85 replies to this topic

[biggentleben]

 

So are you saying that players are still taking money to affect the outcome of games? That seems like something that probably should be looked into.

 

 

You have taken this thread from if Landis should or should not be on a trophy (Which I think most on here agree it would be fine to remove him from an award given by the writers) to blaming him for just about everything bad in baseball.

That's far from what I'm saying, but I'm also not going to glorify him for saving baseball either. He didn't take steps to "save" the game. He took an easy answer instead of actually addressing the problem. Essentially, he chopped off the weed rather than pull out the root.

 

As far as players taking money...that's not what I said either. Gambling has never lost its influence on the game. It's just finding different angles to get that influence. It's been investigated, sometimes things have been done, but no one goes scorched earth in the way Landis did with players because it would mean burning potential advertisers and sponsors.

[yarnivek1972]

Just as an fyi, the Twins MVP award is still technically called the Calvin Griffith Award. It was last year, anyway. Has the team made any announcement that it intends to change that?

I’ve said it before, but there probably shouldn’t be any names associated with awards for the simple reason that if one digs deep enough one can find “bad things” about just about anyone.

[strumdatjaguar]

Until now, I only knew the Jackie Robinson Award (rookie) and Cy Young Award (pitcher) had names attached to them. This seems like low hanging fruit for equality. Just call it the MVP Award (likely what 99% of people thought it was anyway) and you're good to go.

I wonder if Barry Bonds could have won four or five MVPs without roids, then this would be easy.

I like the idea of naming baseball trophies after people, even rogues. Here are more named after persons:
Warren C Giles: trophy given to NL Champ
William Harridge: AL Champ
Willie Mays: World Series MVP
Ted Williams: All-Star Game MVP
Roberto Clemente: Sportsmanship, Community Invilvement

I’m sure there are more. If names start to be deleted from trophies, then the ultimate result will be a league that takes no chances and put no names in trophies. That would be a shame a sport with such a legendary history Play ball

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

Although no overt statements that say, "I will not let a black player play," or something like that, it was stated for very long time that he had great influence over the owners and would behind the scenes help keep the owners to the unwritten rule of no blacks.There was never a rule on the books, it was the understanding by all owners that was the rule, and Landis would keep the owners in line with that rule.There are many stories that state Landis was behind much of the color barrier, but being a smart judge he knew not to come out and say it.There is a story of him blocking purchase of a team that had intentions to hire many black players.There is not coincidence that shortly after his death a black player was signed and then made the majors.  

 

So no smoking gun, he was too smart for that.He knew how to keep the oppression hidden from the public. 

 

I'm not sure why he would need to do that covertly given the era he lived in.

[yarnivek1972]

I'm not sure why he would need to do that covertly given the era he lived in.

Landis was a judge. If he openly showed bias that would be grounds to remove him from a case.

[Trov]

 

I'm not sure why he would need to do that covertly given the era he lived in.

Because he was a former federal judge and understood the law.He knew making a statement like that would lead to law suits, and possibly challenge the reserve clause they had back then, which later was successfully overturned.It is not about public perception, it was about the law and he knew the law.He wanted to keep baseball out of the courts as much as possible because he knew they would lose.