Quote:
Originally Posted by ThomasL
Also a counter to that is this...Comiskey and the Sox management basically knew about the fix as it was happening if not heard the rumors before the World Series and told a member of the National Commission in John Heydler...and what did they do to the suspected players? Nothing.
Comiskey also spent a lot of money hiring private investigators to look into several of the suspected players (Jackson was not one of them by the way) in the off season and what did he do? Tried to trade a few including Felsch and then signed every single one back save for Gandil who didnt want to come back. And I believe every one of them got a raise in salary as well.
The most blatant and obvious game fixing scandal didnt result in suspected players being "quietly let go" or washed out and Comiskey had the opportunity to do that with I think all of them as their contracts were up. This was what was typical of how owners and MLB handled these things prior to Landis. The idea that the players thought there was no real consequences for fixing games is a major reason why they did it and cant be irrelevant in trying to understand the Black Sox scandal.
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Thomas, you are absolutely right! Baseball was big business and the owners did everything they could not to upset the money making ventures they ran. I was trying to give them (MLB and the owners) the benefit of the doubt in maybe not knowing as much about the gambling activities and all that were going on back then, but it seems fairly obvious that they at least suspected, if not in some cases actually supported (and maybe even profited off of) the activities that were going on. Like anything else in business, the idea is to keep interest and activity as high as possible, and by secretively supporting the gambling side of things to boost the game's popularity, it wouldn't entirely surprise me.
With all the anti-trust activity and the lawsuit stemming from the Federal League still going on at the time of the 1919 scandal and during the 1920 season, I can see where the owners may have started getting worried about the rumors and concerns from the seemingly ever increasing stories and activities surrounding baseball, it's players, and their interactions with gamblers. These owners were not stupid and with the ongoing anti-trust suit would have made sure that their activities would not be recorded to show their collusive activity in controlling the players and the game itself. As was noted in the earlier post about the 18 or so players who were more or less quietly removed from the game prior to Landis banishing the 8 Black Sox players from MLB, as stated, it was done quietly and in such a manner that most people didn't ever know or even think about it and why these players were gone. But that was part of the owner's doing in trying to keep the public's perception of MLB being on the up and up. The problem for baseball now was that Comiskey still wanted to win and make money, and even though the 1919 scandal was past, he purposely kept the Black Sox players together as for the most part they were still great players that would more often than not win, and therefore make money for him. If instead he had broken them up, and not re-signed the most obvious offenders in the scandal, it is possible that there never would have been the need to appoint a Commissioner to ban those players back then, and Joe Jackson gets in the HOF. I can imagine the other MLB owners basically telling Comiskey behind closed doors what they were going to make him do because he didn't properly take care of this potential problem internally himself. He was putting them all at risk for losing money because of his actions, and I'm guessing they didn't stand for it and told him what they were going to do, whether her liked it or not. If it had only been a player or two on his team possibly involved in some gambling rumors and scandals, the public (and other MLB owners) probably wouldn't have been so concerned. But having 8 prominent and integral team players involved was likely too much to hide and likely a big reason the other MLB owners decided to act and install Landis to ban the Black Sox. It was possibly a pre-emptive move on the part of the owners to make sure it didn't ruin MLB in the eyes of the fans and have them thinking all the teams may be controlled by gamblers.
In fact, here's a wild theory, totally without proof. Would it be too much of a stretch to suspect there may have been some political input into the decision to put in place a baseball Commissioner and have the Black Sox banned for life? Don't forget that all right around this same time, Prohibition went into effect on 1/16/1920, and the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified a little later that year on 8/18/1920. The women's movement at that time was a huge factor in the passing of Prohibition and with women now having the right to vote, I can easily see politicians of the day scrambling to maybe try to clean things up that would be looked down upon by the women's movement, including gambling and baseball. Baseball was huge back then, likely more so than ever today. it wasn't called America's pastime for nothing. And it was also mostly a male dominated and followed sport. So women hearing about the potential influence of gambling and gamblers in that sport would probably not be well thought of by the newly ratified voters of the time. I can see politicians of the time also putting a little pressure on MLB owners to clean up their act so they wouldn't be forced to. So, is it a coincidence that MLB officially elected Landis as their first Commissioner on 1/12/1921, and then on 8/3/1921 Landis permanently banned the Black Sox 8 the day after they were acquitted in their trial, only to be followed by the U.S. Supreme Court on 5/29/1922 confirming that MLB was exempt from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act? I could possibly see the anti-trust exemption as being a sort of thank you or pay back to MLB for taking care of their issues and not involving politicians.
And here is a little more food for thought as to why this all might not be so squeaky clean as we'd like to think. This Supreme Court ruling in 1922 was actually the final culmination of a case brought by the then newly formed Federal League back in 1914, basically accusing MLB of violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. That is the same Act that broke up the American Tobacco Company in a 1911 ruling and likely put an end to the T206 set, along with several others. Well, guess which federal judge was put in charge of that original 1914 case brought by the Federal League? Lo and behold, it was none other than Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Landis was a known, huge baseball fan who lived in Chicago and followed both the White Sox and Cubs supposedly. It was rumored that he deliberately delayed the case until after the Federal League went belly-up in 1915 as he did not want to see any damage to MLB. So what an absolutely surprising coincidence then that MLB selects him to become their first ever Baseball Commissioner just a few short years later, right? I even read somewhere that Landis initially accepted the Commissioner's job with the understanding that he would retain his position as a federal judge also, at least for a while. But being the fine, upstanding and totally independent person he was, he insisted that the $50,000 a year salary MLB was going to pay him as Commissioner be reduced by the $7,500 a year salary he would still be getting as a federal judge. So, does anyone know of any ballplayer making even close to $50,000 a year in 1921? I believe that Cobb was MLB's highest paid player in 1921, and he got $25,000. I know the Commissioners of all the major U.S. sports today get paid very well, but I don't think a one of them is making double what the highest paid athlete in their respective sport is getting paid. Hmmmmm?
07-01-2021, 12:14 PM
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