Quote:
Originally Posted by nolemmings
It would be naive to argue that gambling on baseball did not exist prior to 1919, and baseball could be selective in enforcing its rules, but that is not the point. The issue was raised that the Black Sox were treated in some after-the- fact fashion; i.e., that what they did was somehow not against the rules and that it was arguably unfair to punish them, or at least Weaver, for conduct that had not been proscribed previously. That is simply untrue.
I assume you have read about the Louisville Grays scandal in 1877 and the banishments that followed for association with gamblers/fixing of games. Those banned players tried repeatedly to be reinstated over the years, and their pleas were always denied, so the message about baseball coming down seriously on fixers was commonly known. If you peruse “The Fix is In: A History of Baseball Gambling and Game Fixing Scandals” by Daniel Ginsburg, you’ll see a narrative of several gambling investigations from after the Louisville scandal through the first part of the 20th Century. In no case did the players ever challenge an accusation of fixing or gambling by claiming there was no rule against it. None defended by saying such conduct was not prohibited. They would claim that they did not do what was alleged, or, more accurately, that it could not be proved, but they did not argue that gambling on baseball and rigging of games was somehow ambiguous or acceptable behavior, or that someone guilty of same did not merit strong punishment. That issue had been decided long before, which is my point– the punishments doled out to Weaver et. al. were not unprecedented and were not without there being a “rule” against the activity they chose to undertake.
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So instead of answering my questions, you change the subject. The fact is that there was no rule, otherwise, there would have be no need to hire Landis as commissoner. There would have been no need for Landis to make a rule against gambling in 1926.
The fact that McGraw publicly bet on his team without punishment, supports that. So does 40 plus years of looking the other way. Even after Landis was hired, an exception was made for Cobb.
The bottom line is that it was only public out cry after the 1919 WS that forced baseball to clean up what it had been ignoring for years. If not for that, some, if not all would never been banned.