NEW YORK – The organization that presents the annual Most Valuable Player awards for Major League Baseball will consider whether the name of former commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis should be pulled from future plaques.
“The issue is being addressed,” Jack O’Connell, the longtime secretary and treasurer of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, said Wednesday. “It will definitely be put up for discussion.”
Former National League MVPs Barry Larkin, Terry Pendleton and Mike Schmidt this week told The Associated Press they would favor removing Landis’s name because of concerns regarding his handling of Black players during baseball’s segregation era.
“I could not agree more,” decorated writer and broadcaster Peter Gammons wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, a lively debate has popped up on social media about whose name should be on the plaque, if anyone at all. Among those being suggested are National Baseball Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, the only player to win the MVP in both the American and National Leagues, Negro Leagues star Josh Gibson and Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, who signed Jackie Robinson, the player who broke MLB’s color barrier in 1947.