Kenesaw Mountain Landis

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Landis, 1928 (credit: UPI-EB Inc.)

(born Nov. 20, 1866, Millville, Ohio, U.S. — died Nov. 25, 1944, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. federal judge and first commissioner of professional baseball. Landis was named for a Georgia mountain where his father had been wounded as a Civil War soldier. He practiced law in Chicago (1891 – 1905) before being appointed a U.S. district judge (1905 – 22). In 1907 he presided over a famous case in which Standard Oil Co. was found guilty of granting unlawful freight rebates and fined $29 million (his decision was later reversed). He was named baseball commissioner in 1920 in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal and became noted for his uncompromising measures to preserve the game's integrity. Though widely disliked for his stern, autocratic rule, he kept the post until his death.

For more information on Kenesaw Mountain Landis, visit Britannica.com.

As major league baseball's first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944) cleaned up a sport that had been almost fatally corrupted by ties to organized gambling. Ruling with an autocratic hand, Landis saved baseball from squabbling owners and miscreant players and presided over the sport's ascendancy into American's undisputed national pastime during the era between the two World Wars.

A Self-Promoter

During the U.S. Civil War, Abraham H. Landis was a surgeon with the 35th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment. On General William Sherman's famous march through Georgia in 1864, Landis nearly lost a leg to a Confederate cannonball at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Two years later, he insisted on naming the sixth of his seven children after that battle, though he misspelled the mountain's name, dropping one "n."

Many of his friends called Kenesaw Mountain Landis by the nickname Kennie. His older brothers and sisters called him "the Squire" for his pompous manner, even at a young age. The family moved to Logansport, Indiana, when Kennie was eight. There he learned to play baseball around the same time as the first professional baseball league, the National League, was forming. He was skilled at baseball but bedeviled by mathematics, and he dropped out of high school before graduation.

As a teenager, Landis played first base for the semipro Goosetown, Indiana, team, and at the age of 17 became its manager. Though only a wiry 5 foot 7 inches, he was offered a professional contract but turned it down because he said he wanted to play "merely for sport and the love of the game." Yet he did not lack competitive drive, winning many medals in bicycle races at county fairs. On one occasion, displaying his unique gift from self-promotion, he pinned 20 store-bought medals on his chest and showed up in a strange town for a big race. Intimidated, his rivals were defeated.

After working various odd jobs as a handyman, an errand boy, a clerk in a general store, and a newspaper hawker, Landis caught on as a court reporter in South Bend, Indiana. He loved the showmanship of the world of law and quickly gained influential friends. In 1886 he became the aide to Indiana's Secretary of State. The following year he was admitted to the state bar, and in 1891 he graduated from Union College of Law in Chicago. Early in his law school days, he was denied admission to a fraternity because he looked like a country bumpkin. Outraged, he organized the other non-fraternity students and they took over the school government.

Even though he had been a high school dropout, Landis proved to be a genius at advancing himself. His rapid rise continued in 1893 when his father's former commanding officer, Walter Greshman, became U.S. Secretary of State and made Landis his personal secretary. President Grover Cleveland was so impressed with his work that he offered him a post as minister to Venezuela, but Landis declined, instead moving back to Chicago in 1895 to practice law and marry a young socialite, Winifred Reed.

Landis became an ardent Chicago Cubs fan and sometimes asked for postponements of court hearings so he could attend a crucial game. He said baseball was a great game and "remarkable for its cleanness" in an era where other sports had an unsavory relationship with gamblers.

Trust-busting Judge

Two of Landis's brothers were elected to the U.S. Congress and Landis was approached to run, but declined. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Landis to a newly created federal judgeship, the District Court of Northern Illinois, in Chicago. Landis was a flamboyant judge who engaged in frequent theatrical flourishes, jumping out of his chair and pointing fingers at recalcitrant witnesses. His procedures often were unorthodox and autocratic; for instance, he would hold suspects without warrants and order people to appear before him without subpoenas.

