say it ain't so, jay: fitzgerald's use of baseball in 'the great...

Say It Ain't So, Jay: Fitzgerald's Use of Baseball in "The Great Gatsby"Author(s): Robert Johnson Jr.Source: The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, Vol. 1 (2002), pp. 30-44Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41583031 .

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Say It Ain t So, Jay:

Fitzgerald's Use of Baseball

in The Great Gatshy

Robert Johnson Jr.

Л he corruption of the American Dream emerges in various

ways throughout The Great Gatshy - extravagant parties, expensive cars, and sprawling homes providing the backdrop for adulterous affairs, car crashes, and, eventually, three deaths. What Ross Posnock calls "the novels concern with the power of money upon human relations" (Donaldson, Critical Essays 201) resonates throughout the novel and

perhaps most brilliantly through Fitzgerald's subtle and seemingly in- nocuous use of sports. Several characters are defined by the social im-

plications of the sport they play, and Fitzgerald recognizes, long before it became common practice, how well baseball in particular embodies the contradictions of capitalism. In better understanding the intricacies of the two references Fitzgerald makes to the 1919 World Series scandal, we can see how the use of baseball offers one of the novels most endur-

ing and powerful critiques of the American Dream.

Sports references abound in Fitzgerald's writing, and they often serve as distinguishing features of his characters. Amory Blaine, the pro- tagonist in This Side of Paradise , takes his name from Hobey Amory Baker, captain of Princetons 1913 football team. In the same novel, the character Allenby is "explicitly modeled" on Baker (Isaacs 202). Early on, as Amory watches Allenby march by "slim and defiant, as if aware that this year the hopes of the college rested on him" ( Paradise 46), the reader should understand that, at that time, the essence of glamour was defined by these gentlemen athletes attending celebrated universities

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 2002 30



Fitzgerald's Use of Baseball in The Great Gatsby 31

(Gross 18). In the first half of the twentieth century, when the student- athlete was a student first and an athlete second, no collegiate sport carried more prestige than football.

In his essay on the short story "Winter Dreams," Neil D. Isaacs makes a point that may be applied here: Fitzgerald understood the sig- nificance of sports and the labels that went with them (207). Christian

Messenger echoes this idea in Sport and the Spirit of Play in Contempo- rary American Fiction , claiming Fitzgerald s legacy is school sports (422). In The Great Gatsby , Tom Buchanan is introduced as "one of the most

powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven" (10). This im-

mediately places Tom in a socially elevated position because of college footballs aristocratic status. As Isaacs notes, Fitzgerald is not the only author who recognizes the mythological heights to which football soared at the time. E. L. Doctorows narrator in Ragtime refers to football players as "the [leading] glamour personages" (qtd. in Isaacs 203). Yet,

Fitzgerald also recognizes the hypocrisy football represents: socially ac-

cepted violence. Nick, seeing Tom for the first time since their college days, connects Toms physical presence, "a body capable of enormous

leverage - a cruel body," with his demeanor: "[T]he appearance of al-

ways leaning aggressively forward" (11). Fitzgerald captures in Tom the once glorious school sports hero who now searches for the heroic mo- ment where things were less complicated and he was clearly on top (Messenger 193). Tom still uses his physical power to intimidate people, actually breaking Myrtle Wilsons nose (41), and now wields his business power and money to bully men like George Wilson and ruin men like Jay Gatsby. Though such thuggery seems incongruous with his social status, Tom does so with relative impunity because common hooli-

gans do not wear suits and work in Manhattan. Like football, golf enjoyed an aristocratic status in the 1920s, and

Fitzgerald invokes this association as well. Jordan Baker first appears "extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little . . ." (13). Though not yet identified as a

champion golfer, her pose mirrors that of someone about to tee off.

