Final Card Friday: 1920 Shoeless Joe Jackson

I’ve always had a soft spot in my baseball heart for Shoeless Joe Jackson. Even though he was ignorant and probably took money from gamblers, I still wish he was in the Hall of Fame and had gotten the chance to finish his MLB career. It’s reasonable to think Jackson would have played until age 40, which would have been eight more seasons.  If you figure an average of 180 hits a season, Shoeless Joe might have finished with  3,212. It’s likely he would have been in the first Hall of Fame class of 1936 with Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, and Babe Ruth.  Instead, he moved back to the south in shame, played and managed semi-pro teams for a number of years, and then opened a dry cleaning business and a liquor store.  It was a sad ending for one of the greatest natural ballplayers in history.

Shoeless Joe’s final APBA card is awesome. He produced the third best year of his career in 1920, which makes it all the more heartbreaking. Who knows what kind of seasons Jackson might have had in the live ball era 1920s? He might have hit 20+ home runs a time or two. He might have hit .400 again. He, undoubtedly, would have influenced countlessly more ballplayers with his swing of beauty and Black Betsy.  However, if that were the case, we wouldn’t have the tragic hero that is Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Black Sox Scandal, which has become a cornerstone of baseball history. Without his fall from grace, Jackson would probably be lumped in with other great ballplayers, like Sam Crawford or Harry Heilmann. We’ll never know, but his tragic fall is part of the attraction of Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Jackon’s final APBA card is extremely accurate. In 1920, he hit .382. I calculate this card should hit .387. It’s helped by having four 8s instead of the now standard three. If it only had three 8s, it’d only produce a .363 average. It only makes sense to have an extra 8, because I’m sure Jackson tore up C-Pitchers in 1920. You don’t see too many cards with five zeroes. With them, Jackson should be sprinting around the bases almost every game. He slugged 42 doubles, a league leading 20 triples, and a career high 12 home runs in 1920. It was the only time Jackson ever reached double-digits in homers and drove in over 100 runs.  But there’s one more amazing thing about this card…it has NO 13s. Shoeless Joe only struck out 14 times in 649 plates appearances in his final campaign. That’s one strikeout for every 46 plate appearances, or once every 10 games.  Amazing. It’s hard to imagine such a thing in modern baseball.

I think everyone who loves baseball history struggles with the tragic story of Shoeless Joe Jackson.  For younger fans, the same could be said about Pete Rose.  Jackson’s role in the fix is not clear cut. There certainly is reasonable doubt. It’s easy pity Shoeless Joe Jackson. Instead of pity, I’ve come to think of Jackson as a tragic hero, who sacrificed his career in order to maintain the integrity of the game. If the Black Sox Scandal hadn’t happened in the way it did, the National Past-time might have gone the way of boxing with gamblers and crooks running the show.  Instead, it has survived, nearly a hundred years hence, as the greatest game ever invented.

A special thanks to Rod Caborn for providing the picture of the 1920 Shoeless Joe Jackson card.

Also, if you have suggestions for future Final Card Friday posts, please contact me and send a picture of the card.