OT: Shoeless Joe HOF decision?
 

It is being reported that there will be a decision tomorrow on whether or not Rob Manfred will reinstate Joe Jackson.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybro...on-on-tuesday/

What do you guys think, will he be reinstated or not? Though I think he should be, I am guessing that it is not going to happen. I hope I'm wrong.

correction- title should have read "reinstatement", not HOF

I'm thinking.....
 

Thumbs :) Up! Reinstatement will be a "Yes"!

Say it is so Joe!

Peace, Mike

maybe the price of JJ cards will decrease if he is reinstated?????

LOL, maybe I can afford one then.

I'd like to think so but then again there should be stipulations.

#1 this isn't happening just to get Rose to be reinstated.
#2 the other 7 men will be reinstated mainly Cicotte, Williams, and Weaver.

This is an absolute joke. He needs to stay banned. If they want to reinstate someone from that group, they should reinstate Buck Weaver.

My guess is a "No". Then they would open a can of worms and have to reinstate Rose.

Why would MLB allow the Museum to make the announcement? They like their own glory.......

No it wouldn't. Joe Jackson has been banned for like 90 years, while rose has been for like 30.

+1

I don't really care one way or another. I am deeply passionate about baseball but there are a lot of players who are in who shouldn't be and, arguably, a few out who should be in. I will assure you it is worse from a popularity standpoint for Jackson to be in than it is for him to be out.

I would think Joe Jax's card values would go up if he were reinstated. There would be all of these HOF collectors that would then need to add a card of his to their collections if he were voted in.

If he is reinstated, then I predict the auction houses will be inundated with people who discovered signed photos of Joe Jackson that were stored in someone's attic or barn for the past century yet are miraculously in mint condition. And of course PSA will deem, if not all, then most authentic.

It was a "lifetime" ban...Jackson's life time ended in the 1950s. Reinstate all of them. Otherwise throw Speaker and Cobb out for their role in throwing a game.

This is the correct answer.

+3

You know, Cicotte, though a little light on wins, has pretty nice career numbers.

+1

My buddy Jim who sold me my awesome 1957 topps set is all about shoelessjoeinthehof. For his sake I hope it happens. Otherwise, if it helps Pete get in, then I am violently opposed.

Joe Jax
 

I 100% agree with Grant.
There is no way this decision is going to be announced by the Museum if the decision is to reinstate Jackson. That is a MLB call all the way.

They will drum up some free PR for the museum, that's all. Should be about as effective as a 2 dollar discount coupon in the weekly Nickel Ads.

As far as whether Joe gets reinstated, I also agree that his popularity will not increase much if any if allowed in. Some of his fame comes from him being a great player but <I> not </I>being in the Hall.

It will irritate HOF Collectors (like me) who have been able to avoid collecting his astronomically priced cards since he's not in the Hall of Fame. Voting purely with my wallet, I am in no rush to have him added to my WL :p

Yawn. No way it happens unless Manfred departs from 90 years of baseball and then the voters give him the nod. I don't see it at all. I think I have an equivalent chance to be elected, and that ain't ever gonna happen. Non-issue IMO. Hope I'm wrong, because that would make for fruitful discussion, but not seeing it.

IMO

Jackson shouldn't be reinstated. If Mountain Landis decided on that all these years ago, and the fact that Frick, Chandler and every commissioner after him didn't reinstate them, then it is obvious that they shouldn't be voted in.

~Owen

EDIT: And..... he's still banned

http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/stor...-reinstatement

If Jackson is going to be considered to be reiinstated, then Rose should as well since both were banned for practically the same reason

I think Rose and Jackson should both stay banished but I don't think they were "banned for practically the same reason"

-Rose bet on baseball. Dealing with bookies is a no-no and every one from a kid in single A ball to a veteran like Rose knows betting on the game is instant expulsion

-Jackson took cash to throw the World Series.

Both admitted doing what they were accused of and both should stay banned.

And does anyone find it disturbing that MLB is supporting that Fan Duel betting racket?

Agreed.

Also, if reinstated I doubt he would be elected to the HOF

Interesting, I did not know that. In what way are they supporting it?

This is what I was thinking. Are his career stats even good enough for the hall?

The similiarities IMO are both were driven by cash.

What? His career average was .356 incl .408 in 1911.
If he is reinstated & doesn't make the Hall, it will be from the 1919 fix, not his career stats.

