* Elysian Fields Quarterly: Where it all began

For me, as a freelance writer, anyway.

My first major published piece was a review of Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball, by Harvey Frommer for Elysian Fields Quarterly in 1993, which you’ll find after the break.

I wax nostalgic because I learned at the recent SABR Convention that EFQ might be forced to ceases publication for a number of reasons. Rather than go into it myself, I’m recreating the press release/flyer from publisher/editor Tom Goldstein:

Baseball Journal seeks Publisher/Partner to Revive Literary Gem

For more than twenty-five years, Elysian Fields Quarterly (and its predecessor The Minneapolis Review of Baseball) has been the preeminent journal of record for baseball literature, poetry, essays, and commentary.

As one has described it, “EFQ is a wonderful little magazine that’s edgy, entertaining, rebellious, contrarian, nostalgic – and mostly just damn good writing about baseball.”

Unfortunately, publishing a baseball journal has proved extremely challenging in a marketplace that has never been kind to small press publications even in the best of times, and with mass market chains dominating the landscape and appreciation for the printed word perhaps at an all-time low, Elysian Fields Quarterly has been forced to go on hiatus during the 2009 season.

Will EFQ return to the playing field next year? That may be up to you. Do you have the business acumen, publishing background, fundraising experience, or financial backing to take EFQ from a little gem of a magazine to something much bigger? If so, we should talk. Opportunities include everything from a business partnership or working agreement to an outright purchase of the journal and inventory of back issues. Serious inquiries only.

Please contact: Tom Goldstein, publisher and editor, at 651.644.8558 or info@efqreview.com, Elysian Fields Quarterly: The Baseball Review, PO Box 14385, St. Paul, MN 55114

So if there’s some small or university press out there that’s looking to add a quality journal to its holdings, I urge them to get in touch with Goldstein.

The Scandal That Won’t Die

Book Review by Ron Kaplan

Harvey Frommer. Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball. Taylor Publishing, 226 pp., illustrations, index, bibliography, $19.95, doth .

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Long after his death and the infamous Black Sox Scandal, “There IS no end to the public’s fascination with the illiterate South Carolina baseball player banned from the game he loved for a crime he may not have committed.” Harvey Frommer, author of Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball’s Color Line and New York City Baseball, 1947-1957, chooses Joe Jackson as his subject in the latest version of the tragic tale.

Over his thirteen year career, Joe Jackson batted .356, the third highest average in history. Babe Ruth praised himas “the greatest hitter I had ever seen … the guy who made mea hitter.” Yetforall his accomplishments, Jackson will forever be remembered as the most famous of the “Eight Men Out,” blacklisted for life for allegedly throwing the 1919 World Series.

Frommer’s narration brings us to America during the early twentieth century. From politics to consumer prices, we see a simpler, slower epoch. We read not only the standard saga of a gifted young athlete, but also life in a small southern mill town, with its tedious twelve hour workdays and the importance of baseball as diversion. Anecdotes regarding the nature of “ragtime baseball” also entertain as Frommer discusses low salaries, poor working conditions, and tradition. For example, William H. Taft, the least athletic of presidents, orginated the custom of throwing out the first ball on Opening Day while Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps the most exercise-conscious of our leaders, disdained baseball as a “molly coddlesport.” The use of the baseball itself is fascinating-how they were rationed to two or three per game and how teams required fans to return balls hit into the stands in order to economize; indeed, how a single ball was used for an entire game.

After his customary stellar performance for the company team, Jackson’s brothers would pass the hat and collect the equivalent ot five weeks’ wages. It was not surprising that Jackson soon agreed to a minor league contract wi th the home town Greenville Spinners.

In 1909, Jackson’s contract was purchased by the Philadelphia Athletics. But here was a small town boy who loathed the big city with its noise and crowded streets; several times he tried to flee the club only to be intercepted at the station.

Frommer offers no less than four explanations for the famous nickname, which the ballplayer detested. Jackson felt it marked him as a rube, a bumpkin:

“His illiteracy was an embarrassment to him and a malicious magnet for opposition fans.” Some of his teammates resented the attention Jackson received and made him the butt of their practical jokes, causing him to be even more aloof. Connie Mack, the venerable owner/manager of the A’s, believed in the superiority of educated players and tried to help the befuddled Southerner by offering to hire a tutor. Jackson stubbornly refused: “It don’t take no school stuff to help a fella play ball.” Although most of the baseball writers liked Jackson, veteran columnist Huey Fullerton stated: “A man who can’t read or write simply can’t meet the requirements of baseball … ”

After several attempts to have the promising slugger realize his potentiaL Mack reluctantly traded him to the Cleveland Naps (later the Indians) in 1910. Jackson came out of his shell in his new surroundings. He cajoled his favorite bat, “Black Betsy,” (some say he spoke to his bats more often than to people) to produce hits for him, then sent screaming line drives all over the park, delighting fans and teammates.

