AP News, July 11th, 2007
It's too bad "Shoeless" Joe Jackson isn't still alive. It sounds like he's got an ally in presidential candidate Bill Richardson.
Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, took a swing by the "Field of Dreams" movie site in Dyersville on Wednesday.
A lifelong baseball fan and a player in his youth, Richardson mentioned Jackson while sitting on the porch swing made famous by the 1989 hit movie. The film centered on an Iowa farmer who plowed through a corn field and built a baseball diamond that somehow draws "Shoeless" Joe, a player besmirched by a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series.
Jackson, along with seven other members of the so-called "Black Sox," was banned from baseball for life, though some baseball historians believe he was innocent.
"I was asked if I would consider pardoning "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, and the answer is yes. I'll consider it, if Scooter Libby can get off the hook," Richardson said of Jackson, portrayed by Ray Liotta in the movie.
Like "Shoeless" Joe, Richardson's baseball career has been the subject of debate. Richardson had maintained that he was drafted in 1966 by the Kansas City _ now Oakland _ Athletics, based on a program from a summer league team he played on that said he was "Drafted by K.C."
In 2005, Richardson acknowledge he hadn't been drafted.
A Richardson aide said Wednesday that he was offered a $25,000 signing bonus by a scout for the Houston Colt .45's/Astros organization in the mid-1960s. He said his father insisted he go to college instead.
His dad, William Blaine Richardson, was shared his passion for the game, however.
According to Richardson, his father bought land in Mexico and made it into a baseball field where young Bill and his friends could play.
"I was a very shy kid, and baseball was a way of getting acceptance," Richardson said.
Richardson, a lefthander who pitched for Tufts University, played catch with a pair of brothers from a nearby high school team, then took a few cuts in the batter's box.
His first hit was a screaming grounder down the first base line that plunked an unsuspecting bystander in the upper thigh. Batting practice stopped briefly, until the man assured Richardson that he was OK.
Richardson resumed, scattering a number of hits into left-center field before visiting with a crowd of about three dozen people.
Richardson spent about an hour at the site. He toured the farm house where many of the scenes from the movie were filmed and grilled the site's owners, Don and Becky Lansing, about facts from the film.
Richardson said that he's seen "Field of Dreams" 18 times, and ranks it as his second-favorite movie _ behind "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid."
"I came here as a fan. I know I'm running for president, but I would have come here as a tourist," Richardson said. "I love the movie."
