A love story: Black Betsy and Shoeless Joe Jackson

POTTSTOWN, Pa. The old girl is kept in the dark these days.
It has been weeks since Betsy s last sip of fresh oxygen.

She is kept behind a door, locked from the outside. She shares her space with a stack of reading material, but there is no light to make the words dance.
The whispers in her direction come infrequently.

When they do, all anyone talks about is how old she looks, how heavy she is and how the blemishes on her 99-year-old complexion seem wider and deeper than black-and-white photographs indicate.
Betsy has had 55 years to adjust to being a widow. What she did best, of course, was support her man, Joe and make him look good.

But then Joe left her, in December 1951. Betsy was in his office, keeping quiet as always and leaning against the wall next to his desk, when Joe s heart gave out. He never said goodbye.

Locked inside this cage now, life is slow and quiet and black. She is alone, 650 miles from home, with nothing to suggest she will return.
It is no way for an old girl to spend her 100th year.

You will not find statistics in this space of the sports page. Read elsewhere to quench those fixes.
See, this is a love story.

It is the story of the unique relationship between one of South Carolina s best and most infamous athletes, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the best girl in his bat bag, Black Betsy. It was with her in 1908 that Jackson ended his slump. He walked out of the spinning room at Greenville s Brandon Mill and into the major leagues.

Betsy was with him until Jackson s final game.
He was nothing without her. She was nothing without him.

Anyone who saw them together knew it.
She was a friend. Betsy was with Jackson in Cleveland in 1911 when he hit .

408 during his first full season in the big leagues. He spent 13 seasons in the majors, during which he had a .356 batting average third all time in the game s 135-year history.

She was a confidante. Betsy stayed with him during the impossible times. Jackson was run out of baseball amid the Black Sox scandal, which alleged Jackson was among eight Chicago White Sox players who took money to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

The ban prevents him from being inducted into baseball s hall of fame or honored among the all-time greats. As far as Major League Baseball is concerned, Jackson never existed.
She was a bodyguard.

Years after Jackson finished his baseball career in semi-pro leagues in South Carolina and Georgia, Betsy leaned against the walls of Jackson s dry-cleaning business in Savannah, Ga., his liquor store in West Greenville and his home office, between the wall and Jackson s desk, in Greenville. Jackson never had trouble.

Who would want a formal introduction to Jackson s 48-ounce guardian?
Betsy never broke during Jackson s career; she sustained only a small crack near the handle. Jackson covered the wound in black tape .

.. and pretended nothing happened.

Perhaps it was that Betsy was custom-made for Jackson out of hickory, a strong wood but an imperfect one for making baseball bats. Perhaps it was because Jackson cared for Betsy, brushing her dark finish with cotton and soaking her in sweet oil to protect her from the elements.
Or perhaps it was because they were supposed to be together forever.

And Joe didn t keep up his end of the deal.
Jackson was far from monogamous, but that never bothered Betsy, because she was his favorite. Jackson kept a crowded bat bag, and all of the company had names.

He had Blonde Betsy and Big Jim and Old General and Black Betsy 2. Yes, Betsy was a twin.
But Black Betsy, the one with the wide barrel and the brass staple and the Spalding logo and the overflowing good luck, was the slump buster.

Jackson was buried in a slump when Wesley Cap n Martin introduced Jackson to Betsy in 1908.
Months later, Jackson and Betsy were out of the Upstate s textile leagues and in the batter s box at Columbia Park, home of the American League s Philadelphia Athletics.
Three seasons later, Betsy followed Jackson to Cleveland, where he finished fourth in MVP voting in his first full season in the majors.

The bond between Joe and Betsy was cosmic. She had grace and timing and strength under pressure. His powerful, left-handed swing and preferential treatment made Betsy feel loved.

Other players asked for a chance to hold Betsy, but Jackson wanted no other man s hands on her. That is, until a talented friend of Jackson s named Babe Ruth approached him in 1920, when Jackson played for the Chicago White Sox, and asked for advice in breaking through a slump. After Ruth adjusted his batting stance to resemble Jackson s, the Pickens native lent Ruth his secret weapon: the Black Betsy.

Ruth smothered his slump and finished that season with 54 home runs, nearly twice as many as a player had hit during a season previously.
A year later, Jackson was banned from baseball after allegedly accepting $5,000 for his part in throwing the 1919 World Series. Jackson often said, until his death, that he never played any less than his best during that Series.

