baseball hall of famers: shoeless joe jackson, pete rose, willie aikens

blog two of the rabble rouser hall of fame baseball inductees. 

check out the mamie "peanut" johnson blog here. 

shoeless joe jackson (1887-1951) :: an absolute abomination

            considering his upbringing, it is a miracle shoeless joe wasn’t a child victim of the early century pre-labor unions workforce. while working in mills, he was paid to play for various mill’s teams as young as 13. he broke a players arm with a fastball, and was then relegated to the outfield. he was given a bat named black betsy, and his hitting prowess made him known around the leagues. he didn’t get his nickname from being a poor child, rather blisters on his feet forced him to take his shoes off during a game. he rose to the majors quickly, by the age of 21, when he was signed by connie mack to the philadelphia athletics.

as a player, shoeless joe seems to have the resume to be considered among the best.  he played 12 years, though technically eight full seasons in the majors, not a long time for hall of fame credentials, but he did have 1770 hits in that short span.  his career average of .356, ranks him with the third-best hitting percentage in major league history.  his hitting .408 as a rookie in 1908 was only the second-best batting average that season, but still the sixth-highest single-season average since 1901 and the record for rookies. he won a world championship with the white sox in 1917 by hitting .307 vs the new york giants. also again in 1919, but let’s get back to that. in that most lists and statistical measures rank shoeless joe in the top of many categories and that babe ruth claimed to have learned how to hit from watching shoeless joe, we can say that he was most likely the best player of his era, i.e. the most famous which would logically preclude the hall of “fame”.   so why is shoeless joe not in the hall of fame?

coming back from world war I, joe had a strong season in 1919 and his white sox were heavily favored to beat cincinnati in the world series. he hit .375 in the series, but the white sox lost. during the 1920 season, he was again hitting well, over .380, when the commissioner banned shoeless joe from baseball for being part of a scandal to have fixed the previous world series, thus cutting short his hall of fame career and making him automatically ineligible for enshrinement.

to hit .375 in the world series, with a record of 12 hits (which still stands), and had a perfect fielding perentage, it would seem that shoeless joe wasn’t really trying to lose the game. but there are newspaper accounts and court testimony (that also seem to be rather fixed) that make jackson guilty of conspiring to allow cincinnati to score runs.

the “say it ain’t so, joe” story is that such a scandal is apparently good for a lifetime ban, whether it was true or not. but as famous as he was as a player, as infamous as he was as a liquor store operator after baseball, jackson also has been depicted in the films eight men out, field of dreams and the natural.

triples are the early century version of home runs. the first 50 or 60 years of baseball was known as the “dead ball era” in which pitchers reigned supreme, bats were heavy and fences were really far away. though not many home runs were hit in those days, the fences being far back allowed balls hit into the alleys to help the runner advance extra bases. therefore, triples were a rather common statistic in place of home runs. shoeless joe retired with 167 triples, one less than rogers hornsby, two more than roberto clemente for 26^th place on the all-time list.  someone someday might hit more than 167 triples, but it’s unlikely. there are currently two players in the major leagues today with more than 100 triples. if you asked me if 26^th on the all-time home run list would put a player eligible for the hall of fame list, i would say no doubt, especially in conjunction with an otherwise stellar record, humble background and no evidence of any fixing on his part. he was not in cahoots with the mob. 

free shoeless joe!

pete rose (1941-present) :: the guy that gets made an example of

            if i can make a case for joe jackson being eligible based on baseball merits alone, despite that he is also innocent, let’s suppose he really was guilty and a jerk. would he still be elgible based on being one of the very best players ever?

i am a pirates fan, as my love of the special marks they made at cornerstone points of new eras in baseball will attest. that being the case, the cincinnati reds are the nemesis, not a team to love. the big red machine stole most of the bucs glory, particularly in the 1970s, thanks mostly to charlie hustle. it’s hard not to respect the tenacity.

there’s a fifty-fifty chance that i would find pete rose a legitimately fun loving prankster, or just a downright jerk. it would be no doubt that his attitude has more to do with his lifetime ban from major league baseball than the crime for which he is charged.  betting on baseball games?  there are plenty of people that have done it over the years that aren’t banned from sports.  though when proven is kind of beomes a career derailer. unless, you’re someone like michael jordan!

there is no legitimate reason pete rose should not be in the baseball hall of fame. being a jerk has never been part of the exclusionary criteria before.  pete has more hits than anyone.  of all the “insurmountable” records in baseball, the career hit record seems most unlikely to be broken. (well, maybe second to 309 triples, but then again pete rose also has a very high number of triples for the modern era - 136).  he has the record for most games played and most at-bats.  not only was rose the face of the most dominant franchise for an entire decade, once he got traded, it altered the balance of power and his next team was in the world series twice in four years. at a decade and a half of mvp-caliber career, rose was every bit the counterpart of carl yazstremski in the american league as far as star value was concerned during the same years of longevity.  his reward should be the same.  but the awesome caveat in this case is that rose doesn’t need to give a damn.  secretly, though, one would imagine he really does.  he doesn’t need to be included because he ultimately doesn’t need some stuffy tightwads appreciation anyway.  he knows he was the best of his era.  i suppose he can act like the best if he wants.  the rabble rouser will honor him if only beause cooperstown should and won’t.  if i were pete rose, that would mean way more.

willie aikens :: the guy that gets made an example of

            the 1980s were infamously the cocaine years, in the u.s. generally, but also in baseball.  it would get even worse in the 90s in other areas like growth hormones and such, but heavy tolls were paid.  in the late 70s, the pittsburgh pirates, with john milner, were the first in a wave of teams to be ripped apart by drug scandals.  john milner got punished, then lost his life to an overdose in the 1980s, and so did pitcher rod scurry in the 1990s.

from then on, player after player was involved in some kind of fracas.  in the arly 80s, the kansas city royals got particularly torn apart with drug buys that prompted the league to mandate trades that sent four players to separate teams after short prison sentences: willie aikens to the toronto blue jays, jerry martin to the new york mets, vida blue to san francisco. willie wilson was allowed to stay, ultimately finishing the last couple years of a long career in oakland and chicago.  jerry martin was soon selling used cars, aikens was on expensive coke binges until he landed a 20 year sentence for selling crack to an undercover female cop in his home.

          in some respects, 20 years in prison could be blessing.  he saw many more succumb, including his former teammate and born-again christian darrell porter.  porter died of a coke-induced heart attack in 2002 at the age of 50. but on the other hand, some players like daryl strawberry had similar lives yet got only supervised probation. sort of like michael vick wasn’t the first, nor most prominent dog fighter in the south. he was just the guy whose attitude got the better of him and he became made the example.  even michael vick only got a couple years.  in willie aikens case, he was busted for a few grams and ended up serving 14 years of a 20 year sentence. surely lots of stuff that isn’t counted or known, but isn’t that the case with anyone who ultimately gets busted?  there must be more of a political reason why the penalty was so stiff.

michael vick could probably never do anything redeeming enough to become a rabble rouser hall of famer.  but willie aikens, man!  he was supposed to be the next reggie jackson, and even had one of the more epic of world series performances, but he was humbled as a has-been, reformer, ex-con.  he took his lumps in stride.  he learned his lessons.  

he can now teach us.