Hello and welcome to Issue 003 of Shoeless Notes, the email newsletter for the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library in Greenville, South Carolina.
One of my favorite things (and easily one of the most frustrating things) about researching Joe Jackson is that there will never come a day when we can dust off our hands and say “okay, we’ve learned everything there is to learn!” We are always on the hunt for new information. We’re always trying to uncover little bits of information that can give us new insight to how things were back then, not just for Joe and Katie, or for ballplayers, but for people in general.
When we do find out something we never knew before, it’s such an exciting thing! To be able to share it with you, to be able to make that history come alive, it makes the hours and hours of digging through old newspaper clippings and searching through digital archives worth it. On June 11, John Thorn learned something new.
John is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, and, without hyperbole, he probably knows more about baseball than anyone who has ever lived on this planet. The fact that even John is still learning new things proves my earlier point: it’s impossible for anyone to know everything. But John didn’t just learn something that he didn’t know… he learned something that possibly less than 10 people currently living knew. He learned what the 1914 B18 Blankets were originally intended to be.
Let me back up, because that last sentence probably doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot to most of you, and the rest of this newsletter is going to go a lot better for everyone if we’re all on the same page! Back in the early days of baseball cards, card sets would often times have designations such as B18 or N162. One of the most famous card sets of all time, which features one of the most famous cards of all time, is the T206 set which was produced from 1909 to 1911. If you’ve ever heard anyone mention the Honus Wagner card that has sold for millions of dollars, they’re talking about his T206. There wasn’t a rhyme or reason to the lettering or numbering of those sets, it was just a way to tell them apart.
In 1914, a unique “card” set was introduced, which has become known as the B18 set. But the cards were not made of a paper-like material, as most other cards had been before it, and as most have been since. The B18s were felt squares measuring approximately 5 ¼" on each side with a dark brown border all the way around. They started getting included as part of tobacco packages, most notably in ones with the brand name of Egyptienne Straights Cigarettes.
A common way baseball cards were distributed in the early days was in packs of cigarettes, and often times the cigarette companies would have advertisements on the back of the card. In fact, the reason Honus Wagner’s T206 card is so valuable was due to Wagner’s objection to a cigarette ad being on the back of his card. Wagner demanded that the American Tobacco Company pull his card from circulation, which made them super rare, and since he is an all-time great, a graded example can now fetch 7 figures.
If you’d like to read a more in-depth history of the B18 set, read THIS PIECE by Jeffrey Obermeyer, which he wrote in 2009
The method of delivery for the B18s was nothing new, but the size and material of these “cards” was different than almost anything that had been seen before. They became known as “blankets” over the years, and nobody really seemed to know why. One working theory was that they were just like tiny blankets, themselves. Another theory was that the name was due to the fact that people would collect as many as they could, and either sew them directly together to create a blanket, or stitch them onto other patches of fabric and create quilts.
The B18 set had 90 different baseball players represented, including nine from each of ten different major league teams. Five of the teams were from the National League (Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis), and five were from the American League (Cleveland, Detroit, New York, St. Louis, and Washington). There were 16 teams in major league baseball at the time, but why the other six were left out of this set will likely forever remain a mystery.
Of the 90 players represented in the B18 set, nine became Hall of Famers: Max Carey, Frank Chance, Ty Cobb, Miller Huggins, Walter Johnson, Rabbit Maranville, Casey Stengel, Bobby Wallace and Zach Wheat. Other notable players featured in the set include Fred Snodgrass, Ray Chapman, Chick Gandil, and our very own Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Joe’s blanket had two different variants, each of which are shown above. One had purple basepaths and yellow bases, and the other had green basepaths and purple bases. The purple basepath version is the rarer of the two, and therefore the more valuable, though both are incredibly sought-after.
