Joe Jackson

You've seen this man before. This fellow in the black-and-white photograph the size of a baseball card. But this is not how you saw him. You saw him betraying a nation's faith, maybe walking out of a courtroom with a sad little kid hanging from his coat sleeve pleading with him to deny the awful corruption. Or maybe you saw him as a ghost in an antique baseball uniform stepping out of an Iowa corn field.This fellow in the snapshot is from another place, a pleasant balding man with big features who seems to have not a trouble in the world.

It's more than a sentimental journey, the vacation trip Mark Babiarz has planned with his 11-year-old daughter later this summer. It's part of a continuing campaign Mark has always felt pretty strong about before increased involvement turned it into a crusade for him.A letter Babiarz dispatched to several newspapers, marking the occasion of the 106th anniversary of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's birth (yesterday) helps to explain:"It has been 75 long years since Joe Jackson was banned from the game of baseball . . . imagine how he felt after juries acquitted him twice of all charges of conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series only to be banned from baseball for life.

So one night the president of the United States goes to the Lincoln bedroom in the White House.He wants to show his guest something. They walk to a room next door and stop in front of two dressers with large mirrors and stacks of drawers.There the president pulls open a drawer to reveal a cache the contents of which are so unexpected that his guest, even years later, would say of that moment, "Geez, I was just startled."What Ted Williams saw, that night by Lincoln's bedroom in the White House, were hundreds of a fishermen's flies: "Salmon flies and English flies.

Michael does Oprah; Joe does Baltimore."Michael's interview with Oprah was good for Michael. It sort of put me down a little bit. When you chastised a youngster back in the early ages, we called it a whipping. Now it's called child abuse," said Joe Jackson, father of Michael, LaToya and all those other singing and confessing Jacksons.But that was all he would say on the subject; the press conference he held in Baltimore yesterday was called to promote his new soft drink, "jocola," rather than to discuss his children's allegations that he abused them.

I SAT at the dinner table and listened to my father tell my son about Shoeless Joe Jackson, about how when my father was growing up, he used to deliver newspapers to Jackson in Greenville, S.C.My 11-year-old son is an avid baseball fan who wanted to hear every detail: Why was Joe Jackson banished from baseball for life? (For my son there could be no punishment worse than being banished forever from playing baseball.) Why did they say he "threw" that game, what does it mean to throw a game, why didn't the people believe him, what did he look like, did you know him?

Get fans involvedIn your letter section of Jan. 6, I saw many people wrote why they saw Baltimore Blast attendance declining. I believe that the reason for declining attendance is because of decreasing fan involvement during halftime. A few years ago, for instance, halftime had Jerry Cvach's goals for cash. Fans were chosen out of the audience to score goals at increasingly longer distances (e.g., $25 for red line, $50 for half field, etc.). Another thing they used to do is to have fans take penalty shots on a huge cow or crab.

The Chicago Cubs fired pitching coach Dick Pole yesterday after their 12th loss in 13 games, a 14-6 rout by the St. Louis Cardinals in which Cubs pitchers allowed 21 hits.He was replaced by Billy Connors, who was Chicago's pitching coach from 1982-86. Pole, 40, was in his fourth season with the Cubs, and his departure comes a little more than five weeks after manager Don Zimmer was fired."Sometimes, a fresh look helps," manager Jim Essian said.* EXPANSION: Major-league owners will meet by conference call Friday to vote on final approval of Denver and Miami as the National League's expansion cities.

Wearing a cowboy hat with a patch that reads, "Dead End: Story of My Life," and a priestlike black robe to protect him from the flames, Pasadena's last cowboy-blacksmith pounds out the curve on a horseshoe.As he cranks up the billows under the coals to get the shoe red-hot again, Joe Jackson sadly laughs at his lot in life -- his "girl" left him last month, taking his prize-winning quarter horse, given as a courting gift, with her."I'm trying to get over it. She didn't break my heart, she broke my wallet," Jackson said, explaining that his life savings were tied up in the horse.

World Party has had an album out for more than six months, and leader Karl Wallinger is still shocked that people haven't gotten the initial joke.The album, strangely titled Goodbye Jumbo, was never meant to sell a million copies or take the band on a major tour. Wallinger said it was an educational process in the studio that was purposely given an awkward title and done with "no marketing ethic at all.""I still hear DJs say Goodbye Jumbo and I laugh," said Wallinger, whose band will perform at Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University in D.C. Sunday night.

The fall concert season is shaping up to be quite dry not just in this area but throughout the country. Many bands had a difficult time selling tickets in the summer, therefore managers are leery about sending their other acts into the drought.Only two major arena shows have been announced -- one a holdover from the summer -- and many local clubs are also suffering empty dates because record companies are pulling tour money from bands.* Billy Idol and Faith No More perform on Sunday at the Capital Centre in Landover.