He isn't being reinstated-

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/20...ng-reinstated/

Oops, forgot about that. I was looking at the totals line.. 1772 hits.

Rose and Jackson should both be in the HOF hands down

Odd that the commissioner's response was dated July 20, 2015. If so, the museum held the letter for over a month knowing full well the results but didn't share it publicly until a day after baiting the public into thinking that a reinstatement was possible.

Why did you call it a racket...Its just fantasy the same way you play for a season they just offer daily leagues. Its actually pretty fun. I am not a gambler (I understand the gray area of Fantasy) but have enjoyed the one day leagues very much.

Joe Jackson could have been voted in but he's only gotten 4 total votes the whole time.

This is one of the great things about baseball, the debates that can go on forever.

I appreciate both sides of this debate and side on the they were both great but they should not be in the Hall.

In my opinion one of the things that makes the Baseball Hall of Fame special is the ethics clause. While we all know that there are several rascals already in, it makes it more special in my mind that the quality of the human being matters.

I enjoy watching pro football but the Pro Football Hall of Fame (which I have visited) is not special in my opinion. From the Lawrence Taylors of the world to the Warren Sapps and Michael Irvins, these are just not quality human beings.

There are some players in Cooperstown that I have encountered that are beyond rude like Mays, Bench and now Randy Johnson. They may be rude but they have never injured anyone off the field that I know about?

Heck, if Lawrence Phillips could still run some NFL team would try to get him off this latest charge of killing his cell mate.

Once again, I appreciate everyone's dissenting opinions, this is a cool part of baseball.

He admitted himself to taking $5,000 from Lefty Williams. Whether he threw the series or not, he took money to throw it instead of reporting anything or doing anything to stop the fix. He deserves the ban in my opinion.

Yes, I do. I'm all for placing a bet, but the fact that the league and the players are allowed to sponsor gambling in this form is an issue. Particularly when players who sponsor the sites, like C.C. Sabathia, would likely be banned for utilizing them.

It's a far cry from when Kuhn suspended Mays and Mantle for being casino greeters

So if he took the money but didnt jeopardize the series he should still be banned??? Just curious but whats the logic behind that. Who cares if he took money. If he didnt throw the game then....

I agree. Rose visited Manfred July 14-15, and this letter was penned July 20. Sounds like Manfred spent that week reaffirming past decisions of former commissioners. Don't see any new ground here, non story.

What is your logic? Guy A offers Guy B money to throw the World Series. Guy B takes the money. His team loses. He keeps the money.

Did Guy B do nothing wrong? Even if you want to argue that Jackson played well, he took money to throw the World Series. The appropriate thing to do would have been to not take the money and alert the league. But he chose to take the money and keep his mouth shut until he was implicated, at which time he admitted to taking a bribe to throw the Series.

He did nothing to jeopardize the game right? So besides taking money then what did he do personally to keep him outta the HOF??? I get what youre saying but if he played his best and didnt purposely throw any games then he deserves to be in

He accepted a bribe to throw the World Series and admitted such in court. That is why he is banned from baseball. Seems cut and dry to me. If there is some honor in accepting a bribe, I am not aware of it.

Accepting a bribe is meaningless unless u do something personally to fulfill the terms of the bribe. If he didnt then theres no reason whatsoever why he shouldnt be in

That's a shame... obviously by judging his performance in the series... Joe didn't throw anything, but taking the money makes him guilty.

He'll never get in..... but he'll always be an iconic figure and his cards will always have significant value.

Jackson had 0 errors, 12 hits and a .375 batting average during the world series and he doesnt deserve to be in the HOF??? Come on

He accepted a bribe. His play doesn't matter and no one is going to ignore the fact that he took the money and his team then lost. His personal play doesn't mean as much as the moral implications of taking the money and being on the losing team, just like he was supposed to be.

You need to think about coercion and how it works. Either everyone is in, or no one is in. So just by accepting the money he told his teammates that he didn't object to losing the World Series on purpose. There's your ban.

I see what youre saying and i agree to a certain extent. But my own personal opinion is i could care less if he took a bribe. If looking at his personal achievements and stats he should be in. If he personally didnt jeopardize the game then to me he should be in. Theres all kinds of speculation about what really happened but jackson's stats dont lie and based on those itd far fetched to say he threw any games. Let him in

But how can you say he didn't jeopardize a game? You have no way of knowing that and you could easily view his play as a straw man tactic to alleviate suspicion.

