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Posted By: runscott

Agreed. If the Cobb/Speaker incident were to come up today, would we want them banished from the game? Few on this board would be in favor of Cobb's banishment, despite what we know about his deplorable behavior - he's simply a nasty but great baseball player to us, and rightfully sits in the HOF. And Speaker is a vintage favorite, despite admitted betting on ML games. Maybe if we had been alive during the Cobb/Speaker thing, and the details had been in the paper every day, we would have been in favor of their banishment as well.

Also, perhaps there was more betting, etc., in Cobb's day, so minor violations were overlooked; however, outside of the Black Sox scandal (when Jackson was banished), Landis never again banished a star player, but continued to banish minor players for small offenses. This doesn't mean the stars were all clean. Landis was brought in to "clean up" and so it was necessary to banish the Sox for the good of baseball. But also for the good of baseball, it was necessary to not banish additional stars once things had settled down and baseball was viewed by the public as more or less clean.

Volume #4 of the "Fireside" books has a detailed account of Judge Landis' career as commissioner, describing each of the situations where he did or did not banish players from baseball.