Ease His Pain

It was in the fall of 1920 when a Grand Jury provided nine indictments for racketeering against eight Chicago White Sox players and five gamblers in what is known as the Black Sox scandal.  The players were alleged to have thrown the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, giving the Reds their first championship.  In an era before free agency, player earnings were rather limited.  They were beholden to their original team, and could not be signed by another.  The owners had the power. Needless to say, there was no 1919 equivalent of multi-million dollar annual earnings many professional players receive today.  One of the highest of the low paid White Sox players who was indicted was “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.  “Shoeless” Joe became famous to us non-baseball aficionados for his role, played by Ray Liotta, in the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.”  In the movie, “Shoeless” was the sports hero of John Kinsella, the father of film's protagonist--the upstart farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner).  We learn that Ray, acting as late aged teenagers act, riled his father by stating who would have a crook as a sports hero, a rift developed between the two that would last the remainder of his father’s life.  Ray, this wary farmer educated at Berkely during the height of the 60's culture, plowed under five acres of corn to build the Field of Dreams, local farmers probably thought drug use had done in his mind.  Yet, in so doing he would change his life and the ghosts of the Black Sox players. 

Black Sox Players

“Shoeless” Joe is said to have been illiterate, but yet would confess to being a part of the fix on the baseball championship series.  He later desired to recant his confession, but was unable.  As Ray was plowing under the corn to construct the field he regaled his daughter, who sat on his lap, with Shoeless Joe’s statistics during the series to explain why Joe was likely railroaded and not part of the fix.  One teammate, involved in the scandal says that they used Joe’s name to the gamblers in order to impress them with how committed most the team was to throwing the series.  Some of the players claim that the fix was never in place as they became too scared of the consequences of being found out, which they say explained the high number of errors.  Another player says they stopped the fix after not receiving the money, at $20,000 per loss, as promised after each game.  For some reason you cannot trust gamblers and mafia—go figure.  Too bad the “Godfather” story was not out in 1918, maybe they never would have planned it in the first place.  Regardless, they planned the fix. 

Acquitted, but Condemned by Commissioner Landis

It appears that some desire to blame Charles Comisky, the founder and owner of the White Sox.  Many claim that he was miserly, others say he was frugal.  There is fine line between the two.  Educated by the Jesuits at Chicago’s St. Ignatius Prep, one cannot doubt he was probably engaged with a level of frugality.  Was his level of frugality inappropriate?  One story, probably an urban legend, has it that the term Black Sox actually arose because Comisky would not pay to have the wool player uniforms cleaned, so the players wore the dirty uniforms fame after fame game until they became a darker color.  It is said Comisky finally had them cleaned, but deducted the cleaning from their pay checks.  If he was a miser, why did the White Sox did have the highest payroll in baseball in 1919?   Comisky would be no body’s fool, and he banned the players near the end of the 1920 season even though he knew it would cost him a championship. 

Field of Dreams Movie with some of the Black Sox Players

Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was appointed the first commissioner of baseball in November 1920.  Even though the players were found not guilty in the summer of 1921, after a trial, the new commissioner would ban them from the game forever.  Attempting to support themselves and their families, the men attempted to put together some exhibition games, but the strong arm of Landis, apparently even stronger than that of current football commissioner Roger Goodell, would intervene and say that any who played with them would forever be banned from professional baseball.  The city of Chicago, presaging the scarcity of baseball championships, much less consecutive championships, in the city of big shoulders would also prevent them playing in the city.  The eight men, with John Kinsella as catcher, were left to meeting their dreams playing baseball in a fictional story as ghosts in the rich deep prairie soils of Iowa that usually grew corn.

Costner in Field of Dreams

The fictional story does more than simply ease the pain of Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and the other seven of the Black Sox scandal by allowing them to play among the corn of Iowa.  In one of my favorite sport movie endings, cars line the cardinal oriented roads near Dyersville, IA as dusk envelopes the well-tended corn fields and they slowly make their way to the Field of Dreams.  This eases Ray Kinsella’s financial pain.  They come, as character Terrence Mann puts it, to relive their childhood.  More importantly, Ray, in the end, was able bring back his childhood memories, and ease his own pain, by once again playing catch with his father on that early fall evening in Iowa as dew starts to settle on the manicured grass of a field a dream told him to build.  Childhood memories reinstated after being pushed back in a rift with his father over “Shoeless” Jackson.