Shoeless Joe Jackson was born in rural poverty in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1888. When he was only six, he worked seventy-hour weeks at the local cotton mill with his father. There was no opportunity for formal educational, and Jackson grew up illiterate. He joined the mill's baseball team at the age of fifteen and within five years was playing in the local minor league team, where he earned his nickname by playing in stocking feet.

In 1908, Jackson joined the major league Philadelphia Athletics, and, in 1910, he was traded to the Cleveland Indians. Five years later, he was traded to the Chicago White Sox.

The White Sox were owned by the miserly Charles Comiskey, who refused even to pay for the team's laundry, which earned them the nickname, Black Sox. The players were inadequately paid. The highest annual salary Jackson ever earned with the Black Sox...