KKK and K's- They're All in the Hall

[DOUGHBOYS]

I've given up on the Hall of Fame being clean.
First and foremost is because there is no definition for 'clean'.
The Hall of Fame wants its members to be full of virtue, full of import, along with the talent that put them under consideration.
But it is too late.
Although the Hall prides itself on keeping a 'clean' house. It is not.

Joe Jackson is barred from the Hall. He was accused of being in on the fix of the 1919 World Series. Banned from baseball by Judge Landis, Jackson was on the outside looking in.
Not that Jackson cared much (For sure not as much as I do). Jackson's playing days were over before the Hall of Fame was built.
Jackson was barred in a one-man decision. Landis. Landis, who perpetuated the lie that Abner Doubleday invented baseball.
Abner Doubleday, who lived in Cooperstown, where the Hall of Fame was erected, is not in the Hall of Fame.
Baseball people know why.

Pete Rose bet on games while a Manager. He'll never walk the hallowed grounds.
Is Rose a stand up guy?
No.
Did he do something abhorrent to baseball? Even hurting the game? While playing and Managing the game?
Yes.

Would it shock you if I said Ty Cobb did the same thing?
Along with another Hall of Famer, Tris Speaker?
They did.
In their time, gambling was more of a constant in baseball. Bets in the crowd were common and players sent 'clubhouse boys' to make bets for them.
Sometimes on themselves, sometimes not.

In September of 1919, the White Sox had already clinched the pennant. The Indians had clinched second and the Tigers were trying to nail down third and scheduled to play the Indians.
Now, if there was a man who hated black folks more at that time than Ty Cobb, it was Tris Speaker.
There is little proof that Cobb was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but no doubt, Speaker was a member.
Speaker said, "Don't worry about tomorrow's game" in a conversation with Detroit pitcher Dutch Leonard, outfielder, Joe Wood and Cobb.
"We have second place won already, you guys will win tomorrow, understand?"
Wood 'won' $600 betting the game, which he split with Speaker, while giving $30 to the clubhouse boy for placing the bet.
Cobb didn't act soon enough and didn't get his bet down.
Leonard did not bet.

In 1926, seven years after, Leonard wrote a letter to American League President Ban Johnson, detailing the whole sordid deal. He also produced letters from Cobb and Wood that verified his claims.
Cobb and Speaker, both near the ends of their careers, quietly and quickly, resigned as Player-Managers of their clubs and hinted at retirements.
Nefarious?
You haven't read the whole story.
Ban Johnson knew that an affair of this magnitude would rock baseball.
Like the McGwire-Sosa high that baseball experienced then, Babe Ruth was providing the same during this era.
Baseball was the talk of America, and Ban Johnson did not want that conversation to be about two of its heroes, Cobb and Speaker.
So, here is what Ban Johnson does.
Johnson tells Leonard that he will BUY the letters from Leonard for $20,000.
In effect, buying his silence.
$20,000 is more than what Leonard made over a five year span.
He took the money.
Afterwards, Ban Johnson suspended Cobb and Speaker, without publicly noting why.
And here, here is where the plot even thickens more.

Ban Johnson has his ruling of the suspensions overturned by none other than my good buddy, Judge Landis.
"These players have not been, nor are they now, found guilty of fixing a ballgame."
Landis re-instated Cobb and Speaker to the game.
Although Joe Jackson was found by court to have not been involved with the 1919 Black Sox, Landis didn't care.
He wanted to make his mark at the time and that mark was at Shoeless Joe Jackson's expense.
Seven Years later, without a court ruling, Landis, now in the role of not rocking baseball's boat, pronounces Cobb and Speaker as innocent.

I see that early picture of the first inductees to the Hall of Fame in 1939.
I look at Speaker's face, and that of Cobb, and I think of Judge Landis and Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Cobb, a bigot, a better, and a possible murderer (More about that in a later post) is in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker, A bigot, a KKK card carrying bigot is in the Hall of Fame.

Baseball is not a 'clean' game. Neither, the playing or the business.
The Hall of Fame is no different.

[Ando]

Nice post, Doughy. Do you know the reason(s) Abner Doubleday isn't in the Hall of Fame or is your comment about only baseball people know why insinuating the 'good ole boys network' that exists? Just curious. Thanks.

[EA Sports]

Great post Dan. Joe Jackson was banned for life. He is dead. Put him in.

