MVP award to discontinue use of Landis name

[voodoochile]

This is inherently a political topic but it's newsworthy from a baseball standpoint. I trust you all to keep it civil.

The BBWAA has voted to remove the name of Kenesaw Mountain Landis from future MVP awards due to his stance on integration. The vote was 89% in favor. There will be no name associated with the award next year but they may revisit that in years to come.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/breaking/ct-mlb-mvp-kenesaw-mountain-landis-bbwaa-20201003-gktpsmihnbdqbc46yiap64cu3e-story.html

[thomas35forever]

Honestly, has anyone ever even thought about this as the Landis Award? I doubt this will be much a major change for most people.

[voodoochile]

Honestly, has anyone ever even thought about this as the Landis Award? I doubt this will be much a major change for most people.

I didn't even know his name was on it.

[longtimefan]

I could care less but it seems nowadays everything offends somebody.

[TDog]

I could care less but it seems nowadays everything offends somebody.

It offended people who won it. Landis name was huge on the border surrounding the plaque. It wasn't as if PETA complained about a name associated with some prize. Considering what has long been Landis' legacy, I'm surprised it took baseball so long to remove his name and surprised to see so much figurative eye-rolling over the announcement..

[Dumpjerry]

This is the first time I've heard that his name was associated with the award.

Good move, he screwed the White Sox royally for no good reason.

[HomeFish]

Like most people, I had no idea it was named for him. Can't say that I am a huge fan of his.

[berwyn]

Landis? Not big enough to care about. The problem is magnified to significance when the racist in question happens to be important. Like The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's well preserved estate in Nashville, including slave cottages, brick, still there. You can hardly take Tennessee's favorite son's name off his own estate, even though he owned slaves and treated them worse than he needed to, even though he didn't come from a slave holding family. So they make sure everyone who goes there sees the history, prominently displayed on plaques and in written material. That's the best solution, IMO. It could be the solution for the group trying to remove Thomas Jefferson's name from the middle school in Waukegan.

[TDog]

I finished third grade in a north Dallas elementary school named for a(n unprosecuted) Civil War criminal, a Confederate officer involved in the massacre of captured Union African-American troops in 1864. Decades later, I'm retroactively angry about it. That doesn't mean I shouldn't not respect baseball's decision to stop honoring Landis with the MVP award. It's the right thing to do. Maybe baseball is making too much of it in the look-what-we're-doing sense. Landis' name is seldom used in association with the award and many, most don't even know it's associated with the award.

But if you've ever seen the award, and stories about this show it, Landis name is one of its most prominent aspects. Complaints from MVPs are not a new thing. I don't know how Jackie Robinson felt about the "Landis" award. It's never come up in anything I've read. He was a complicated man and internalized a lot. His wife Rachel said he was deeply offended with the Confederate flag being raised on Pee Wee Reese Day, but I don't know if anyone ever asked her about Landis on the MVP plaque. It's possible he took pride in the fact that he was baseball's MVP and Landis who wouldn't have allowed him to play, was dead. Of course, Robinson ws a football player making money in the Negro Leagues when Branch Rickey recruited him for the Dodgers.and social-justice history. Barry Larkin, on he other hand, grew up wanting to play baseball, and he was deeply offended that a man who wouldn't have allowed him to play had his name on the award.

Removing Landis from the award is something that should have been done long ago. I think it's the right thing to do now, it not having been done sooner. Perhaps baseball is too self-congratulatory in their announcement, but it was the right thing to do.

[PaleHoser]

Perhaps they should name it after Barry Bonds since no one has won more of them.