Shoeless Joe Jackson

[Fenian_Bastard]

Damn, I'm disappointed.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

85bears,

The one I'm talking about is the one you're talking about. Priceless. The narrator's running arguments with the Giants coaches and players about whether certain novels are allegories ... damn, where's my copy of that short story? I want to go read it again now.

 

[Twoback]

FB, if it weren't woven into the fabric of our society, if it weren't the first game most of us came to love as kids, what the heck would baseball have going for it? It's nine guys standing in one place for half a night, only to be replaced for the other half by nine different guys.
Without the meaning, baseball is pretty dull.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

Let me just mention that Wade Boggs still sucks

 

[buckweaver]

FB, if it weren't woven into the fabric of our society, if it weren't the first game most of us came to love as kids, what the heck would baseball have going for it? It's nine guys standing in one place for half a night, only to be replaced for the other half by nine different guys.
Without the meaning, baseball is pretty dull.

And football is 22 barbarians smacking each other around for an hour. You can simplify every sport to meaningless nothingness if you want to. Doesn't mean any of them are dull.

Sorry, but I HATE this argument. Huge pet peeve.

 

[Jesus_Muscatel]

Jackson is a very romanticized figure, I understand the defense of him.

"Is she really goin' out with him???"

Wait, that's another Joe Jackson.

Proceed.

And Pete Rose is still the Anti-Christ.

 

[JRoyal]

I say open the doors for Shoeless Joe and Rose. Let them in. Then, open a special exhibit for controversial figures in the Hall. When Bonds gets in, he can go there, too. Actually deal with the unseemly side of the game, showing that sometimes bad things have happened, but the game goes on.

 

[The Big Ragu]

A little late to the party. I am on the fence about Jackson. Yes, he took money and the idealist in me says that if he knew about it, took the money and did nothing to stop it, it was aan assault on the integrity of the game that should deny him access to the Hall of Fame. But the other half of it is that he played in an era when things were so different than they are now. Comiskey was such a prick, and so cheap with his players, and while those guys earned nice salaries compared to the typical person on the street, they were not getting wealthy from baseball. So taking the money was probably less a case of "blind, arrogant greed," than him feeling he was just getting what he was owed from Comiskey, who dicked his players every opportunity he got. I could be swayed either way about Jackson. If a player today, earning $2 million a year, threw World Series games for a payoff, it would make my blood boil in a way that Shoeless Joe Jackson doesn't.

Knowing how I feel about cheating and integrity, this may surprise some, but I absolutely think Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame. His gambling does not change when he did on the field as a player. If there was any evidence that he ever did anything to throw a baseball game, it would be one thing. But there isn't.

Baseball should have a hard line when it comes to anyone associated with the game doing any sort of gambling on the game. Keep Rose away from being honored at official baseball ceremonies. Ban him from the game. Make it clear to everyone that he dipped his toe in a pool that he knew was off limits. But that still doesn't change what he did as a player, and as a player, he is Hall of Fame worthy.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

My mistake on the Salinger connection. I read it on IMDB but after checking it out it is not true.

Kinsella did use Salinger as a character in the Shoeless Joe book and I think this is a case of fact and fantasy being confused together. My apologies. In the movie the character is changed to Terrance Mann.

OK - now I have to backtrack from what I wrote earlier. I did not get that nugget about Salinger and Kinsella from IMDB.com - it was in an article in the Minn Star Tribune about the real Moonlight Graham. The link to that story no longer works but if anyone has Lexis-Nexis that might help.

It would be cool if true