Written in the style of an oral history as told by those involved, A Man Called Shoeless relates the life story of Joe Jackson, one of the most controversial, enigmatic and interesting characters in American popular culture. A story based on exhaustive research presented through the medium of fictionalized dialogue, the entire amazing trajectory of his life is told through a broad tapestry of voices-family, friends, rivals, players, officials, fans, critics. From illiterate mill hand to baseball legend, to his fall from grace, his story is told by Joe himself, those he knew, and those who knew him.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW!,
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This review is from: A Man Called Shoeless (Paperback)
Wow! This is a can't-put-the-book-down read. Burman has done a superb job of bringing the characters to life. The color, flavor, texture and smell of baseball has permeated every page.The dialogue-format is refreshing and fun. You'll laugh; you'll cry; you'll love it. A must-read for any baseball fan!
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Exhilarating Ride 'Round the Bases,
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This review is from: A Man Called Shoeless (Paperback)
Step in the batter's box and face down the pitcher. When reading, "A Man Called Shoeless," by Howard Burman, that's how intimately close you will feel to the game and to the man whose reputation sparks debate among the aficionados of baseball to this day. Using a wonderful technique of "first person" to tell from a fresh perspective the story of Joe Jackson, Burman uncovers level after level of personal dimensions of not only Jackson, but of those who intertwined in his life. Reading with an urgency not usually found in historically-based biographical accounts, "A Man Called Shoeless," forces the pages over with a rapidity usually garnered by detective or mystery stories. In a sense this is a novel with those attributes. As a baseball historian, no one knows better than Burman the times in which Joe Jackson played. He's undertaken an enormous task of bringing to life a multitude of characters both of major and minor import and has woven their peculiar personalities into the fabric of the overarching story of Shoeless Joe Jackson. Anyone who has followed baseball at all knows the story of the throwing of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago White Sox. What has not been done, and until this book very little has been written about, is the telling of the story by the multitude of personalities involved, and why perhaps the players of that disgraced team found reason to throw the series. Jackson is the topic of the story of course--from his stutter-step start in the majors to his eventful banishment from the game--but the book is studded with the contemporaries of that magnificent player. They are all in here, among them Connie Mack, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Ban Johnson, Charles Comiskey, Eddie Cicotte, Eddie Collins, Abe Attell, and Charlie Lebeau. The huge menagerie of characters who populate this book provide both insight and authenticity to the story making it a wonderful read. The possible root causes for the 1919 Sox's fall from grace is brought to light but never fully settled. And this just adds to the mystery. Was it revenge against the sometimes heartless, ruthless, and penurious owners of baseball teams? Was it due to the fact the baseball players needed second and even third jobs to make ends meet during those years of America's post WWI depression? Or was it just plain greed? No undertaking of the magnitude like that sad event is done for a singular purpose, so more than likely it was done for those reasons and many more that historians will unlikely be able to unearth. Thankfully, until such time, we have this incredible narrative to read. So straighten your cap, dust off your cleats, step into the box, face down the pitcher, and swing for the fence. Like a batter who has just gone 'downtown' this book touches all the bases.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fresh Take on Joe,
By 19 to 21 "John Shiffert" (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Man Called Shoeless (Paperback)
What about Shoeless Joe Jackson? Ah, there is a subject for much speculation. Writers from Eliot Asinof to W.P. Kinsella to David Fleitz and ad infinitum have speculated on this subject. The subject of Shoeless Joe Jackson. And now there's a new entry in the field, an entry that, mirable dictu, can stand alongside Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe." No small accomplishment, since, in the 20 plus years since Kinsella wrote his novel of the banned ballplayer coming back to life in Iowa (though it's ultimately a story about fathers and sons and baseball), no one has yet written a better baseball work of fiction. To even be mentioned in the same sentence as Kinsella's ingenious and creative work, an author would have to be, well, pretty ingenious and creative.Meet Howard Burman who, in his own fashion, has created a work of literature. "A Man Called Shoeless" isn't "Shoeless Joe," but it is, in its own way, as creative a work as you're likely to see, since Burman has fashioned what could best be called an oral history novel. Let's break that down a little before proceeding. Lawrence Ritter can be said to have, if not invented, at least popularized, the oral history genre in baseball with "The Glory of Their Times." History as told by those who lived it. And, if James Michener, a devoted baseball fan, didn't invent the historical novel, at least he popularized that genre of recounting history in a series of novels based largely on placing fictional characters in real situations. Burman has managed to do both... he has told the story (or maybe a story) of Shoeless Joe Jackson by means of a fictional oral history... "quoting" dozens of people, many real, some fictional (ala Michener). Burman himself describes the book as "faction," that is, a story based on exhaustive research presented through the medium of fictionalized dialog. In this case, the dialog tells the story of the often-troubled life of a baseball superstar who never really quite seemed to fit in outside of the south, or outside of a baseball diamond. If there's an over-riding message in "A Man Called Shoeless," that's it. Joe Jackson was, in both reality and in his own mind, a stranger in a strange land. Burman, by means of dozens of real people - baseball players, officials, reporters, family members - and some fictional characters, tells a story of a young, illiterate "linthead" (as southern mill workers of the turn of the last century were known) who was often bewildered by his surroundings, especially those outside of the mill towns of the south. The path and pitfalls of Jackson's difficult life are thus made much clearer to the reader than they were to Jackson himself. Like Kinsella, Burman sees Jackson as a sympathetic figure, victimized by his peers, his circumstances and surroundings, and his illiteracy (a common problem