Landis became famous in 1907 when he summoned the nation's wealthiest man, John D. Rockefeller, to testify in an antitrust case against his own company, Standard Oil. After Rockefeller's evasive testimony, Landis slapped a $29.2 million fine on Standard Oil for colluding with railroads to fix prices. His decision was later overturned on appeal. Citing many cases where his decisions were eventually overturned, critics denounced Landis as a judge who played to the crowds. "His career typifies the heights to which dramatic talent may carry a man in America if only he has the foresight not to go on the stage," wrote sportswriter Heywood Broun.

In 1915, Landis presided over an antitrust suit by the upstart Federal League against baseball's two established major leagues, challenged organized baseball's reserve clause, which gave the American and National leagues lifetime rights to a player's services. He delayed his decision for 11 months, and the frustrated Federal League owners finally agreed to a buyout before Landis rendered a verdict.

During World War I, Landis was an ardent patriot. He issued several harsh verdicts to alleged seditionists, fining members of the International Workers of the World a total of $2.3 million for draft evasion and sentencing them to up to 20 years in prison. The sentences later were commuted. In another famous trial, Landis, who had said German Americans' hearts were "reeking with disloyalty," gave radical German Austrian émigré Victor Berger and five other socialists twenty-year sentences for conspiracy, saying later he wished he could have had them "lined up against a wall and shot." The Supreme Court later reversed that decision.

Cleaned Up Baseball

In 1919, at the behest of a ring of mobsters, members of the Chicago White Sox conspired to throw the World Series to the underdog Cincinnati Reds. The affair was covered up but suspicions grew about a fix. The owners, who had run the sport for decades with a weak governing commission, realized they needed a strong leader to dispel debilitating doubts about the game's integrity. On November 12, 1920, 14 owners showed up in Landis's courtroom, hats in hand. The judge told them to be quiet while his court was in session, demonstrating to them that he would not be cowed. That same day, he took the new job of baseball commissioner for $50,000 a year after getting a contract which specified that he could not be fired, fined, or criticized in public by the owners, his ostensible employers. He stayed on as judge for a year, then quit when he was accused of a conflict of interest.

Landis's first important act as commissioner was to banish forever eight members of the 1919 Series fixers, the so-called Chicago "Black" Sox, even though they had been acquitted of all criminal charges in connection with the conspiracy. The banished included the great "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, who was little more than a patsy in the fix and had played his hardest during the games. Landis said the eight "will be and remain outlaws." Because of Landis's ruling, Jackson has never been admitted to baseball's Hall of Fame, though many baseball experts and fans feel he should be exonerated.

Landis's cleanup of baseball, which had become corrupted by its association with gamblers, was harsh but uneven. In his first five years as commissioner, he banned seven other players for life and suspended 38 others. Most of those punished had merely been approached by gamblers and had failed to disclose their conversations. Others did even less. Landis banned pitcher Ray Fisher for life when he took a job as a coach at the University of Michigan while still under contract to the Cincinnati Reds. He banned New York Giants outfielder Benny Kauff after Kauff was acquitted on auto-theft charges.

Landis was unafraid to tackle even the game's biggest star, Babe Ruth. In 1921 Landis suspended Ruth and New York Yankees teammate Bob Meusel for 40 games for violating a rarely invoked rule against post-season barnstorming, a common practice in those days. But he reinstated Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, two future Hall of Famers, who had been suspended by American League President Ban Johnson for allegedly throwing games during the 1919 season, even though there was written evidence they were involved in a fix.

Owners who had thought Landis would be their lackey proved sadly mistaken. He ordered owners with financial interests in racetracks to quit any involvement with horse racing or anything related to gambling. He turned down singer Bing Crosby's bid to buy the Pittsburgh Pirates because he owned racehorses. He slammed owners for stockpiling deserving players in their expanding minor league "farm" systems. In 1930 he declared St. Louis Browns player Fred Bennett a free agent, claiming owner Fred Ball had unfairly stymied his career. Ball took Landis to federal court and lost. By the end of the 1930s, Landis had freed almost 200 players under similar circumstances. He often nixed player trades that he figured were not in the best interests of baseball's competitiveness. "He was always on the side of the ballplayer," said manager Leo Durocher. "He had no use for the owners at all."

