As for Jackson, yeah, I’d agree that he’s clearly guilty of something. All I’m taking issue with is the sort of one-size-fits-all punishment that deems Jackson and Cicotte equivalent, when I’d say they clearly committed different crimes.

Pete Rose should not be allowed to manage or coach or (hypothetically) play ever again. I’m willing to state that unequivocally. But the Hall? What’s he going to do, throw Vets Committee votes? For fuck’s sake. It’s not clear to me that he was good enough to be in the Hall — though many people vastly more intelligent than I say he’s one of the greatest ever, so probably they’re right and I’m wrong — but you know what? He has the goddamn career hits record. 4256 hits is an admission ticket to the Hall as far as I’m concerned, and keeping him out really just seems petty and spiteful.

Shoeless Joe belongs in the Hall from a performance standpoint (he was worth nearly as many WAR as Rose in a career half the length, for pity’s sake), but, again, it’s harder to admit a dude who clearly was in bed with a plan to fix the World Series. That said, I don’t see what harm it does to put a plaque for him in the Hall (since he was amazing), and clearly state on the plaque that he was forced out in disgrace for his role in the 1919 debacle.

Mainly I object to the people who paint Joe Jackson as some witless rube who happened to be a baseball savant–as if he not only didn’t participate in the fix, he didn’t actually know anything about it or didn’t “understand” what was going on, despite being paid off and sitting in on multiple meetings with gamblers discussing the fix.

If nothing else Jackson and Weaver are guilty of knowing about a crime in progress and not doing anything about it. Whether or not that deserves a lifetime ban from the game isn’t really for me to decide, but I believe Pete Rose got the same punishment for less–I’m not aware of any evidence that Rose ever attempted to throw any games, although betting against his own team is at least heavy incentive to do so. And although I believe Rose ought to be in the Hall of Fame (that’s really a completely different issue to me) I’m not convinced he should be allowed to manage or coach ever again.

Anyhoo, you seen Joseph Jefferson Jackson’s line for that series? It goes a little something like this: .375 / .394 / .563 / .956. And, as you can see here (aside: holy shit baseball record-keeping is amazing), it wasn’t a case of throwing the bad games and winning the good ones. He was legitimately awesome the whole series, except for the very first game. He clearly wasn’t trying too damn hard to throw anything. He doubled in his very first PA (aside: seriously, holy shit) in game 2, and didn’t look back. Now, I’m no Black Sux apologist (lord knows), but the evidence that Shoeless Joe actually tried to throw the Series is pretty faint. And should it be a permabannable offence to take money from gamblers and then fuck them over? I dunno. Maybe he should have raised the alarm earlier — though, as you say, talking to Comiskey was pointless — but it’s still difficult for me to lump Jackson together with the likes of Eddie Ciccote. Their crimes do seem different to me.

That said, yours is possibly the first write-up of the event that I’ve read that didn’t blame it all on Eddie Ciccotte.

And the point, to be sure: fuck A-Fraud.