Article:Shoeless Joe vs Rogers Hornsby who was the better hitter.

The was a question that my father and grandfather use to argue about at the dinner table until the wee hours of the morning sometimes and my mother, God rest her, would have to chase me off to bed sometimes before either of them  would submit to one anothers' ideas or opinions. It was great and I will always remember some of the cold winter nights listening from my bed at my father trying to change my grandfathers' mind about which was a better hitter  Shoeless Joe Jackson or Rodgers Hornsby. My father always was saying Rodgers because Rodgers was a extremely close friend as was Joe but Dad was around the same age as Rodgers and my fathers best friend even through he was a little younger was of course Shoeless Joe Jackson. Everyone knows the story but what some or maybe a lot of fans didn't know was years later the players told a reporter or others that Shoeless was never in the team meeting that was supposed to have happened and that Joe had never taken the 5000 dollars, it was thrown on the floor, and that Joe tried to tell the owner but he wouldn't talk to him about it. I have already stated what an ass Landis was and I will always feel he was the worst thing that could ever had happened to baseball. Way to much control and his punishments were way out of line. The Babe once said to my father that if he ever got mad enough he would really like to put one on him,  right in the kisser, smack on his big fat lips..I didn't hear it but my father didn't have any reason to lie about it. Babe was always saying all kinds of things about what a joke Landis was and things I will not put in this article. Anyway, Grandpa really loved Joe they use to go fishing and hunting all the time. Years after he left or was kicked out of baseball Joe sometimes would spend a few weeks with us at the farm and just the two of them would sit and talk baseball for hours and hours sometimes even missing dinner until my grandmother would go out to the back and call them a last time to come to dinner. My grandmother was very much like my mother she put up a lot with my grandfather but with the both of them I always knew how much my grandfather and father loved my grandmother and mother. My dad us to say it was love at first site, she a beautiful city girl and he a farmer's son. Even through both went to college they always loved the land and what it gave them. I loved it too but not as much as the sea and what it had to offer me, at least until the war broke out and all hell was raised. Grandpa use to tell me stories of Joe hitting in the early 1910-1917 and he had met him in 1904 in Tenn hunting of all things. They became lifetime friends and I never remember them not seeing each other during the winter months until Grandpa died in 1949 about 2 years before Joe passed away. Grandpa was over 90 and still as strong as an oxe, Dad two until he passed in 1980. I understand why Grandpa thought Joe was the best hitter and I could long at Dad's way of looking at Rodgers but I saw both hitting and even through Joe was older, heavier and slower he had a swing and stroke that was amazing to watch. He could hit it anywhere he wanted it seemed and Rodgers too was just like him except maybe he had more power in his swing. But just after the war Joe was visiting my dad on the farm and I happened to be there that week and I finally asked him why he didn't hit more homeruns and he told me that he didn't need too,  "I leave that to the hitter's like that young guy in 1919  what was his name,  Babe something." and started to laugh just like he and grandpa always use too out on the porch. My own opinion on the two is something Dad and I use to argue like he and Grandpa for hours after I came back from the second world war and basicly the same results me favoring Joe and Dad favoring Rodgers. Like my mother use to say some things never change, Dad and me talking about the same things Dad and Grandpa talked about for 40 years or more. But there was something about the way Joe played the game in the field and at the plate that put him on a different level than anyone else. I have never been able to put a finger on it because I didn't she Joe in his prime and the only times I got to see him were when he came to the farm and played and a few games in the dirt leagues after leaving the majors. Being banned from baseball left him only able to play in these games under a different name even through everyone knew who he was he played for years for 5 or 10 dollars a game that is how much he loved playing baseball and one of the biggest reasons I have never been able to not dislike Judge Landis. He did a great disservice to baseball and baseball fans by not letting him play especially after he found out that Joe didn't have anything to do with it. Almost every major league ball player I have talked to during that era from the early 20 until the war agrees that Shoeless Joe Jackson was given a rare deal and should after the establishment of the Hall of Fame should have been one of the first to be admitted. Dad and Grandpa always said that Joe was such a better pure hitter than Ty Cobb that they would have put Joe in the hall in place of Cobb as one of the first 5 players. That isn't  really out of line because if he had continued playing his lifetime average was greater than Cobb and lasting as long as he did he may have actually outhit Cobb because he always hit the ball where it was pitch to all fields. But I am bias, Cobb may have been a real jerk and asshole but his records speak for themselves and he did deserve to go into the hall as one of the first five but not ahead of Ruth. Babe Ruth saved baseball for all of us with no thanks to Landis like the man use to say to me  I would like to let him have it across his big fat lips.