Fitzgerald, no doubt, was very much aware of golf s associations with leisure and people of privilege (Lauricella 39). More importantly, as James E. Miller Jr. observes, "In a few swift strokes, Fitzgerald . . . reveals her character and her world . . ." (Donaldson, Critical Essays 251). What



32 Robert Johnson Jr.

Miller refers to is Jordan Bakers propensity to cheat at golf. He con- tends it "cannot be dismissed as minor, as it suggests the contagious- ness of the 1920s disease [corruption]" (251). Taking it a step further, golf, unlike football, is not as closely officiated. Players are expected to abide by an honor code and police themselves on the course. By sug- gesting that Jordan cheats at golf, Fitzgerald again offers us an incon-

gruous character who appears aristocratic but possesses little or no honor. The sport with which Jay Gatsby is associated, baseball, brings no

social status. Though he attempts to alter this by showing Nick a photo of himself holding a cricket bat at Oxford, we later learn that, as a youth, he scheduled time for "Baseball and sports" (181). The subtlety of this reference lies in how, within our class system, a particular sport may become identified with a particular socioeconomic status. Baseball, even with some of its elements adopted from cricket, was the sport of ruffi- ans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Gatsby s photo with the cricket bat is an attempt to place himself among the elite. Ul-

timately, however, his youthful association with baseball (perhaps the skill that has brought him to cricket) labels him rural and middle class, if not lower. George Grellas essay "Baseball and the American Dream" describes how baseballs pastoral associations - dirt infields, grass out- fields, wooden bats, and leather gloves - tend to "reinforce the rural nature of baseball" (556). While this rural nature may influence a ro- mantic view of the game, perhaps calling to mind a simpler time, it also

emphasizes Gatsby s lack of sophistication. Gary J. Scrimgeour describes him more like a cowboy than a country boy: "[He's] a boor, a rough- neck. . . . His taste is vulgar, his behavior ostentatious, his love adoles- cent . . ." (Lockridge 73). While Scrimgeours assessment seems harsh, it is consistent with descriptions often associated with baseball greats in the early part of the twentieth century. The New York Giants' John McGraw was called "the toughest of the toughs and an abomination of the diamond" (Ward 63). The Detroit Tigers'Ty Cobb "played the games cruelly and ruthlessly, behaving like a spoiled boy when things didn't go his way" (Grella 559). And the entire St. Louis Cardinals team was known as "The Gas House Gang" for its fun-loving but rough style of play. That said, Gatsby s association with baseball need not function solely in nega- tive terms. Despite his wealth, he typifies many of the positive notions of ball players at the time: men from average families in the Midwest




who moved closer to the city to chase down a dream and make some-

thing of themselves in the process. The novels most important sports reference also emanates from

baseball. When Gatsby informs Nick that Meyer Wolfshiem is the gam- bler who fixed the 1919 World Series, Nick is initially staggered by the

very idea and thinks, "It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people . . ." (78). The revelation

brings Nick to an understanding of just how powerful Wolfshiem is. By association, it also further establishes the lengths to which Gatsby will

go to chase down a dream. In Extra Innings: Writing on Basebally Richard Peterson sees

Fitzgerald's reference to the 1919 World Series as simply a cameo role

(142). However, though the scandal merits just 17 lines in the entire novel, to think of it as little more than a device to characterize Wolfshiem, as Marius Bewley does, greatly underestimates Fitzgerald's subtle and elusive technique. The reference perfectly accommodates one of the novels main functions, what Bewley calls "an exploration of the Ameri- can dream as it exists in a corrupt period" (Lockridge 38). One cannot find anything more symbolic of a corrupt period in American history than a fixed World Series. It challenges the very integrity of the game that, by the 1920s, had truly become the national pastime. George Grella

goes so far as to speculate that the scandal "may have been more important than World War I in educating the nation in the dubious lessons of disenchantment" (560). For Nick, it immediately becomes much more. He remembers the event, but now he is forced to consider the manner in which it occurred and, worse, the agenda of a person who would

tamper with the sanctity of a uniquely American sport. Nick says, ". . .

[I]f I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that

merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain." He then asks Gatsby how Wolfshiem did it. Gatsbys response is vague - "He just saw an op- portunity" - and when Nick asks why Wolfshiem is not in jail Gatsby is

vague once more: "They cant get him, old sport. He's a smart man" (78). It may seem curious that Nick asks "how?" instead of "why?" The an- swer to "why?" is obvious: for the money. Nicks "how?," on the other

hand, is loaded. It sounds more like "How could he?" Initially staggered by the revelation, Nick seems equally amazed that Wolfshiem is not in

jail. That Nick quickly drops the subject shows how well he understands




the impotence of his position. His only means of asserting a bit of mo-

rality in the scene is to insist on paying the check, thereby preventing Wolfshiem from treating him to anything with his tainted money.