Landis frequently clashed with Ban Johnson, who had been the most powerful figure in the game for many years. Eventually, he told the owners that either he would go or Johnson would go. It was Johnson who resigned.

The Judge

Along with Ruth and the "lively" ball, which transformed the game into a crowd-pleasing spectacle with more home runs, Landis was largely responsible for redeeming the tarnished reputation of the sport and turning baseball into the nation's undisputed national pastime during the years between the two world wars. With his shock of long white hair and his imperious manner, Landis was a frail-looking, scowling, patrician figure. Autocratic and stern, Landis projected an image of rectitude even while unleashing a vituperative storm of profanity, and he issued frequent lectures against anyone who would besmirch the sport. Baseball historian Harold Seymour described him as a "scowling, white-haired, hawk-visaged curmudgeon who affected battered hats, used salty language, chewed tobacco, and poked listeners in the ribs with a stiff right finger."

Landis frequently attended games and was the sport's unflagging ambassador. He selected announcers for the World Series and watched every inning of every game from his box. In the 1934 World Series, when angry fans in Detroit showered St. Louis outfielder Ducky Medwick with produce during a lopsided game, Landis ordered the Cardinals to remove Medwick to avoid a forfeit. They complied.

Few people dared defy Landis, who as commissioner was known simply as "the Judge." His office in downtown Chicago had a single word stenciled on the door: BASEBALL. He was the game's one-man judge and jury. His centralized authority was a stark contrast to the lackadaisical way the game had been run prior to his installment. Critics said too much decision-making power had been invested in one man.

Landis's obstinate views on race thwarted all attempts to integrate baseball under his watch. He repeatedly upheld the sport's unwritten ban against African American players. When the Pittsburgh Pirates sought to sign legendary Negro League star Josh Gibson to a contract in 1943, Landis stopped them. "The colored ballplayers have their own league," he said. "Let them stay in their own league." Owner Bill Veeck claimed Landis prevented him from buying the Philadelphia Phillies because Veeck had told him he planned to integrate the team, but some historians doubt Veeck's account.

Two days before the start of the 1944 World Series, Landis was hospitalized for his chronic respiratory problems. In mid-November, the owners again renewed Landis's contract for seven years, but it was mainly an act of tribute. Landis died on November 25, 1944, at the age of 78. He had decreed there would be no funeral, so he was cremated and buried modestly in Chicago. Two weeks later he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. His plaque reads: "His Integrity and Leadership Established Baseball in the Respect, Esteem and Affection of the American People."

Never again did baseball's owners invest a commissioner with such sweeping powers. Subsequent baseball commissioners often kowtowed to the owners and rarely interfered in trades and sales of teams. Never again would one man wield such supreme authority over the sport.

Books

Alexander, Charles C., Ty Cobb, Oxford University Press, 1984.

Asinof, Eliot, Eight Men Out, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963.

Seymour, Harold, Baseball: The Golden Age, Oxford University Press, 1971.

Periodicals

Smithsonian, October 2000, p. 120.

Sports Illustrated, July 19, 1993, p. 76.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis is remembered by some as the trust-busting federal judge who in 1907 imposed a whopping fine against millionaire John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. More often, sports fans remember Landis as the first and, arguably, most powerful commissioner of U.S. baseball.

Landis earned a reputation as a stern, highly principled baseball commissioner who ran a tight ship and disapproved of gambling. He antagonized many team owners with his dictatorial style, yet was reelected several times during his twenty-four-year reign.

Although Landis is criticized for maintaining racially segregated major league teams, he is credited with restoring the integrity of the sport after the Black Sox cheating scandal—in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series— nearly ruined baseball. Surprisingly popular with the public, the former judge was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1944.

