The Ty Cobb & Tris Speaker Game Fixing Scandal

Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker are both legendary Hall of Fame baseball players. The men were icons in the early 20th Century sports world where baseball was truly the national pastime and the biggest sport of them all in America. In the summer and fall of 1926 a former major league pitcher, Hubert Dutch Leonard, came forward with letters that had been sent to him by Ty Cobb, his former manager. Cobb and Leonard had a tempestuous relationship that culminated with the pitcher being sent back to the minors by the Georgia Peach, as Cobb was known. Whether it was retribution for this slight or a gambling venture gone sour, the correspondence made its way first to the American League Commissioner Ban Johnson and the to Judge Kenesaw Landis, the Commissioner of Baseball.