In 2019 the League Will Once Again Come Face to Face with the Black Sox Scandal

As the centennial of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal approaches Major League Baseball will have to decide how and if it will acknowledge the historic event.

Baseball has always been pretty clunky in it’s handling of scandal; from the Steroids Era to Pete Rose to stimulants there’s rarely agreement on how future generations should view dark times in the game’s past. When the clock strikes midnight on New Years and we’re launched into 2019 the league will have to grapple with a new question regarding its legacy: how should they handle the centennial of the Black Sox Scandal?

The 100th anniversary of the throwing of a World Series that led to baseball’s first ever commissioner and lifetime bans for eight players isn’t just going to pass quietly. We’re not even out of 2018 yet and MLB superfan Marlins Man is already tweeting about it:

It’s tough to gauge the validity of Marlins Man’s claim, but that’s not the point. The Black Sox Scandal is something that has intrigued baseball fans for years, and the way it has been worked into literature and pop culture has given it cultural relevance beyond the sport. It’s doubtful anyone would have looked into Marlins Man’s heritage because of the event, but his insinuation that fans will be interested in and excited about the anniversary is certainly a valid one.

This interest probably couldn’t come at a more awkward time for MLB, who just inked a lucrative gaming deal with MGM. Up to this point, the league’s position on the scandal has been one of stern consternation, rooted in the idea that rampant gambling jeopardized organized baseball, a line that will be hard to spit while promoting the now legal betting on games.

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This is a problem that can be circumvented with a little reframing, reframing that would actually more accurately represent the scandal and those involved. The Black Sox Scandal was not at its core a gambling issue, but a labor issue.

The only reason that the players were in a position to be bribed was that they weren’t being paid a fair wage by Charles Comiskey, and the league’s reserve clause made it so that they had no bargaining power to fight for better contracts. Throughout the series and legal proceedings the players were taken advantage of at every turn by gamblers and the league alike, and in the end, their punishment was a hollow PR act meant to show the public that the league had been “cleaned up” when in reality the root of the problem remained untouched.

By focusing not on the wrongs of the players, but the wrongs of the system that took advantage of them MLB wins both by presenting history in a more accurate light and not having a negative impact on their new business venture with MGM. But, it would also involve the league highlighting one of its past faults, and it might be a kind of weird time to champion labor rights while engaged in conflict over the pay of minor league players.

October, the true anniversary of the event and the most likely time for any Black Sox acknowledgment or remembrance, is a ways away so it’s not likely we’ll get answers on the league’s plans/stance any time soon. I’m hopeful that the league embraces this important part of its past, but I wouldn’t bet on it.