By Wesley Harris
One of the most famous players in Major League Baseball, “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, not only has Louisiana connections, but he played ball locally.
For a brief time in the summer of 1923, Jackson played for the Bastrop baseball team, engaging the Homer team in nine games and the Haynesville team in three.
Joseph Jefferson Jackson was born on July 16, 1888, in Pickens County, South Carolina. Jackson overcame a sad start in life to rise to the pinnacle of his profession. Born into a dirt poor family, he never attended a day of school and could not read or write. He played for factory teams as a youth. In 1908 he signed with the semi-pro Greenville Spinners for $75. In 1910 he played in 136 games for the New Orleans Pelicans club before moving up to the majors.
First playing for the Philadelphia Athletics and Cleveland Indians, Jackson was traded in 1915 to the Chicago White Sox. Charged with throwing the 1919 World Series after losing to Cincinnati, Jackson and seven other White Sox players were suspended from the league. A Chicago jury acquitted them in 1921, but baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned them permanently.
Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Oscar “Happy” Felsch, Fred McMullin, Buck Weaver and Jackson were labeled the “Black Sox” for their alleged participation in the betting scheme.
In 1922, Jackson moved to Savannah, Ga., and opened a dry cleaning business but by the summer of 1923 he was back in baseball in the most unlikely place—north Louisiana.
The league represented towns in north Louisiana—Alexandria, Bastrop, Glemora, Haynesville, Homer and Rayville.
Exactly how Jackson got to Bastrop is lost to history, but that summer he filed an appeal of his suspension from major league baseball. He needed to get his body in shape for a return to the big league.
Bastrop and Morehouse Parish were still reeling from the August 1922 disappearance of two white men. Months later, their bodies were found in Lake Lafourche near Bastrop. Louisiana Governor John M. Parker sought help from the U.S. Department of Justice in suppressing Ku Klux Klan violence within the state. In the summer of 1923, newspapers across the nation were still following the case as federal agents spent months investigating the murders in Bastrop.
Baseball was a welcome respite from the national attention focused on the little town.
Jackson made his first appearance in Bastrop in early June, playing under the alias Joe Johnson. Other Black Sox players were suspected of being part of the team, at least for a time, especially former White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte playing under the name Moore.
In early June, the Haynesville team visited Bastrop, winning two of three games. Jackson batted twelve times in the series with three hits.
Jackson and the Bastrop team visited Homer July 1-3. Homer won the first game 5-4, with Jackson going hitless in three trips to the plate. On July 2, Bastrop bounced back to win 5-1. The score for the final game was not recorded in local papers, nor were player statistics.
Homer traveled to Bastrop for a game on July 6 and a doubleheader on July 8, losing all three games 3-1, 3-1, and 1-0. Jackson was one for five with a run scored in the first game. Player stats were not reported for the doubleheader.
Around July 11, the identity of Bastrop’s centerfielder was exposed. Articles announcing Shoeless Joe’s membership on the team appeared in several north Louisiana newspapers and the press quickly spread the news across the country. That day, manager H. F. Benson announced his team would soon take a two to three week road trip to play in Mississippi and Alabama. The trip may have been prompted by reports some local games had been cancelled because opponents refused to play against Jackson.
Bastrop returned to Homer July 14-15, winning three games. Jackson scored four runs with five hits—two of them home runs—in nine trips to the plate.
With the final score of one of the Homer games unknown, in the other 23 games Jackson played for Bastrop that summer, the team won 18 and lost 5. Although complete stats are unavailable today, in games in which Jackson’s hits were recorded, he batted a respectable .296.
On its first road trip stop on July 17, the Bastrop team defeated Brookhaven, Mississippi 3-1. The next day, Shoeless Joe arrived in Americus, Georgia to join the local team, while the other Bastrop players went to nearby Albany for a game.
Jackson’s arrival created a stir that reverberated all the way to the baseball commissioner’s office. Americus guaranteed Jackson five weeks of employment, but the directors of the South Georgia Baseball League said he could not play. The commissioner sent word that whoever knowingly played with outlawed players might find themselves barred from ever rising to the minor and major leagues.
While officials debated the dilemma, hundreds of fans flocked to Jackson’s hotel to meet him. Soon the Bastrop team showed up at Jackson’s request and nearly every man joined Joe in becoming the revamped Americus team. The Bastrop newspaper continued to follow the Americus team, calling them “the Bastrop team playing in Americus.”
With Jackson managing the team and playing the outfield, the Bastrop men participated in 32 games for Americus in the summer of 1923, winning 24 with six losses and two ties.
Over the next five years, Jackson played on various small town teams in Georgia and South Carolina. He was never reinstated to the majors and his involvement in the betting scandal is disputed to this day.
His play in the notorious 1919 World Series does not characterize someone trying to lose. He had highest batting average of the Series—.375—including the only home run and threw out five baserunners. He handled 30 chances in the outfield with no errors. In general, players perform worse in games their team loses, and Jackson batted worse in the five games the White Sox lost, with a batting average of .286 in those games. Three of his six RBIs came in the losses, including the home run and a double in Game 8 when the Reds had a large lead, and the series was all but over. In that game a long foul ball was caught at the fence with runners on second and third, depriving Jackson of a chance to drive in the runners.
In the fifth inning of Game 4, with a Cincinnati player on second, Jackson fielded a single hit to left field and threw home. But Gandil yelled for Cicotte to cut off the throw. The run scored and the Sox lost the game, 2–0. Cicotte, whose guilt is undisputed, made two errors in that fifth inning in addition to cutting off the throw that could have saved a run.
Far from a major league stadium, baseball fans in north Louisiana in the summer of 1923 experienced the thrill of seeing one of the biggest names in the sport.
