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Posted By: Anonymous

As I said in an earlier post.......Jackson had tested the "waters" where MLB's jurisdiction was concerned.....once he determined MLB couldn't really touch him in those outlaw type leagues.....he used his real name. The only reason Joe tried to play under assumed names in 1922 is that he loved the game and feared he wouldn't be hired to play in those leagues if he used his real name (all Joe Jackson wanted to do was play ball......play anywhere someone was willing to pay for his services). From my research, though even when he used an assumed name......it sometimes only lasted for a few innings before someone figured out that this Jefferson Walker guy or this Joe Josephs guy was indeed the great Shoeless Joe Jackson....sometimes it went the entire game before someone was tipped off after the fact. Most of the time, the teams that hired Joe had to forfeit those games to the other team or the other team requested that be done (sometimes it happened....sometimes the game stood as played). I believe by 1923 he was playing under his real name (I know that to be a fact for his time in Americus, GA and Waycross, GA in 1923). In 1922, Joe was in the New York City area playing ball there....but all the newspapers reported seeing him out and about NYC (they used his real name). Joe was doing a vaudeville act at night and playing ball during the day. The papers reported about the vaudeville act using his real name.....yet Joe could slip out of the city during the day to play ball in New Jersey under an assumed name...and in most cases no one was the wiser (at least for a while).

I think that if we find this man to be Joe Jackson.....that he will be listed in the papers as JOE JACKSON....and not some assumed name.

Mike
Official Historian
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