Before the scandal. Before the courtroom. Before the ban. Before the movies. Before Joe Jackson became a ghostly legend haunting the cornfields of Iowa, he was just a wide-eyed, illiterate kid from South Carolina riding a train north, contract in hand, to join the mighty Philadelphia A’s.
It was August 1908, and Connie Mack had just paid $900 for the 20-year-old’s rights. Mack thought he’d found something special. Jackson didn’t exactly agree.
Philadelphia was big. Loud. Overwhelming.
And Jackson? He was homesick the moment the train stopped moving.
He got one hit in his first big league at-bat. Then he vanished. Back to Greenville. He came back. Left again. Came back again.
Mack loved the bat but couldn’t stomach the fear, the awkwardness, the teasing from teammates who mocked Jackson’s illiteracy and backwoods roots. So in July 1910, Mack gave up. He shipped Jackson to Cleveland. And baseball lore was set in motion.
All these years later — 74 of them since Jackson’s death in 1951 — that lore has taken a new twist.
In a Tuesday letter revealed by ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced that Jackson — and the rest of the infamous Black Sox — are no longer on baseball’s permanently ineligible list. They’ve been reinstated. Posthumously.
Just like Pete Rose, whose ban was lifted last week following his death in September, Jackson’s name is no longer chained to a ruling handed down over a century ago by baseball’s first commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis.
“No player who throws a ball game… will ever play professional baseball,” Landis wrote in 1921. That line became baseball’s moral high ground for generations. The eight players from the 1919 Chicago White Sox — accused of conspiring with gamblers to throw the World Series — were acquitted in court but banned for life. No appeals. No exceptions.
Jackson was the most famous of the eight. And the most complicated. He hit .375 in that World Series. He didn’t commit a single error. He even hit the only home run in the series. To this day, historians argue over whether he was a willing participant or collateral damage in the biggest scandal in baseball history.
Now? That debate may be headed to Cooperstown.
“Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered,” Hall chairperson Jane Forbes Clark said in a statement posted Tuesday.
That means Jackson is no longer barred from enshrinement. And here's the catch: he doesn’t need universal forgiveness. He needs 12 people.
That’s all it will take. If at least 12 of the 16 members of the Hall’s Classic Baseball Era Committee vote for him — and his name is almost certainly going to appear among the eight candidates selected by the Historical Overview Committee — then he’s in. That vote will come in 2027. Induction would follow in 2028. The same path now sits before Rose.
As for Jackson, his story was never as simple as banned or innocent. His major league journey sputtered in Philadelphia, where the city and its people intimidated him, where his teammates ridiculed him, and where his manager, the gentlemanly Connie Mack, reluctantly acknowledged the talent would never bloom under his watch. “A mighty fine man,” Jackson once said of Mack — “taught me more baseball than any other manager I had.” But it didn’t work. It couldn’t.
So Mack pulled the trigger on a trade. Out went Jackson. In came outfielder Bris Lord and $6,000. Jackson headed to Cleveland. Then to Chicago. Then to history.
And then… to the shadows.
For over a century, his name — and those of Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Lefty Williams — became baseball’s cautionary tale. Landis's ruling cast them out. The movies brought them back. “Eight Men Out.” “Field of Dreams.” Redemption through film, but never through baseball.
Until now.
Risberg, the last surviving member of the eight, died in 1975. There are no apologies left to accept. No clemency to acknowledge. No second chances to embrace. Just the Hall. And a ballot. And the long, painful question of whether baseball is finally ready to forgive.
Even if it's too late for anyone to hear it.
All these years later — 74 of them since Jackson’s death in 1951 — that lore has taken a new twist.
In a Tuesday letter revealed by ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced that Jackson — and the rest of the infamous Black Sox — are no longer on baseball’s permanently ineligible list. They’ve been reinstated. Posthumously.
Just like Pete Rose, whose ban was lifted last week following his death in September, Jackson’s name is no longer chained to a ruling handed down over a century ago by baseball’s first commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis.
“No player who throws a ball game… will ever play professional baseball,” Landis wrote in 1921. That line became baseball’s moral high ground for generations. The eight players from the 1919 Chicago White Sox — accused of conspiring with gamblers to throw the World Series — were acquitted in court but banned for life. No appeals. No exceptions.
Jackson was the most famous of the eight. And the most complicated. He hit .375 in that World Series. He didn’t commit a single error. He even hit the only home run in the series. To this day, historians argue over whether he was a willing participant or collateral damage in the biggest scandal in baseball history.
Now? That debate may be headed to Cooperstown.
“Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered,” Hall chairperson Jane Forbes Clark said in a statement posted Tuesday.
That means Jackson is no longer barred from enshrinement. And here's the catch: he doesn’t need universal forgiveness. He needs 12 people.
That’s all it will take. If at least 12 of the 16 members of the Hall’s Classic Baseball Era Committee vote for him — and his name is almost certainly going to appear among the eight candidates selected by the Historical Overview Committee — then he’s in. That vote will come in 2027. Induction would follow in 2028. The same path now sits before Rose.
As for Jackson, his story was never as simple as banned or innocent. His major league journey sputtered in Philadelphia, where the city and its people intimidated him, where his teammates ridiculed him, and where his manager, the gentlemanly Connie Mack, reluctantly acknowledged the talent would never bloom under his watch. “A mighty fine man,” Jackson once said of Mack — “taught me more baseball than any other manager I had.” But it didn’t work. It couldn’t.
So Mack pulled the trigger on a trade. Out went Jackson. In came outfielder Bris Lord and $6,000. Jackson headed to Cleveland. Then to Chicago. Then to history.
And then… to the shadows.
For over a century, his name — and those of Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver and Lefty Williams — became baseball’s cautionary tale. Landis's ruling cast them out. The movies brought them back. “Eight Men Out.” “Field of Dreams.” Redemption through film, but never through baseball.
Until now.
Risberg, the last surviving member of the eight, died in 1975. There are no apologies left to accept. No clemency to acknowledge. No second chances to embrace. Just the Hall. And a ballot. And the long, painful question of whether baseball is finally ready to forgive.
Even if it's too late for anyone to hear it.
