Hello and welcome to Issue 012 of Shoeless Notes, the email newsletter for the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library in Greenville, South Carolina.
Although our physical museum is still closed, we are getting closer every day to being able to reopen! The addition is framed, windows have been installed, electrical has been run, and the roof has been replaced on the existing home. While we are still not certain on an exact date for reopening, the time is approaching, and it’s an exciting time. This is what the last 14 months of being closed has been for, and the wait is almost over.
An in-progress aerial view of the addition to our museum (in white), and the legacy building of the museum.
If you are within driving distance of Greenville and would like to come see us once we reopen, shoot me an email and we can coordinate a time for you to come see us. We will be adhering strictly to COVID health and safety protocols, and everyone who enters the museum must wear a mask at all times. We will only be allowing 10 people inside the museum at a time to be able to maintain proper social distancing, so it is best to make your plans with us ahead of time to be sure that you won’t have to wait to get in. Reach out to me at shoelessmuseum@gmail.com to plan your visit.
In the meantime, I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you all about one way to enjoy our museum’s digital content while our physical location remains closed. Almost one year ago, I launched a podcast called My Baseball History. This past Wednesday, the fourth episode of Season Two was posted, which was our 14th episode overall.
A few issues ago, I told you all about Lester Erwin and his experiences with Joe and Katie Jackson, which led to Lester being given Joe’s favorite bat, Black Betsy. The first episode of Season Two was a very insightful interview with Lester, which shed some light on who Joe and Katie were as people. Much has been written about Joe’s playing career, and anyone can go online and look up his incredible statistics, but it’s very hard to find first-hand accounts about who Joe was as a person. We’re lucky to have Lester on our team to be able to give us that perspective.
The interviews for the next three episodes from Season Two were all recorded within 72 hours of each other during the first week of October, 2020. I do all of the interviews for the podcast in person, which is a choice I made before recording a single one. I’m not sure if you normally listen to podcasts, but when there is a phone interview, or a skype interview, or anything similar, I am always distracted by the poor sound quality of the guest.
In addition to the poor quality of the audio, I always feel like the quality of the conversation is less than what it would be if the interview were done in person. It’s hard to get the rhythm of a conversation going when you’re not able to see each other or feed off of the facial queues and body language of the person you’re speaking with. There are awkward pauses. There are delays and cut outs due to technical difficulties. It’s just not ideal in any way.
However, insisting that all of my interviews be done in person made it really hard to do any interviews during 2020, because we weren’t allowed to leave the house while in quarantine. One thing which made it easier for me to coordinate interviews for Season One was that I was still living in Chicago at the time. I had great access to people who lived in Chicago, or somewhere in the Midwest within a 6-8 hour drive. I took advantage of that, and recorded a bunch of interviews, most of which have been posted as full episodes now.
But being quarantined in South Carolina made interviews a much more difficult task. Knowing I needed to get some recorded so I could have content ready for Season 2, I picked a couple places I wanted to go, and planned a road trip with my mom to see them and interview some people while I was in town.
Joe Jackson made his major league debut for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1908. He played only 5 games for Connie Mack’s A’s toward the end of that season, when Philadelphia played their home games at Columbia Park. It just so happens that between the 1908 and 1909 seasons, the Athletics built a new stadium called Shibe Park, where they would play their home games from 1909 until the franchise moved to Kansas City after the 1954 season. Since Joe played 5 games for the Athletics toward the end of the 1909 season, just like he did in 1908, that meant that Joe had two different home parks for his short stint with Philadelphia.
My mom and I standing at the site where Shibe Park, the former home of the Athletics, once stood in Philadelphia.
I had never been to either site before, and decided that would be a cool trip to make. I figured while I was in Philadelphia, it would make sense to interview an expert on the Philadelphia Athletics. Luckily, my friend Alex Cheremeteff lives nearby, and said he would meet with me to record an interview on the rich history of that franchise. We spoke about Joe Jackson, of course, but the majority of that interview is about the Athletics as a whole, about Connie Mack, and about the great players who made up each of their two distinct dynasties.
Seeing the former sites of Columbia Park and Shibe Park was really special, and being able to meet my friend Ryan Lawrence (who is a SJJM member, and has been featured in a previous Shoeless Notes Member Spotlight) just added to the experience.