Jackson s wife, Katie, wrote letters to baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, begging him to re-instate her husband.
But it was Jackson s other girl, Betsy, who might have sold the story best. Jackson and Betsy combined during the 1919 World Series for a .

375 batting average the best among both teams players the Series only home run and what then was a World Series-record 12 hits.
It did not matter. After the 1920 season, Joe and Betsy were banished from the major leagues.

Jackson stared into the eye of the storm and did not blink. He gathered his bat bag, renewed his fire and slid headfirst into the orange Carolina dirt. Landis might have banned Joe and Betsy from major-league stadiums, but he could not keep them off the chain-link sandlots on which the couple had perfected its relationship a dozen years earlier.

But Jackson needed financial assurances. He learned while playing for the White Sox how to make his money do the legwork while he played a game that paid him no more than $8,000 annually. Jackson, who owned a pool hall near the University of Chicago, opened a dry-cleaning business in Savannah and worked until the sun set and the game started.

Betsy never left Joe s sight, whichever shift he was penciled into.
When Jackson returned to South Carolina to play for the Greenville Spinners in 1932, he opened a liquor store on Pendleton Street in Greenville s West End. He kept Betsy behind the counter, leaning on a wall near the bottles of whiskey.

Jackson s legs weakened in the mid-1930s, forcing him to give up baseball after nearly 30 seasons. But his hands and his mind had life left. A wide-eyed kid named Joe Anders staked out Jackson s liquor store, itching for baseball tips from a man the Greenville Piedmont said played in the majors.

Anders was not of age to enter a liquor store, so Jackson and Betsy came outside.
It is Jackson s hands that Anders remembers, the way his fingers snaked around Betsy s handle delicately but snugly ..

. the way Jackson waved her barrel in front of him on the trip to the top of his left shoulder ..

. and the way his eyes peered forward, staring headlong at an imaginary fastball, right where he liked it.
It was as if these two were made for each other, Anders thought.

They had been through heaven and hell together.
He had laid it out in the rain, and he had beat the end of it up knocking the mud off his spikes, says Anders, who now is 86 years old. Looking at it, you d think it was ready for the trash pile.

But it meant a lot to him. He loved that bat. It was part of Joe.

Betsy was at home when Joe died. She leaned against a wall in a quiet room, in between a small space between Jackson s desk and his office wall.
Jackson, who suffered from heart problems during his final years, sustained a fatal heart attack Dec.

5, 1951. Betsy leaned against that wall during Jackson s visitation at the McAfee Funeral Home and during his burial at Greenville s Woodlawn Cemetery. She leaned against that wall for the next eight years.

Joe and Katie Jackson had no children. Some believe that, considering their widely known affection for youngsters, the couple might have tried but failed to conceive. Jackson kept no secrets about his fondness for children, particularly energetic ones with a nose for sports.

Jackson spent his final years outside, one leg draped over the other and his back in a lawn chair.
Jackson had evening conversations with Larry Erwin, a distant cousin of Jackson s by marriage. Erwin stopped by often to check on Joe and Katie Jackson, to make certain they had everything they needed.

Joe Jackson had plenty, but he enjoyed Erwin s visits because he brought his 4-year-old son, Lester, with him.
Lester s energy always seemed ready to burst, as he rounded first, flew through second and slid into third: Jackson s leg. Larry Erwin was embarrassed, but Jackson smiled and assured the boy s father no harm had been done.

If Lester was interested in baseball, perhaps he might like to meet an old friend. Jackson introduced Lester to Betsy, whose sturdy shape had begun to bow. Lester was impressed, and he made certain on future visits to steal a quick glance at the bat as he passed the doorway to Jackson s office.

Jackson s fondness for Lester was put in writing when Katie Jackson completed her last will and testament. She closed the document with wishes that five of her late husband s possessions be distributed. No.

5 stated Jackson s bat would go to Lester Erwin.
Several days after Katie died in December 1959, a man named Jack Abbott arrived at Larry Erwin s front door with a long piece of oily hickory. Abbott gave Betsy to Lester, who was 13 at the time.

Erwin was speechless. He did not yet know the details of Betsy s journey. But he had learned from Joe Jackson s affection for the old girl that she was not made for hitting rocks in the Erwin family s driveway.

Betsy spent her golden years in comfort, adjusting to retirement and trying to adjust to life without Joe. Instead of being one of baseball s most fearsome tools, Betsy was a showpiece. Instead of leaning against a wall in one of Jackson s properties, she spent the 42 years after Katie Jackson s death on two custom-made stands, one to support her handle and another to support her barrel, on Erwin s bookshelf at his home in Easley.

