Laziness Is Keeping Shoeless Joe Jackson Out of the Hall of Fame

Will someone please correct the madness of not allowing Joe Jackson into the Hall of Fame. The acceptance of nonsense as truth has gone on for too many years.

The punishment dealt to this man in his life was worse than how we deal with enemies of our nation. The continued blacklisting, over half a century after his death, is petty, simplistic, and reeks of laziness in investigating the facts.

His name must be removed from Major League Baseball's ineligible list, so that he may be voted upon by his peers for acceptance into the Hall. That's all the spirit of this simple man cries for as he lies in the ground in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina.

We're all familiar with Shoeless Joe's story. His .356 batting average, playing without shoes in a game as a youngster, and the 1919 Black Sox scandal regarding that season's World Series between the ChiSox and the Reds.

But has this situation become the counterpart to Oliver Stone's JFK? Are folks so absorbed in the film 8 Men Out that they have confused reality with fantasy? Fans, countrymen, fellow travelers of life's road, that was a movie. Like ET. Is there an alien in your closet phoning home?

In 1999, the U.S. House of Representatives looked at the evidence and passed a motion supporting a move to have the ban on Joe Jackson removed. In Dennis Purdy's 2006 team-by-team encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, he states, "the seven other players implicated in the scandal confirmed Jackson was never at any of their meetings". Lefty Williams, in the same source stated, "We only mentioned Jackson's name to give our plot more credibility".

What more do you want? As they say around Joe's old neighborhood of Brandon Mills, you can look it up.

We recognize the oddly named Kennesaw Mountain Landis had to act in some manner as commissioner to solidify the sport's authenticity with the masses, and we understand that some corrective measures were necessary. Does that include ruining this man's life, dying before his time in misery, and being painted as the equal of Kaiser Bill as an enemy of America?

It's gone on long enough, and even a sadist should draw no further pleasure from punishing this man 50 years after his death.

Let the facts speak for themselves. Third highest lifetime batting average of .356, .423 on-base rate, .517 slugging percentage, struck out 3 percent of at-bats in his lifetime. Movies don't tell this man's story, his performance on the field does.

America, hear one of your wronged children speak through his work and his performances. Listen to what is good in all of us, don't accentuate any possible negatives. Please correct this wrong before it's too late for us. It already is for the shoeless one.