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Show . - -L' SPORT LIGHT , Shoeless Joe Always Good Coptf Bv GRANTLAND RICE NEW YORK No other game has turned out as many odd or different characters as baseball has furnished. fur-nished. The list of distinct personalities is a long one. I mean such players as Dizzy Dean, Germany Schaefer, Rube Waddell, Ossie Schrcck, Larry McLean, Babe Herman and many others. One of these was Shoeless Joe Jackson, who died recently. Shoeless Joe ("Oh, the brave song his black bat sung") v.as on the quieter side. But the Carolina Crashsmith was always a good story. There was the time Joe, lifetime average .356, reported to some small team in East Tennessee. Some time ago, Hyder Barr related the following yarn about Jackson's first game there. "The ball park was terrible, ' Barr said. "It was full of rocks. broken glass and lnftilifrlftfli-ttir 1 old cans. Finally after the fourth inning in-ning Jackson came 1 back to the bench and said he was through. He was Ip 1 a y i ng barefoot 'What's the matter?" mat-ter?" the manager asked. 'Rocks and glass hurting your the time be played for bJ "j; This isn't as much as a Hi.;:.-' league rookie gets today, i ... . wasn't too hot for a .410 hittJ !l . Charlie Dryden, one of the p g l baseball writers of all time, c 0 tainly the most humorous one, its ' Jackson an endless source ti trj ' "Joe didn't read too smooth:; Dryden said one day. "So whet got a letter from his wife Joe u g. t to chuckle as he pretended to rs : Then he'd slip me the letter i say, "Want to read someti ffiO funny?" I'd read it back but 1 ,35 quently it wasn't anything to la; ep. at, like asking for dough." rz. Ty Cobb one day told me a t; 12 story about Jackson. They hadb good friends in the major leap s Long after Ty was through i baseball he dropped by Green S3 where Jackson lived. it Cobb talked a few minutes r various unimportant things. Ito'? he said: lS "Don't you know me, Jot I'm Ty Cobb." ( "Yes, I know you, Ty," Jati ... son said. "But I didn't thio --, -anyone I nsed to know won -, want to recognize me again." -3 Joe Jackson took a small arm r-hJ of gambling money, largely bees nis he knew he had been far underp; I don't believe he ever thres S! game in that series and I -E them all. To me he was a p : hitter and a good guy. rs m The Training State -! Citrus fruit and sunshine, V i games and flowers, are not T:. 1 da's only contribution to the due ! race. is I have discovered again in ro ' tag its highways that Florida is i! I:i keen about its record as a ck " tioner of men especially ballpli i ers. Who grained at St. Petersfc: last spring? Well, the Giants, 1 Dodgers and Cardinals, for txt ;j pie, and they ran one, two, three the National League pennant nj, last season. a What team got its basic trite in Florida for several years had enough left to survive the ms b The Yankees. '! "You don't suppose," a Fieri resident said, "that the Yantf could have surived Arizona to cc: . along and win another pennant '; they hadn't been in Flor'da for I !' or fifteen years before?" All we know is that the Giai .. had trained all around the rc without winning any pennants, t never seemed to be physically ' But last year, after training Florida, they surviv an ll-ga losing streak and a deficit of games in middle August, and ! won the pennant. Grantland Rice 1 , ' " Naw," Shoeless Joe said. "But they're fuzzin' up the ball so much I can't throw it.' " Cobb, Ruth and Speaker each told me on radio interviews that Jackson was by all odds the greatest natural hitter that ever lived. Joe batted left-handed. "I decided to copy Jackson," Ruth told me one day, "because he looked more like a good hitter hit-ter than anyore else. I couldn't copy Ty Cobb's hand action because be-cause Ty was looking more for basehits than for power. "Jackson stood with his feet fairly fair-ly wide apart, his right foot shoved forward and the left foot back of the right. This gave him a good turn to start with. I changed this a little. I kept my feet closer together. 1 could get more leverage that way. But I was also more easily caught off balance by a left-hander. I had more trouble with left-handers than Joe ever had. He never had much trouble with anybody." Jackson and Money Shoeless Joe was never a big spender, but no man was more underpaid. He used to sew a ten or a twenty dollar bill in the lining of his coat, to be sure he had some cash when needed. The years where he hit over .400 brought him small increases. I doubt that Jackson ever got over $4,500 a year, and most of |
