Notes From the Shadows of Cooperstown: Then and Now

I enjoy linking history to today, events in baseball’s past to what is happening this season. So the title above not only fits the two items in this issue, but covers a lot of my stuff.

Up top is a review of Baseball’s Greatest Hit — no, not Mazeroski’s homer, although that would be my personal #1. No, the “hit” here refers to a hit song . The one that we heard endlessly in Ken Burns’ Baseball collage of history, the one we may have heard and sung as a toddler. Take Me Out to the Ball Game is now 100 years old, and anything that makes it to 100 impresses me a lot more these days than it would have, say, fifty years ago. And it’s the subject of a new book.

I’m always a bit uneasy when I review a book that I did not pay for, or take out of the library. Over the years, I’ve been given a few bummers, and they have strained my integrity some — all reviewers want to call ’em as we sees ’em , and that is harder when there is a gift involved. So I was relieved when this book turned out to be a winner, one I can recommend with a clear conscience. Maybe my years in 1919 have made me overly-sensitive to the appearance of bribery that review copies carry.

What follows is a little piece made possible by Mike Nola, who has once again mined a handful of nuggets out of his collection of Joe Jackson articles. This time, Mike dipped into 1922 — looking for a reference to Jackson playing a game for Scranton against a team in Utica, NY. (Scranton?Well, that was the adopted hometown of Honest Eddie Murphy, a friend of Jackson, and if the connection between Honest Eddie and Shoeless Joe is of interest, revisit Notes # 413 , 417 and 419 in the archives.

The connection I see between the 1922 articles Mike sent, and today, are in the words of Shoeless Joe himself. As they echo forward, it is for us to wonder what they may have sounded like, had they been uttered on television (as they almost were, in 1951), and replayed for our ears — and our eyes, along with images of Jackson standing between a baseball icon and a TV icon.

What keeps Shoeless Joe Jackson in the news is not Pete Rose, not Eight Men Out or Field of Dreams , not an ongoing quest for justice, or a family’s effort to restore a reputation. Nor is it the recent discovery by some fans (and a tiny segment of the media) that Baseball can and will participate in a cover-up, then (when gambling was strangling baseball in Jackson’s day) and now (the steroid era). Jackson will surely be in the news again when Barry Bonds — currently exactly where Jackson was in 1922: on the outside, hoping to get in a few more seasons — comes up for consideration for Cooperstown. But that is not it, either.

No, what makes Jackson eternally interesting is his .356 lifetime average. Once upon a time, Mel Ott was not just a crossword puzzle clue, but a familiar baseball ancestor, his 511 home runs ranking right up there behind Ruth and Foxx, and ahead of Gehrig, when he retired. But today, Mel is no longer in the top ten, or even the top twenty in career home runs. Jackson’s .356, on the other hand, has stood its ground against Stan Musial, Ted Williams (a Jackson booster), Wade Boggs, George Brett, Tony Gwynn — well, everybody . It will be a while before .356 is not ranked in the top five, let alone twenty.

Some will reel out the old asterisk and slap it on Joe’s .356, pointing out that his career ended before his declining years. Cobb hit a measly .323 in his final summer, Hornsby lost five points over his final eight seasons. But on the other hand, Jackson would have been swinging against the livelier ball in the early twenties, and hit .382 in his final summer — and it was not his idea to end it there. So hold the asterisk, please.

What makes a review of Take Me Out to the Ball Game (the book) timely is a 100th anniversary. What makes yet more about Joe Jackson especially timely is the opening of a museum dedicated to his memory, June 21, in Greenville, SC. Will Bud Selig show up with a pardon in hand?Probably not, but if he did, I think his personal rating would go up a notch. And the Jackson case would no longer be Baseball’s concern at all, but that of the sportswriters and the Hall of Fame guardians — the Veterans Committee, and those who make and change the rules.

The group of people standing on the HOF doorstep in Cooperstown has always been a mixed bag. Lots of folks now in there , had a long wait. Like Addie Joss, who got lots more attention on the doorstep than he has since he was admitted. Lined up behind Jackson and Pete Rose, are Buck O’Neil (who was a sentimental favorite, thanks to Ken Burns and television) and Gil Hodges and name your own favorite Deserving Player. Barry Bonds seems headed for that select company in the bright light near the entrance. Like Aaron and Ruth, Bonds seems over-qualified for any Hall of Fame, but this is baseball, an all-too-human sport that can be strangled by politics as well as gambling and steroids.

A long intro to a short issue. I don’t know when I’ll get the next one posted. Visit the archives!