The original photograph which inspired the image on Joe’s B18 blanket was taken by George Grantham Bain (likely on March 23, 1914 at Cleveland’s spring-training site in Athens, Georgia)
Which takes us back to John Thorn, who was doing some reading on June 11, and came across an entry on NYHistory.org which very casually told him precisely what he didn’t even know he was looking to learn that day:
A white cotton felt cloth pen wipe, printed with a central image of a baseball player marked "Jackson", surrounded by pennants marked "Cleveland" and "A.L." for American League, with green borders decorated with purple corner blocks resembling bases, with baseball items in each block including a ball, a mitt, crossed bats and a catcher's mask. Part of a collectible series of baseball team felts given as a premium by cigar stores and manufacturers for blotting the ink from a nib pen.
So there we have it! 106 years after their creation, the world knows once again what these “blankets” were originally intended to be: pen wipes. Why am I telling you any of this? Great question. It seems like a pretty random thing to talk about. But now you know the backstory of THIS ENAMEL PIN, which is available in our gift shop:
An enamel pin, modeled after the 1914 B18 blanket card featuring Joe Jackson, available in our online store
We had them made through our friends at Big League Pins, who were incredible to work with. They not only helped us design the pins, but they also designed, produced, and hand-numbered the backing cards for us, too. If you need enamel pins made for your business, or your team, or for any reason or event, get in touch with Angie + Kirsten, and tell them we sent you.
As you will notice, the backing card which comes attached to each B18 pin tells a brief version of the story you just read, and they are limited to 356. Why are they limited to such a strange number? Because .356 was Joe’s lifetime batting average, of course! The third highest career batting average in the history of baseball, to be exact.
Whenever we do something at the museum, it is with a purpose. Every little detail was thought out. We have a number of new items in the works which will be added to OUR ONLINE STORE in the coming months, each of which will tell another unique story about Joe, or is a nod to an image from his past. Keep checking back so you don’t miss when new items get released!
Each newsletter, we’re going to spotlight one new member as a token of our appreciation. This issue, we’d like to tell you a little bit about Ron Gieseke, who recently became a member.
New member Ron Gieseke giving a tour at Wrigley Field in Chicago
Ron was raised in Cincinnati during the Big Red Machine era, so he started off as a Reds fan (we won’t hold that against him). He was at Game 5 of the 1972 NLCS when Johnny Bench hit the most famous home run in Reds history in the bottom of the 9th. Ron thought the ball was destined for his hands, but it landed just a few rows in front of him. Bench’s homer tied the game against the Pirates, and the Reds won the NL pennant later that inning on a wild pitch.
Ron went to college at Northwestern University, just outside Chicago, and slowly started becoming a Cubs fan (we won’t hold that against him, either, but this would be Strike Two if anyone has decided to keep track). He spent most of his professional career in St. Louis, but moved back to Chicago a few years ago. Part of his retirement gig is being a tour guide at Wrigley Field, which has helped strengthen his love of baseball history.
Ron’s favorite baseball movie of all time is Field of Dreams, which furthered his interest in the 1919 World Series between his favorite team from childhood and the Chicago White Sox, who were famously led by Shoeless Joe Jackson. For the past two years, Ron has written a baseball blog which is published every Monday morning during baseball season. You can find his work at BaseballBenchCoach.com.
Ron incorporates his love of baseball into something else he loves to do: travel. He has been to many baseball museums around the country, including the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (Kansas City), the Bob Feller Museum (Van Meter, IA), the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum (Cincinnati), and the Roberto Clemente Museum (Pittsburgh). Ron’s wife even treated him to a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY for their 25th wedding anniversary.
Hopefully when we reopen, Ron will be able to make a trip to Greenville to see the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum in person for the first time. Until then, he loves visiting our website, and is proud to be a member.
If you want to have a chance to be the new member we spotlight in our next newsletter, you can BECOME A MEMBER of our museum at whichever level best fits your current budget.
As always, thanks for being here. Until next time…
-dan
Your Notes #3 sold me on this pin - great story! I will proudly put it next to my 1936 Olympic pins in my collection. I look forward to your future Notes. Thank you.
Another excellent read! Thank you for sharing some of your wealth of information. 💙⚾️