Landis was born November 20, 1866, in the small Ohio town of Millville. He was named after the mountaintop near Atlanta where his father, a Union Army surgeon, was wounded in battle during the U.S. Civil War. Although Landis did not finish high school, he attended the University of Cincinnati and the Union College of Law in Chicago. He practiced law in Chicago until 1905 when he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to serve as U.S. district judge for northern Illinois.

Landis made headlines in 1907 when he fined Standard Oil of Indiana a record $29.24 million for illegal freight rebates. The decision was applauded by the public but thrown out on appeal. Landis remained on the federal bench from 1905 to 1922, also gaining national attention for his sedition trials of labor leaders and socialists during World War I. After becoming the first baseball commissioner in 1921, Landis retained his judgeship for one year, until members of Congress complained about conflict of interest in matters pertaining to the sport.

In 1921, Landis replaced the three-person national commission set up in 1903 to oversee the sport of baseball. Although his official title was commissioner for the American and National Leagues of Professional Baseball Clubs and for the National Association of Professional Baseball, Landis was often called simply the czar of baseball.

Landis was asked to do nothing less than save professional baseball. The game suffered a public relations disaster after the White Sox conspiracy and bribery scandal. To cleanse the sport of corruption or the mere appearance of cheating, Landis imposed lifetime bans on the eight White Sox players who had collaborated with gamblers during the 1919 World Series. He also did not hesitate to ban other ballplayers for gambling offenses.

Landis died in Chicago, at age seventy-eight, on November 25, 1944.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Kenesaw Mountain Landis (November 20, 1866–November 25, 1944) was an American jurist who served as a federal judge from 1905 to 1922, and subsequently as the first commissioner of organized baseball, including both the American and National leagues and the governing body of minor league baseball, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues.

Contents 1 Personal life 2 Judicial career 3 Baseball commissioner 3.1 Gambling 3.2 A fiercely independent Commissioner's Office 3.3 The baseball color line 3.4 Curbing the growth of minor league farm systems 3.5 Legacy and honors 4 See also 5 In popular culture 6 References 6.1 Bibliography 6.2 Notes 7 External links

Personal life

Born in Millville, Ohio, to Abraham Hoch Landis and Mary (Kumler) Landis. He grew up in Logansport, Indiana where, at the age of 17, he played on and managed the Logansport High School baseball team. He later dropped out of school to take a job at the courthouse in South Bend, Indiana.^[1] His name comes from a variant spelling of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia, where his father, a physician, fought on the Union side and lost a leg during the American Civil War at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Two of his brothers, Charles Beary Landis (1858–1922) and Frederick Landis (1872–1934), served in the United States Congress.

Judicial career

He took pre-law courses at the University of Cincinnati and obtained a law degree at Union Law School, now Northwestern University, in Evanston, IL. He graduated in 1891, and opened a law practice in Chicago.^[2] After being appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to the bench of the Northern District of Illinois in 1905, Landis dealt with several cases of historical significance during his career as a U.S. federal judge. In 1907, he presided over a Standard Oil antitrust trial fining them $29 million for accepting rail freight rebates, although the verdict was later set aside.

In 1918, he presided over the trial of over 100 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (including Big Bill Haywood) on the charge of violating (by hindering the draft) the Espionage Act of 1917. He also presided over the December 1918 trial of 5 prominent Socialist Party of America leaders, including Victor Berger, SPA Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, youth section leader William Kruse, and editor of the party's national newspaper J. Louis Engdahl. While Landis oversaw the convictions of many in these trials, imposing draconian verdicts, many of the verdicts were reversed on appeal or nullified by presidential pardon.