ONE FOR THE CROWD

If you have any doubts about the first law of ecology ?? everything is connected to everything else ?? Baseball’s Greatest Hit: The Story of Take Me Out to the Ball Game (Hal Leonard, 2008) just might erase them. Tri?authored by Andy Strasberg, Bob Thompson and Tim Wiles, and timed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the famous song, Greatest Hit takes its readers on a number of journeys, explorations of baseball’s connections with history, music, film, collecting, and more. It is a delightful serving of words and images, “peanuts and Cracker Jack” that can be snacked in scattered bites, and there is even a prize at the bottom, a CD containing sixteen versions of the song.

Most people, fans of baseball or not, are familiar with Take Me Out , after a century; it is a tune and words that we all have grown up hearing and singing. It can be challenging to make the familiar interesting, but this book succeeds because instead of over?analyzing the lyrics and dissecting the melody, it quickly scatters the readers’ attention in dozens of directions.

For those who describe baseball as a country, Take Me Out is nothing less than its anthem. National anthems before sporting events may be patriotic, but they are not nearly as much fun as singing Take Me Out during the seventh?inning stretch at any ballpark. Never mind that we’re already there, we like being reminded that we want to be there, preferably taken, to be part of the crowd, and oblivious of time. Singing Take Me Out at a ballpark is not unlike vocalizing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve; it is corny, but irresistible.

So is this book. We don’t need to know all the details about how the song was written, by Jack Norworth, but a chapter mis?titled Unsung Heroes will tell us anyway. Does it matter how his lyrics were united with the notes of Albert Von Tilzer? No, but why not take the subway back a hundred years and find out? Both men produced many more songs, apart and together ( Shine On Harvest Moon is the one rival from the batch, for Take Me Out ). But they are not really un sung ?? Take Me Out is right up there, behind The Star?Spangled Banner and Happy Birthday as the all?time most sung.

Legend has it that neither Norworth nor Van Tilzer had ever been to a ball game when Take Me Out was composed. But Norworth had seen the enthusiasm of fans en route to the Polo Grounds. Did he scribble the lyrics on the note that is now on display in Cooperstown?That is not certain, it turns out, but that’s OK. It’s how the song should have been born. It might have been a better story if Norworth claimed that he came up with the words after a chat with Ty Cobb, and Van Tilzer had heard Abner Doubleday hum the melody. But the version that has gone down as history will do nicely.

Take Me Out was catchy, and once it caught on, it took on a life of its own. Readers will spend some time in 1908, then move into the future, as the song is performed in as many ways as the current technology would permit. That is, from piano sheet music, to recordings (Edison’s wax cylinders to records and so on, right up to the CD), to film. Naturally, being an all?American product, there would be countless versions and spin?offs, and as we learn the history of this song, we tour the evolution of the music industry. At least six million copies of the sheet music and even more recordings, have been sold. So not unsung, and definitely not unpaid. We also explore baseball songs in a chapter ( Music of the Sphere ) in which it is fun to pause and play with the hundreds of titles.

I suspect that every reader will find their own favorite chapters for lingering. Collectors and historians, musicians and movie buffs, no one will be disappointed. The book goes where baseball?mad Katie Casey could only dream about in her fever. It is filled with wonderful photography (we see that evolve, too) and all sorts of images, mostly supporting the text but often a fascinating and pleasurable distraction. It will make for a great present for any baseball fan, the kind of a book that ?? when you see it on a bookshelf ?? says Take Me Out .

“I AIN’T GUILTY OF NOTHING”

The words are Shoeless Joe Jackson’s. They appeared in newspapers across America (I’m citing the Charleston Daily Mail ) on or around July 22, 1922. That was a year after Jackson and his teammates were acquitted by a Chicago jury, of conspiracy to defraud; the victory was hollow, as Judge Landis reiterated his ban, keeping the still-suspended players out of Organized Baseball. In summer 1922, Jackson was a client of Ray Cannon, and preparing (with Happy Felsch and Swede Risberg) his case against the White Sox, for back pay and damages; only Jackson’s case would go to trial, in January/February of 1924.

“I’m standing on my reputation as a clean cut, honest ball player and asking the jury of fans for a square deal.”Jackson was addressing a crowd of about two hundred in an uptown New York City hall. He was “shoeless Joe” on the bill, and introduced to the assembly as the “greatest outfielder of all time.”We can bet that Ty Cobb was not in the room.

