Rose requests to be reinstated

[nolemmings]

Originally Posted by rats60

Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker fixed a game. Why were they never banned? Why are they in the Hall of Fame? There were several other players who fixed games prior to the 1919 WS and were not banned until after the Black Sox scandal broke. Why were there no players banned for over 40 years?

John Mc Graw bet on his team to win the 1905 WS. It was public knowledge, but he was never punished. Why is he in the hof?

Betting on baseball wasn't a formal rule until 1926. One year if you bet on a baseball game, life if you bet on your team. Why did Landis need to make this rule if it existed prior to 1919?

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.