Puck, you have convinced me that this a probable scenerio and I am comfortable with it. I still have a couple of reservations about it however. First most new owners have no football or very little football experience yet manage to usually fire both the GM and the coach and start new. Secondly these women were not blindsided by this. They had years many where they were specifically groomed to take over from their father. Making these kind of decisions should have been near the top of their teaching. Then there is the fact that Jim's death wasn't something out of the blue. It doesn't make the emotional difficulty any easier but should have made the transition in running the club easier. Finally I am concerned that Carlie is so involved with the club on a day to day basis that she isn't seeing the whole picture clearly (Ballard may be a very close friend for instance, making objectivity difficult). Now I am not saying any of this is true (either scenario) only that both are possible. It will become clear as time passes which is true.

Can't argue with any of that. I think maybe she saw the beginning of the season and thought if I don't give this one more chance I could be making a huge mistake.

Ballard's contract expires after 2026 correct? Not sure when SS does. For the record I am indifferent on Ballard. I think he has made some very good draft picks. And he has also missed some. As all GM's do. (most recently seeing that he took Evan Hull one spot before the Rams took Puka OUCH).

I am a Shane fan though. I think he has proven that with a competent QB he can win.

You are right She was groomed. And maybe I didn't put enough credence into that. But maybe she really thinks they are close when healthy.

As far as her being so involved in the club, that is an interesting take. She sees everything like CB and SS as well as the coaches do And everything looks great on paper from that view. But taking a step back like us as fans see things differently. One thing though is that you don't see the outside NFL community outside of the local media, thinking either is on the hot seat.

I wonder if she needs a President of FB ops? Like Matt Ryan signed for the Falcons

Who knows. Good points. We shall see

No argument from me about Cubs or Sawx fans. Especially Cubs fans since I run into way more of them living in the Midwest, hence the joke I always make about teams should be dissolved if they can't win a championship within a 100 year span :D.

Although I would be remiss if I didn't bring up that the White Sox would likely have not had a larger gap than the Red Sox if they hadn't thrown the 1919 World Series.

o


As a Black Sox expert, the first thing that needs to be said about that entire situation is that there are many things about the entire affair that nobody will ever know for sure (including myself.)

That said, both Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver very likely played to win. In fact, Jackson set what was then a World Series record with 12 hits, batted .375 for the series, hit the only home run of the series for either team, and did not make an error on defense. Similarly, Weaver batted .324, did not make an error on defense, and by all accounts played his best to win (not easy to do, knowing that 6 of your teammates are intentionally throwing games.)

Weaver never took a dime, repeatedly asked for a separate trial from his teammates to prove his innocence (of which he was denied), and appealed to the MLB commissioners (Kenesaw Landis, Happy Chandler, and Ford Frick) every year until his death in 1956 to have himself reinstated (all of his appeal were denied.)

Jackson was given $5,000 in an envelope by his best friend and teammate (Lefty Williams) ........ money that he never asked for, and that he did not want. In fact, he even tried to give the money to the team owner (Charlie Comiskey) and report the entire scandal to him but he was intercepted by Harry Grabiner (Comiskey's secretary), who told Jackson that Comiskey had nothing to say to him (even though he had offered a $10,000 reward for anyone giving him any information on the fix.) At that point, Jackson decided that he simply wasn't going to play in the series because of the fix that he knew that his teammates were complicit in. His manager (Kid Gleason) screamed at Jackson that he would play ....... Gleason's statement was not a prediction or a request, it was a threat. The uneducated, illiterate Jackson buckled under the pressure of his manager and owner, and played all 8 games of the series to the best of his ability, but (like teammate Buck Weaver) was not comfortable in doing so.

As stated before, there are still many aspects of the entire affair that people do not know, and will never find out. However, based on the numerous books, articles, and films that I have read and seen, and the people that I have spoken with (I actually called a man named Gardner Stern on the telephone just before he died in 1996 who lived in Chicago his entire life, and who was 16 years-old at the time of the fix, and I spoke extensively with him about it), Jackson and Weaver both played to win, in spite of the pressure of the situation that was on them.



************************************


Me and Gardner Stern


In regard to Gardner Stern, this man ......


A. ) Saw the first game ever at THE ORIGINAL Comiskey Park in April of 1910, when he was 6 and-a-half years old.

B. ) Had his heart broken when it was found out that his beloved White Sox had thrown the 1919 World Series (he in fact went to one of those World Series games against the Reds.)



As I said earlier, his name was Gardner Stern. He was born in 1904, was a life-long White Sox fan, and was a guest in Ken Burns' baseball documentary.