No youre right i dont know but looking at his world series stats if he did he sure did a horrible job..lol

While a timeless debate, I don't see your side of it really. I think romanticism has clouded our judgement of what occurred.

I thought Manfred's letter was perfectly worded. What do we know now that Landis did not know in 1921? Likely nothing. Therefore Manfred has to respect that decision. Only if new, substantive evidence emerges that changes the fact that Jackson admitted under oath to accepting money from a person he knew to be paying him and his teammates to throw the World Series should baseball even consider re-looking at the case in its entirety.

Authoritative decisions like banning a player must be respected by future generations and future commissioners for the punishment to have merit and for the authority to be considered inviolable. You cannot rewrite history out of nostalgia. While it may have seemed harsh, the decision was final in Jackson's life and should remain so now unless new evidence emerges.

I see both sides and respect people's opinions but personally i feel like he should be in along with pete rose. Thatll never change but like you said itll always be a timeless debate.

You can do a lot of things and not get banned from Baseball. But gambling or taking money has always been THE BIG NO-NO.

Jim Devlin, George Hall, Al Nichols and Bill Craver of the Louisville Grays were banned in 1877. They were, late in the season, 27-13, but went 8-12 in the last games. All but Craver admitted throwing games.

I've always felt these guys set the "unbreakable" rule in Baseball that has held up for all these years.

Rose, Jackson, Weaver, NO.

They both get my vote to be in. In my opinion their career numbers should determine their entry to the HOF.
The only ones i don't want in are the ones we know 100% used PED.

Totally agree

OT: Shoeless Joe HOF decision?
 

NO!!

In that era who would be dumb enough to rat on the mob???? Arnold Rothstein was in business with luciano, lansky, etc youd be looking at a death sentence if you snitched..period

The point is you could have just said no and not taken $5,000 from Lefty Williams. You can't look at stats and say Joe Jackson definitively did not throw the World Series. He played the field. There's nothing about a box score that will tell you a guy didn't pull up on a fly ball they could have caught or tripped up rounding the bases and took a base away from themselves.

Thats true but not going along with it couldve also meant a death sentence as well. There was millions at stake and if 1 person was a threat to that do you really think theyd hesitate to do something. How do you explain jackson begging comiskey to take him out of the series? Obviously he didnt want any part of it.

I don't know if there's any truth to that claim that he asked Comiskey not to play. He made it later in life and not during his deposition.

If you want to go with the mob angle, which I don't really buy into because it takes a whole team or no team, he didn't have to accept the money. Accepting the money is what did him in.

I have always understood that Weaver did not take money, nor threw any game, that his only part was not telling the league about the fix. Am I mistaken in this? I am definitely not a big time baseball historian, just a card collector and fan. I have always thought, though, that his wrong doing was much more minor than the others.

Some historians state that Weaver was present at three separate meetings when the fix was being planned. He was more than just some naive innocent.

Remember, Asinof's Eight Men Out took a lot of artistic license with the story and should be read with caution when seeking out historical fact.

When MLB looked at Weaver's case again they found that he definitively participated in at least two meetings, one in New York City and one in Cincinnati. He discussed throwing the series with his teammates. He told no one and did nothing when they did throw the series.

But it wasnt the WHOLE team and the fact that jackson even knew about it made him a liability. You dont think for a second that Rothstein used intimidation to persuade some of the players to go along with it???

In that case why pay him at all to be in on it? He didn't have to be paid extra to play well.

PS At this point Rose has paid the price. I would reinstate him, unless there is evidence he bet against his own team and I don't believe there is.

So when is this desition happening? Or did it happen today already?

I don't think so, no. Because Buck Weaver attended multiple meetings and took no money, he simply sat back and watched his team throw the series. Joe Jackson on the other hand did take money. No one had to do anything.

Does everyone in the hobby that supports Rose forget the shady stuff he did hobbywise? Stuff that comes very close to fraud if not being fraud and sometimes only because it's so hard to prove?

Selling loads of game used bats - Sketchy when he was using a new bat for what seemed like every pitch. Not illegal, but still a little questionable for the era.

Selling multiple bats from the same milestone hit. - Hard to prove he did that, harder still to prove that's exactly what he claimed at the time. sort of dueling stories, and the buyers could have been interpreting his claims. Sort of "this bat is from the at bat where I got the hit" which gets taken as "this is the bat I got the hit with" In the buyers mind - instead of the more truthful "this is the bat I hit the foul with a couple pitches before" (Not sure of the exact at bats/hits , just a for instance)

He did some other stuff too. I'd have to really dig for the old magazines that have the details.

