Dispute over Jackson's guilt
Jackson's involvement in the scandal remains controversial to this day. He reportedly refused the $5,000 bribe twice—even though it would effectively double his salary—only to have teammate#Lefty Williams#toss the cash on the floor of his hotel room. Jackson then tried to tell White Sox owner#Charles Comiskey#about the fix. Still, Comiskey refused to meet with him.[28]#Unable to afford legal counsel, Jackson was represented by team attorney Alfred Austrian—a clear conflict of interest. Before Jackson's#grand jury#testimony, Austrian allegedly elicited Jackson's admission of his supposed role in the fix by plying him with whiskey.[20]#Austrian also persuaded the nearly illiterate Jackson to sign a waiver of immunity from prosecution.[28]
Years later, the other seven players implicated in the scandal confirmed that Jackson was never at any meetings. Williams said they only mentioned Jackson's name to give their plot more credibility, although he did not say why Jackson would have been paid $5,000 had that been the case. Jackson's performance during the series itself lends further credence to his assertions, although the game records show that he hit far better during the "clean" games than those thrown.[20]#A 1993 article in#The American Statistician#reported the results of a statistical analysis of Jackson's contribution during the 1919 World Series and concluded that there was "substantial support to Jackson's subsequent claims of innocence".[29]
An article in the September 2009 issue of#Chicago Lawyer#magazine argued that#Eliot Asinof's 1963 book#Eight Men Out, purporting to confirm Jackson's guilt, was based on inaccurate information. For example, Jackson never confessed to throwing the series as Asinof claimed. Further, Asinof omitted key facts from publicly available documents, such as the 1920 grand jury records and proceedings of Jackson's successful 1924 lawsuit against Comiskey to recover back pay for the 1920 and 1921 seasons. Asinof's use of fictional characters within a supposedly non-fiction account also damaged#
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoeless_Joe_Jackson