I simply called information for Chicago, Illinois (in 1996), asked for his phone number, and he was nice enough to talk to me for about 20 minutes about the entire Black Sox scandal, plus his lifelong fandom of the White Sox ...... he died just a few months after our conversation.

o

C&O That is amazing and very cool. What made you call the man? Do you do this for a living or is it a hobby of yours? Ive always found the scandal to be infuriating. One more example of the rich and powerful screwing over the players. We did get Landis who cleaned up baseball but seemed like a total ass.

o


It's a hobby.


Regarding Landis "cleaning up baseball", that is a fallacy that is greatly exaggerated, and I'll explain why ......

Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were permitted by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to resign from their player-manager posts near the end of the 1926 season after former pitcher Dutch Leonard charged that Cobb, Speaker, and Smoky Joe Wood had joined him just before the 1919 World Series in betting on a game they all knew was fixed. Leonard presented letters and other documents to Commissioner Landis and AL President Ban Johnson, and Johnson thought that they would be so potentially damaging to baseball in the wake of the Black Sox scandal that he paid Leonard $20,000 to have them suppressed. Landis, who proposed to have a "zero tolerance policy" when he was hired as the Commissioner of MLB in direct response to the Black Sox scandal, did everything that he could to cover up and gloss over the Ty Cobb/Tris Speaker/Smoky Joe Wood incident for fear that the American public would be completely disillusioned about the authenticity of the game, because it would have been the second major game-fixing scandal in the same time period of time.

So while Landis is in Baseball Hall-of-Fame for allegedly cleaning up baseball, the fact of the matter was that was a racist, bigoted grandstander who gets far more credit than he actually deserves in regard to his overall legacy in the history of professional baseball.

o

I agree with you on the reality of Landis. Baseball was chock full of racist bigots back in the early 20th century (as was the whole damn country). He changed the public perception of baseball which was worth something. Cool hobby by the way.

Interesting info C&O and really cool story about your conversation w/ Gardner Stern. Definitely really nice of him to share his story w/ you. Unfortunately that probably wouldn't happen today due to all of the scam and spam calls everyone gets.

I knew that Buck Weaver didn't take the bribe and played to win, but that he was banned w/ his teammates under the pretense that he knew about the fix and didn't turn them in. Also, I knew that there's a lot of controversy on whether Sholess Joe threw games or not and that he overall played well, but I didn't know he played that well.


Interesting. I'll have to read up on the Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker incident.

And Landis may have been a total asshole and gets too much credit, but I think he definitely deserves at least some credit for saving baseball. At least from my understanding the Black Sox had gotten away w/ the whole thing scott free until Landis stepped in and laid down the hammer. If he (or perhaps someone else) had not done this then the flood gates would have been wide open for fixing games, which IMO would have ended baseball.

Anyway, interesting stuff. I'll definitely do some more reading on this as it's piqued my interest. Also, there's a historical walking tour in downtown Cincy on the 1919 World Series I had forgotten about until our conversation here. I'll have to plan on going on it here in the spring or summer.

o


Landis was not the reason why the Black Sox avoided getting away with the fix. The story went viral/nationwide in late September of 1920. With only 3 games left to be played in the regular season, Charlie Comiskey suspended all 8 players, pending further investigation. Landis was not in the picture at all until well after that ...... in other words, the genie was already out of the bottle, action had already been taken against the 8 accused players, and Landis had nothing to do with it.

The MLB owners, fearing an extremely damaging blow to baseball because of the fix, hired Landis after the fact (after the fix had been exposed, and action had been taken against the 8 accused players) in order to try to give some credibility to the game. After the 8 accused players were exonerated in a court of law in 1921, Landis banned them all from MLB for life.

Landis' inaction and willful ignorance of the Ty Cobb/Tris Speaker fixing incident completely belies the notion that he banned the 8 Black Sox players to preserve the moral integrity of the game ...... it was nothing more than Landis grandstanding after the fact, and he cared not about the integrity of the game, but rather was doing what was expedient at the time.




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In regard to the possibility of baseball not surviving had the 8 accused White Sox players not been banned, it is highly unlikely that baseball would have met its end had they not been banned ...... basketball survived the Tim Donaghy scandal (a referee who was actively fixing games with his officiating because he bet on them) without blinking. Since then, numerous basketball players and coaches have all been indicted for gambling on games that they were playing in and coaching in as well (Terry Rozier, Chauncey Billups, and Damon Jones, etc), and the game is still going strong, and attendance and TV ratings haven't missed a beat ...... Americans love their sports, and gambling, fixing games, and/or other ridiculousness such as the NFL rule changes neutering defenses and vaulting quarterbacks into putting up statistics that resemble a pinball game gone wild won't stop them from coming through the gates by the thousands, and tuning in on their TV sets by the millions.

