Is there any evidence that Shoeless Joe Jackson was actually involved in the 1919 Black Sox scandal even though he did set a series record with 12 hits and was not broken until 1964?

Joe Jackson was absolutely involved in the 1919 Black Sox scandal. He testified under oath:

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" Gandil.

Q Who is Chick Gandil?

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.

Q Who is Lefty Williams?

A The pitcher on the White Sox club.

Q Where did he bring it, where is your room?

A At the time I was staying at the Lexington Hotel, I believe it is.

Q On 21st and Michigan?

A 22nd and Michigan, yes.

Q Who was in the room at the time?

A Lefty and myself, I was there, and he came in.

Q Where was Mrs. Jackson?

A Mrs. Jackson? Let me see? I think she was in the bathroom. It was suite; yes, she was in the bathroom, I am pretty sure.

Q Does she know that you got $5,000 for helping throw these games?

A She did that night, yes.

Q You said you told Mrs. Jackson that evening?

A Did, yes.

Q What did she say about it?

A She said she thought it was an awful thing to do.

So Jackson was aware of the fix, he agreed to take money to be part of the fix, and he then accepted the money to be part of the fix.

Did he actively try to lose games? Well, he did get 12 hits, but 6 of those hits (including his home run and all 6 of his RBI) were in the final three games of the series, which it is known that the White Sox were trying to win, because the gamblers hadn't paid them what was promised. In the first five games of the series he hit .316 - but he also drew 0 walks, so hit OBP was also a lousy .316, and his OPS an unimpressive .737. Further, he was 0-4 with runners in scoring position in those games, including a bunt pop-up to first base.

Of course, that's only 19 (and 4) plate appearances, which are far too few to make a fair judgment about anything. He did allow a triple to left field (which is pretty hard to do), but the left field wall was as deep as a modern power alley back in those days, so it's possible that there was no intentional misplay there.

While he testified that he had played his best the whole series, he later admitted (not under oath) that he could have tried harder, which isn't exactly a confession that he actively threw games.

What seems most likely is that with the White Sox's two main pitchers, Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams, in on the fix, it wasn't necessary to Jackson to actively try to throw the games for the desired outcome to happen.

Jackson and the other seven players involved in the scandal were charged with a conspiracy to defraud the public in 1920, and were acquitted by a jury both because the sworn testimony I referred to disappeared before the trial, and because the judge told the jury that they were only to find the players guilty if the jury found that they had intentionally conspired to defraud the public, rather than just conspiring to throw games (even if throwing those games defrauded the public).

The next day, Commissioner Landis banned them all from baseball permanently. He wrote:

Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ballgame, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame, no player that sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.

For professional sports, it is absolutely vital that the public be convinced that the games are completely on the level - that both teams are trying their very best to win every game. The steroids scandals of recent decades are damaging from a PR perspective, but they never created an existential crisis like game-fixing did. If anything, steroid abusers were trying too hard to win - but nobody doubted that their opponents were trying to prevent them from doing what they did.

But when fans believe that the outcome of a professional sporting event is predetermined, the entire allure of the event is lost. Professional wrestling can thrive even though the outcome of the matches is predetermined because they outcome of the match is not the product they're selling - they're selling a storyline that uses an athletic performance as a storytelling device, like a TV show or a movie. But in non-scripted sports, the greatest moments are great because they were non-scripted. If the public generally believed that the outcome was fixed, they'd stop paying to see the games, and the league would go bankrupt. It was absolutely necessary to send the message to every player in baseball that they should never take money to fix a game, or fail to inform management when someone took money to fix a game. It was more important to send the message to the public that there would be zero tolerance for game-fixing.

Generally when people talk about Jackson and his role in 1919, they're advocating for him to be put in the Hall of Fame. In fact, Jackson was not ineligible for the Hall of Fame until 1991. No rule excluded him from induction, yet he only received 2 votes in 1936, and 2 more in 1946. The writers who covered him knew how bad what he did was, and felt that it negated all the good he did in his career before that.