Field of Dreams: Part II

Sporting News, The, July 31, 1995 by Dave Kindred

In the movie "Field of Dreams," an Iowa farmer hears the whispered words, "If you build it, he will come." So the farmer plows under his corn and builds a baseball field. Soon, Shoeless Joe Jackson materializes with ghosts in White Sox uniforms. But the field is built for a grander thing than Joe Jackson's return. It's there as a meeting place for the farmer and his father, long dead. The movie ends as they come together one more time.

Anyone who loved the movie first made a willing suspension of disbelief. For as much as we would like for such a thing to be possible, we know it could never happen.

Or could it?

Judge for yourself from our story this week. It begins with a curious letter that arrived just before Joe Jackson's 107th birthday on July 16.

The letter said: "Is Shoeless Joe Jackson there? We have reports of a fashionable lady walking back and forth outside the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York. Witnesses have reported this lady is carrying a black baseball bat in a cotton cloth. They also reported she kept saying, `Is Joe here yet? He should have been here by now.' Could this be his wife, Katie Jackson?

"We wouldn't think any more of it, except Shoeless Joe was invited to attend Ed Sullivan's `Toast of the Town' show on December 16, 1951. This would have been his greatest opportunity to clear his name. ... But as we know, Joe had a heart attack 10 days before the show.

"These reports add to indications that Shoeless Joe Jackson may show up at Comiskey Park between August 11 and 20."

Three days later, another letter: "Is Shoeless Joe Jackson there? We have reports of a gentleman visiting Petland Pet Shops in Cincinnati. Workers have stated that this gentleman wanted a multicolored parrot that would bellow, `You're out! He also wanted to know if the bird could walk on a baseball.

"We wouldn't think any more of it, except Shoeless Joe sometimes carried a pesky bird whose vocabulary was limited to a screeching, `Y-o-u'r-e out! These reports suggest Joe may visit Comiskey Park between August 11 and 20."

The great hitter Joe Jackson took $5,000 of gamblers' money to fix the 1919 World Series in which the White Sox played Cincinnati. Though acquitted - evidence disappeared - eight players were banned from baseball.

Over the years, crusaders defended Jackson's honor by saying he took the money but played his best. He had the Series' only home run, the most hits (12), a .375 batting average and a .563 slugging average. He made no errors.

Jackson's defenders say he was an illiterate country boy duped by teammates who threatened to kill him. They say that after 76 years it's time to pardon Jackson and allow him in the Hall of Fame.

These letters were among a dozen this summer. Each came with a filip of fact about Joe Jackson's life, that filip wrapped in a piece of fantasy. Sometimes the letter writer would cite bizarre events involving the White Sox - a no-hitter lost, 12 home runs in a game, a 459-minute doubleheader - as proof that "primal forces are at work" to bring Joe Jackson back to Chicago.

The letters were stacked on a desk, forgotten, until this summer's All-Star Game. That night in a TV shoe commercial, Don Mattingly said, "If Shoeless Joe Jackson were playing today, he'd have a shoe contract."

Well. Was it coincidence that Joe Jackson's name came up so soon after these letters arrived? Maybe coincidence is just another way of saying primal forces are at work. Whatever we called the letter writer.

Mark Babiarz has been a White Sox fan since growing up in the northern Illinois town of Amboy. He is 36, a financial consultant in New Port Richey, Fla. One day his softball coach, Tom Malone, said it had been "my dream since long before `Field of Dreams" to get Jackson into the Hall of Fame.

Malone says: "Whatever damage Joe did, and we think he was innocent, there are 30 to 50 future Hall of Famers playing today who did more damage to baseball in 1994 by canceling a World Series."

So Malone and Babiarz became crusaders who built a database, mailed letters around the country (no answer from acting commissioner Bud Selig) and placed this classified, ad in the Chicago Tribune: "Lost Pair of shoes. Old Comiskey Park area. Pick'em up August - Joe Jackson."

An intriguing touch, that. But the story seemed to end there, only one more quixotic attempt to rehabilitate poor Joe Jackson.

Then Babiarz said he also would drive to Iowa to see the ballfield made for the movie and left in place as a baseball shrine of sorts, the real Field of Dreams. Babiarz said, "Something big is going to happen there."

Something with Shoeless Joe? "No," he said.

If not Joe, what? A silence and then: "I'm going to meet my son for the first time."

Babiarz was 17, his girlfriend 17. Neither was ready to be married. She raised their son. Only once did Babiarz see the boy; that was at a distance in a grocery store when the boy was 1. They had never spoken until July 5 when Babiarz heard Christopher Albrecht's voice on the phone.

"Christopher said, `Let's let bygones be bygones. I want to know the other side of my family.' And, `I wish you could've been there for my games.' I told him, `You don't know how many times I wished the same thing.'"