with mill workers' kids at the time, as Burman makes eminently clear.) It's not hard to empathize with this Joe Jackson, at least in terms of his difficulty adjusting to life outside of the south. According to Burman's highly detailed and enlightening account of the mills (by itself a significant historical essay), life was hard and not very pleasant... but it was at least a life among Jackson's people, his family and friends, the people and surroundings he knew. But, when his contract was sold to the Philadelphia Athletics in the summer of 1908 (when he was barely 19), he was dropped into a strange new world. Perhaps Burman's chapter titles for some of those years tell the story best, "I Wasn't Too Crazy About The Idea." "I Wanted To Disappear." "The Busiest Place I Ever Seen." "I Hated Philadelphia." Or maybe we can let Joe Jackson himself tell the story... "We walked from the train station through the narrow streets bordered by buildings so tall that they blocked out the sun. I knowed right there that those people who say the mill is a loud place ain't never been to Philadelphia at 5:00 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon. People was everywhere, pushing and shoving, going God knows where in such a almighty hurry that not one of them even slowed down so much as to say howdy. If there ever was any doubt that the big cities of the North was different from Greenville, it was gone by the time we was five feet outside that station." Personally, I love the city. I love Philadelphia, I love Center City, even at 5 p.m. on a Wednesday in the summer. And, it's a lot more hectic now than it was walking into the heart of Center City from the old B&O station out by the Schuylkill River 98 years ago. (Burman doesn't give that detail, but I just wrote a book on baseball in Philadelphia in the 19th Century, so trust me on this.) Still, Joe, I feel for you. It's been 12 years since I moved from Philadelphia to the south, and I don't like Atlanta any more now than I did in 1994... and I can read and write. A stranger in a strange land. Who is Howard Burman, this individual who can write in such a moving fashion? He's the real deal. The holder of a Ph.D. in Dramatic Literature from Ohio State and a Fulbright Scholar, Burman has served as the artistic producing director of three theater companies and has written more than 20 full-length plays, so you know he has a better feel for dialog than just about anyone else who's written baseball history. And that's the other aspect of "A Man Called Shoeless" that shines from the pages... the dialog Burman has created to tell his story. Actually, that's not completely accurate. There are several places in "A Man Called Shoeless" where Burman's vast research efforts have enabled him directly bring history into the story. Probably the most poignant instance is the story, probably first told by Fred Lieb (so maybe it should be looked at with askance, especially since Lieb didn't start in as a full-time baseball writer until 1911) about the Athletics coming back to Philadelphia from Spring Training in 1909. On the train platform in Reading, Pennsylvania, Jackson sees a row of milk cans with red labels, indicating their respective destinations. As Connie Mack tells it in "A Man Called Shoeless," Jackson turns to the A's manager and says, "I wish you'd put a red tag on me and ship me along with the milk cans down south." Burman also provides us with plenty of baseball references to the people, games and developments of the Deadball Era. Like the famous incident in 1909 when Ty Cobb cut up Frank Baker pretty well when sliding into third. Mack was not pleased, and said so in the press. Tiger manager Hughie Jennings responded in the newspapers by calling Mack, of all things, a "squealer." Burman has both Mack and Jennings "speaking" on the incident, even to the subtle point of having Jennings say that the Tigers "never squealed if our players were hurt." Thus giving the impression that maybe Hughie was slightly misquoted in the first place. (And maybe he was...) Certainly one of the appeals of "A Man Called Shoeless" is "listening" to the comments of the Hyder Barrs (a former minor league teammate and, for a short time, an Athletics' teammate), the Topsy Hartsels (who comes off as Jackson's main tormentor on the Athletics), the Eddie Planks (a much more sympathetic character), the Eddie Collins', the Charles Somers', the Jack Graneys, the Hugh Fullertons, the Charles Comiskeys, the Ban Johnsons, the Sport Sullivans, the Billy Mahargs, the Chick Gandils (he claims the fix was Sullivan's idea... right), the Hartley Replogles, the Alfred Austrians (what a sleaze), the Katie Jacksons (Joe's wife), even the Jim Devlins'. This last player in the game at first gives pause... the most prominent fixer on the 1877 Louisville Grays died six years before Jackson was born. However, "quoting" Devlin is just an example of both Burman's knowledge of the game and its history, and his use of all the characters in his play (edited down, this would make a great piece for the stage). Burman notes that, "a few characters were made up so as to better express the whole story... but only a very few, and with all the `invented' characters, I tried never to violate what we know [was] the reality of the situation they describe." This technique is very effective throughout the book, but no more so than with "Vincent Alexander." The quintessential krank, Alexander becomes a Joe Jackson fan as a kid in Philadelphia, and follows him throughout his career, even to the point of going to all of the 1919 World Series games and then, late in Joe's life, traveling to South Carolina to finally meet his hero and to present him with the scrapbooks he kept on Jackson throughout his career. A moving and significant story. A moving and significant character in this book, and totally a work of Howard Burman's creative imagination. "He, of course, is intended to represent all the staunch fans of Joe," says Burman. Did Joe Jackson betray his staunch fans and take part in throwing the 1919 World Series? Vincent Alexander doesn't think so, and neither does Burman, who essentially places him in a similar position as Buck Weaver... he sat in on some early meetings, but never truly agreed to be in on the fix, and also didn't tell anybody about it until after the fact. There is, however, admittedly one major difference between Jackson and Weaver. The third baseman didn't get a cent of the gamblers' money. And Jackson got $5000, whether or not he was in on the fix or not, whether he played to his best or not. (If he didn't, he still played pretty well.) There can really be no conclusion to this debate. No moral to the story, except maybe that Joe Jackson had a hard life from the beginning to at least until he was through with major league baseball and the north. For this is the story of Joe Jackson's life, as told by Howard Burman, it's not just the story of the 1919 World Series. And the irony of Joe Jackson's life is that which brought him the most fame... Read more ›
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