Landis was also instrumental in getting African-American heavyweight champion Jack Johnson banned from the sport by charging him with transporting a white woman over state lines for prostitution.^[3]

The end of Landis' judicial career overlapped his duties as baseball commissioner, a position he accepted in November 1920. Throughout 1921 Landis came under intense criticism for his moonlighting, and congressional members called for his impeachment. In February 1922, Landis resigned his position as a federal judge saying that, "There aren't enough hours in the day for me to handle the courtroom and the various other jobs I have taken on."^[4]

Baseball commissioner

While serving as a Federal judge, Landis, an ardent baseball fan, was selected as chairman of a new National Commission of baseball. The owners decided to appoint a commission made up entirely of non-baseball men to restore confidence in the sport following the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, perhaps the worst of a number of incidents that jeopardized the integrity of the game.^[5]

However, Landis declared that he would accept only an appointment as sole commissioner. He also demanded unlimited authority to act in the "best interests of baseball"--in essence, serving as an arbitrator whose decisions could not be appealed. The owners, still reeling from the perception that the sport was crooked, readily agreed.

Gambling

Landis' first act was to deal with the Black Sox scandal. He banned for life eight players suspected of involvement in the fix, including Buck Weaver and superstar Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Over the years, he dealt harshly with others proven to have thrown individual games, consorted with gamblers or engaged in actions that he felt tarnished the image of the game. Among the others he banned were New York Giants players Phil Douglas and Jimmy O'Connell, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Gene Paulette, Giants coach Cozy Dolan, and (in 1943) Phillies owner William D. Cox. He also formalized the unofficial banishments of Hal Chase and Heinie Zimmerman. In 1921, he banned Giants center fielder Benny Kauff even though he had been acquitted of involvement in a car theft ring. Nonetheless, Landis was convinced Kauff was guilty and argued that players of "undesirable reputation and character" had no place in baseball.

A fiercely independent Commissioner's Office

The owners had hoped he would then settle into a comfortable retirement as the titular head of baseball. Instead, Landis ruled baseball with an iron hand for the next 25 years. He established a fiercely independent Commissioner's Office that would go on to often make both players and owners miserable with decisions that have been seen in hindsight as being in the best interests of the game. He worked to clean up the hooliganism that was tarnishing the reputation of players in the 1920s, and inserted his office into negotiations with players, where he deemed appropriate, to end a few of the labor practices of owners like Charles Comiskey that had contributed to the players' discontent. He also personally approved broadcasters for the World Series.

Landis' only significant rival in the early years was longtime American League founder and president Ban Johnson, who was as iron-willed as Landis. A clash between the two was inevitable, and it happened in the 1924 World Series. When several Giants were implicated in a plan to bribe players on the moribund Phillies late in the season, Johnson demanded that the Series be canceled, and loudly criticized Landis' handling of the affair. Landis threatened to resign. The American League owners promised to throw Johnson out of office if he stepped out of line again. Two years later, when Johnson criticized Landis' decision to give Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker an amnesty after it surfaced they had bet on a fixed game in 1919, Landis told the American League owners to choose between him and Johnson; the owners promptly sent Johnson on a sabbatical from which he never really returned.

The baseball color line

Landis perpetuated the color line and prolonged the segregation of organized baseball. His successor, Happy Chandler, said, "For twenty-four years Judge Landis wouldn't let a black man play. I had his records, and I read them, and for twenty-four years Landis consistently blocked any attempts to put blacks and whites together on a big league field."^[6] Bill Veeck claimed Landis prevented him from purchasing the Phillies when Landis learned of Veeck's plan to integrate the team. The signing of the first black ballplayer in the modern era, Jackie Robinson, came less than a year after Landis's death on Chandler's watch and was engineered by one of Landis's old nemeses, Branch Rickey. Eleven weeks after Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Veeck became the first American League owner to break the color line.

Curbing the growth of minor league farm systems

Landis tried to curb the growth of minor league farm systems by innovators such as Rickey, in the name of protecting the lower levels of professional ball. Landis argued that because a parent club could unilaterally call up players from teams which were involved in pennant races, the organization was unfairly interfering with the minor competitions. His position was that the championship of each minor league was of no less importance than the championships of the major leagues, and that minor league fans and supporters had the right to see their teams competing as best they could. Yet he also prevented the formation of a powerful third major league when he stopped Pants Rowland from upgrading the Pacific Coast League in the 1940s.

