Forgive me if this diary seems like the product of an overstressed mind that has finally snapped...

 and props to Cheat for the Phun with Photoshop thread that planted the seed of this idea.

Shoeless Joe walks among us.

Since 1919, Joe Jackson has waited for redemption.  In the years following his banishment from the game, he wandered through various podunk semipro leagues in Georgia and South Carolina, slipping further and further into obscurity...and death didn't help.  Shoeless Joe, famously illiterate and least culpable  of the named Black Sox conspirators (he actually hit .375 over the 8 games of the 1919, better than anyone on the victorious Reds team) remains banned from Cooperstown almost 54 years after his death.

Something tells me, though, that he has finally been released from baseball purgatory.  Maybe that cartoon in the Des Moines Register did it.  Maybe it's just something about the way AJ Pierzynski smirks at the camera.

I don't really care. I think there is something to it.  As soon as the umps let AJ stay at first, I KNEW the Sox would score in that inning.  (My poor newlywed wife, who has been bravely putting up with this crazy season, can confirm this.)  Now, I promise you this:

Shoeless Joe is back.  The Sox have his mojo on their side: Shoeless Mo-Jo