LOS ANGELES - -A lawyer for Michael Jackson's personal physician said Sunday that reports that the doctor injected the pop star with a powerful painkiller before his death were "absolutely false." "There was no Demerol. No OxyContin," said Edward Chernoff, the attorney for Dr. Conrad Murray. The lawyer, who was present Saturday for Murray's three-hour interview with Los Angeles Police Department detectives, said Jackson was already unconscious when the doctor "fortuitously" entered the bedroom of the performer's Holmby Hills mansion.

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Jurors in the Michael Jackson molestation case ended their first full day of deliberations without reaching a verdict, but the bulk of action was outside the courtroom yesterday. The crowd of fans increased steadily and the tension among the estimated 1,200 members of the media grew throughout the day. Amid the hoopla, Joe Jackson, the singer's father, set off a minor fracas during an unscheduled appearance at the courthouse, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson condemned authorities for prosecuting the pop star.

GREENVILLE, S.C. - Lester Erwin leads the way into a sanctuary that holds what is, in his world, Excalibur and the ghost of King Arthur. Amid collectibles on a table, cradled between two wooden holders, there it is. Dark as baker's chocolate, slightly bowed in the shaft, with loosened black tape at the handle, the hickory bat looks as exotic as the tiny baseball gloves players wore 80 years ago. "This is Black Betsy," he says proudly, as if introducing one...

You've seen this man before. This fellow in the black-and-white photograph the size of a baseball card. But this is not how you saw him. You saw him betraying a nation's faith, maybe walking out of a courtroom with a sad little kid hanging from his coat sleeve pleading with him to deny the awful corruption. Or maybe you saw him as a ghost in an antique baseball uniform stepping out of an Iowa corn field.This fellow in the snapshot is from another place, a pleasant balding man with big features who seems to have not a trouble in the world.

It's more than a sentimental journey, the vacation trip Mark Babiarz has planned with his 11-year-old daughter later this summer. It's part of a continuing campaign Mark has always felt pretty strong about before increased involvement turned it into a crusade for him.A letter Babiarz dispatched to several newspapers, marking the occasion of the 106th anniversary of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's birth (yesterday) helps to explain:"It has been 75 long years since Joe Jackson was banned from the game of baseball . . . imagine how he felt after juries acquitted him twice of all charges of conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series only to be banned from baseball for life.

So one night the president of the United States goes to the Lincoln bedroom in the White House.He wants to show his guest something. They walk to a room next door and stop in front of two dressers with large mirrors and stacks of drawers.There the president pulls open a drawer to reveal a cache the contents of which are so unexpected that his guest, even years later, would say of that moment, "Geez, I was just startled."What Ted Williams saw, that night by Lincoln's bedroom in the White House, were hundreds of a fishermen's flies: "Salmon flies and English flies.

Michael does Oprah; Joe does Baltimore."Michael's interview with Oprah was good for Michael. It sort of put me down a little bit. When you chastised a youngster back in the early ages, we called it a whipping. Now it's called child abuse," said Joe Jackson, father of Michael, LaToya and all those other singing and confessing Jacksons.But that was all he would say on the subject; the press conference he held in Baltimore yesterday was called to promote his new soft drink, "jocola," rather than to discuss his children's allegations that he abused them.

I SAT at the dinner table and listened to my father tell my son about Shoeless Joe Jackson, about how when my father was growing up, he used to deliver newspapers to Jackson in Greenville, S.C.My 11-year-old son is an avid baseball fan who wanted to hear every detail: Why was Joe Jackson banished from baseball for life? (For my son there could be no punishment worse than being banished forever from playing baseball.) Why did they say he "threw" that game, what does it mean to throw a game, why didn't the people believe him, what did he look like, did you know him?

The Chicago Cubs fired pitching coach Dick Pole yesterday after their 12th loss in 13 games, a 14-6 rout by the St. Louis Cardinals in which Cubs pitchers allowed 21 hits.He was replaced by Billy Connors, who was Chicago's pitching coach from 1982-86. Pole, 40, was in his fourth season with the Cubs, and his departure comes a little more than five weeks after manager Don Zimmer was fired."Sometimes, a fresh look helps," manager Jim Essian said.* EXPANSION: Major-league owners will meet by conference call Friday to vote on final approval of Denver and Miami as the National League's expansion cities.

Get fans involvedIn your letter section of Jan. 6, I saw many people wrote why they saw Baltimore Blast attendance declining. I believe that the reason for declining attendance is because of decreasing fan involvement during halftime. A few years ago, for instance, halftime had Jerry Cvach's goals for cash. Fans were chosen out of the audience to score goals at increasingly longer distances (e.g., $25 for red line, $50 for half field, etc.). Another thing they used to do is to have fans take penalty shots on a huge cow or crab.