After Philadelphia, my mom and I headed to Boston. We had no interview planned in Boston, but that’s where Hotel Buckminster is, just a stone’s throw away from Fenway Park. The significance of that hotel is that it is believed to be where White Sox 1st Baseman Chick Gandil and gambler Sport Sullivan first devised the plan for the 1919 White Sox to throw the World Series that year. The resulting scandal would lead to Joe Jackson’s lifetime ban from baseball, along with seven of his teammates.
Standing in front of Hotel Buckminster in Boston, where the Black Sox Scandal’s entire plan may have been devised.
On the way to Boston, we stopped in Hoboken, New Jersey to see the site of Elysian Fields, which played a key role in the early formation of baseball in America. For a while, it was believed to be the site where the first baseball game ever played took place, but recent research has found that to be false. It is still an important location, though, where the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club held its first practices and played their first games. So we stopped there, then continued on to Boston where we took some pictures at Hotel Buckminster, and then continued on to Connecticut.
In Connecticut, I interviewed Marjorie Adams, who is the great-granddaughter of Doc Adams. Doc physically wrote The Laws of Base Ball in 1857, which set many of the primary rules of the sport which are still followed to this day. He also invented the position of Shortstop during his playing career, much of which he spent with the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. That interview is largely about Doc and his role in the regulation of the game of baseball, as we know it, but it also touches a lot on the early years of the sport itself. There are some stories that will be news to a lot of you, and it’s well worth your time.
After Connecticut, we started heading back home to Greenville, but we had one more stop along the way: Baltimore. A few blocks away from Oriole Park at Camden Yards is the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, which is where we spoke to Shawn Herne, who is their Executive Director. Shawn gave us a private tour of the museum, even taking us into their vault and archives to see some artifacts that weren’t publicly displayed. Then we sat down and recorded an interview about Babe Ruth’s early years, which was VERY revealing. You may think you know the general story about Babe’s childhood and upbringing, but get ready for lots of new information when you listen to our conversation. We also touch upon Babe’s relationship with Christy Walsh, who was essentially his agent, who helped the Babe become the highest paid athlete in terms of endorsements at the time.
The room in which Babe Ruth was born, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Each episode is a couple hours long, so these short paragraphs are really just skimming the surface of what we talked about. And at the end of the Alex Cheremeteff episode, my mom and I go more in depth about our road trip, too, sharing some really incredible stories about what we saw at Hotel Buckminster that you won’t want to miss. Hopefully, you’ve been keeping up with the podcast all along, but in case you haven’t, now is the perfect time to subscribe to it on your favorite listening platform. Just search for My Baseball History, or follow THIS LINK which will give you lots of listening options, too.
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 Bill Johnson, who recently became a member.
New member, Bill Johnson, at historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.
Bill and his wife live just outside Savannah, Georgia. He is retired Navy, and does some teaching and writing. Bill has been a baseball fan since the early '70s, and has written a book about a Cleveland Indians player named Hal Trosky, as well as a long monograph on a Chicago American Giant named Art "Superman" Pennington.
Sticking with the Cleveland/Chicago theme, if Bill could have one piece of baseball memorabilia for his personal collection, it would be the first ball pitched in the first ever American League game on April 24, 1901 at the Chicago Cricket Club between the eventual pennant-winner Chicago White Stockings and the Cleveland Blues. I’ve asked this question to literally hundreds of people over the years, and Bill is the first person to ever answer it that way. Impressive.
A few years ago, Bill lived in southwest Ohio and started volunteering at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum. One of Cincinnati's baseball attractions is a "1919 Tour" which takes you on a walking tour through the old downtown area, visiting various sites that remain which players, reporters, and executives frequented, and learning about the 1919 World Series from the Cincinnati perspective.
From that, along with Bill’s mom's stories about her father's love of Chicago baseball, and Bill’s dad's stories about the Indians and their history, Bill began to dig and read. The Black Sox scandal is an absolutely compelling subject to him, and he’s a “moth-to-a-flame” whenever anything is produced or written about it. The full documentary timeline may have been lost to the ages, and we may never have an absolute, undeniable truth about exactly what happened, so Bill is thoroughly fascinated by any and all revelations and/or speculation about the event.
While Bill hasn’t been to our museum yet, once we reopen and the world's dust settles a bit, it is stop number one for him. We can’t wait to see him.
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…
Another great newsletter! Every one is worth the read. One day I'll get down to the museum. As you know, my last trip to visit Joe Jackson's grave and see the field by the mill was almost 20 years ago... can't wait to see how much has changed.