[JimStinson]

Don't know what happened on the show as I didn't watch it. But the Jackson commentary brought to mind something that was relayed to me personally about Shoeless Joe.
There used to be a west coast collector who collected signed personal checks, all fields including baseball. He sold his check collection in the late 1980's. He was from Greenville South Carolina and told me as a young man he visited Shoeless Joe Jackson at the liquor store he owned in Greenville. He said he asked Jackson for an autograph a couple times and on both occasions Jackson would reach under the counter and hand him a signed item. Never signed in front of him, on both occasions the items were pre-signed by Jackson's wife.
On one occasion he said he visited and brought his own item , a photo from a book and asked Jackson to sign it. He said that Jackson acted odd and said that he would "sign it later". He said he never witnessed Jackson sign his name even though he met him and shook his hand etc.
He said he suspected even then that Jackson was not signing the items. After Shoeless Joe had died he was already an avid check collector and at some point before the store closed he asked someone in the family if they had a signed check. He told me they actually helped him go through some of the store's old files but found nothing that was actually signed by him.
In my conversations with him at that time it was known that a few authentic Joe Jackson signatures existed so he COULD sign his name. I think he and I concluded in our conversations that it was his opinion that Jackson's real signature would have been so labored as to be awkward so he delegated almost all signing duties to his wife unless he absolutely HAD to sign something himself