Ballard and Steichen are safe

[Colts And Orioles]

Originally Posted by Kray007

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

[Colts And Orioles]

Originally Posted by Colts And Orioles

o


Back to Chris Ballard ......



Chris Ballard Ready to Retool Defense in 2026

(By Kevin Bowen)

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

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

o

[IndyNorm]

Back to our Landis/Cobb/Speaker/Black Sox Debate. I found this article today that I thought was a good read on the Cobb/Speaker controversy:

https://www.vintagedetroit.com/gambl...oybpgbA-jQo9sK

Per this article Cobb and Speaker along w/ Leonard and Wood did indeed fix the game in question; however, the author does state that late season fixes after the pennant was decided were pretty common back then, Especially on the final day of the season:

But in addition to the game fixing and schemes that hovered like storm clouds over the World Series in the deadball era, every season there were opportunities for a clever player to make extra money by “laying down.” The circumstances of these fixed games often involved teams hopelessly out of the pennant race, late in the schedule when players were weary from a long season and hoped to make a few hundred bucks before heading home for the winter.

At least two dozen incidents are known where players from opposing teams went in cahoots to throw a game on the final day of the season. The players would pool their money and bet on the team that would “win” the fixed contest. In 1919, when the Cleveland Indians were in Detroit to face the Cobb’s Tigers, such an arrangement was concocted. Neither the Indians nor the Tigers were going to win the pennant that season, but the Tigers were in a tight scrum with the Yankees for third place. At that time, a third place finish would mean a small share of the post-season money for every member of the Tigers. The Indians had second place locked up. Veterans Cobb and Tris Speaker of Cleveland huddled prior to the game of September 25th and ironed out the details.

I could definitely see this playing out where Landis saw the Cobb/Speaker game as the tip of the iceberg, so decided it best to keep the punishment in house (Cobb and Speaker were both let go from their respective teams in 1926 and never rehired as managers) and then write into the MLB bylaws the penatlies for gambling on the game. Pure speculation on my part, but IMO not unreasonable at all. And it aligns w/ the final tidbit from the article I posted yesterday as from what I know about Cobb he would definitely be the type that if he's going down he's taking the ship with him:

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.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX

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.

I fully agree that Buck Weaver got the shaft in the deal. IMO he should have been suspended, possibly up to a year, but a lifetime ban was way overkill for him since he did not take the bribe or throw games. Jackson is more of a gray area, but since he accepted the bribe (which he admitted to doing) I don't think his ban was necessarily unfair.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the trial a complete sham? To my knowledge the evidence was pretty overwhelming that the players on trial had accepted bribes and fixed the Series, which included multiple players confessing to it during their grand jury trial. Hell Eddie Cicotte admitted to hitting the Reds lead off batter in game 1 to signal that the fix was on.

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

We'll probably have to agree to disagree here. I don't think there's any question the game would have lost a lot of credibility and fans if the Black Sox players would have been allowed back on the field (with maybe the exception of Weaver). I also believe that if no strong deterrent had been put in place after the scandal then flood gates would have been wide open for more and more fixing scandals in games that actually mattered which very well could have damaged the game's credibility for good.

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.

I have no idea about Landis' record as a judge, so I'll take your word on it. Also, I don't think he was baseball's white knight, but I do believe he had a pretty large impact on cleaning the game up which you're shortchanging. So we'll probably just have to agree to disagree there as well.

[YDFL Commish]

Damn, this thread has gone off the rails. Movie it to a other forum.

[IndyNorm]

Originally Posted by YDFL Commish

Damn, this thread has gone off the rails. Movie it to a other forum.

Well unfortunately we have nothing better to talk about

[Colts And Orioles]

Originally Posted by IndyNorm

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the trial a complete sham ???

o


The trial was a sham.

3 signed confessions were mysteriously lost.

2 of the confessions were legitimate (Cicotte and Williams) while the 3rd "confession" was not (Joe Jackson) ...... Jackson could not read and write, and was coerced into signing the confession with an X mark. Jackson's "confession" was completely written out for him in advance.

o

Originally Posted by IndyNorm

I could definitely see this playing out where Landis saw the Cobb/Speaker game as the tip of the iceberg, so decided it best to keep the punishment in house (Cobb and Speaker were both let go from their respective teams in 1926 and never rehired as managers) and then write into the MLB bylaws the penatlies for gambling on the game. Pure speculation on my part, but IMO not unreasonable at all. And it aligns w/ the final tidbit from the article I posted yesterday as from what I know about Cobb he would definitely be the type that if he's going down he's taking the ship with him.

o


This is what make Landis a complete phony, hypocrite, and why he deserves no credit for allegedly "cleaning up baseball."

With the Black Sox, Landis made it abundantly clear, with no wiggle room whatsoever, not even for Buck Weaver and Joe Jackson who both played to the best of their abilities, that any type of fixing and/or gambling would not be tolerated, and that they would never play professional baseball ever again.

But when he had hard evidence of other games being fixed (and gambled on), and with Ty Cobb asserting that if he went down he would tell all and bring many others down with him, Landis conveniently acted like a big pussy, and ignored it ........ Therefore, Landis DID NOT clean up baseball ...... he carefully and expediently cherry-picked which scandal (and which players) that he would come down hard on, and when an even bigger mess was put on his desk, he ignored it ....... that was nothing short of cowardly and disingenuous, and it absolutely drives home the point that I have been making about him all along. If Ty Cobb had hard evidence of 30 or 40 other players fixing games, and if Landis TRULY wanted to clean up the game and give it credibility, then Landis would have and should have dealt with each and every one of those players and banned them all for life, just like he did with the Black Sox ........ but he didn't do that, therefore her was a complete hypocrite, therefore he did not "clean up" baseball, and he deserves no credit other than coming along after the fact and conveniently dealing with only what he chose to deal with.

o

[YDFL Commish]

And it continues!