The Door Ted Williams Pushed On

Ted Williams first asked the question in 1936. He was a teenager in San Diego, and he put it to Eddie Collins, who had played beside Joe Jackson on the 1919 White Sox: was Joe in on it? Collins paused, then said no. Williams carried that answer for the next sixty-six years.

In 1998 he stopped carrying it quietly. He and Bob Feller hired a lawyer and sent Bud Selig a 28-page argument for why the man with the fourth-highest batting average in baseball history did not belong on a permanent blacklist. Williams' case was simple and he never varied from it: no court ever convicted Jackson of anything, and the numbers he put up in that Series do not look like a man trying to lose. Williams died in 2002 with nothing to show for it.

Then in May 2025 the rule changed. Bans now expire at death, and Jackson came off the ineligible list along with sixteen others. The Classic Baseball Era Committee meets in December 2027, sixteen voters, twelve yes votes required, for the class of 2028. There is no guarantee he even makes the ballot. But for the first time since 1921, the door is not locked, and Ted Williams spent a good part of his life pushing on it.