1916 Draper & Maynard Athletic Goods Catalog (Joe Jackson)
1916 Draper & Maynard athletic-goods catalog from Plymouth, New Hampshire. D&M was a major maker of gloves and sporting goods; its spring/summer catalogs used star players to sell equipment to ballplayers. Jackson is on the cover, as trade advertising — a primary-source look at how his name worked in the sporting-goods business, not on a bubble-gum card.
- Issue
- 1916 Draper & Maynard Athletic Goods Catalog
- Year
- 1916
- Subject
- "Shoeless" Joe Jackson
- Grade
- Raw (ungraded)
1916 Draper & Maynard Athletic Goods Catalog
Draper & Maynard of Plymouth, New Hampshire was a leading maker of gloves and athletic goods, and its catalogs of the 1910s used star players to sell equipment. Jackson was among them, and he is on the cover of the 1916 edition. A catalog is advertising rather than a card, which is the point: it shows how Jackson's name was used to sell to ballplayers in his own day.
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 →