Hunting Shoeless Joe's Holy Grail

By
• BEN COHEN

It is one of the most enduring mysteries in sports: What happened to the long-lost signed confession of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson?

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'Shoeless' Joe Jackson was banned from baseball along with seven of his White Sox teammates after throwing the 1919 World Series.

The question has persisted since Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox players were indicted on charges of fixing the 1919 World Series. The "Black Sox" were acquitted of those criminal charges, but became baseball's most famous outlaws when they were banished from the sport by Major League Baseball's first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Now, almost a century later, the quest to find the most captivating piece of evidence in the case has intensified, luring collectors and fans alike to this week's National Sports Collectors Convention, which is being held in Chicago.

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Game 2 of the 1919 World Series

Last month, in the lead up to the convention, a prominent auction house posted a $1 million bounty for Jackson's confession, the city's holy grail of sports memorabilia. "I wouldn't offer $1 million if I didn't think it was worth more than that," said Josh Evans, founder of the New York auction house Lelands.com, who called himself a "treasure hunter."

But as troves of newly discovered documents have forced experts to reconsider the entire scandal, leading Black Sox researchers are in consensus about Jackson's missing confession: It's a myth. It doesn't exist and, in fact, never did.

"There are no signed confessions," said Jacob Pomrenke, chairman of the Society for American Baseball Research's Black Sox committee.

The confession represents a coveted treasure for serious collectors of sports memorabilia, in part because the Black Sox loom so large in the nation's sports psyche, having committed perhaps the gravest sin in the history of American sports. But it is equally prized for its mysterious absence, since the alleged disappearance of the document has long served as a crucial plot point in popular stories about the scandal.

According to the legend, Jackson's signed acknowledgment that he agreed to take a $20,000 bribe to throw the World Series was stolen before his 1921 criminal trial, possibly by the mob figure Arnold Rothstein, who figures prominently in the story of the 1919 World Series. As the tale goes, the theft scuttled the prosecution's case, leading a Chicago jury to acquit the Black Sox on charges of defrauding the public.

The evidence has been sought ever since. This week in Chicago, Evans hopes that his seven-figure offer will smoke out what he calls the "Dead Sea scrolls" of baseball.

The importance of the documents traces back, in large part, to "Eight Men Out," Eliot Asinof's 1963 book about the scandal, and John Sayles's 1988 film of the same name. In the book, the confessions play a role not only in the Black Sox criminal trial, but also in a lawsuit that Jackson filed in 1924 seeking back pay from White Sox owner Charles Comiskey. As Comiskey's attorney, George Hudnall, was presenting his defense, something remarkable happened, according to Asinof.

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D.B. Sweeney (left) as Jackson and Charlie Sheen as teammate Oscar 'Hap' Felsch in the 1988 film 'Eight Men Out

"Incredibly, the stolen confessions, missing since the winter of 1920, suddenly reappeared in Hudnall's brief case!" Asinof wrote.

The film version of "Eight Men Out" relies on the confessions for even more drama. In a pivotal scene, a witness in the Black Sox criminal trial mentions Jackson's confession, prompting a defense attorney to ask that the prosecution present it to the court. The judge agrees, demanding that the document be brought forward. "We don't have them, your honor," the prosecutor says. "They've been stolen."

Onto the screen flashes the front page of a fictional newspaper: "CONFESSIONS DISAPPEAR." Not long afterward, an acquittal has the defendants partying in the courtroom.

What actually happened, Black Sox scholars say, wasn't so cinematic. Information recently unearthed, particularly a 2007 auction of Black Sox papers won by the Chicago History Museum, has convinced some experts that the signed confession is a fabrication—even though the evidence that would debunk it has existed all along. Jackson's signed confession, these Black Sox researchers say, was nothing more than his testimony before a Cook County, Ill., grand jury on Sept. 28, 1920. The whereabouts of that transcript are well known: A copy was given to the Chicago Historical Society by the former law offices of Comiskey's attorney in 1988. In that testimony, Jackson admitted to agreeing to throw the 1919 World Series for $20,000, but said he pocketed only $5,000 in denominations of $50 and $100 bills.

Legal procedure wouldn't have called for Jackson to sign his so-called confession—much less with the famously scrawled "X" that fans of "Eight Men Out" remember—said Bill Lamb, the author of "Black Sox in the Courtroom," an account of the judicial proceedings published in March.

Thus, the scholars predict, the auction house's reward will go unpaid. "I believe their million dollars will remain in their bank account," said Mike Nola, founder of the Shoeless Joe Jackson Virtual Hall of Fame.

Like all good myths, of course, this one is rooted in some truth. Before the criminal trial, the original copy of Jackson's grand-jury testimony did go missing, resulting in wide and sensational press coverage. There was even public speculation that it was stolen by Rothstein. But the testimony was quickly reproduced on a typewriter from the grand-jury stenographer's notes and admitted as evidence in the 1921 trial. The state's attorneys even read the transcripts aloud in the sweltering courtroom.

As it turned out, jurors could make little sense of the transcript, in part because it was redacted "to the point of near unintelligibility," writes Lamb. In the grand-jury transcript, Black Sox players like Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams became "Mr. Blank" and "Mr. Blank," he says.

The legal keepsake that Black Sox historians are certain Jackson did sign was his waiver of immunity before giving his grand-jury testimony. But even that testimony, along with its brief disappearance, was irrelevant to Jackson and his teammates being found not guilty. "It's a big misnomer," said David Fletcher, the founder of the Chicago Baseball Museum, who is writing a revision of "Eight Men Out."

Evans isn't buying their skepticism. Should his million-dollar offer produce results this week—and it hadn't as of Thursday—he said he will have his checkbook ready and cash stored in a nearby safe. "I think they exist," Evans said. "I believe that signed confessions were done and they're out there."

As for those who disagree, he added: "They could be right. They could be wrong. It doesn't matter. I'm looking for great things, and this is one of them."

Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared August 2, 2013, on page D9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Hunting Shoeless Joe's Holy Grail.