SHOELESS JOE JACKSON

A guy from Pickens County, South Carolina, who swung a bat he called Black Betsy and hit the ball like the outfielders owed him money. Joseph Walker Jackson — Shoeless Joe to the wires and the bleachers — left-handed lumber, right-handed glove, and a line-drive stroke that made polite parks look small.

He broke in with the Athletics, but Cleveland is where the storm got a name. In 1911 he hit .408. The next summer he came back at .395 and sprayed twenty-six triples, the ball rolling to the wall like it had somewhere to be. Two hundred career steals rode along for the quiet business; the loud business was the wood.

Then Chicago. In White Sox flannel he kept raking — a .382 year in 1920 with twelve home runs and one hundred twenty-one ribbies, thirty-three years old and still the left fielder pitchers hated to see. After that season the big-league door shut and never opened again. What stayed in the book was cleaner than the rumor mill: a .356 lifetime clip, seventeen hundred seventy-two hits, three hundred seven doubles, one hundred sixty-eight triples, and the memory of Black Betsy talking all afternoon.