Throughout the years his wife, Katie, was there, reading to him from newspapers, helping him settle his contracts, teaching him to sign his name. She attended every home game, always leaving in the seventh inning regardless of the situation, one of Jackson’s superstitions. He also had a mania for collecting women’s hair pins and stuffing them in his pocket. If he fell into a slump, he discarded them and started over.

When the Federal League began pirating players from the majors, Jackson turned down a $25,000 offer, more than four times his salary. “I felt I was dutybound under contract to stick with Cleveland, and I can truthfully say, in all my playing days there and everywhere, I never shirked a duty to baseball.” Fiscal problems, partly caused by the new league, forced Cleveland to trade the popular Jackson to the Chicago White Sox in 1915 for three players and the then astounding sum of $31,500.

White Sox Owner Charles Comiskey had a reputation for treating the sportswriters better than his players. His miserly ways were as legendary as his nose for talent. He collected some of the greatest ballplayers of the era, including Eddie Collins, Ray Schalk, Happy Felsch, Buck Weaver, Lefty Williams, Chick Gandil, and Swede Risberg.

The fact that they were able to win the 1917 World Championship was remarkable in that “[A]mbivalent work ethics, factionalism, divided loyalties, cliques, and outright hostilities between teammates” characterized the ball club. On one side was Eddie Collins, Schalk, Shano Collins, Dickie Kerr, and Red Faber. The other, rougher group was led by Gandil and included Jackson, Risberg, Williams, Weaver, Felsch, utilityman Fred McMullin, and ace hurler Eddie Cicotte, all of whom would become enmeshed in the scandal.

With America in the throes of the Great Warin 1918, the federal government demanded that all able-bodied men “work or fight.” Baseball was deemed not to be an “essential industry” and Jackson was classified as fit to serve despite being the sole support of his extended family. He chose to work in the shipyards rather than serve in the military, to the ire of many fans and the press. The New York Herald considered Jackson a slacker, and the Chicago Tribune reported:

“Good Americans will not be very enthusiastic over seeing him play baseball after the war is over.” Even American League president Ban Johnson hoped tha t Jackson and “other evaders” would be forced into active duty.

Once the war ended people were anxious to make up for lost time. An innocence had died. The roaring twenties ushered in a new era of looser morals, fast livin& and excitement. Owners feared that interest in baseball would diminish and they cut back on the schedule, reduced their rosters and, consequently, payrolls. But instead of staying away from the ballparks, attendances soared.

Jackson was very concerned about the reception awaiting him when the 1919 season began. To his delight, the Chicago fans presented him with a gold pocket watch on Opening Day. He was still their favorite, reveling in the cries of “Give ’em Black Betsy, Joe!” The Sox clinched the pennant on September 24 and went into the Series overwhelming favorites to beat an inferior Cincinnati ball club.

According to Frommer, Gandil approached Jackson on the final road trip of the season: “Seven of us have gotten together to fix the series. You’ll get $10,000 if you help us out.” Jackson declined. A few days later, Gandil raised the offer to $20,000, but again Jackson refused. Fearing the consequences of such a scheme, Jackson went to Comiskey and asked to be taken out of the lineup. Frommer quotes Jackson as saying that Comiskey would not listen to him. Does that mean the two actually met, or that the owner simply refused to see Jackson? Regardless, wouldn’t the request by one of the day’s greatest players to sit out the most important games of the year raise some eyebrows? Comiskey must. have known of the accusations.

The author analyzes each game of the Series and the strange incidents that “proved” something was amiss. Sure, anything can happen in baseball, but the Sox looked like “bushers” as Cincinnati beat them five games to three.

Jackson batted .375 on twelve hits and played flawless defense. Is this the work of a player on the take?

At the outset of the Fall Classic, with odds shifting to the Reds’ favor, Fullerton inferred that a fix might be on: “Every dog in the street knows it smells … A lot of strange things may happen before [it] ends.” Few of his colleagues believed, or wanted to believe, that such a heinous act was possible.

