IT AIN'T SO!: Shoeless Joe Jackson's Story

Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) IT AIN'T SO! Shoeless Joe Jackson's Story, 2021 LARRY RITTER AWARD nominee, is a Two-Act Play and Afterword based on the rise and fall of baseball legend, Shoeless Joe Jackson. Joe, a humble and uneducated young man who dreams of more than a life of menial labor in the cotton mills of South Carolina, finds both his passion and ticket to freedom at the end of a baseball bat. Full of raw talent and armed with his trusty Black Betsy, Joe takes baseball by storm--challenging even the giant amongst players, Ty Cobb. However, dissent begins to grow amongst Joe's fellow Chicago White Sox teammates due to owner Charles Comiskey's stranglehold upon their livelihoods. Locked into contracts with unfavorable terms and under constant threat of lifetime bans, a group of players led by Chick Gandil hatch a plan to throw the 1919 World Series in order to earn the money they feel they deserve. Unwittingly drawn into the plan, Joe attempts to inform the management of the scheme and plays the best ball of his life in a desperate bid to win. All his efforts come to naught, however, as the fix works and Joe finds himself a pawn for both sides of the ensuing legal conflict; ultimately being banned for life and forever haunted by the immortal phrase: "Say it ain't so, Joe..." Read more