Making a case for Shoeless Joe Jackson to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown
Harold Baines is in! Should “Shoeless Joe” Jackson follow?
Back on December 9 of last year, the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced that former Chicago White Sox player and fan favorite Baines had been selected along with Lee Smith to the hallowed halls of Cooperstown by the 16-person “Today’s Game Committee”. Baines received the minimum of twelve votes for induction.
Congratulations to Baines, the honor is well deserved as he becomes the 27th Pale Hose player to enter the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Keeping in-line with those deserving of such status, I’m writing this article in hopes the number will increase to 28 by way of a one-man cause to endorse former Chicago White Sox outfielder, Joseph Jefferson Jackson, for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and to have his good name reinstated to the positive annals of professional baseball.
Although I wasn’t alive and following professional baseball or the ChiSox back in the early part of the 20th century, I’m well aware of Jackson’s on-field feats and that of his alleged involvement in the infamous, “Black Sox Scandal of 1919”. A scandal that resulted in the banishment of Jackson and seven of his teammates from professional baseball by then-Commissioner Kennesaw “Mountain” Landis, a federal judge at the time.