Shoeless Joe Jackson
Shoeless Joe Jackson
David E. Poston
1
Here’s Joe rounding third in his stocking feet,
mill village boy whose new spikes raised blisters,
and somebody in the crowd yells, You shoeless bastard!
Watch the kid from Pickens County outshine them all,
going from mill cleanup at 13 to cleanup hitter at 19,
before he can shake the lint out of his hair. In 1908,
the Greenville Spinners sell him to Connie Mack for $325.
He can’t read the headlines in the Philly papers,
has to order what other players do in restaurants.
He is so homesick for his young wife that he jumps the train
in Richmond. Mack is done with him, but Comiskey buys him
for $65,000, and in Chicago he makes good.
Here’s Joe, big-time star of the White Sox, his brand-
new alligator shoes proclaiming to the world
I am not a Shoeless Joe. His glove is the place where
triples go to die, his swing so feared Babe Ruth copies it.
But none of it is enough.
Here comes 1919 and a swirl of
rumors about Arnold Rothstein, about the fix being in,
turning the odds against the highly favored Sox. Some say
the gamblers promised him $20,000 to throw the series.
Here’ s Joe asking to be benched rather than play under
a cloud of doubt, but play he does, has twelve hits,
no errors, the highest batting average, yet Cincinnati wins,
and rumors keep spreading until a grand jury is called.
They take one ballot to find all eight men, Joe among them,
innocent, but the stain can’t be erased. As he leaves the courthouse,
a legend is born: a young boy—they say—cries, Joe, say it ain’t so!
Joe says to everyone, for the rest of his life,
It ain’t.
2
But the high priests of baseball refuse to listen. First
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who condemns him despite the court.
For a kiss, Judas got thirty pieces of silver but, for nothing,
Joe gets banned for life. And on it goes: Giamatti doesn’t want
to play God with history, Faye Vincent can’t uncipher it all,
Bud Selig washes his hands of it when Ted Williams pleads for Joe.
In a field called Hakeldama, some say, Judas hanged himself.
Joe goes home to Pickens County.
3
Perhaps if hope had let him alone,
Joe’s shame would have died,
but the world won’t forget,
not even in 1951, when Ed Sullivan
invites him on and the Cleveland Indians
offer a trophy and a spot in their hall of fame.
Then, a week before his TV date,
his heart attack cancels everyone’s plans.
4
Imagine Joe as a boy again, blending in with barefoot children,
with beggars and idlers in the street as Jesus stoops
to put his dusty sandals at the Pharisee’s doorway. Hear Judas
scoff when the woman dries the Son of Man’s feet with her hair.
Hear Jesus say, tenderly, Shoeless Joe, all will be forgiven.
See Joe waiting for the world to say it.
Go to Cooperstown. See the life-sized photo of Shoeless Joe.
His bat is there, along with his jersey from the 1919 Series.
So is the last Major League baseball contract he signed.
So are his shoes.
David E. Poston lives in Gastonia, North Carolina, historically a significant center of the textile industry in an area still dotted with former mill villages similar to the one from which Shoeless Joe Jackson hailed. He has work forthcoming in moonShine review, BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, and North Carolina Literary Review. He is the author of three poetry collections, with a new collection, Letting Go, scheduled for publication by Fernwood Press in fall 2025.
Elliot Lin is a college student who spends their free time musing about sports and how they shape or reflect identity. You can find their other baseball-related illustrations here, on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.
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