The name of the former baseball commissioner who never had a black player in the MLB during his long reign is being pulled off all future Most Valuable Player (MVP) plaques after more than 75 years.
Kenesaw Mountain Landis would not be depicted on the annual awards presented by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), the group said on Friday.
The decision came after 89 percent of its membership last week voted for his removal.
Photo: AP
“We will no longer be associated with the Landis name, and the MVP plaques will be nameless in 2020,” association president Paul Sullivan wrote.
“Hopefully, when some sense of normalcy returns in 2021, we can have a healthy debate over whether to add a new name or just leave it as the BBWAA MVP award,” he said.
Former MVP winners Barry Larkin, Mike Schmidt and Terry Pendleton have said they favored pulling Landis’ name because of concerns over his handling of black players.
Larkin, the black shortstop voted National League MVP in 1995 with the Cincinnati Reds, applauded the decision.
“To me, the MVP award should be something that’s all positive,” Larkin said on Friday. “There shouldn’t be a cloud over it.”
“I was always aware of the Landis name and what it meant to slow down the color line in Major League Baseball,” he said.
“I think the MVP honor stands on its own. It doesn’t need a name,” he added.
Told of the BBWAA’s ruling, Pendleton, the black third baseman who won the 1991 National League honor with the Atlanta Braves, texted: “It’s the right thing to do!!!”
The MLB would redesign the trophies, association secretary-treasurer Jack O’Connell said.
The American League and National League winners awards in this virus-shortened season are to be announced on Nov. 12.
Landis became MLB’s first commissioner in 1920 and no black players were in the majors during his control that ended with his death in 1944.
Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 and Larry Doby followed later that year.
Landis’ legacy is “always a complicated story” that includes “documented racism,” official MLB historian John Thorn has said.
A federal judge in Chicago when he was hired, Landis banned Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black Sox for throwing the 1919 World Series and helped rid baseball of gambling problems that were plaguing the game.
Landis “notably failed to integrate the game during his tenure,” Sullivan said in a statement.
The only living relative of Landis who personally knew him is nephew Lincoln Landis.
“Now at the age of 98, I am duly puzzled to learn that the baseball writers would have agreed to eliminate my uncle’s name and picture from the Most Valuable Player award,” he said on Saturday. “I must say that if today’s MVP winners truly understood the role Judge Landis played in preserving the game of baseball, they would support putting his image back on their award plaques.”
During the 1944 World Series, the BBWAA voted to add Landis’ name to the plaque as “an acknowledgement of his relationship with the writers,” O’Connell said.
“If you’re looking to expose individuals in baseball’s history who promoted racism by continuing to close baseball’s doors to men of color, Kenesaw Landis would be a candidate,” said Schmidt, the three-time National League MVP with the Philadelphia Phillies.
“Looking back to baseball in the early 1900s, this was the norm. It doesn’t make it right, though,” said the Hall of Famer, who is white. “Removing his name from the MVP trophy would expose the injustice of that era. I’d gladly replace the engraving on my trophies.”
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