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All things considered, Shoeless Joe Jackson should be in the Hall of Fame. His lifetime ban should have been lifted when he died, and no less than eight different commissioners have had a chance to lift the ban and did not. That the ban has not been lifted by now raises some eyebrows with me. This is one conspiracy theory that clearly isn’t motivated by money. No one stands to gain financially, which makes it even more puzzling.

Jackson never agreed to the fix, although he kept the money. He was punished greatly in his lifetime. Unlike Rose, Jackson couldn’t make a living from signing his name on memorabilia. Not being able to sign his name (even if someone was willing to pay him for it), and not being able to play or manage any organized baseball team, Jackson made more money pressing pants than he ever did in baseball.

Commissioner Bud Selig can look at the record books of his beloved game and find them littered with great playesrs who did unsavory things and embarrassed the game. In Jackson’s case, it is time to clear his name. He belongs on the same “Field of Dreams” with all the other Hall of Famers.

CONCLUSION:

#24

U.S. Olympic basketball team gets cheated out of the gold in 1972

The twelve members of the 1972 United States national basketball team won a hard-fought gold medal, but they had only seconds to celebrate their crowning moment before it was snatched away from them in what was undoubtedly the most controversial finish in international basketball history. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that the players and coaches were cheated by a conspiracy involving the Soviet team and its coaches, Olympic officials, and members of the International Federation of Amateur Basketball (FIBA) pales in comparison to the tragic events of those same games. But still, the conspiracy remains.

The slaughter of eleven Israeli athletes by the terrorist group Black September (part of the Palestine Liberation Organization, formed a few years prior from the remnants of an Arab force routed in Jordan), was the tragedy of those Munich Games. The terrorists stormed through the lax German security—which was intentionally minimal on the part of the hosts, to make a different impression on the world than the one it imparted at the 1936 Berlin Olympics—took eleven Israelis, and demanded that the Israeli government free 236 Palestinian prisoners. The terrorists immediately murdered two Israeli athletes who resisted in the athletes’ village, and the remaining nine were taken as hostages. The hostages would die later, after a rescue attempt when the terrorists were attempting to extradite a flight to Cairo. For many, the most lasting image from the Munich Games will always be the German tanks sealing off the athletes’ village, while police took up rooftop positions.

Many people felt at that point that the games should have been suspended and not completed. However, the head of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, allowed the Games to resume after only twenty-four hours. Although the Games continued, many of the athletes couldn’t wait for them to end.

The United States didn’t do exceptionally well in those Olympics, with the exception of swimmer Mark Spitz. Outside of Spitz, the United States athletes were snakebit in 1972. A track coach had the wrong start times of two world record-holding sprinters who were both overwhelming favorites for medals. An American named Rick DeMont had a great chance at gold in the 1,500 meter freestyle, but he failed a drug test when doctors neglected to clear his asthma medication and he was therefore denied the opportunity to compete.

The initial controversy at those Games didn’t concern the United States at all, however. Rather, it concerned South Africa. In 1968, Rhodesia and South Africa had been barred from the Olympics for their practice of apartheid racial discrimination. While South Africa was still out by 1972, Rhodesia had been reinstated in 1971 by the IOC. Incredibly, the day before the Opening Ceremonies, the IOC bowed