BONUS STORY:
Jackson: Best arm, best bat, best scapegoat

Maybe Joe Jackson is the conscience of baseball. Baseball fans of many stripes who have made a study of Jackson's life cling to three major views:

His performance during the 1919 World Series (.375 batting average; no errors in the field) suggests that he was doing nothing to "throw the series."

He was incapable of understanding the contents and ramifications of a confession, no matter how sincere he was in scrawling an X. The illiterate ball player was the perfect scapegoat in this affair. Despite admissions to the contrary, he denied wrongdoing till the end of his life. His last words to his family before his death were something like, "I've never been guilty of this whole thing."

And, finally, that he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame based on his career performance; that a number of Hall of Famers from the era would fail a test based on morality and ethics, maybe even crimes against the game.