By groovydude
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on February 18, 2002.
The movie Eight Men Out was on TV tonight, and I watched it. Again. This movie is the story of the 1919 World Series and the Chicago White Sox, later known as the Black Sox, who conspired with gamblers to fix the Series. Watching Eight Men Out reminded me of Ted Williams.
Ted Williams is going to die soon. He has been in and out of the hospital many times lately. He’s an old man. Almost blind. Wheelchair bound. And the greatest hitter who ever lived. Oh, I know, you can make your case for Babe Ruth, you can make your case for Ty Cobb. Maybe you can even make your case for Barry Bonds. But you can darn sure make your case for Ted Williams as the greatest hitter who ever played the game.
I saw him play. In 1960, his final year, Ted Williams and his Boston Red Sox came to Chicago to play the White Sox. That’s where I lived, and me and my dad and my Uncle Joe and my cousin Jerry went to see them play one cool, clear night on the glorious south side at the venerable old Comiskey Park. Everyone knew that Ted would retire at the end of the year. This was probably our last chance to see him hit. And as he came to bat, the scoreboard in centerfield flashed a sign: “Congratulations to Ted Williams: 503 career home runs.” Just then he smacked a fastball deep to center field. The crowd rose to watch our swift centerfielder, Jim Landis, race to the wall. He leaped, crashed into the canvas fence, and came down with the ball, robbing Williams, but only temporarily, of his 504th home run.
I was there. I saw this.
And now, somewhere in Florida, Ted Williams is an old man, soon to die.
For the last several years, Ted Williams has campaigned vigorously to have Joe Jackson put into the Hall of Fame. Joe Jackson, better known as Shoeless Joe, was a star on the Chicago White Sox from 1915 to 1920. Joe was an uneducated fellow from South Carolina. Never learned to read and write, but oh, how he could play baseball. On the strength of his record, Joe Jackson would seem a natural for the Hall of Fame. He had a career batting average of .356 and was generally considered one of the premier players of his day.
Joe Jackson is not eligible for the Hall of Fame. He was banned from professional baseball for life as a result of the Black Sox scandal of 1919. Jackson was one of the eight Chicago White Sox accused of throwing the World Series. Although the eight were tried and acquitted in court, major league baseball, wanting to purify its image, banned all eight for life. Thus the movie Eight Men Out.
Ted Williams has long maintained that Joe Jackson was not part of the fix. The numbers bear him out. Shoeless Joe hit .375 and never made an error in the 1919 World Series. Furthermore, there is no evidence that he ever took a penny from the gamblers who were behind the scheme to fix America’s premier sporting event. So Ted Williams is trying to get Shoeless Joe into the Hall of Fame.
I saw Ted Williams play. And I wonder sometimes, if my dad saw Shoeless Joe. He could have. The most famous story told about Joe, the one that even non-baseball fans have heard, concerns a little boy in Chicago who had heard all the talk of the fixing of the World Series and of the crooked ballplayers on the White Sox. The story is that the little boy in Chicago stopped Shoeless Joe on the street and said: “Say it ain’t so, Joe, say it ain’t so.”
It occurs to me that the news of the fixing of the 1919 World Series broke in 1920. It occurs to me that my father was, in 1920, a nine year old boy, living on the south side of Chicago. It could have been him who talked to Joe Jackson that day. It could be my dad who said: “Say it ain’t so, Joe. Say it ain’t so.”
And I was a 10 year old boy that night at Comiskey Park, in May of 1960, when Ike was in the White House and a young Senator from Massachusetts named Kennedy was beginning to attract attention. My dad sat beside me as we watched Jim Landis rob Ted Williams of a home run. But I never asked my dad about Shoeless Joe. I never asked him about the Black Sox and what that was like for him, what he remembered of that.
I can’t ask him now. Dad has been gone since 1976, a very long time now.
So tonight I saw the movie Eight Men Out about the Chicago White Sox of 1919, who sold their souls to gamblers and rigged the World Series. It makes me think about Shoeless Joe Jackson, who probably was innocent. Thinking about Shoeless Joe makes me think about Ted Williams, who is trying to get Shoeless Joe into the Hall of Fame. And thinking about Ted Williams makes me think of that fabulous catch by Jim Landis at Comiskey Park in 1960. Thinking about that catch makes me think of my dad, and all the questions I didn’t ask him before he died, all the conversations we never had.
And people who don’t understand all this sometimes ask me… “why is it that you love baseball so much?”