1912 Cleveland Amateur Base Ball Ass'n Guide (Joe Jackson)
1912 Official Guide of the Cleveland Amateur Base Ball Association — a local Cleveland publication from Jackson's years as the city's American League star (.395 that season). Amateur association guides mixed local schedules and ads with big-league heroes; this one has Jackson on the cover, and surviving copies are scarce regional paper.
- Issue
- 1912 Cleveland Amateur Base Ball Association Guide
- Year
- 1912
- Subject
- "Shoeless" Joe Jackson
- Grade
- Raw (ungraded)
1912 Cleveland Amateur Base Ball Association Guide
Cleveland's amateur association published an official guide each year, a window onto one of the country's biggest sandlot baseball scenes, centered on fields like Brookside Park. The 1912 edition, with Jackson on the cover, ties the city's grassroots game to its biggest professional star of the time.
More on this issue →"Shoeless" Joe Jackson
A South Carolina mill-town hitter with almost no schooling, Jackson became one of the purest hitters the game has ever seen: a .408 average in his first full season with Cleveland in 1911 and a .356 career mark, among the highest ever. Babe Ruth later said he had copied Jackson's style because he thought Jackson the greatest natural hitter he had ever seen — a widely repeated attribution, even as historians still argue how literally Ruth meant it. Jackson hit .375 and played errorless ball in the 1919 World Series, yet admitted to a grand jury in 1920 that he had taken gamblers' money. Acquitted by a Chicago jury in 1921, he was banned for life by Commissioner Landis anyway. The unresolved question of how guilty he really was is the reason this collection exists.
More on "Shoeless" Joe Jackson →