After the final game Williams gave Jackson $5,000: “Some of the players sold the Series to a gambling clique. (Didn’t Jackson already receive that information from Gandil before the Series?) We told the clique that you would play crooked, too … ”

Jackson said he didn’t wan t the money and was angry tha t his name had been used. When he sought to inforrn Comiskey, he was rebuffed by Harry Grabiner, the owner’s assistant, who said “Go home, Joe. We know what you want,” (emphasis added). In effect, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Fullerton wrote a scathing column alluding to the questionable goings-on in the Series. The Sporting NerJ.JS, the unofficial “bible of baseball,” attacked Fullerton for besmirching the reputation of the sport. Nevertheless, four separate investigations were launched. Comiskey downplayed the charges, claiming that there was always some scandal following such high-profile events. However, he offered a $10,000 reward for any evidence that would prove his players intentionally sought to dump games and warned that if any of them had gone crooked, “I will see that there is no place in organized baseball for them.”

In 1920, the National Commission, the ruling body of baseball, announced a massive effort to stop gambling. An investigation into a Phillies-Cubs game eventually turned into a probe of the previous year’s Series.

For propriety’s sake, Comiskey once again promised to fire anyone not on the up-and-up, although he fully realized that he needed his players to make money. He suspended the eight suspected of involvement, all the while praying fortheirreinstatement. Atthe time of the suspensions theSox werein first place, with Jackson among the league leaders in several offensive categories.

With the investigation looming the players were misled into signing wai vers of immunity, which were turned into confessions. Alfred Austrian, a noted attorney hired by Comiskey (and therefore looking out for the owner’s best interests), led this deception. Jackson clearly did not understand the ramifications when he scratched out his “X” on the waiver, which the avuncular Austrian told him was simply a paper he had to sign in order to testify. A grand jury handed down indictments on the players along wi th a number of gamblers for conspiracy to run a confidence game. During the trial, however, the confessions mysteriously disappeared.

The players were acquitted, but that was not sufficient for Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the newly appointed Commissioner of Baseball, who had been brought in to clean up baseball. He banned the “Black Sox” for life.

In his afterwards, Frommer raises several questions, many of which may seem trite: “If there was a plan to throw the Series, was it carried out? If so, which games were thrown?” “How much did each … player receive? And for what?” “Was due process served?” Some inquiries, though are more provocative: Was Comiskey guilty of a cover up? “If knowledge was tantamount to guilt … why did Grabiner and Comiskey escape judgment?” “Once the trial was on, did Comiskey attempt to save his team by supplying favorable witnesses? Did he pay the bill for the … legal talent ?” “How much stock should be placed in [Jackson’sl confession, signed with an “X,” of a man who could neither read nor write? Was the confession obtained under false pretenses?”

The subtitle for Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball promises “a revealing new look at the greatest sports scandal of the century,” ostensibly because it includes Jackson’s “never before published” entire grand jury testimony. This is neither particularly enlightening nor interesting, but it is new and therefore a selling point. In the testimony, Jackson claimed he was not in attendance at a meeting involving the other co-conspirators. His information seemed mostly second hand. Jackson warned Gandil he would tell ” … ‘the boss and have every damn one of you pulled out of the limelight,'” for which he received veiled threats of violence. Jackson also admitted he felt “ashamed” to have taken the money, despite trying vainly to return it (and being told to keep it).

As with the myth of his nickname, Jackson declared the image of the poor waif standing on the courtroom steps, pleading “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” was the fiction of the press.

Joe Jackson was thirty-three. His attempts to return to the game were constantly thwarted by Landis’ edict. In 1923, Jackson filed suit against Charles Comiskey for $119,000-the remainder of his contract, his World Series share, and $100,000 for slander. During the trial his old “confession” was conveniently found and used against him. The jury awarded him over $16,000, but the judge reversed the decision based on Jackson’s denial of the confession and claims of innocence. Jackson was jailed for two days for perjury and, upon his release, vowed never again to have anything to do with baseball.

Ironically, in 1926, Judge Landis ordered him to testify in another gambling trial. After consulting with his lawyer, Jackson decided he owed nothing to the game that had cast him out.

Public opinion supported Jackson. Numerous attempts were made to clear his name, but nothing ever came of them. Efforts are still made to have him inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Joe Jackson died in 1951, at the age of sixty-three, the “first man ou t” of the eight. Frommer writes:

They tried to exorcise his spirit from the game. But his black bat, blue darters and, slashing swings have stitched him into the tapestry of the national pastime nevertheless. Although cast out from the game he loved, he never became an outcast. His fall from grace never neutered his persona; it only served to enhance the myth. Often maligned and misunderstood during his lifetime, he has become a folk hero after death ….

Although it offers little in the way of new insight into Jackson’s role in the scandal, Shoeless foe and Ragtime Baseball is nonetheless an entertaining look into the tenor of the times, the hustle of the early twentieth century, and a sympathetic view of one of baseball’s greats.