I have to wonder if the short speech Jackson gave that evening was the speech that he might have given in 1951, on a different New York City stage. He had accepted an invitation to appear on “Toast of the Town,” the Ed Sullivan variety show, on December 16. Jackson had been voted into, as a charter member, a Hall of Fame — the Cleveland Baseball one. Reporter Ed Bang — a fellow who may have known as much about the Fix of October 1919 as Hugh Fullerton — had invited him. Tris Speaker, who covered the 1919 Series himself (and was no stranger to hanky-panky with gamblers in 1919), would present Jackson with a gold clock, as millions watched.

Ten days before the program was to air, Jackson suffered a fatal heart attack. We have no record of what he might have said. But maybe he would have begun, “I ain’t guilty of nothing.”

The 1922 event kicked off a campaign to pressure Landis to open the door for Jackson’s re-entry into the game he played so well. That campaign never succeeded, but it also never ended. The next event will be later this month, as the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum officially opens, in Greenville, SC. In 1922, Joe Jackson only wanted Landis to let him play some semi-pro ball, but if the Judge “wants me back in the big leagues, I’ll be pleased to go.” Today, Jackson’s “campaigners” are simply asking for an amnesty, an acknowledgement that for whatever Jackson may have done in 1919, he has served his sentence, paid the price and more. That there is reasonable doubt that his actions were more damaging to baseball than those who covered up the Fix of October 1919 — and decades of tampering with baseball by gamblers — seems clear.

“I played my hardest in the 1919 worlds series. I fielded 1.000 and batted .375 … you can’t throw no ball game that way. I tried hard to win, and no one had more heart bleedin’ than I did about that series.”Jackson consistently pointed to his performance on the field, but that has never been convincing proof. The fact that he accepted $5,000 from a teammate has always overshadowed his actions and his effort; that he may have shown the money to his team immediately has made no difference, because instead of becoming “hard evidence” of the Fix, making Jackson a whistle-blowing hero, that money became instead an obstacle to his reinstatement.

“I ain’t saying that them other fellows was guilty and I ain’t sayin’ they was innocent. On my word as an honest gentleman I didn’t know nothin’ about no crooked work. I was just out there playin’ my head off to win like I always done.”Of course Jackson knew that something rotten was going on, but he really did not know who was going through with the Fix. Probably no one did. Jackson had not attended any meetings with gamblers, and his own manager had confronted the team about the “ugly rumors.”His response was to ask to be benched, so there could be no doubt that he was not among the crooked players. But that would not only tilt the series in favor of the Sox’ opponents, it would take some explaining. So would postponing the series, to look into those reports of bribery that everyone was talking about.

“I ain’t never murdered no one and I ain’t tried. I ain’t guilty of nothin’ and I think I ought to be let play baseball because I can’t do nothing else.”It turned out that Jackson was successful in other endeavors, but he did not want to do anything else. He was a born ballplayer. And he would “keep playin’ baseball if I have to play by myself.”

Officials of the semi-pro teams that were courting Jackson had collected, they said, 150,000 signatures on petitions that they had passed out around the country. Over the years, countless more petitions would be signed and presented to Commissioners. None would succeed. To remove Jackson from its “Ineligible List,” baseball would need to revisit 1919. And that would mean looking at a chapter in its past that has been called baseball’s “darkest hour.”We are still too close to “the steroid era” to know if the current scandal will eventually eclipse “the Black Sox” — but perhaps baseball will at least see the comparisons.

A star left fielder, whose career would rate a first-ballot admission to Cooperstown, is shut out of baseball. Condemned at first by information leaked from a grand jury. Then vilified by the media. It sounds too familiar. In Jackson’s case, what he said to the grand jury was not , after all, what was “leaked.”He said that he played to win; the headlines said he confessed to throwing games — something Jackson at once and forever after denied.

It makes for a great Hot Stove question, doesn’t it?Who has the better chance of having his likeness in bronze on a Hall of Fame plaque — in Cooperstown, that is, not Cleveland or San Francisco — Jackson or Barry Bonds?Jackson has to battle over eight decades of “history” that have painted him as one of the “Black Sox” who almost ruined baseball. Bonds must climb a hill that may be even steeper.

“I ain’t guilty of nothing.” Two hundred people heard the words in 1922. In 1924, twelve jurors would hear the words again, and eleven would believe them. The words of Shoeless Joe Jackson echo today, but they are buried in old newspapers, not on our televisions, not in a recording from 1951, with Jackson standing between Tris Speaker and Ed Sullivan. Would that have made a difference?Ask Elvis, ask the Beatles. It couldn’t have hurt.

The above is an excerpt from Issue #449 of Gene’s Notes From the Shadows of Cooperstown. To read the rest of the issue (or past issues), click here .