F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
"Who is he anyhow, an actor?"
"No."
"A dentist?"
"...No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added cooly: "He's the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919."
"Fixed the World Series?" I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as something that merely happened, the end of an inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people--with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.
"He just saw the opportunity."
"Why isn't he in jail?"
"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man."
Nelson Algren (A Silver-Colored Yesterday)
"Do not be remembering the most natural man ever to wear spiked shoes.
The canniest fielder and the longest hitter,
Who squatted on his heels
In a uniform muddied at the knees,
Till the bleacher shadows grew long behind him.
Who went along with Chick and Buck and Happy
Because they treated him so friendly-like,
Hardly like Yankees at all.
With Williams because Lefty was from the South too.
And with Risberg because the Swede was such a hard guy.
Who made an X for his name and couldn't argue with
Comiskey's sleepers.
But who could pick a line drive out of the air ten feet outside the foul line
And rifle anything home from anywhere in the park.
For Shoeless Joe is gone, long gone,
A long yellow grass-blade between his teeth
And the bleacher shadows behind him."
Chicago Herald and Examiner (9/30/1920)
As Jackson departed from the Grand Jury room, a small
boy clutched at his sleeve and tagged along after him.
"Say it ain't so, Joe," he pleaded. "Say it ain't so."
"Yes kid, I'm afraid it is," Jackson replied.
"Well, I never would've thought it," the boy said.
A Song by Sports Writer Ring Lardner and Others
(to the tune of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles")(1919)
I'm forever blowing ball games
Pretty ball games in teh air.
I come from Chi.,
I hardly try,
Just go to bat and fade and die.
Fortune's coming my way.
That's why I don't care.
I'm forever blowing ball games,
For the gamblers treat me fair.