Tagliabue vacates Bountygate player punishments

Maybe he thinks this gets him into Canton without buying a ticket

 

tagliabue handled it the way he handled everything during his reign -- he brings a lawyer's mentality to every issue. in this case he ruled in a way in which he cleaned up a mess that seemed likely to keep getting uglier and possibly end up in court battles. and, in the end, the guys paying most for it are the ones most culpable from the get-go: the arrogant coaches and execs of the saints.

the players will end up recouping plenty of their money, which is great. they are the ones with such a finite time limit on their earning power. they ended up having to be suspended for only one or two games. so the players 'won.' but if any teams still had any active 'bounty' systems still in vogue bountygate almost certainly put an end to those. which was the point of the suspensions to begin with.

so, mission accomplished, in that sense. all of our goodell bashers in the audience can revel in this and do their celebratory dances. but believe me, he took no hit at all from his 32 bosses on this. well, at least 31 of 'em. tom benson surely isnt very happy with the commish...

that's how this goodell suck-up/apologist views it anyway. now i'll just st back and let everyone else have at ol' rog and me. we're big boys. we can take it. 8)

 

I do not hold Judge Landis in the same high esteem that you do. His inaction in the mid-20s when it surely looked as if both Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker had been involved in "activities that would violate the integrity of the game" was hypocritical given what Landis did to Joe Jackson - and would later do to the owner of the Phillies who was involved with gambling.

Then there was the whole "segregation issue" which Landis perpetuated. Many believe - and I tend to agree - that Landis had to be out of the picture before there was even a prayer of getting a "Jackie Robinson" onto a major league roster.

 

A common misconception, but this isn't entirely true.

Landis' first actions were to deal with the gambling problem, of course, but he was brought in to end the reign of Ban Johnson because 11 of the 16 owners had finally had enough of the ineffective National Commission.


*** optional trim [/crossthread] ***

The National Commission, except for Ban Johnson, effectively had lost all its authority after the Federal League collapsed in 1915, and the Lasker Plan had been calling for an impartial outside authority to rule over baseball since at least 1917, well before the Black Sox Scandal took place. President Taft was a popular suggestion to become the chairman of that new commission, and other prominent names were tossed around, too: Gens. Black Jack Pershing and Leonard Wood, Sen. Hiram Johnson ... and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Ban Johnson had long ago undermined the National Commission's other members, NL president John Heydler and Reds owner Garry Hermann, to effectively become a one-man National Commission, and his dictatorial decisions on many issues — including all the outright betting being allowed in ballparks, especially in the two Boston parks — alienated most of the owners in both leagues.

Five AL owners, Navin (DET), Ball (SLA), Griffith (WAS), Somers (CLE) and Shibe (PHA), remained loyal to Johnson. The rest were known as the "Insurrectos" in baseball's looming civil war. There was much infighting in 1919-20 as the owners decided on a way to delegate power to a central authority. A plan was hatched to form a new 12-team National League, with the 11 Insurrectos plus whichever of the Loyal Five teams was the first to break ranks. Judge Landis accepted the chairmanship of the new National Commission on November 8, 1920, six weeks after the Black Sox mess was made public, on the condition that the three-man commission become a one-man show instead.

For the next week, talk of a 12-team league headed up as Johnson attempted to win over the then-independent minor leagues to his side. But Johnson and the Loyal Five lost a lot of steam in the wake of the Landis announcement, and in meetings on November 10 and 13, began to negotiate with the other owners to resolve their differences without splitting up the major leagues. By January 1921, Johnson and the other owners had accepted Landis as the "supreme ruler" of baseball — fans and writers had done so immediately, largely because of comments he made about cleaning up the game — and life went on as usual.

But Johnson continued to exert his power and clashed often with Landis until finally being forced out as AL president in 1927. That firmly solidified Landis' position, once and for all.

 

Also, to continue the crossthread, Jackson had (allegedly) confessed to knowing about throwing the series. In the Speaker/Cobb case, pitcher Dutch Leonard was accusing them, and later retracted it. Hence, all Landis had was a retraction.

 

Is there something in the CBA that Goodell violated by suspending the players? He's been suspending people right and left, both for on-field and off-field conduct, since he became commissioner.

I'm not sure what to think of his approach to that. But he clearly feels he needs to protect the NFL's clean, competitive image that is worth billions of dollars and fears that image could be damaged if he isn't strict enough.

 

at some point the league must surrender a bit to the years; the commish as judge and jury is obsolete. they should give some on this in exchange for something thebeen stonewalled on -- but NOT the 18-game season. the timing for that is terrible and may never be right.