Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 25, 1994 TAG: 9410010031
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD MARCUM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
OK, so it wasn't as dramatic as, "If you build it, he will come." It was more like, "If you go there you might find him."
A lifelong fan of Shoeless Joe Jackson, he took a couple of days off from work, boarded a plane and headed from Southwest Virginia to Southeast Texas on a pasteboard pilgrimage to add a baseball card of his hero to his collection.
This dream forged in cardboard was born some 20 baseball seasons ago when he first learned about Joe Jackson by reading one of the countless baseball chronicles.
He began writing letters to surviving players from the 1919 World Series - the one Joe Jackson was reputed to have conspired to "throw," subsequently causing his lifetime ban from professional baseball. The letters they wrote back provided no consensus, but stoked the fires of his curiosity even more.
And sometime in the back of his mind he decided it would be neat to own a card of the legend who was Shoeless Joe.
Joseph Jefferson Jackson left a mixed legacy when he died in 1951. Depending on whom you ask, he was one of the greatest of the natural athletes of the 20th century, an idiot farm boy or a crook who very nearly destroyed the national pastime.
Perhaps it is this mystique that keeps the lifetime .356 hitter in the mind of the public. He has been the subject of numerous books, two major motion pictures and a great deal more fan curiosity that his contemporary greats Tris Speaker, Nap Lajoie, even Ty Cobb.
"Joe Jackson stuff is hard to find," said Louisa, Ky., baseball card dealer Randy Keeton. "Every now and then you can turn up a [Lou] Gehrig piece or a Babe Ruth card. But Jackson just played at the wrong time - very few cards were made during his career. There isn't much out there and what there is sells quickly."
The collector had earmarked about $1,000 for the purchase, assets set aside through selling a portion of his cards that had grown to mean less to him over the years. His wife knew how much he intended to spend and gave her blessing. She knows she's married to a baseball junkie.
After combing nearly 1,000 vendor tables, he had isolated about a dozen Jackson cards. He eliminated eight of the cards because they were priced at about what he expected to pay for his next car, between $8,000 and $20,000 each.
Three of the other copies, although in an acceptable price range, exhibited far too much wear to be satisfactory. On Friday, the remaining Shoeless Joe was the subject of negotiation, but he and the dealer could not reach an agreement.
He resigned himself to leaving without what he had come for. Then, about 15 minutes before the show closed, something unexpected happened. He found a nice example of Jackson's 1941 Playball priced at $1,500. Somehow, he'd overlooked it on his first trip around.
He asked the dealer if he would take less. The dealer, a quiet but pleasant man from Iowa, said he really couldn't - he'd only recently acquired the card and had quite a high percentage invested in it. But he had an interest in 1880s cabinet photographs of Hall of Famers.
That was all it took. The collector had an extra cabinet photograph of old-time Giants pitcher Tim Keefe, worth about $500. After adding another card and his stash of traveler's checks, the search was over.
The collector returned home a poorer but richer man. He knows a lot of his friends and co-workers could never understand why someone would travel halfway across the country to spend a relatively large amount of money for a relatively small scrap of cardboard.
That doesn't really matter. If it's not something a person innately understands, you simply can't explain it.
by CNB