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.
Landis was hired in 1920 as MLB's first commissioner. No Blacks played in the majors during his tenure that ended with his death in late 1944 - after Robinson broke the barrier in the NL, Larry Doby followed later that season with the AL's Cleveland Indians.
The legacy left by Landis is "always a complicated story" that includes "documented racism," official MLB historian John Thorn said.
Every AL and NL MVP plaque since his death has carried his name - in letters twice as big as the name of the winner - and an imprint of his face. Landis gave the BBWAA control of picking and presenting the MVPs in 1931.
"We are trying to work out the mechanics of dealing with the topic amid a pandemic," O'Connell said. "It will just be a matter of what form.
"It is safe to say that we would prefer to settle this matter before the winter meetings."
The BBWAA's next scheduled meeting is in Dallas in December. The MVP winners are usually announced in November.
The name has been on the plaques for 75 years, but it is not pledged to remain there under the BBWAA constitution. A vote by the membership could lead to a redesign by the end of the coronavirus-delayed, 60-game season that is set to start in three weeks.
"I don't know that it needs a name," Larkin said. "MVP says it all."