As for Jackson, I agree that taking the money and playing well but keeping quiet is wrong, and I'm confident in thinking that Landis viewed it as being just as bad. Plus, as others have pointed out, there's a lot of subtle stuff a great athlete could do that wouldn't be obvious from the stats. While it might be trackable now with the video all teams have of other teams in detail. At the time there was no way to track stuff like not getting a good jump on maybe one particular ball so it falls in, or not taking a base, or taking a strike in a certain situation.

Steve B

I don't care about Pete Rose's personal shortcomings or hobby activities. By sheer force of will he made himself into the all-time hit leader and a superstar. He was the consummate competitor, and obviously raised the level of play of his teammates. His work ethic was unmatched.

As Sports Illustrated put it, even in the stands, his will to win could be felt.

As Rose himself put it, in one of the greatest of all baseball quotes, "I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball."

Yeah he gambled, but he's paid for that with purgatory for decades. He is clearly a Hall of Famer.

Nope. He refused to admit what he did until it was undeniable. At any time, if he did in fact never bet against his own team, he could have admitted as such. So after all those lies he told when faced with the truth, you really believe him and believe he has enough integrity to be telling the truth this one time?

Given how fiercely competitive he was, I doubt he bet against his own team.

He's a compulsive gambler though. When are compulsive gamblers moral crusaders? If it meant winning the money he was chasing, why wouldn't he do it? Clearly he didn't respect the game enough to not bet on it.

Has anyone claimed he did, or suggested specific games where his playing or managing was questionable? They may have I just was not aware of it.

Same with Louisville Craver. He never admitted to taking money. Later in life, trying to be reinstated, he adamantly denied it. He was included, in association, like Weaver, for not coming forward.

Arguably more minor, but others would argue the opposite.

All that stuff has NOTHING to do with what he accomplished on the field without any help. Who cares if he sold bats..how does that affect anything he did as a player? The HOF is based on numbers and what you accomplished as a player. The bat issues can be dealt in another way. He deserves to be in no question about it

In 1920 Jackson batted .382. This is the year after the 1919 series. Landis announced his rule against throwing a game Aug. 3, 1921. This is almost two years after the 1919 series.
So here's my question. How can you be suspended for life for breaking a rule that hasn't been written yet? Wouldn't that be like getting a speeding ticket for driving 70 mph on a highway that was two years later changed to 55 mph?

Now for the life time suspension. Wasn't Steve Howe given like 7 life time suspensions? If I remember it right, each "life time" suspension was for one year.

Just sayin....

Joe took money to throw a World Series. Landis had to set a hard example to keep organized gambling out of the game and instill the public's trust that the games were not fixed going forward. Joe and the others were the example. Time does not change what he and the others did.

As for Pete, and I'm a big Reds fan and loved Pete the player, I cannot believe a word that comes out of that man's mouth. He has lied from the day he was investigated, only fessing up to whatever evidence is on the table that he cannot deny. He agreed to a lifetime ban and that is what he deserves.

Now if the Hall of Fame wanted to induct either of these gentlemen, it could change their own rule and take out the part about being banned from baseball - remember being banned from baseball and not being eligible for the HoF are two independent issues.

I don't presume to be an expert on this. I have read a lot of books, read the grand jury testimony that is available, have seen some interviews and still don't really have a good sense of what actually occurred. After 90 years, it is probably unrealistic to expect that I would.

What I do think is that it is crystal clear that Comiskey knew about it and did his best to cover it up. I think it is almost equally as clear that Ban Johnson knew and tried to cover it up. If we are going to vilify the players who were involved, and I get the indignation about "cheating the game" and whatnot, it seems to me that the higher-ups who knew about it, and in Comiskey's case, was the basic reason why it occurred, deserve an equal fate. Comiskey is in the HOF. So is Johnson. Fair is fair. Kick them out or give up the pretend outrage.

BTW, did anyone note that, according to some interviews, the genesis of the 1919 conspiracy was that the 1918 world series had been thrown? I find that very interesting.

Very interesting...im sure we'll never know the real truth on what occured. But looking at Jackson's stats and what hes confessed about the world series i dont believe he personally jeopardized any game. But the debate will go on.....thanks for sharing what you learned.