Nick never again brings up the World Series scandal to Gatsby, and this may very well be Fitzgerald at work, trying to keep control over a loaded reference. The fixing of the World Series launched the 1919

Chicago White Sox to infamy, forever tying them to a memorable nickname: the Black Sox. In his book, Home Games : Essays on Basehall Fic- tion , John Lauricella claims that readers of The Great Gatsby not familiar with the Black Sox "will misconstrue allusions to these figures" (3). While "misconstrue" may give readers too little credit (it is not difficult to understand that corruption of any kind, at any period in time, reflects

negatively on society), the subtlety, and therefore resonance, of the reference comes in understanding baseball and its place in the early part of the twentieth century.

Major league baseball attendance grew to over 7 million in 1908

(Dagavarian 20). With a prospering economy and the country's expand- ing urban centers, the sport continued growing in the second decade of the twentieth century, and by 1919 it was "the almost universally fol- lowed American sport" (Gross 57). It was played by men like Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, the uneducated son of a farmer whose pitching hand was deformed in a feed-cutter accident when he was seven years old. It was also played by men like Christy Mathewson, a devout Meth- odist who would not pitch on Sundays (Lauricella 40). Though Mathewson attended Bucknell University, to reach the major leagues one did not need to attend college - something reserved for the intel-

lectually elite at the time. On the other hand, football, Fitzgerald's fa- vored sport, enjoyed a popularity concentrated primarily in the East and

primarily with a highly educated fan base. The nickname of the most

respected colleges in the United States, the Ivy League, is a direct reference to their football conference. Fitzgerald himself often confessed he chose Princeton after witnessing Sam White s brilliant effort in the 1911 win over Harvard (Isaacs 202). The young men who played football went on to professional careers, not as defensive ends and tailbacks but rather as stockbrokers, lawyers, and politicians. While such professions fit the American Dream, they were dreams the majority of the population could not attain at the time.



Fitzgerald s Use of Baseball in The Great Gatsby 35

Fitzgerald made no secret of his dislike of baseball. He claimed that his good friend Ring Lardner, because he so often wrote about base-

ball, "got less percentage of himself on paper than any other American of the first flight" ("Ring" 38). Yet, in choosing a sport symbolically to comment on the state of the American Dream, Fitzgerald knew that baseball could reach more people. Hindsight has recognized baseballs cultural importance, and George Grella sums it up well in saying baseball "embodies some of the central preoccupations of that cultural fan-

tasy we like to think of as the American Dream. Anyone who does not understand the game cannot hope to understand the country" (550). Fitzgeralds decision to use the sport he disliked so much may have been a numbers game - a way to ensure that his critique extended beyond a select group and covered the population en masse - though it is not

outrageous to think he also recognized the class distinction between the

typical New York Giants fan and the typical Princeton alumnus. The association we draw between individual characters and base-

ball in The Great Gatsby deepens the characters and furthers Fitzgeralds critique. Returning to Meyer Wolfshiem, had Fitzgerald simply wanted to establish his gangster reputation, he could have effectively done so with Wolfshiems tale of "the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal" (74). Like the fixing of the 1919 World Series, the murder of Rosy Rosenthal is a historical event, making Wolfshiem seem all the more real; however, while being associated with the Rosenthal murder is the most gangsterlike thing about him, it does not go as far as Wolfshiems other attributes in

revealing character. Wolfshiem s accent, his word "gonnegtion" for "con-

nection," makes him seem un-American. And unlike the World Series

fix, the murder of Rosy Rosenthal garnered little attention nationally and certainly does not resonate as critically. We expect gangsters to kill and be killed; that does not drag the average citizen into the fray. But a man who would fix the World Series not only disregards the lives of others in favor of money, he also uses something integrally American to feed that greed. He destroys the American Dream from within.

