[IndyNorm]

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.

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.

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.

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

1926 - Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were permitted by Ban Johnson to resign from baseball 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 Johnson, and Johnson thought 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. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis exposed the cover-up and the eventual fallout forced Johnson out his job as president of the league he had created. Cobb and Speaker vehemently denied any wrongdoing, Cobb saying that "There has never been a baseball game in my life that I played in that I knew was fixed,? and that the only games he ever bet on were two series games in 1919, when he lost $150 on games thrown by the Sox. He claimed his letters to Leonard had been misunderstood, that he was merely speaking of business investments. Landis took the case under advisement and eventually let both players remain in baseball because they had not been found guilty of fixing any game themselves. It was after this case, though, that Landis instituted the rule mandating that any player found guilty of betting on baseball would be suspended for a year and that any player found to have bet on his own team would be barred for life. Cobb later claimed that the attorneys representing him and Speaker had brokered their reinstatement by threatening to expose further scandal in baseball if the two were not cleared.

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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.

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.