Born on July 16, 1887 in Pickens County, South Carolina, "Shoeless" Joseph Jefferson Jackson is often considered one of the best baseball players of all time. Joe's Career as a baseball player he was punctuated by a (then) highest all-time batting average of .356 (currently the third-highest batting average on record. The influence of "Shoeless Joe" was so substantial that legend of baseball Babe Ruth ""...copied ["Shoeless Joe] Jackson's style because [he] thought ["Shoeless" Joe] was the greatest hitter [he] had ever seen..." . Although his name was overshadowed by the “Black Socks” scandal of the 1920s, Joe Jackson managed to overcome his inferior circumstances, chief among which were poverty and illiteracy, to be considered a baseball legend. Due to his family's difficult economic situation, Shoeless Joe Jackson needed to work in a steel mill, marking his first step towards a career as a professional baseball player, illiterate, Joe Jackson was exploited in the Black Socks scandal, but his passionate attitude pushed him through another twenty years of minor league baseball until after his death in 1951, marked by the commemoration of his legacy with the standard services provided to other deceased baseball greats. "Shoeless" Joe's early starts in baseball came specifically as a result of his poor family's need for money and would prove to serve him well in his later years. Joe Jackson's rise to baseball fame began in 1900, when his mother let him play baseball on Saturdays for the price of two dollars and fifty cents at the age of thirteen. As he progressed in the sport, "Shoeless" Joe sought out better contracts from other baseball teams, which would offer him higher salaries than normal...... middle of paper... his quote, states his intrepid passion for baseball, as well as his genuine seriousness in his actions. While "Shoeless" Joseph Jefferson Jackson may not have been afforded the same advantages that were afforded other baseball players of the era, valuable resources, an education, and the favor of the Major League Baseball Association, he still managed to put He used his experiences as a lower-middle-class American to become a great baseball player. “Shoeless” life experiences demonstrate not only the ideal “rags to riches” cliché in many fairy tales, but also the fact that experiences in early life can have a drastic impact on an individual's adult life. Regardless of his tarnished reputation in major league baseball, Joe was commemorated after his death in December 1951 with the typical memorials of any baseball great, ballparks, statues, museums and the like..