Module 10: Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy

• Book Summary:  Shoeless Joe got his name from playing an entire baseball game in his socks.  Before becoming a major league baseball player, Joe went through a horrible hitting slump.  He tried different things like changing the way he stood at home plate, switching his left hand to his right, and even wearing glasses.  When all of these things didn't work, Shoeless Joe went to Ol' Charlie who was gifted at making bats.  Ol' Charlie made a bat for Joe, which he named Betsy, after Betsy Ross.  Unfortunately, the bat didn't help Joe get out of his slump.  Shoeless Joe asked Ol' Charlie to change how Betsy how Betsy was made to see if it would help him out of his slump.  Each time, Joe wanted Betsy to represent strong people and symbols from America's History.  For example, he wanted her to be made out of Hickory, after President Andrew Jackson.  He also wanted Betsy to weigh forty-eight ounces.  "One ounce for each state in America" (Bildner, 2002).  With the use of tobacco, Betsy was made big and black.  Shoeless Joe entered the minor league, and during his first year he had 120 hits in 87 games.  He was drafted by Philadelphia to play in the major leagues.  After a poor season, he was dejected back to the minor leagues.  Each time Joe was dejected from the major leagues back to the minor leagues, Ol' Charlie gave Joe instructions on how to take care of Black Betsy to help his swing.  He had to keep her warm by sleeping with her at night, oil her every night, and wrap her in cotton cloth.  Finally, Shoeless Joe had a great season in the major leagues in Cleveland, where, as a rookie, he had a record breaking 233 hits in only 147 games.

• APA Reference of Book:

Bildner, P. (2002). Shoeless Joe & black Betsy.  New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster.

• Impressions:  My favorite parts of Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy is how the author makes references to America's history when Ol' Charlie is trying to create the perfect bat for Joe.  For example, the first time Shoeless Joe went to see Ol' Charlie, he named Betsy after Betsy Ross, because he said, "Pitchers are going to honor and respect this bat the way they respect the flag Betsy Ross created" (Bildner, 2002).  I found this to be an interesting way to give the reader some facts about America's history.  This book is also had its funny moments.  You never knew how Shoeless Joe was going to ask Ol' Charlie how to make his bat to help him out of his slump.

• Professional Review:   Plummeting from star slugger to an outcast besmirched by scandal, Shoeless Joe Jackson is the eponym for baseball drama, but this tall-tale rendering of his early career zeroes in on the relatively tepid theme of Jackson's persnickety quest for the perfect bat, realized at last in the form of his fabled Black Betsy. Blaming each batting slump and subsequent fall from major-league grace on inadequate equipment, Joe continually consults Ol' Charlie, the consummate craftsman who not only fashions his forty-eight-ounce bats but also instructs him in their care and feeding: "When you get up north to Cleveland, you make sure you wrap her in cotton cloth every night. The South is the land of cotton, Shoeless Joe, and a good Southerner must always be true to his roots." Folksy idiom and repetition brush a folkloric patina over the proceedings, but the slim plotting cannot justify the rambling text; Payne's mixed-media illustrations capture flap-eared, ham-handed Joe at some startling and original angles, but they awkwardly cast the semi-tragic figure in a comic light. Four pages of concluding notes comment on the 1919 World Series debacle that saw Jackson tossed from the pros, and it's here that aficionados will find the satisfying intrigue. Readers sufficiently outraged by Shoeless Joe's banishment can pursue the closing reference (that seems to pass as a wildly biased source note) to his booster club at www.blackbetsy.com and nutz the Baseball Commissioner for Jackson's posthumous reinstatement.

Reference:  

Bush, E. Review of Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy by P. Bildner.  Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, 55(6), p. 200.

• Library Uses:  This book could be used to help students learn history facts.  A game could be played where students have to name how many times a history fact was mentioned and what has changed.