[DOUGHBOYS]

There were three 'architects' or builders of baseball as we know it today. The game itself evolved from a game brought over from England and other places. 'Rounders' was the most common name for the game.
The two names that constructed baseball as we know it are Henry Chadwick and AG Spalding.
Chadwick was the Bill James of his time. The premier baseball historian. He edited 'Beadle's Dime Baseball Player', the first baseball publication. He was also the man responsible for coming up with Batting Average and E.R.A.
He also extended box scores to look as they do today. Generally, he was responsible for all the trivia questions asked about baseball, being as he was the one who kept track of 'statistics.
At 80, Chadwick published a book about the beginnings of baseball. He spoke about the Rounders game in England and how it had morphed to 'Town Ball' in America. Essentially saying that America had gotten the idea from England, improved upon it, and made baseball our own.
This was at a time when Ellis Island was humming with immigrants from all lands. America had open arms. Theodore Roosevelt was welcoming all, as long as they made a concerted effort to learn English. Roosevelt did not care for baseball. In fact, he thought it was a game for sissies. But, he also knew that the game had flourished. Flourished so much that he wanted it to be American, even in its roots.

AG Spalding was baseball's first great pitcher. He broke in with the Boston Red Stockings in 1871 and led the league in Wins five straight years. He won over 50 games twice.
In 1875, he finished the year at 55-5. He was lured to a new league, where he became the highest paid player in baseball.
Not only did Spalding receive a salary, he also negotiated a contract where he would get 25 percent of the receipts from the gate.
He played one year, then retired at the age of 26.
The business side of baseball started having more interest for Spalding than playing the sport. In 1878, He published his own book called 'Spaldings Official Base Ball Guide and Base Ball League Book', and he hired Chadwick to edit the book.
Ten years later, he organized an 'around the world tour' to promote AMERICA's game of baseball. Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the middle east (some say he used the Pyramids as a backstop for a game)
Upon returning home, he was nationally acclaimed as the unofficial Ambassador of baseball. He was appointed Commissioner of the American Olympic Committee.
Like Roosevelt, Spalding was a little put out that Chadwick implied that the origins of baseball had started in the third world.
But by now, Spalding did not want to challenge Chadwick. He had become both a friend and employee. And challenging him would only bring a 'He said, he said' argument to the table.
Spalding invented the Mills Commission. The Mills Commission sounds official enough, but its members were handpicked by Spalding. Abraham Mills, who shared Spalding's view of how baseball should be called an American sport headed the Commission. He was a former President of the National League. On this Commission were former Senators and other high profiled dignitaries.
For evidence of how and where baseball started, Spalding presented this commission with a letter from Abner Graves. Graves recounted in his letter that he had grown up in Cooperstown and that once as a boy, in 1839, a man named Abner Doubleday arranged four small bags in a diamond formation, and brought order to boys who were bent on chaos.
Doubleday was the perfect choice.
He was a Civil War hero. The first officer to fire a shot at Fort Sumter and had risen to the rank of Major General before retiring to San Francisco to start up the first cable car company.
He also wrote a lot of books. Not one even mentioned a baseball.
Doubleday died in 1893. There was not a mention of baseball, even from his biographers of the time.
This did not stop Spalding or the Mills Commission.
They founded that Abner Doubleday had founded baseball in Cooperstown in 1839.

In 1939, 13 foundational members of baseball were inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame.
Spalding and Chadwick were inducted along with Alexander Cartwright.
If anybody had a claim to inventing baseball, it was Cartwright.
Cartwright rewrote rules that would fit the game as we know it.
Length of bases, foul territory, ball-strike counts can all be attributed to Cartwright.

Before that induction, Cartwright's grandson wanted his dead grandfather to have more credit for instituting the game. He wrote Judge Landis a letter telling him that he had notes and material from his grandfather that proved how instrumental Cartwright was in advancing baseball.
Landis, again not wanting to rock baseball's boat offered the younger Cartwright, a prominent place in the Hall of Fame for his grandfather and possibly other things to keep the grandson quiet.
Fortunately for Landis, the grandson died three months before the induction and the Doubleday story remained intact.
Abner Doubleday was a Civil War hero and probably a nice guy.
But he had little to do with baseball.
That, is the reason he is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

[DOUGHBOYS]

And an, 'Oh, by the way'-
The Hall of Fame opened in 1939, 100 years after Abner Doubleday 'invented' baseball.
Beside the Hall of Fame, a baseball field was built. Each Major League team sent two representatives to play in a pickup game after the ceremonies. The teams were 'Captained' by Honus Wagner and Eddie Collins.
A player sent by the Red Sox was the same player that was sent any and everywhere by baseball.
Whether it was an event like this or any event baseball and America could be a part of abroad.
That man, was Moe Berg.

[whale4evr]

Good stuff, Doughy as usual. Anyone interested in the origins of baseball should read John Thorn's "Baseball in the Garden of Eden." He did decades of research on this subject and briefly recounted some of it in the Ken Burns series when he was only about half done with his project that became this book. Well worth the read for anyone interested in the history and origins of the game.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Thanks and thanks for the tip.
I'll pick it up at the library.