THE FIELD THAT SHOELESS JOE JACKSON BUILT
Written: May 01 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: It's all about baseball
Cons: Can't play baseball in the winter
|
|
|
| M_Lee_Williams's Full Review: Iowa |
It’s 1911 and Shoeless Joe Jackson steps up to the plate. He’s a rookie playing for Cleveland and he knows how to please a crowd: hit the ball. At the age of 23 he set the record for highest batting average by a rookie.
Just two years later he will lead the American League in hits (197) and batting average (.551). O the glory days! Joe at bat! The crowd yelling, “Give ‘em Dixie! Give ‘em Dixie!”
Just eight years later he will be shamed out of baseball, banned for life, denied a place in the baseball Hall of Fame. But, for some baseball fans Shoeless Joe Jackson (Joseph Jefferson Jackson) will always have a place in their field of dreams.
There was a madness about the 1919 World Series. Joe Jackson’s team, the Chicago White Sox was playing against the Cincinnati Reds. Some say Jackson and seven other Chicago players took money to throw the game. Some say that many of the accused eight players did throw the game, but Jackson wasn’t in on it. There were arrests after the game and there was a trial. The eight were found not guilty, but they were punished anyway by being banned for life from baseball.
Of the eight, it seems only Jackson went on to prosper and live a contented life. He never fought the decision ending his baseball career, preferring instead to let God be his judge when all was said and done. And all was said and done in 1951 when Jackson died at the age of 63 of a heart attack.
As far as I know Shoeless Joe Jackson never spent any time in Dyersville, Iowa, but if the spirit of a man with a big heart and a natural talent lives on, it is surely alive and well in Dyersville. This hamlet, population of about 4,000, hosts a baseball tournament in Jackson’s name. It has kept intact the baseball field created for the filming of the movie, FIELD OF DREAMS. It is a friendly place where the family can bring their gloves, bats and ball and play a few innings of baseball on the field of dreams and recall why it is we love to play the game.
Dyersville is just 200 miles from Chicago, where Jackson’s glory days came to an end. It is 55 miles from Cedar Rapids and a mere 25 miles from Dubuque and the Mississippi River. The field is about 3 miles outside of Dyersville. Easy to find. Folks around Dyersville know that those who love baseball need just a few directions and a sign or two to point the way.
In the movie, FIELD OF DREAMS, one of the ghost players asks Kevin Costner’s character, “Is this heaven?” The answer: “No, it’s Iowa.” I think on a Sunday afternoon, after the picnic basket is emptied and a cool breeze rustles the corn in the nearby fields, making sounds that call us to grab a glove and head out to the field, there might be a little heaven in that. There’s surely a little bit of heaven in sitting in the bleachers and dreaming dreams of lazy summers and youth and baseball.
The movie baseball field is open to visitors April through November. Admission is free. On the last Sunday in July through September, the Ghost Players come out on the field to entertain. The Ghost Players are many of the original baseball players that emerged from the cornfield in the movie to play ball. When they are not in Dyersville, they are on the road a lot, going to U.S. military bases throughout the world to entertain the baseball-loving soldiers. The money from the concession stands nearby is spent keeping the field in shape and in sending the Ghost Players to the military bases.
The big event in Dyersville this summer happen July 1 – 4, when the 2nd Annual Shoeless Joe Jackson National Baseball Tournament will be held. Players from 20 American League teams will be participating in the event. What a way to celebrate baseball, to celebrate one of the greatest players of baseball – Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Like many players, Jackson followed superstitions. One of his oddest superstitions was collecting hairpins. He felt the carrying of them in his back pocket kept him from falling into slumps. He also felt that bats had just so many hits in them, and when he felt he had used up the bat, he’d get another one. He named his bats – “Black Betsy,” “Blond Betsy,” “Big Jim,” and “Dixie.” (Thus the reason for the crowd yelling, “Give ‘em Dixie!”)
When he left the north after the baseball season to return to South Carolina, his home state, he took his bats with them because he felt that they should not get cold. When he wasn’t using them, he rubbed them in sweet oil and covered them with a clean, dry cloth.
The story of Jackson is interesting and has been written by several authors. The legend of Jackson has many myths. Two of the more interesting ones concern how he got his name and the impact of what happened in 1919 had on young fans. In 1908, while not yet a major league player, Jackson wore new spikes during a game and they rubbed blisters on his feet. He tried wearing his old shoes, but that didn’t work. Wearing the new spikes was out of the question. There was only one thing for him to do and that was to go shoeless out onto the field. He did it only one time, but the name stuck forever.
The other myth is not based in fact. A Chicago newspaper reporter made up the story of Joe coming out of the courthouse on the day he was arraigned for conspiring to fix the World Series game. The reporter wrote of a young fan rushing up to Joe and pleading, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” Though that never happened, there is still the sense among baseball players that we want Joe to say it ain’t so and we want baseball to recognize one of their finest. He did speak of the madness that was the 1919 World Series in an interview in 1949 in an issue of SPORT Magazine. He said he it wasn’t so, he said he was innocent. He said he played his heart out during the Series. His stats seem to prove that he did. He had a .375 batting average and 1.000 fielding average during that infamous Series.
It is true he loved baseball. It is true that he was a natural baseball player. It is also true that Shoeless Joe Jackson was a baseball player with a rhythm in tune with the forces of the universe, and a strength of talent that was not given a chance to run its natural course because he was forced into retirement at the age of thirty-two. Baseball moved on without him. Unlike his bats, Jackson was retired when he still had hits in him.
There is the stadium that Ruth built and it’s in New York. There is the field that Jackson built. It’s in Iowa. Going to either one of them should satisfy the soul of those of us who love baseball.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
M_Lee_Williams
|
|
Member: M. Lee Williams
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 100 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.