Baseball MVP winners Barry
Larking, Terry Pendleton and Mike Schmidt want the name of Kenesaw Mountain
Landis taken off their awards. As
Schmidt put it, “If you’re looking to expose individuals in baseball’s history
who promoted racism by continuing to close baseball’s doors to men of color,
Kenesaw Landis would be a
candidate.” Amen. Alas, there’s ever so much more.
Landis threw the book at the
so-called Black Sox yet looked the other way when Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were
implicated in a cheating incident. He
voided the minor-league contract of pitcher Jackie Mitchell because baseball
was “too strenuous” for women. Among the
players he suspended—not to be confused with banning for life a la the Black
Sox—was Sox pitcher Dickie Kerr, one of the “clean” Sox who had the audacity to
challenge the reserve clause.
With a record like this, you have
to wonder how Landis ended in the Hall of Fame.
It might be time to reconsider his membership along with that of fellow
commissioner, Bud “I don’t see no PEDs” Selig.
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