

There is also testimony from the pitchers who helped sink the Sox in the series, Eddie Cicotte and Claude “Lefty” Williams.

“I think it’s a huge piece of the puzzle,” Pomrenke said. “This puts the testimony in their own words, which we haven’t had a lot of in the past 100 years,” Pomrenke said.

It also provides an antidote to the poisonous prevarications of Eliot Asinof’s “Eight Men Out.”

“That book was mostly mostly fiction,” Fletcher said. “He had very little firsthand source stuff.”

Fletcher and Pomrenke’s book is a real page turner.

“Jacob and I are extremely proud of how we packaged it together. It just reads well,” Fletcher said. “And there is some drama. It ends with Joe Jackson getting thrown in jail.”

Pomrenke said the Black Sox story remains relevant in the modern baseball landscape.

“We still have World Series scandals today,” he said, adding that “you can’t watch a single inning of baseball on TV” without being bombarded by ads for sports betting. “Maybe we will have another Black Sox scandal at some point.”

One nagging question remains, though. How much of a part did Joe play on the field in throwing the series?

Although Jackson’s statistics from the World Series are solid, Charles A. McDonald, chief justice of the Criminal Court of Cook County, who empaneled the grand jury in 1920 to look into the scandal, testified that Jackson told him he let up in the series and didn’t play his best.

“We’ll never be able to solve that,” Fletcher said. “But this document without a doubt is the first document to say he took the money. His wife admits that he got the money. She admits they spent the money on his sister’s hospital bills.”

And that might put the nail in the coffin for Jackson’s Hall of Fame chances, although Pomrenke points out that there are game fixers, such as Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, in the hall.

On the other hand, he said: “Shoeless Joe is much more famous outside the Hall of Fame than he ever would be if he was elected in 1949. Nobody would know who he was. He’d be Harry Heilmann. He’d be Zack Wheat. Nobody talks about those guys. Everybody still talks about Shoeless Joe.”