Upper Deck adding Shoeless Joe to 2010 product

Posted Dec 2, 2009 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Dec 2, 2009 at 06:32 PM

Say it ain’t so? No, say it is so.

Upper Deck announced Wednesday that Shoeless Joe Jackson cards and memorabilia will be appearing in the Carlsbad, Calif., company’s 2010 baseball products. Upper Deck reached an agreement with Jackson’s estate to include him in many of next year’s sets.

Jackson, who was banned by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis for his part in the 1919 Black Sox scandal, has not appeared on an Upper Deck baseball card since 2001. His cards will make their 2010 debut on March 16, when Upper Deck releases its Goudey product.

Game-used memorabilia cards will include pieces of some of Jackson’s bats — his most famous one was called Black Betsy, but he also called some of them Blonde Betsy, Big Jim, and Old General.

Although he batted .356 lifetime and .375 in the 1919 World Series, Jackson, who died in 1951, may never be reinstated by Major League Baseball and become eligible for the Hall of Fame. Still, getting a piece of Jackson memorabilia would be a nice addition to any collector’s inventory.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say there won’t be any Jackson autographs in the set. Since only six originals exist, including one on his will (it rests quietly in the South Carolina archives), it’s very unlikely. One auto sold at an auction in 1991 for $23,100, which at the time was the second-highest price for a signature not attached to a document (the record at the time belonged to Declaration of Independence signee Button Gwinnett, a Georgian whose autograph fetched more than $56,000).

A facsimile might be cool though.

By the way, if you want to see some examples of genuine Joe Jackson autographs, go to www.autographalert.com and then head to the archives section. Two different pictures of the autographs can be found in the July-September 2006 link, from an article published on Oct. 26, 2006.

Fascinating stuff.