THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

That’s approximately how I would feel if they named the award after Tommy Douglas. 

As another example, my understanding is that Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic saint, said some nasty things about what should be done with Jews.  There are lots of Catholic schools named after him. 

My guess is that the general empirical rule seems to be: so long as bigotry is not the primary thing the person is famous for, it’s OK to name things after him. 

Still, you’d think that after going to all that trouble to extol Jackie Robinson and desegregation, MLB would be able to exhibit a little bit of consistency and self-criticism here.

martin luther was also a virulent anti-semite.  george washington and thomas jefferson owned slaves.  etc.  i think it depends on the case.  sounds like landis was especially prickish even for his era but pre-WWII everyone was pretty backwards.  even the most well intentioned public figures couldnt have had a modern appreciation of race as it’s understood today.  social sciences (not to mention natural sciences) were in the proverbial stone age.

but thats not an excuse for double standards applied by hacks in the BWAA.

But as Tango describes it, Landis was at the center of keeping non-whites out of MLB. Of course he was not the only bigot, but he was the top man who was in a position to make sure no owners broke the color line. Unfortunately it seems some would rather ignore that and pretend that everyone was a bigot, everyone was guilty.

Landis was more than just a prick.  He used power to perpetrate injustice.  He was an infamous Red Scare judge, and convicted Big Bill Haywood of espionage for preferring peace to war.  He was an infamous judge, period, and convicted Jack Johnson of white slavery for dating a white woman.  That he later did yeoman’s work keeping Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige out of the major leagues is icing on the cake.

I’m not shocked, mind you.  The US loves its racists and far-right lunatics.  But don’t delude yourselves about Landis.  He did a thousand times worse in his life than did, say, Ty Cobb.

ok, consider me convinced, judge landis was a big time piece of crap. 

i dont quite follow the generalization that the US loves racists and far-right lunatics tho. all americans? in history? just right now?

I would personally object to the lumping togther of racists and far-right lunatics.

I do consider myself far-right, although not a lunatic. I definitely am not a racist.

One of the most important conservative philosophies is that every person is an individual, and should be judged by their own beliefs, words and actions, not by whatever group they are judged to be members of. Yes, some groups of people may, as a whole, tend to be one way or another, but that does not tell us with any certainty about any one individual.

If I am running a business, including a baseball team, I will maximize my profits by hiring the best persons for the job, regardless of anything that doesn’t have to do with the quality of the job performed.

Along with that comes the belief in individual responsibility. You should be rewarded for the good you do, and suffer the consequences of the bad.

Since Jackie Robinson, baseball’s color barrier is considered the sport’s worst blemish. What Tango describes concerning Judge Landis, is group responsibility in action, where no one individual is guilty, it’s all of our faults. But that’s not true - there were racists who wanted to exclude blacks, and there were those who wanted to hire them because they knew being a winning baseball player had nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.

Judge Landis was the chief enforcer of the segregation policy, was at the core of this disgrace, but many would rather say that everyone was a racist.

...to avoid pointing the well-deserved blame at any particular individuals.

Canseco and Caminiti were two that early on outed themselves as steroid users, but with what I thought was a typical attitude of the self-confessed “Yes I did it, but so did everyone else” - in order to diminish their own wrongdoing.

Perhaps an undertaking for the NAACP.  I can’t seem to muster up enough energy to care about anything award-related, much less what one of them is called.  Maybe I’m too cynical.

Also according to Wikipedia the name was bestowed on this award in 1944. That was following the death of Landis and a few years before baseball integrated. I wonder if any of the “Holy Writers” who decided to memorialize Landis are even alive anymore?

I have never heard (until now) baseball’s MVP award called anything BUT the MVP award. My guess is hardly anyone ever called it the “Landis Award”, not even the writers who named the award for Landis. It seems odd to get upset over it now. It is just an award named after a dead man who doesn’t even rate being mentioned when the award is given.

I suspect hardly anyone uses the official name anymore in part because of how controversial Landis is now and in part because the tradition of simply calling it the MVP was never really broken to begin with, but if you look up pictures of the trophy (or see that Pedroia commercial for PlayStation where he polishes his trophy), they haven’t really shied away from the name at all.  It’s basically a plaque with “KENESAW MOUNTAIN LANDIS MEMORIAL BASEBALL AWARD” engraved in a circle around the perimeter and Landis’ portrait in gold in the center above the league and player name.

The BBWAA and MLB don’t seem to ever use the name, to the point that it almost seems like they don’t want it anymore either, so I have no idea why they don’t change it already.  I guess it’s just that they’ve had the same trophy for decades and don’t want to change the tradition?

Right, like the Indians.  Better to bury your head than to face up to the truth.

