Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball

Nearly seventy-five years hove passed since America was rocked by the biggest sports scandal of the century–the fixing of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago "Black Sox." Eight ballplayers from one of the greatest teams ever were banished from baseball for all time (despite being found innocent in a court of law)–foremost among them the legendary Joseph Jefferson Jackson, "Shoeless Joe, " who maintained his innocence until his death.

Now, in Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball, celebrated sports author and historian Harvey Frommer fuses oral history, court testimony, and sparkling narrative to re-create the life and times of the illiterate farm boy who became one of the greatest players in baseball history. To read this riveting story is to rediscover a sport, and a nation, at a crossroads–a time marked by larger-than-life characters, the First World War, and the great pilgrimage from the country to the city. The story of Shoeless Joe is, more than anything, the story of America–and a loss of innocence that would never be recovered.

But this is more than an in-depth biography; it is an impassioned but reasoned argument for a re-evaluation of this misunderstood man, and it raises new questions about the entire Black Sox scandal. Included for the first time ever is Jackson's sworn grand jury testimony, complete and untouched. Did Shoeless Joe help to throw the World Series? Did he deserve eternal banishment from the game he loved so much? Or was he framed by the manipulative owners of the time, sacrificed by baseball's power structure to preserve the illusion of innocence in the game? Find out in Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball.

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