Why is Landis’ name on trophy?
NEW YORK — Something still bothers Barry Larkin about his Most Valuable Player award.
The other name engraved on the trophy: Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
“Why is it on there?” said Larkin, the Black shortstop voted National League MVP in 1995 with the Cincinnati Reds.
“I was always aware of his name and what that meant to slowing the color line in Major League Baseball, of the racial injustice and inequality that Black players had to go through,” the Hall of Famer said this week.
Hired in 1920 as the sport’s first commissioner to help clean up rampant gambling, Landis and his legacy are “always a complicated story” that includes “documented racism,” official MLB historian John Thorn said.
This much is true: No Blacks played in the majors during his quartercentury tenure. Jackie Robinson broke the barrier in April 1947, about 21⁄2 years after Landis died.
“Landis is a part of history, even though it was a dark history,” Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker said.
Fact is, few fans realize Landis’ name is plastered all over the Most Valuable Player trophies. But there it is, prominently displayed on every American League and NL MVP plaque since 1944: the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award, in shiny, gold letters literally twice as big as those of the winner.
“This is 2020 now, and things have changed all around the world. It can change for the better,” said 1991 NL MVP Terry Pendleton of Atlanta, who is Black. “Statues are coming down, people are looking at monuments and memorials. We need to get to the bottom of things, to do what’s right. Yes, maybe it is time to change the name.”