Review: Just Joe: Baseball's Natural as told by his wife

By Thomas K. Perry
Pocal Press, 2007.

From his humble Southern roots up to and including his banishment from organized baseball, Joseph Jefferson Jackson was considered one of the brightest stars in the sports firmament. Even the mighty Babe Ruth claimed to have modeled his style after the lithe lefty.

The story of Shoeless Joe has been chronicled in many forms: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, theatre, and film. Those volumes almost exclusively follow his exploits on the diamond, with an emphasis on the 1919 Black Sox scandal, understandably a highlight (and low point) of the slugger’s career.

Thomas K. Perry, a Jackson uberfan and researcher, has dared to step outside the box. He has entered a place where few, if any, male baseball fiction writers have gone: writing from the distaff point of view, in this case the voice of Katie Jackson, Joe’s wife.

“Her” story begins as a smitten adolescent in Pickens County, South Carolina, where she realized as a 12-year-old that she was destined to be Mrs. Joe Jackson. It ends a lifetime later, when, dying of cancer, she is reunited with her love at the Pearly Gates.

While a good portion of Just Joe revolves around the ballplayer’s amateur, minor, and major league careers, it is more concerned with the domestic relationship between husband and wife. Katie is obviously a proud and loyal helpmeet as she goes on about “my man,” a pet name that’s perhaps a bit overused, but undoubtedly in character. She is more impressed with how he is embraced by his fans than his batting average, stolen bases, or spectacular fielding. She is also the illiterate Joe’s “agent,” reading his contracts, as well as the sports pages, and is appalled with the low regard in which he is held by his employers, especially Charles Comiskey, the penurious White Sox owner.

The 1919 Fall Classic is a focal point of Just Joe, as Kate describes how her Joe was duped by players, gamblers, and Comiskey and his minions (in the aftermath) alike, railroaded out of the game that was second in his affections only after his wife.

About a third of the fictional biography is devoted to their lives after Joe’s “retirement.” Never out of the public eye for long, Jackson had his supporters in later years, including Ted Williams, who pays a visit to Katie in the book. Through the good and bad times, she is assertive that no matter how “organized” baseball turned its back on Joe Jackson, he always considered it the greatest game in the world.

Those who know the true-life story will understandably feel a sadness as Just Joe winds down, aware of what is to come: Joe’s death on what might have been the verge of his re-acceptance. It is ultimately a tale with a good dose of disappointment, overshadowed by the healthy measure of love and appreciation for Jackson, both Katie’s and the author’s.