When Nick last speaks to Wolfshiem and learns of the gangsters partnership with Gatsby, he wonders "if this partnership had included the Worlds Series transaction in 1919" (179). Many critics, including Scrimgeour, have questioned Nicks honesty and reliability as narrator. His indifference here - he now calls the fix a "transaction" and has taken




no steps to report Wolfshiem's involvement - supports Scrimgeours as- sertion that "Carraway is neither honest nor as high-principled as he

might like to seem" (Lockridge 75). Yet, of all the things Nick may have

suspected about Gatsby - bootlegging, forging bonds, covering up fatal accidents - the World Series scandal comes to mind. Nicks sudden rec- ollection, roughly 100 pages later, raises the events importance within the novel. The fix has found a place in Nicks mind because, though baseball is an orderly game with lines and ground rules and gentlemen's agreements, he has learned that not everyone plays by the rules. The world, even in a game, is not as orderly as he may have once thought. Nicks coolness toward this particular revelation, and perhaps other star-

tling events in the novel, may speak more to his shock and disappoint- ment than his principles.

Regardless of Nicks reliability as narrator, Fitzgerald has carefully chosen an event that shook the national pastime of something far more valuable than money: integrity He appears to recognize that if the pur- suit of money or dreams comes at the price of integrity, it is an unworthy dream.

§ At the time Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby ; few writers

were drawing the parallels between baseball and American culture/capitalism. Writers, including Fitzgerald, were just beginning to discover the notion that "baseballs foregrounding of individual performance within a context of team play suggests a metaphor for the part played by a

productive citizen within the institutions of democratic capitalism" (Lauricella 26). In fact, baseball as a distinct literary subject did not yet exist, and few books of note even referenced the sport. (Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court [1889] and Ring Lardners You Know Me , Al [1916] are notable exceptions.) Fitzgerald, no doubt, was aware of the metaphorical possibilities of baseball, but it is difficult to say just how much control he had over his baseball allusions or how far he intended them to go. It is fair to say that, at the very least, he was

using the metaphor long before it grew commonplace or tired. In addition to working well as a microcosm of American capital-

ist, baseball also possesses the mythical qualities from which legends spring. Some of the games earliest heroes were pitchers, magicians on




the mound who could make a ball bend, curve, drop, slide, and explode into the catchers mitt. Men like Cy Young and Walter "Big Train" Johnson came from little-known places like Gilmore, Ohio, and Humboldt, Kan- sas. They rose from the mist, appearing in the big cities of the East -

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington - and leaving an in- delible mark on the game.

We find Nick, the implied author of Gatsby ; viewing the books namesake in a similar manner. The title alone suggests a man of legend- ary, if not mythical, stature. Nick narrates a tale not about Jimmy Gatz or Jay Gatsby but rather The Great Gatsby. Like a child seeing a storied

player for the first time, Nick has heard of Gatsby (from Jordan Baker) before he has ever seen him. He describes his first sighting of Gatsby as

though he were watching from the bleachers of a ballpark: "[Fjifty feet

away a figure had emerged . . . the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens" (25). Adding to Gatsby s mythical quality, Nick later receives a note from him, "signed Jay Gatsby in a

majestic hand" (46). Though it may be a stretch to call the signature an

autograph, Nicks appreciation of the penmanship suggests not only curiosity but also a reverence earned solely on reputation to this point. He knows Gatsbys exploits from a distance, but he does not know Gatsby personally, and few people do. He remains a mysterious figure for the first 52 pages of the book, his legend growing within his own home where party guests speculate if he is a bootlegger, if he once killed a

man, or was a German spy during the war (48). The parallels between Jay Gatsby and ball players may sound merely

coincidental, but Fitzgerald, and therefore Nick, is attempting to create a particular kind of mythical figure. The same mentality that allowed

people simultaneously to marvel at Ту Cobb's talent and feel scorn at his overaggressive play, allows Nick to see past Gatsbys shady past and the questionable characters with whom he associates. Nick tells Gatsby in their last meeting, "They're a rotten crowd. . . . You're worth the whole damn bunch put together" (162). This is the paradigm of an American

public that, George Grella writes, has "always responded to imperfect glory . . . [S]ince Captain Ahab, we have preferred our heroes to be not

only superhuman but also maimed, wounded, somehow incomplete" (558). Of baseballs many legends, Grella concludes: "The game abounds




with . . . players who burned as brightly, briefly, and mysteriously as comets, with strange, doomed men who systematically abused and de-

stroyed their skills" (558). Nicks admiration of Gatsby makes him all the more American. And while the average American may not be able to

identify with the privileged class - men like Gatsby who can afford to

spend so much of their time playing - they are familiar with those men

privileged enough to play a boys game for a living.

