This week, the commissioner of Major League Baseball reinstated the infamous “Eight Men Out” of the 1919 Chicago White Sox. All eight, banned from the game for taking bribes to throw the 1919 World Series, are now eligible for the Hall of Fame.
The story of the eight was told in the 1988 movie “Eight Men Out” with an all-star lineup that included John Cusack, Christopher Lloyd and Charlie Sheen. The movie has an 87% critics rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
The most famous of the eight is “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. Jackson, considered one of the best to ever play the game, is portrayed by Ray Liotta in the 1989 Kevin Costner movie “Field of Dreams.” That movie has an 88% critics rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
On the 1919 White Sox roster I’ve shared with you today, the “Eight Men Out” are circled in black. But it’s the one circled in red that is of the most interest to me. His name is Charlie Robertson; he was an Austin College Kangaroo.
Robertson was signed by White Sox owner Charles Comiskey after his 1918 AC graduation. His 1919 story is not just intimately tied the “Eight Men Out,” it is also closely connected to his home state of Texas.
White Sox spring training in 1919 took place in Mineral Wells, not far from Robertson’s home of Fort Worth. The White Sox traveled from Chicago to Mineral Wells in March, where the rookie Robertson was already waiting.
Chicago scrimmaged in April of 1919 against the University of Texas in Austin. As Robertson watched from the dugout, homeruns by the two of the Eight Men Out gave the White Sox a victory. The Longhorns would recover a week later on the same field with a win against Austin College.
The 1919 season began in full swing in May, when Robertson was tapped to start a May 13th game at Comiskey Park. Members of the “Eight Men Out” went 8-for-16 (.500) in that game; Shoeless Joe went 2-for-2 with the White Sox’s only run. But it wasn’t enough for Robertson, who endured a 2-1 defeat in his first career start.
Robertson was sent down to the minors for the remainder of 1919 to polish his game. There, he watched his White Sox teammates enter baseball lore by advancing to the World Series, throwing that Series, and then either denying or justifying the act.
The story of the 1919 Chicago White Sox is complicated. However, former AC baseballer Wayne Whitmire puts it well I believe: whatever your thoughts on the lifetime Hall of Fame bans, those bans have been served. It’s now time for those of us in posterity.
The 1919 Chicago White Sox mean a lot to me. I was a freshman at AC when “Eight Men Out” and “Field of Dreams” were released. In fact, I watched “Field of Dreams” at the Sherman movie theatre on Texoma/82 right after my fraternity pledgeship ended. My pledge class included a bunch of baseball guys, including Wayne Whitmire.
The impact of “Field of Dreams” was so great that I visited scenes from the movie on graduate school trips to Boston. Those scenes included Fenway Park, Comiskey Park, and of course the Field of Dreams itself in Dyersville, Iowa.
But my favorite 1919 White Sox tie is a personal one. Robertson entered baseball immortality three years after 1919 when he became one of only 24 players in baseball history to pitch a perfect game. I wrote a book about it and made sure to include Robertson family members John Robert & Martha Wright……both fellow AC alumni and friends.
So put me down as strongly supportive of baseball’s decision to lift the lifetime bans on Jackson and the Eight Men Out. After all, the entire theme of “Field of Dreams” is about repairing the past after a lifetime is done. The Hall of Fame in Cooperstown was “built” in 1939, and with Jackson’s baseball resume he will likely “come.”
“If you build it, he will come.” Those words are well known from “Field of Dreams.” They also happen to be the last words spoken in the movie by the now Cooperstown-eligible Shoeless Joe Jackson, the former 1919 White Sox teammate of Austin College Kangaroo Charlie Robertson.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA191905130.shtml
https://sports.yahoo.com/article/paul-sullivan-shoeless-joe-jackson-093000097.html