Who then beat the Kiwis in the semis and went on to win the whole thing. The cricket gods will not be mocked…
Aren’t there several relating to Ayrton Senna’s death at Imola in 1994? The one I heard was that the Formula 1 authorities contrived to ensure that he was not declared dead at the racetrack, and instead airlifted to hospital on artificial support machines, because if he had died at the scene Italian law would have required the cancellation of the race.
I’ve little idea how widespread this theory is, and even less idea whether it even makes any sense, but I’m sure some Brazilian friends have told me that they’d heard it.
I replied to this days ago, but it isn’t here. Oh well.
My point wasn’t that players on the permanently ineligible list should be elected to the hall. My point was that if it wasn’t for Cobb threatening to go public with some of baseball’s “sins” to Commissioner Landis, he and Speaker would be on that list and therefore not be in the Hall.
Jackson’s “confession”, as I understand it, was lost (or stolen), so he was never officially convicted of anything. Landis did what no other commissioner since would have been able to get away with. But I don’t want to quibble. From what i understand, Jackson took $5000. Whether he believed he was part of a conspiracy to fix games or not, it makes it hard to understand what he took the money for.what did he think they were paying him $5k for?
As for Weaver, you are wrong. His niece made an effort to get her Uncle’s status changed in 2003. It might make no difference to you, but to Weaver’s family, it continues to be a pretty big deal.
I would believe if your family name and legacy was tainted by a scandal in which a relative had nothing to do with the crime in question but was still linked to it, I would think that you might want to get that changed if you could.
Weaver can never shake the stain of the Black Sox scandal unless he is reinstated. That won’t change anything for Buck Weaver, but it would for his family and his legacy.
None of the eight players were convicted of anything, because there was no clear criminal law at the time against what they did. The state of Illinois indicted them on various racketeering and conspiracy charges, none of which exactly fit the crime. The players almost certainly would have been acquitted even had the confessions not disappeared.
(Since then, and in reaction, most it not all states have passed criminal laws specifically against accepting a bribe to fix a sports event. College players have been convicted in point shaving scandals.)
Baseball’s internal disciplinary process, of course, need not follow the criminal code, and players are disciplined for all sorts of things (from criticizing the officials to taking steroids) for which they have not, and in some cases could not, be convicted. Landis was entirely correct and just to ban the seven players who accepted money, for life and even for eternity.
In a perfect world, Weaver should have gotten a one- or two-year suspension. But, Landis made an example of him. It sucks to be made an example but it worked–afterward, players began to squeal, which made multiplayer fixes too risky to arrange.
The Cobb-Speaker scandal put Landis in a horrible position. He had evidence that Cobb and Speaker had bet on the game in question, which was not against baseball rules at the time, but no clear evidence of a fix. (Leonard’s letters didn’t say anything about a fix, and Speaker, the only player in the group who played for the losing side, hit two triples and a single in the game.) Cobb and Speaker were two of the most popular players in the game, and the scandal involved a meaningless regular season game seven years in the past.
Yes, Cobb was a smart man and lawyered up and made lots of threats and had the money and savvy to back them up . . . but even if he hadn’t, Landis just didn’t have the goods to ban him.
True – although he did go on to become our second-winningest coach in franchise history. (Behind Dan Bylsma) So I guess that paid off as well. 
If Rose gets in, Jackson should as well, since there was less proof for him than there was for Rose. Rose is a scumbag who’s always changing his story. “No, I never bet on baseball, so can I be in the HOF?” “Well, yeah, maybe I DID bet on baseball, but never against my team – so NOW can I be in the HOF? How about now?” How can anyone believe a word that guy says?
Put them all in, place the following on their plaque:
GAMBLED ON BASEBALL, SHAMED OUR SPORT
HoF’s double as museums (especially Cooperstown) - they’re not holy shrines. To act like Pete Rose or Shoeless Joe didn’t even exist is just idiotic.
Then they’re just an exhibit, they aren’t ACTUALLY in the hall
I’m not saying don’t vote them in, vote them in and state that they shamed the sport. In ALL CAPS, in case people don’t get the message.
You are right that the players weren’t convicted of anything. But everyone mentions Cobb’s confession. I have heard about it, read about it, but no one has actually seen it. So to bring it up is not exactly “proof”, because it no longer exists (assuming it ever did in the first place).
And the evidence is there that Cobb and Speaker were part of the fix. And you can’t give me Speaker’s stats on one hand and say that proves his innocence, but ignore Joe Jackson’s stats on the other and say stats don’t matter… He was part of the fix, too. Regardless of how well he played.
In any event, the fact that Cobb never played after that, but resigned with Speaker says what “goods” the commish had on both of them. They came to a stand-off. We will leave the game if you don’t put us on the disqualified list.