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C&O You obviously know so much more about this than I do. Ive read a couple of books about the era. Two questions for you. I agree he did very little but how important was the public perception that he totally cleaned up baseball (at least the vast general public). Second question is what you think of Honus Wagner? I understand this is a Colt board but you are the first person Ive come across that seems interested in prewar sports. Apologize for this to you Freaks

o


At most, it affected the public perception of the game in the short-run in a positive manner.

See my above post in regard to its affect of the game in the long-run.

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o


Honus Wagner had more integrity in his little pinkie than Charles Comiskey, Ty Cobb, an Kenesaw Landis all had combined.

Wagner was about 80 years ahead of his time in regard to taking a stand against tobacco companies. The reason why his baseball card is so rare is because he didn't want to promote tobacco to kids, leading to the card's abrupt discontinuation and extreme rarity ...... that alone should have put him the Hall-of-Fame, regardless of how great of a player that he was ...... to me, that stance that he took against tobacco companies at a time when the health hazards that came along with using it were virtually unknown was even greater than the his career .328 Batting Average, his 3,428 Hits, and his 723 Stolen Bases.

o

You can clean up the game without doing it on the front page of the New York Herald Tribune or the Baltimore Sun. Both Cobb and Speaker were successful managers who, in the prime of their careers, were forced out, never to return to the game.

As far as making the Hall because of his reputation for cleaning up the game, it’s more likely he made it because he was the commish. Four of the first 5 commissioners made it.

Expecting Landis to take action before the trial was unreasonable. He was a Federal judge and would have been hesitant to make any move that might taint a trial.

Within hours of the verdict, he announced the ban.

o


I never said or insinuated that Landis should have taken action before he was called in by the owners. I said that he was called in AFTER action had already been taken (Comiskey banned the 8 players in September of 1920, which was long before Landis was called in.) Landis was called in strictly for cosmetic purposes, to give the illusion that he was cleaning up baseball. And if you read my previous posts, you would see that there was irrefutable proof that he intentionally ignored the Ty Cobb-Tris Speaker game-fixing incident, an incident that literally had written proof of the fix. Kennesaw Landis was as phony and as disingenuous as any person associated with the crookedness of baseball at that time.

Also, if you know anything about Landis as a Federal Judge, you would know that he was known for grandstanding with ridiculous verdicts that he knew would be overturned (such as the 1907 Standard Oil case, which was overturned in 1908.) The man was as phony, transparent, and as bigoted as they come.

o

C&O Man life just isn't fair in the least. While alive anyway. I think folks like you are at least changing the narrative on these people now. What you have said jibes and clarifies what I have read. To bad you don't live in Arizona.

This is what I was getting at. You obviously are much more knowledgeable on the subject than I am so please correct me if I'm wrong, but since the courts found them not guilty wouldn't the Black Sox players have been allowed to continue playing if Landis had not have banned them? Obviously allowing them back on the field would have been extremely detrimental to the game.

Like Kray I think you're missing some nuance here. Here's a summary I found in this ESPN article: https://www.espn.com/classic/s/2001/0730/1233060.html

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Tim Donaghy is banned for life from the NBA, and Rozier, Billups, and Jones are all suspended indefinitely and will likely be banned as well if found guilty. Pretty sure the NBA would take a HUGE hit if they were all allowed back into the league right now.

The point I was making is that if the Black Sox players would have been allowed to remain playing with only a minor tap on the wrist then there would have been nothing to prevent Arnold Rothstein or someone like him from fixing 1921 World Series, or the '22 Series, and on and on and on. Maybe someone else would have banned the players as well or the players would have been black listed, but since Landis is the one who banned them IMO you have to give him credit for it.

o


Yes, they would have been allowed to continue to play ....... and the game would have survived and even thrived, with or without them.

If you ever saw the movie "Quiz Show" (or read books on the subject) one poignant point of the movie is when Martin Scorsese's character (Martin Rittenhome, top executive of the Geritol company) tells a disillusioned Richard Goodwin that the public has a short memory, but the networks never forget. While Goodwin was trying to assert that the television careers of Dan Enright, Martin Freedman, and Jack Barry were over due to their involvement in the fixing of game shows, Scorsese/Rittenhome was predicting that they would all be back ....... and they were ...... in fact, both Jack Barry and Dan Enright later became multimillionaires in the early 1970's with a game show called Joker's Wild ...... not only were they back in television, but they were specifically back with (of all things) another game show.

