Thanks to David Letterman last night, we could forget about the Tiger Woods saga for a few fleeting moments and focus on another athlete’s high-profile relationship. (Hey, it’s the middle of December, and it’s not as if there is a lot of baseball news coming our way. So we’ll take anything we can get.)

Kate Hudson was the guest on the Late Show, and despite Letterman’s best efforts, she refused to divulge many details about the status of her romance with Alex Rodriguez.

We don’t learn much other than to find out that A-Rod is a “nice guy”, “it was really fun summer”, and the Yankees winning the World Series is “great for baseball.” (“Nice” was not a word used often in a sentence that also contained the words “Alex Rodriguez” before the start of 2009 season.)

Thus, Kate Hudson will not be our source for finding out what A-Rod did over Thanksgiving nor whether Hideki Matsui will return to the Bronx next season.

In this striking picture book biography by Jonah Winter, an old-timer tells us what made Sandy Koufax so amazing. We learn that the beginning of his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers was rocky, that he was shy with his teammates, and experienced discrimination as one of the only Jews in the game. We hear that he actually quit, only to return the next season–different–firing one rocket after another over the plate. We watch him refuse to play in the 1965 World Series because it is a Jewish high holy day. And we see him in pain because of an overused left arm, eventually retiring at the peak of his career. Finally, we are told that people are still “scratchin’ their heads over Sandy,” who remains a modest hero and a mystery to this day.

Accompanied by sidebars filled with statistics, here’s a book sure to delight budding baseball fans. And it will make a fine gift!

Please join Octavia Books at the New Orleans Jewish Community Center on Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 4:00 pm for a book signing and reading with children’s book author Jonah Winter featuring his book, You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the infamous Black Sox throwing of the 1919 World Series.  To those of you who believe that Shoeless Joe Jackson had nothing to do with it, you are wrong.  He took the money.  And he was in on the fix from the start.

He knew Bill Burns, the gambler who set it up.  He knew that  Chick Gandil was the go between for the Chicago White Sox.  He knew that both Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams were in on it.  And he knowingly took $5,000 from Lefty, his roommate at the time, after the first two games, both White Sox losses, in Cincinnati.

It’s all in a court deposition from September 20, 1920, which to me is the most damning evidence.   He freely admits all of the facts.

Q       You were playing professional ball with the White Sox in the season of 1919, were you?

A       Yes, sir.

Q       You played in the World Series between the Chicago Americans Baseball Club and the Cincinnati Baseball club, did you?

A       I did.

Q       What position did you play?

A       Left field.

Q       Were you present at a meeting at the Ansonia Hotel in New York about two or three weeks before ? a conference there with a number of ball players?

A       I was not, no, sir.

Q       Did anybody pay you any money to help throw that series in favor of Cincinnati?

A       They did.

Q       How much did they pay?

A       They promised me $20,000 and paid me five.

Q       Who promised you the twenty thousand?

A       Chick Gandill

Q       Who is Chick Gandill?

A       He was their first baseman on the White Sox club.

Q       Who paid you the $5,000?

A       Lefty Williams brought it in my room and threw it down.

The revisionist historians who claim because he was illiterate and therefore didn’t know what he was doing are just plain wrong.  Later in his testimony, he describes the denominations of the bills and what he did with the money.  When asked what his wife thought about it, he said, “She felt awful bad about it, cried about it a while.”

Now I totally understand that back in the day, it was a different sport than it is today and there were many people in and around the sport who consorted with gamblers.  And I understand what a miser old Charles Comiskey was.  I understand the bitterness, contempt and anger that the players under his thumb must have felt in the days before free agency.

I totally understand that taking $5K or $10K for throwing some games at a time when it happened all the time is probably akin to players nowadays taking steroids.  Like the players of the steroids era, it’s unfortunate that the Black Sox, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, got caught up in the “I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you that gambling is going on” attitude that occurred as a result of Judge Landis’ being brought in to clean up baseball.

Is it fair that Joe Jackson is not in the Hall of Fame?   You could argue one way or the other, just as I have argued that Mark McGuire and others of his ilk should be in the HOF.

But please don’t proclaim Shoeless Joe’s innocence.  It just ain’t so.