The offered 1940 Play Ball Shoeless Joe Jackson card has been assessed at the VG or Very Good level by the expert grading staff at PSA due entirely to the cards apparent but uniform rounding at its corners, a tolerable feature one would expect to encounter on the 1940 Play Ball sets key card and one of the last vintage (pre-1970) cards to feature the tragically disgraced Chicago Black Sock. The card is adequately centered and features exceptional contrast for the issue, with powerful print tones on both surfaces, rendering a remarkable image of one of the most celebrated and mythologized players in the history of the game. Jackson hit for a record .408 average in his rookie season of 1911 with a .468 OBP that led all of baseball, and he would leave the game in 1921 with a .356 career average, which ranks third all-time behind Rogers Hornsby and Ty Cobb. Popularized if not condemned by Eliot Azinofs 1963 book Eight Men Out and later again by John Sayles film of the same name in 1988 starring John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, and D.B. Sweeney as Shoeless Joe, Jackson and seven of his Chicago teammates were banned for life from baseball in 1920 by newly appointed commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis for throwing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Although they were later acquitted by a Grand Jury in 1921, Judge Landis argued that none of the players could be allowed back into baseball if it was to clean up its image. Prior to that fateful 1919 season, Jackson had spent most of 1918 working in a shipyard to support the war effort, and during the 1919 World Series he collected 12 hits, a record for an 8-game World Series, committed no errors, and threw out a runner at home plate. He maintained his innocence throughout his lifetime, and although evidence later surfaced -- or didnt surface -- to support his claim, such as confirmation from the other seven accused players that Jackson was never at any of the conspiratorial meetings, and despite even a resolution passed by the House of Representatives in 1999 to recognize his achievements, he remains on baseballs ineligible list, which has automatically barred him from induction into the Hall of Fame. At least, we hope, for now.
Posted on: Sat, 03 May 2014 16:42:03 +0000
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