Jackson, leery of life up North in the big city, delayed his trip while another teammate whom Mack signed left for Philly. <\/p>\n
Shoeless Joe finally relented and boarded the train with his minor-league manager Tom Stauch, who was instructed to deliver Mack the player an A\u2019s scout described as \u201cthe sweetest hitter I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stauch woke up when the train pulled into Philadelphia. Jackson wasn\u2019t there. He hopped off overnight during a stop in North Carolina while everyone was sleeping. Jackson sent Mack a telegram, claiming that his mother was ill and he had to take care of her. Shoeless Joe would one day become baseball royalty before being blackballed in one of sports\u2019 greatest scandals. But he had no interest in playing for the A\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cConnie Mack understood,\u201d said Dan Wallach, the former executive director of the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum in Greenville, S.C.<\/p>\n
Field of Dreams<\/p>\n
Shoeless Joe will be remembered Thursday night when the Phillies play the Twins in an Iowa cornfield where the 1989 film Field of Dreams was shot. The portrayal of Jackson \u2014 \u201cIs this heaven?\u201d his character, played by Ray Liotta, famously asked after emerging from the stalks \u2014 is an iconic piece of Hollywood lore.<\/p>\n
His baseball career was made for movies, so much that films \u2014 the other being 1988\u2019s Eight Men Out \u2014 were released in consecutive years about Jackson. He was a baseball superstar who became tied up in a gambling scandal that nearly took down the sport after Jackson and seven Chicago White Sox teammates were banned for life amid accusations of throwing the 1919 World Series<\/a>. <\/p>\n Jackson denied until his death at age 64 in 1951 that he lost on purpose and a legion of supporters have since worked to clear his name.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Phillies to wear 1939 throwbacks for Field of Dreams Game against Twins<\/a><\/p>\n Major League Baseball clarified in 2025<\/a> that Jackson \u2014 along with Pete Rose \u2014 was no longer banned as lifetime penalties expire once someone died. So Jackson\u2019s Hall of Fame case will be voted on in December 2027 by a panel assembled by the museum.<\/p>\n \u201cI have never advocated for him to be inducted into the Hall of Fame because I think he\u2019s more famous outside the Hall than in it,\u201d said Wallach, who now hosts a baseball podcast called My Baseball History. \u201cObviously, I think his play and his career warrants that he be honored the way his contemporaries are. But the entire thing that makes his story unique and gives people a reason to fight for him is that he belongs in the Hall of Fame and he\u2019s not in it. So the day he gets in it, there\u2019s no story anymore. I have mixed emotions about him getting in.\u201d<\/p>\n Jackson, like he is portrayed in Field of Dreams, is best remembered for his time with the White Sox. He won the World Series in 1917 and then hit .375 in the 1919 Series against Cincinnati that the \u201cBlack Sox\u201d were accused of throwing. He\u2019ll always be known for the years in Chicago. But his big-league career started in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t spend a ton of time in Philadelphia,\u201d Wallach said. \u201cBut it was an interesting footnote to his career.\u201d<\/p>\n It started in Philly<\/p>\n Mack sent Socks Seybold, a player who scouted Jackson earlier that summer, back to South Carolina in hopes of persuading Jackson to give Philly a chance. Seybold found Jackson working at a cotton mill. Shoeless Joe said he would come to Philadelphia but he had to bring his wife, Katie. The A\u2019s agreed. <\/p>\n Mack usually required his players to be high school educated and preferred that they went to college. But Jackson didn\u2019t even know how to read or write. He never signed autographs and carried a copy of his signature signed by his wife in his wallet that he would trace if he had to complete a legal document.<\/p>\n \u201cHe knew the lines he was making on the paper spelled \u2018Joe Jackson,\u2019 but I don\u2019t think he knew he was writing a \u2018J\u2019 and writing an \u2018O\u2019 and writing an \u2018E,\u2019\u201d Wallach said. \u201cI don\u2019t think he knew exactly what he was doing, but he could mimic the paper.\u201d<\/p>\n The Phillies at the Field of Dreams<\/p>\n The Phillies will play in the cornfield on Thursday (7:30 p.m., Netflix) against the Twins in Dyersville, Iowa.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how much Mack thought of Jackson\u2019s ability that the owner overlooked his education. Mack offered to get Shoeless Joe a tutor and tried to find ways for him to get comfortable in Philadelphia. But there was little Mack could do. <\/p>\n The A\u2019s players teased Jackson when they went out to dinner and he held his menu upside down.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the waitress came to him first, he would say, \u2018Give me a second and let everyone else order,\u2019\u201d Wallach said. \u201cHe would listen to his teammates\u2019 orders and whatever he thought sounded the best, that\u2019s what he would order when it came back to him. His teammates weren\u2019t stupid. Most of them were college educated. They saw exactly what was going on. He just didn\u2019t feel comfortable being there.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/circle_outline_footer_light_theme.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n