The Original Scandal

Professional sports nowadays are plagued by scandals. Either this athlete took performance enhancing drugs, or that coach payed players to injure opponents. Every sport has it's own versions of these stories. The most recent event, DeflateGate,  has gained a lot of controversy in the last month, mostly because it involved an AFC Championship Game.

Deflated American Football- Mike Lupica

However, from this event I began to wonder what other scandals in professional athletics had occurred in the past. I mean like way back. 

One of the most famous scandals took place during the 1919 World Series, it is called the Black Sox Scandal. The series was between the highly favored Chicago White Sox against the Cincinnati Reds. Eight players from the White Sox were paid by gamblers to intentionally lose games. The players that took the bribes were nicknamed "Black Sox". And although they did lose the World Series, they altogether were payed a nice paycheck, around $100,000 which was worth a lot more back then.

reddit.com

The most famous player involved in this incident of "selling out baseball" was "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. He admitted to accepting $5,000 from teammates to "throw" the games. Even though he took the money, some people, along with myself believe that he was not guilty like the other players. Jackson had a very good performance in the World Series batting with a .375 batting average which is higher than his season average of .351. He was the only player in the 1919 World Series to hit a home run, and he had 6 RBIs. He also fielded 30 plays in the outfield without a single error in the series. If a player that I liked had that kind of  performance in an important game, I would be very satisfied. 

The eight players deemed as Black Sox were acquitted of any charges that were pressed on them, however, the Major League of Baseball permanently banned all eight players from playing in the league again.

I believe Jackson was innocent, and was easily tricked by the technicalities of the law due to the fact that he was illiterate and probably relied heavily on his lawyer. "Shoeless" Joe Jackson never played another game in the MLB after the 1920 season. This scandal could be argued either way. What do you think? Was Jackson innocent, or was he rightly removed from the league?