And yeah, to your point, it was a seven year old game with no bearing on the pennant, so was it worth all the trouble?
But if you believe in an absolute rule, and gambling will not be tolerated, then yeah, it is worth the trouble, and Landis apparently pursued this case rigorously at first. Until, that is, Cobb put the ultimatum out there.
The fact that Weaver sued Comiskey and won his 1921 salary on the basis of a lack of proof also speaks volumes about his real culpability.
I mean, what was it, really? He didn’t tell on his teammates? There was no rule in baseball at the time that obliged him to do so. And can you imagine if he had? He could have (and probably would have) been sued for slander by everyone he implicated. There was nothing on paper. And my bet is that no one would have come forward if Weaver told someone BEFORE the series started. Any player accused of being part of a fix before the series could have easily tightened up and played terribly just on the pressure of having to play well to prove they WEREN’T part of a conspiracy. It is a viscous circle. Weaver, I believe, was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time and was slapped with a life-time ban to show the other players that baseball wasn’t playing around with gambling.
The man was in a no-win situation, and of all the players that have been pushed out of the game for one reason or another, he is the one guy I’d like to see be re-instated.
Don’t know how true this is but: The NFL merger would’ve been cancelled if Kansas City lost Super Bowl IV.
As I’ve said 100 times. Mitchell can only go after the leads he has. If Ortiz and Ramirez are getting steroids from someone completely unconnected to the leads Mitchell has…how can Mitchell discover their use?
That’s like asking why the Son of Sam investigators didn’t find the Zodiac Killer.
Why?
One theory is that Rozelle had the Colts throw SB III to establish the AFL and create momentum for the merger.
Another is that the New Orleans Saints franchise was created because Rozelle needed the approval of Senate committee chair Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana to get the merger, and a franchise for NO was Long’s price, despite it being a marginal market (which it still is). The timing does fit.
Actually your analogy, altered only slightly, explains what I think may have happened.
“There are some serial killers out there. Go track em down. Oh, and we have a couple of possible leads for you. Look for guys named Berkowitz living in the tri state area.”
“Will do. But hey. There’s been some serial killing going on in the West, too, shouldn’t we check on–”
“Start with the leads you have, kid. See where they take you first, okay?”
In my scenario it would’ve been in MLB’s interest to steer Mitchell toward certain leads and away from others. I’m certainly not saying it did happen. But it isn’t anywhere near implausible that MLB officials said to him, “hey, check out possible supplier x, who may be linked with players y and z,” and if Mitchell said, “what about potential supplier k,” they said “why concentrate on him when we have good information on x?”
Anyway, it was Mitchell’s job to find leads and pursue them. Sounds like you’re saying he just didn’t do a very thorough job. I suppose that an alternative thesis is that Mitchell specifically avoided leads that might’ve implicated certain players…
Here’s one near and dear to many Aussie hearts. The theory that Phar Lap was poisoned to stop him winning. I believe the core theory being it was committed by “The Mob” to stop them losing a whole bunch of money from their bookmaking operations.
One I heard in a Baltimore bar:
Cal Ripken was arrested for beating his wife and the Orioles caused a malfunction in the stadium lights at Camden Yards, cancelling that night’s game to preserve “The Streak”.
There’s other versions and debunking on Snopes.
No they wouldn’t. If Baltimore won the game the NFL would have been 1-0 vs. the AFL, SBIII was the only ‘inter-league’ game that season. The first season of the merged NFL (AFC-NFC) was 1970, ending with SBV, which the AFC champion Baltimore defeated the NFC champ Dallas.
Given how blatantly the NBA coddles its star players (it’s well known that the big-name guys can get away with fouls that lesser players will get called on) I’m fully prepared to believe that the NBA would arrange a “secret suspension” for someone of Michael Jordan’s caliber.
You see this in hockey too. Far too many playoff series go something like this: A clearly dominant team pulls ahead 3 games to 0 in the (best of 7) finals. At this point, the sucky team suddenly comes alive and wins the next 2 or 3 games before finally being knocked out by the better team. Yes, outcomes like this do happen, but they seem to be suspiciously common.
Mitchell got all the information he could from the very few sources he could find that were willing to talk - and that was only two guys, one of whom was under court order to cooperate with him, or else go to prison, and the other of whom was involved in a slander lawsuit over the subject. If there was a conspiracy, it was among baseball insiders *not *to talk with Mitchell.
Mitchell’s report did not name names in clubhouses where he did not have informers, but did where he did have them. IOW, everywhere he could look, he found rampant PED use.
My team’s pitcher is always squeezed, while the other team’s pitcher gets a strike zone that extends into the batter’s boxes.