![]() Jackson was Gropman’s immigrant father’s favorite player, and although the author spent extensive time with interviews and yellowed newspaper clippings-his work is essentially a tall tale with tragic overtones, a glorification of Jackson’s abilities and a defense of a player whose illiteracy and Southern background led to shabby treatment from the press even before the Scandal. And mythology is sort of a hanging curveball for writers and film-makers.īorn in Pickens County, South Carolina, around 1888, give or take a year (the Jackson family Bible, which recorded such events, was destroyed in a fire) Joe Jackson, by all accounts, was a remarkable natural athlete.ĭonald Gropman’s 1979 biography Say It Ain’t So, Joe! contains most of the details of Jackson’s life, although it is scarcely an unbiased account. ![]() The name, Shoeless Joe Jackson the actual historic figure born in the rural South his bat, Black Betsy, and his role in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal the wounded plea of a small boy on the courthouse steps and baseball itself-are all the stuff of mythology. There is a mythic quality in both of these poems. The other is a phrase Say it ain’t so, Joe, delivered sadly, with its final rhyme. ![]() ![]() Read it aloud and feel the assonance and alliteration. ![]() One is simply a name – Shoeless Joe Jackson. Two of the poems I most admire are very short. ![]()
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