It was during that time that the chatter began. Baseball historians believed Betsy had been lost or destroyed. The most powerful relic of Shoeless Joe, they thought, might have been taken out with the last bag of Jackson s old things and deposited into the landfill.

But what if she had not been? What if Betsy still existed? What might someone pay for the chance to hold her .

.. to swing her .

.. to own her, as Jackson had for so long?

The chatter echoed off the walls of memorabilia conventions and bounced off magazine pages and past the Easley city limits. It took Erwin nearly a half-century to hear the chatter, but in the late 1990s he heard it loud and clear. It had a number associated with it, a fat number with more possibilities and zeroes than Erwin could fathom: $1 million.

A number like that deserves investigation. Erwin listened to memorabilia and auction gurus, debating whether he could do it sell Black Betsy.
No.

He could not do it. Not in this lifetime. Besides, Erwin had doubts a baseball bat could fetch such an amount.

But what about the $45,000 a man shipped Erwin to buy Jackson s signed bill of sale from his Chicago pool hall, sight unseen?
Erwin called Joe Anders, who received hitting lessons outside Jackson s liquor store in the 1930s, and asked if Anders would think less of him if he sold Betsy. Anders said she was Erwin s property; he had Anders blessing in doing whatever he wanted.

Perhaps it was worth a try. Erwin, through memorabilia company Real Legends, posted a description of Betsy on the auction Web site eBay in July 2001. Potential buyers had to front a $25,000 deposit to prove they were serious.

The minimum bid was $500,000.
On the auction s final day, Erwin and his wife, Rita, punched the refresh button on their computer s Internet browser like it was a nervous tic. The hours trickled by, and the bids staggered in two of them in the auction s final minutes.

Betsy was in the other room when the auction ended on the night of Aug. 7, 2001. She was sold for $577,610 to the owner of a marketing and sports memorabilia company in Pennsylvania.

Betsy spent the next days being suffocated inside bubble wrap, a layer of cardboard and another layer of bubble wrap before being stuffed inside a plastic tube and deposited into an armored car. Erwin watched from an upstairs window as the car left his driveway and the driver pointed Betsy toward the northeast.
She arrived in Pottstown, Pa.

, a day later, and her new owners, Rob Mitchell and his sister Mandy, tore open the tube for a glimpse at Joe Jackson s other half. They had spent nearly $600,000 for this moment.
Betsy was old, cracked and weathered from the years.

The bow in her posture was noticeable. Her handle was chipped, and the end of her barrel was discolored and uneven from years of Jackson tapping it on dugout floors. She was perfect.

Betsy arrived exactly how Mitchell and his sister hoped she would. Flawed but beautifully flawed.
This thing just danced its way through time, escaping every mere disaster known to man, says Mitchell, who admits he bought Betsy as an investment in addition to other reasons.

Its unique shape and its unique travel through time and its stand against time, that is the most alluring part of it.
This bat was more like his brother. It went with him everywhere.

It was his good luck charm. It was everything to him.
Nearly six years after being taken from her home, Betsy sits alone in Mitchell s office, inside an old, 6-foot safe that stored pies decades ago.

She leans against one of the safe s walls, the way she did when Joe was still around, with nothing more than her authentication papers to keep her company.
Mitchell opens the safe only occasionally and when visitors ask to meet Betsy. She toured the country for a time, but the insurance company demands upward of $7,500 each time Betsy leaves Mitchell s office.

She could spend eternity in the dark, propped against the safe s iron walls.
Betsy, who will turn 100 next year, was Joe Jackson s other half. And he was hers.

He was nothing without her. She was nothing without him. Each side of their relationship was worthless with the other half removed.

Things became different after he left her. No one held her or cared for her as Joe did. He is buried in Greenville, his gravesite littered by fans who in early March had left 23 baseballs, three shoes and a batting glove.

At the foot of Jackson s grave marker is an old bat with a black barrel and weathered exterior. It is a replica of his famous companion, this one waterlogged and heavy.
Someone who visited Woodlawn Cemetery remembered that Jackson was most comfortable with his trusted bat nearby.

The most comforting one of them all, the friend and confidante and bodyguard, was the one who never left him, even when everything else was taken away.
It looks like an old girl named Betsy, who might sit through eternity before someone else comes along and loves her the way Joe did.
Reach Babb at (803) 771-8357.