Shoeless Joe Jackson:

Changing Perceptions

BY: DAN WALLACH
Executive Director, Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum

Joe Jackson passed away on December 5, 1951. For much of the last 30 years of his life, unless you lived in Greenville, South Carolina or in Savannah, Georgia and happened to run into Joe in the community, you probably didn’t hear much from him. Or of him. So how do we have the perception we do of who Joe was as a person, when he hasn’t had an overwhelming public presence in nearly 100 years? Why do so many people believe he was a country bumpkin who only knew one thing in life: baseball? When did this view of Joe start, and why has it persisted?

Much of our current perception of Joe Jackson is due to how he was portrayed in 1988’s Eight Men Out. Very quiet. Very shy. Easily taken advantage of. A one-track mind that only thought about, and only cared about, baseball. That he was unintelligent, because he was uneducated. A broad concept which many people fail to grasp in society is that there is a big difference between being uneducated and being unintelligent. One doesn’t necessarily always mean the other.

Joe started working in the cotton mills of South Carolina when he was 6 years old to help earn money for his family. Never having gone to school for a day in his life, he never had the chance to learn how to read or write. He was, unquestionably, uneducated. But that didn’t stop Joe from leading a consistently successful financial life, even from the time he was a child. He may not have been educated, but he definitely was not unintelligent.

Joe knew that his southern drawl and his lack of education made people look down on him. It was one of the reasons his career with the Philadelphia Athletics didn’t pan out. His teammates were not only educated, but many were college educated, as Connie Mack preferred. They ridiculed Joe for not knowing how to read. When the team would eat meals, Joe would try to order last so it would give him a chance to listen to everyone else’s order, and he could repeat to the server the meal he heard from his teammates that sounded best to him. His teammates knew Joe wasn’t just being polite by allowing them to order first. They would make subtle (and not-so-subtle) remarks around Joe about what they perceived to be his lack of intelligence.

Did Joe feel homesick for Greenville? Of course. Though, I would venture to guess that many players who are away from home for the first time in their life feel homesick. Even today. But Joe hopping on a train back to Greenville in the middle of the night multiple times during his short tenure with Philadelphia was much more about feeling out of place in a northern city, among a group of men who never tried to (and never intended to) accept him as one of their own.

Joe even disliked his famous nickname, “Shoeless.” He knew the connotation the moniker had, and he did whatever he could to shed that image. Whenever you see a picture of Joe off the field, from very early on in his professional career, he was always well-dressed. He liked wearing nice shoes. He usually wore a nice hat. He loved driving nice, big cars. He wasn’t necessarily flashy, though. And when he would go back to his hometown of Greenville during his playing career, he actually went out of his way not to show off his wealth, knowing that a lot of his community wasn’t as financially successful as he had been. But when he was among his peers in Major League Baseball, he absolutely let it be known that he was making money.

And Joe was making money. During one off-season, he had a (controversial) vaudeville act called “Joe Jackson’s Baseball Girls” that was so successful, he chose not to report to Cleveland’s 1915 spring training on time because he was making more money on the road than he would have with the team. He knew how to promote that show. He knew how to route it from southern city to southern city. And he was entertaining on stage. Just because he was uneducated did not mean he was unintelligent.

Joe was actually a very successful businessman. He was one of the first players to have an endorsement deal with Louisville Slugger, and a signature bat with his name on it. He owned a pool hall and cigar shop in Chicago. He owned a dry-cleaning service in Savannah, Georgia that was so successful it needed to open a second location. He owned a barbeque restaurant in Greenville, South Carolina, and later a liquor store where the famous Ty Cobb/Furman Bisher encounter took place. Each of them was successful.

Joe was always able to provide for himself and for his family, but he didn’t do it by himself. His wife, Katie, played an integral role in the successful financial lives they led. Katie knew how to read and write, and would pore over his contracts (both in baseball and in business) and discuss their content with Joe. She worked at the businesses, too, at least helping at their dry-cleaners, Savannah Valet Service, and at the liquor store.

Katie helped interact with fans on Joe’s behalf. When people would write asking for Joe to send an autograph, Katie would sign Joe’s name on a ball, or a photo, or an index card, and send it back. Joe kept Katie’s version of his signature in his wallet, in case he ever needed to sign something when she wasn’t around to help him do it, or on legal documents that truly needed his signature. Only a handful of 100% verifiable signatures of Joe’s exist, which is why it’s one of the most coveted and expensive signatures in the hobby. The deed to his house, the deed to his liquor store, his driver’s license, and his last will and testament, just to name a few. Nearly every other time you see “Joe’s” signature anywhere, it’s actually Katie signing Joe’s name on his behalf. But she was much more than a secretary for him. She was his partner, in life and in business.

Joe and Katie bought multiple homes for themselves, and for Joe’s mother. They raised one of Joe’s brother’s children during a time in which most of America was struggling through the Great Depression. They moved from Savannah back to Greenville when Joe’s mother got sick and took care of her until she passed. Money was seemingly never an issue for the Jacksons, and considering he hadn’t played professional baseball since 1920, that’s saying something. Just because he was uneducated did not mean he was unintelligent.

More than just being good at earning money, though, Joe was well-respected in his community. He never shied away from spending time with local kids or local baseball players, teaching them about the game. He knew his career had been taken away from him, but he also knew he still had worthwhile insight to offer. When players from the Brandon Mill baseball team would ask for pointers, he would happily talk with them and show them the tricks of the trade.

Joe Jackson is thought of as a tragic figure in baseball history. In American history. But Joe never viewed himself that way. Baseball may have been taken away from him, but he never viewed baseball as his entire life. When his career was over, he focused his efforts on other endeavors, and he succeeded in all of them.

As Joe told famed sports writer Furman Bisher for an October 1949 article in Sport Magazine, “All the big sportswriters seemed to enjoy writing about me as an ignorant cotton-mill boy with nothing but lint where my brains ought to be. That was all right with me. I was able to fool a lot of pitchers and managers and club owners I wouldn’t have been able to fool if they’d thought I was smarter.”

Just because he was uneducated did not mean he was unintelligent.

To learn more about Joe, his life, and his career, follow the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum on social media @shoelessmuseum on all platforms. Keep up to date with our upcoming move and expansion. Please DONATE if you can.