More than a century after his final MLB game, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson is a rookie once again. Kind of.
Topps announced Wednesday that Jackson's first licensed trading card will be included in boxes of 2025 Bowman Chrome, which is set to be released Sept. 23.
Jackson's card, which features the "1st Bowman" logo, is one of the RetroFractors in this year's edition of Bowman Chrome. The RetroFractor celebrates legendary players across 100 years of baseball who never received their 1st Bowman card. Each RetroFractor is a short print that has four colored parallel versions: gold (numbered to 50), orange (numbered to 25), red (numbered to 5) and SuperFractor (numbered to 1).
Beyond Bowman Chrome, "Shoeless" Joe will receive a 1st Bowman logo in Bowman Baseball and Bowman Draft as part of the RetroFractor program. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente and Pete Rose are among the players who have had RetroFractor cards in previous years.
Jackson is shown on his card as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics, the club with which he made his MLB debut in 1908. He played in 10 games with Philadelphia before he was traded to Cleveland in 1910. He had the most productive years of his career with Cleveland, earning MVP votes in four of his six seasons with the franchise, but he is most famous for his stint with the White Sox, who acquired Jackson in 1915.
Jackson, a .356 lifetime hitter across 13 seasons, was one of eight members of the 1919 White Sox who were banned from baseball in 1921 for conspiring with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series, which Cincinnati won in eight games.
This past May, Major League Baseball removed Jackson, Rose and 15 other deceased players from the permanently ineligible list, meaning they can be considered for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Classic Baseball Era Committee. That committee, which considers players who made their greatest impact on the game before 1980, will next meet in December 2027.