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Canseco and Caminiti were two that early on outed themselves as steroid users, but with what I thought was a typical attitude of the self-confessed “Yes I did it, but so did everyone else” - in order to diminish their own wrongdoing.

- in order to show it was no big deal.  That this was a workplace issue, and has nothing to do with anyone other than the players.  Are you going to complain when a rock star goes on stage high?  And don’t give me the “competition” difference.  It’s entertainment.  As long as the outcomes are not predetermined, you are entertained.  Your entertainment level does not change once you find out something about Manny or Ortiz.  You don’t think your World Series is tainted.

And just like in the World Cup qualifier, when Thierry ADMITTED to hand-ing the ball just before a goal (i.e. outright cheating), France will NOT ask for a rematch so that can make it fair.  Thierry said it’s the job of the referee to make that call.

So, spare me the moral indignation here.  There are very few players who have any moral sportsmanship standing around the world.  Players cheat and find the edge, and fans ACCEPT those things.  Every time France advances in the World Cup, the fans will forget about the outright cheating.

Okay, that makes more sense now, that the award was named before integration, and MLB is too cowardly to face up to Landis’s enforcement of segregation.

MLB would look a lot better in my eyes if, instead of just heaping honors on Jackie Robinson, they also looked back a bit on the eviler parts of baseball history.

Ty Cobb was the first baseball player elected to the Hall of Fame.  Character is supposed to be considered when electing players to the Hall.  I realize Cobb was elected eighty years ago, and people thought about things differently then, but I use the Ty Cobb election as a test to determine whether a player’s character flaws should keep him out of the Hall.  If they were worse than Cobb’s, they probably should, otherwise, no.

I would prefer the MVP to be named after a player, but before changing the name it would be nice to figure out what the MVP is awarded for, the best position player that year, for example, or the player most valuable in having his team contend?  But the Babe Ruth Award would be a good name for it, especially in the second case.

And the Jackie Robinson Award is a good name for Rookie of the Year, even without the history of integration, given that he was the first recipient.

Jackie also won an MVP in 1949.  I wonder if he wrote anything about receiving a big trophy with Mountain’s name on it?  Anyone have his autobiography?

I’ve got an an autobiography from the early 70s and another biography from 1960 that Robinson consulted for, and I don’t think either of them mention Landis’ name being attached to the award.  They just mention that he was happy to be named the MVP and move on.

As Mark Armour stated elsewhere, there is disagreement as to what role, if any, Landis played in maintaining the color barrier. See SABR’s 2008 Baseball Research Journal, for example. 

I’m not sure if they have the newer BRJs online or not.  I have a copy of this one at home, I just haven’t read Macht’s article on this topic yet.

This is sad, there are so many things named after avowed racists. This cant be a surprise since the senior member of the majority party in the Senate was a KKK leader. But he apologized so that makes it OK…

If you took away all things named after avowed racists, adulterers, murderers or anyone who has ever had a serious vice there would be a very limited number of names for which to name things for.

Question for the audience.  Does being an avowed racist in the year 1800, 1900 and 2000 carry the same weight?  Is one any worse than the others?

vr, Xei

It’s not that the award is named after a racist.  It’s that the Holy Writers who have sworn vengeance against all evil-doers have this award.

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Xei: it’s a good question.  You can similarly ask if an abused child who grows up to become an abuser any different than a sociopath who becomes an abuser.

Nature v nurture

#20, I guess my question in #19) boils down to is it worse to be a racist in 2010 than to have been one in 1900 or some year in the far past.  Racism was likely a social norm (or more of one) in the far past than it is today.  Society progresses and things that were once concerned somewhat of a “norm” may nowadays be considered cruel/terrible (like owning slaves or being racist).  I am asking this more as a question than making a statement at this point in time.  I think the question somewhat applies to the topic of what standards we hold people at today vs in the distant past on things like political correctness.
vr, Xei

I understand the question, and I’m saying that my example is also analogous, because it boils down to nature v nurture.  Basically, how much personal responsibility is intrinsic in each person, regardless of the environment.

And I would not say that people in power in 1920-1940 are necessarily predominantly racist.

I think there is a difference between just being routinely racist because it’s the way things are and you haven’t thought about it much, versus actually having to examine the issue and coming out on the wrong side.

If Landis was explicitly called upon to take a leadership role and make the decision for MLB, he accepted the responsibility for his explicit decision. 

Unthinkingly ignoring or accepting a wrong can perhaps be partially excused.  Perpetuating that wrong, after due deliberation and after considering all sides, cannot.

"Perpetuating that wrong, after due deliberation and after considering all sides, cannot. “

Well said.

#23 Fair enough, but what does that say about people like George Washington / Thomas Jefferson who owned slaves?  I am sure they must’ve thought it through at one point.  Can’t get much more iconic in this country than those two.
vr, Xei