The same is true of baseball, basketball, boxing, or any other major sport regarding scandals ...... if any of those players and/or coaches who are currently accused of wrongdoing/gambling on games ever came back to the NBA based on even the slightest presumption of innocence, the NBA would not cease to exist, or even be huirt at the box office ....... as I said before, the American public loves their sports, and no amount of scandal ...... not even a continuous, ongoing scandal, like what is happening in basketball ...... is going to drive them away.

Pete Rose admitted to betting on Reds games WHILE he was still playing for and managing the Reds, and there were still millions of fans who were clamoring for him to be inducted into the Hall-of-Fame, right up until the day that he died.

o

o


That article is not representing what actually happened.

Of course Cobb would say that he was misunderstood. Pete Rose also denied any wrong-doing along with almost every person that has ever gone to jail.

More significantly, Landis' behavior in regard to his exoneration of/ignoring the Cobb and Speaker game-fixing was completely hypocritical in regard to his treatment of the Black Sox. Landis banned the 8 White Sox players, in spite of them being found not guilty in a court of law ....... essentially saying that the Buck stops here, and nobody, not even a court of law, will transcend what I view to be justice and fairness ...... allowing Cobb and Speaker to remain in the game because they had not been found guilty without he himself (Landis) digging deeper into the case was passing the buck, and copping out. Furthermore, when he was later confronted about his inaction in regard to the Cobb/Speaker incident, he said that that incident occurred before was the commissioner (the Cobb-Speaker fixed games occurred in September of 1919), and so he felt that it was not his territory to act in a judgmental manner ...... which completely belies not only his attitude about the swift and permanent action that he took against the Black Sox (which also occurred before he was the commissioner), but also his entire career as a Federal Judge when he would hand ridiculous down fines and judgements that he knew would be overturned.

If you want to believe that Kenesaw Landis was at all credible in regard to either his career as a Federal Judge or as the Commissioner of MLB, you can ...... I happen to know, through extensive research, that nothing could be further from the truth.

As Benjamin Disraeli once said, "Innocence is precious, but truth is better." ...... I choose to take solace in the latter.

o

o


Thanks, Old Colt.


The baseball legacy of Kenesaw Landis is that he is in the MLB Hall-of-Fame, and he is credited with cleaning up the game ...... I myself don't always take a person's legacy at face-value, and this is certainly one instance of it.

Unfortunately for Landis, his legacy as a Federal Judge is not as sterling as his legacy is in Major League Baseball, and that is for good reason.

o

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Back to Chris Ballard ......



Chris Ballard Ready to Retool Defense in 2026

(By Kevin Bowen)

https://1075thefan.com/687343/chris-...fense-in-2026/

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My understanding is that Cobb and Speaker didn’t ever throw a game, they just bet on one they believed was fixed.

As far as ignoring it, the fact is that after the scandal came to Landis’s attention, neither man ever managed another game.

And, I’m just curious; what could Landis have done differently in the Black Sox scandal?

o


Cobb and Speaker threw a game, they did not just bet on them.

Regarding the Black Sox, Landis should not have banned Buck Weaver, as Weaver specifically asked for a separate trial from his teammates, and was denied. Weaver appealed his banning every year until the day that he died in 1956, and Landis refused to accept the fact that Weaver played to the best of his abilities and never took a dime in regard to the fix ...... the notion that Weaver necessarily should have "promptly told his ball club about it" completely belies and is in direct contradiction to his extremely lax, dismissing of the Ty Cobb/Tris Speaker game-fixing incident, an incident of which there was documentation that they both threw a game and bet on games ...... with the Black Sox, Landis' blanket/extreme decision to ban each and every one of them, regardless of the fact that they were all exonerated in a court of law, and regardless of the fact that 2 of the players played to the best of their abilities (Weaver and Jackson), set the precedent that he was to be a "No nonsense/no tolerance" commissioner, and that he would deal with any and all accusations of fixing and betting on games harshly and firmly, with no wiggle room for any kind of nuance.


Landis' milquetoast, nonchalant handling of the Cobb/Speaker incident, particularly his statement that he was dropping the case "because it happened before he was commissioner," completely belies his handling of the Black Sox situation (particularly in the case of Buck Weaver), which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that his interest first and foremost was grandstanding and expedience, not to rid the game of corruption.

o

o


Again, back to Chris Ballard ......



What to Know About the Colts’ 2026 Salary Cap

(By Drake Wally)

https://www.si.com/nfl/colts/onsi/ne...026-salary-cap

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