§

Fitzgerald removed a third baseball allusion from the novel; it had Tom, Daisy, Nick, and Jordan going to the Polo Grounds to see the New York Giants play the Chicago Cubs. At the game, Tom cheers for Chicago with "perfunctory patriotism" - perhaps showing his Mid- western roots - and urges Daisy to do the same. She refuses, saying she and Gatsby are for New York. The tension Fitzgerald sought in the de- leted scene resurfaces in the impromptu mint julep party at the Plaza Hotel where Tom and Gatsby each attempt to claim Daisys allegiances (Lauricella 41). More importantly, his allusions to the 1919 World Se- ries and a young Jay Gatz scheduling time for "Baseball and sports" work on a metaphorical level that might have been diffused if an important scene at the Polo Grounds used baseball as scenery instead of symbol.

As the Black Sox scandal drew to a close in 1920, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis commented on the enduring sig- nificance of the game and the importance of keeping its name clean:

Baseball is something more than a game to an American

boy. ... It is his training field for life work. Destroy his faith in its squareness and honesty and you have destroyed something more; you have planted suspicion of all things in his heart. (qtd. in Ward 76)

Landis s noble quote resounds with capitalism and defines baseballs role within it. Had the notion stopped there, it would have been of little use to Fitzgerald. Had baseball been an innocent victim of ambitious gamblers, Fitzgerald's critique would carry far less weight. The allusion to the 1919 World Series would have been merely a way to mark time and label Meyer Wolfshiem a powerful criminal. But it is likely Fitzgerald recognized just how ignoble the day-to-day operations of baseball were




at the time. A year before The Great Gatsby saw publication, Fitzgerald stated that he was a pessimist and a communist (Donaldson, "Political"

350). With that in mind, we may assume he would be familiar with the Marxian thought that, as Posnock explains, "Capitalism, since it is founded on commodity exchange and production, forces the worker himself to become a thing to be bought and used" (Donaldson, Critical

Essays 203). Commonly referred to as commodification, this economic structure allowed owners to control the services of their players because of the "reserve clause" (a rule invented by the owners themselves). Es-

sentially, it meant that players could play only with the team that origi- nally signed them. Those who fought the system were usually fired and then blacklisted (Ward 63). William Hulbert, owner of the Chicago White

Stockings in the late nineteenth century, once said, "It is ridiculous to

pay ballplayers $2,000 a year . . . especially when $800 boys often do

just as well" (qtd. in Ward 63). Almost from the inception of the Na- tional League in 1876, baseball was run this way. By the time Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby , it would have been common knowledge. Until free agency replaced the reserve clause in the 1970s, baseball took the capitalist idea of encouraging individuals to make the most of their natural talents and twisted it with a system intended to benefit not those with the talent but those who controlled the distribution of that talent.

One of the worst offenders of this distorted capitalism was the

early twentieth-century owner of the Chicago White Sox, Charles

Comiskey. Because he was notoriously tight-fisted, the players on the White Sox came up with the nickname Black Sox the year before the scandal. During the 1918 season, Comiskey refused to pay for the team s uniform laundering, so for several weeks the players protested by wear-

ing their increasingly dirty uniforms without washing them. In 1919, Comiskey promised pitcher Eddie Cicotte a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games. Once Cicotte won his 29th game, Comiskey benched him for the remainder of the season so he could avoid paying the bonus

(Ward 71). Comiskey, along with Commissioner Landis, was also one of the guardians of the unwritten rule keeping African-Americans from

playing in the major leagues. When Comiskey began suspecting that his players were throwing

the 1919 World Series (Cicotte was among the conspirators), he was




incredulous. While he indulged in no illegal activities himself, he failed to see the hypocrisy of his own actions. Tom Buchanan embodies this

hypocritical attitude as well. In referring to him as "the most sinister character in The Great Gatshy" (251), James E. Miller Jr. s description could easily be applied to baseball owners like Comiskey:

[He] comes from the world of the established wealth, which, though contemptuous of . . . blatant kinds of corruption . . . itself indulges quietly in bribery, blackmail, and manipula- tion (preferably legal) to maintain and consolidate its power. (Donaldson, Critical Essays 250)

Tom, then, functions as a paradigm of the power structure. For instance, while he partakes in no overt acts of racism, his views on the subject are clear: "Its up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things" ( Gatshy 17). The sinister quality Miller mentions asserts itself here. Like a baseball owner or a business leader, Toms racism will barely register in public. It will be less about scuffles and name-calling than it will be about subversive language and denied opportunities.

The complexities of the Black Sox scandal lend understanding to the struggles Nick has with Gatsby s duplicitous nature. While Comiskeys transgressions do not excuse the actions of the players who took part in throwing the World Series, they do afford us a more sympathetic view of the eight men who paid for their transgressions with their careers. Similarly, while Toms transgressions do not excuse Gatsbys, they do afford us a more sympathetic view of the character who pays for his transgressions with his life.

As narrator, Nick ultimately takes a sympathetic view, and some critics find this inconsistent or unreliable. Gary J. Scrimgeour concludes that the remarkable thing about Nick is not his disillusionment with unworthy values; rather, it is the fact that he "remains enamored of the person [Gatsby] who represents those values in their most brilliant and tempting form" (Lockridge 78). Had Nick only been acquainted with Gatsby, such criticism might be understandable; however, Nick is one of the few people who has seen this larger-than-life character - the mysterious and elusive Gatsby - at his most vulnerable and unselfish. He sees Gatsby, normally so calm and collected, nervous and impatient



Fitzgeralďs Use of Baseball in The Great Gatshy 41

before meeting Daisy for the first time in nearly five years. After she arrives, Nick observes him "reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease." (91). Later, it is to Nick that Gatsby admits that Daisy was driving when Myrtle Wilson was killed, and to Nick he confides his plans to take the blame ( 1 5 1 ). At such moments, the chasm between Nick and Gatsby closes. Gatsby, after all, is a Midwest boy about Nicks age. He has a father and a childhood that, in the end, only Nick learns about. That this mysterious man turns out to be from humble roots only adds to the humanity Nick feels compelled to offer his de- ceased neighbor, humanity that begins with the funeral arrangements and extends through to the present time in the novel, Nicks narration.

A sympathetic view of Jay Gatsby, Nicks view, sees him, as Miller

asserts, as both "victim and exploiter' (Donaldson, Critical Essays 252). Such a notion helps us understand why Nick, within the same para- graph, describes Gatsby as a man representing "everything for which I have an unaffected scorn" and a man with "something gorgeous about

him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life" (6). It also lends further understanding to Nicks efforts to create the mythological Great Gatsby. In Ground Rules : Baseball and Myth , Deeanne Westbrook

says one of the identifiable characteristics of modern myth is its "links with reality, and its ability to impose order on the apparent chaos of existence" (7). Given Nicks search for understanding (the most apparent occasion of the telling), the 1919 World Series again serves as an

appropriate metaphor. Of the eight players banned from baseball for life after the scandal

was exposed, the most famous was Joseph Jefferson Jackson. Better known as Shoeless Joe, he was from a small town in South Carolina, illiterate, and a fan favorite even after the scandal. Though he admitted

taking the money gamblers offered to fix the series, he denied doing anything wrong, claiming to the contrary that he played as hard as he could to help the White Sox win. The statistics for the series back

Jacksons claim: He batted .375 (he was a career .356 hitter), drove in six runs in eight games, set a World Series record with 12 hits, and committed no official fielding errors (Ward 71). His contradictory actions placed many White Sox fans in the odd position of hating what he did while still loving him. As they sought to gain some understanding of their fallen hero's actions, a popular anecdote involving Jackson began circulating and generally went as follows:




On the day that Shoeless Joe went to the courthouse [to tes-

tify in the World Series scandal] , a young boy was in the crowd. He was one of Jackson's fans and refused to believe that his hero had thrown the World Series. As Joe moved through the crowd towards the courthouse door, he felt a tug on the back of his coat. He turned around and saw the boy standing there with tears in his eyes. "Say it ain't so, Joe," said the boy. "I'm afraid it is, kid," responded Jackson as he walked into the courthouse and faded into oblivion. (Walle 198)

Jackson, however, did not fade into oblivion. For years after his banish- ment, people claimed to have spotted him playing in the minor leagues or for independent teams under a different name. The anecdote about the day outside the courthouse still circulates today, and the scene has been reenacted in films such as Damn Yankees and Eight Men Out. As a result, Shoeless Joe Jackson has become an increasingly sympathetic and mythological figure as the years have passed. He assumes godlike status in W. P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe ( 1 982), and Richard Orodenker

says Jackson "seems at once lifted from the history books and turned into a hero for our time" (24).

Obviously, Fitzgerald had no way of knowing the immortality await-

ing Shoeless Joe Jackson, but he may have been aware of the anecdote

involving Jackson and the "kid." It had been circulating for five years by the time Gatshy was published, and Ring Lardner, Fitzgerald's neighbor and a close companion for a time, covered the 1919 World Series for The Sporting News . According to Alf H. Walle, the verbal exchange likely occurred since it was recorded in various places, but the actual account took on a life of its own, splitting into two significant versions that both turned on who the "kid" was (197). In one version, as related above, the kid is a disillusioned but loving fan. We may see Nick in the same light. Though nearly Gatsby's age, he is far less worldly and, like the kid, now

struggles with the fate of a man he sees as heroic. In the second version of the exchange, the "kid" is purported to be

"Kid" Gleason, the White Sox manager. Gleason sees his understudy proving to be "unworthy of the efforts which have been exerted on his behalf' (Walle 199). Similarly, Meyer Wolfshiem sees his understudy defeated, and it saddens him: "The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly



Fitzgeralds Use of Baseball in The Great Gatsby 43

and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears." Yet, Wolfshiem does not attend Gatsby s funeral, refusing to stick with his friend "to the bit- ter end" as he once might have (Gatsby 180). For both Gleason and

Wolfshiem, they see the career of an accomplished apprentice cut short. Nicks tale of "The Great Gatsby" is not much different. He may

not want to set the record straight, but Gatsby begins fading into oblivion before his very eyes. Gatsby s numerous house guests and associates find excuses not to attend his funeral, and Nick soon comes to the revelation that he is "on Gatsbys side and alone" (Gatsby 172). Like a ball

player, Gatsby is a disposable commodity. Though Nick now sees that Tom and Daisy "were careless people," his commentary applies more

universally to a kind of careless people: "[T]hey smashed things and creatures and then retreated back into their money . . ." (187). In 1921, Charles Comiskey did just that, replacing his banned players so the

Chicago White Sox could continue on. None of the gamblers involved in the fix were ever convicted. But the eight players named in the scan-

dal, the men in the middle, never received their full share of the money and, on receiving lifetime bans, saw the death of their careers.

Ultimately, Fitzgeralds commentary on the American Dream appears to be this: The people in the middle pay the price for getting mixed

up with the people at the top, the people in control. The Myrtle Wilsons of the world get run down by the Daisy Buchanans, even if both are adulterers. The Jay Gatsbys of the world are exposed by the Tom

Buchanans, even if both are criminals. And if they are smart, the Nick

Carraways of the world get away from the Meyer Wolfshiems before a

"gonnegtion" is made. The Great Gatsby and the Black Sox scandal both stand today as

enduring symbols of the American Dream gone awry, packaged in things that label us as American: our emerging literary canon and our national

pastime. The brilliance of Fitzgerald's decision to make allusions to the scandal is borne out in the lore and positive manner by which Shoeless

Joe Jackson has been remembered - more than 80 years after the fact. As Nick attempts to create the lore with which he hopes Jay Gatsbys name will endure, we recognize the imperfections of the American

Dream, yet, like Nick, we cannot help but be attracted to it.




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