O’Connell: Shoeless Joe and Buck Weaver’s legacies are complex, 100 years after the Black Sox Scandal

From Patrick O’Connell at the Chicago Tribune on October 1, 2019, with mention of SABR member Jacob Pomrenke:

Debra Ebert and Sandy Schley sat toward the back of the second-floor ballroom at the Chicago History Museum, amid the crowd of 200 baseball fans and history buffs as historians, writers and professors delved deeply into the records and ramifications of the infamous 1919 World Series.

Fans and members of the Society for American Baseball Research spent their weekend listening to debates about the legacy of Sox star “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and club owner Charles Comiskey, gobbling up every morsel of information about the Black Sox betting scandal.

Ebert and Schley’s connection to the topic cut deeper than most at the society’s Black Sox Scandal Centennial Symposium. Their great-uncle, Sox third baseman Buck Weaver, was one of the eight players permanently banned from baseball in the aftermath of the Series.

“Sometimes,” Schley said, “it just feels sad. It feels sad, but you just keep trying. You feel it in your heart.”

Read the full article here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-black-sox-world-series-100-years-20190930-sjromcu4gfgs7mdm6tif7yuoqu-story.html



Originally published: October 2, 2019. Last Updated: October 2, 2019.