One of the schemes he fought was the effort by major-league teams to "cover up" players they were hiding in their farm systems. The term, not used in formal communications by league or team officials, referred to players clandestinely signed by a major-league team to a minor-league contract. Occasionally one team would serendipitously find such a player in the off-season draft, as in this occasion recorded in the book Dodger Daze and Knights:

All the clubowners and managers, and Commissioner Landis, were assembled to conduct the draft. One team representative said he "claim[s] Player [Paul] Richards of Brooklyn."

"You can't do that!" barked a surprised Wilbert Robinson, manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

"Why not?" asked Landis.

"Because Brooklyn has him covered up," sputtered Robbie.

Most of the others broke down laughing. Even Landis smirked.

Legacy and honors

Whether his decisions were praised or criticized, he was satisfied with being respected and feared. Dubbed "the baseball tyrant" by journalists of the day, his rule was absolute. In the context of ensuring the integrity of the game itself, baseball historians generally regard him as the right man at the right time when appointed, but also as a man who perhaps held office too long.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1944, in a special election held one month after his death, and the Most Valuable Player Award in each league is officially known as the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Award in his honor.

Landis' remains are interred in the Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.

See also

• People banned under Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis

In popular culture

• A caricature of Landis is featured in a song of the same title by folk/rock singer Jonathan Coulton.
• Landis is portrayed in Philip Roth's 1973 book, The Great American Novel.
• Landis was portrayed by actor John Anderson in the film Eight Men Out.
• Landis had an elementary school, Landis Elementary School, in Logansport, Indiana named after him.

References

Bibliography

• Pietrusza, David, Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, South Bend (IN): Diamond Communications, 1998.
• Spink, J. G. Taylor, Judge Landis and Twenty-Five Years of Baseball, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1947.

Notes

1. ^ MLB.com: History of the Game Doubleday to Present Day
2. ^ MLB.com: History of the Game Doubleday to Present Day
3. ^ ESPN.com: Johnson boxed, lived on own terms
4. ^ "Landis Quits Bench for Baseball Job; Boomed for Mayor"; New York Times, Feb. 18, 1922
5. ^ "League American". Baseball Library. http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=American_League. Retrieved 2007-12-26. 
6. ^ Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers by Peter Golenbock

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kenesaw Mountain Landis

• Baseball Hall of Fame
• A Brief Biography
• Lyrics to 'Kenesaw Mountain Landis' by Jonathan Coulton

Legal offices
Preceded by Christian Cecil Kohlsaat	Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois March 18, 1905 – February 28, 1922	Succeeded by James Herbert Wilkerson
Sporting positions
Preceded by New Position	Commissioner of Baseball 1920–1944	Succeeded by A. B. "Happy" Chandler

v • d • e Major League Baseball Commissioners 1920-1944: Kenesaw Mountain Landis | 1945-1951: Happy Chandler | 1951-1965: Ford Frick | 1965-1968: William Eckert | 1969-1984: Bowie Kuhn | 1984-1989: Peter Ueberroth | 1989: Bart Giamatti | 1989-1992: Fay Vincent | 1992-present: Bud Selig

v • d • e Black Sox Scandal Banned Players Eddie Cicotte · Happy Felsch · Chick Gandil · Shoeless Joe Jackson · Fred McMullin · Swede Risberg · Buck Weaver · Lefty Williams Key figures Abe Attell · Sleepy Bill Burns · Charles Comiskey · Hugh Fullerton · Ban Johnson · Kenesaw Mountain Landis · Billy Maharg · Arnold Rothstein Other Eight Men Out · Field of Dreams

v • d • e Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 1944 BBWAA Vote none Veterans Committee Kenesaw Mountain Landis

v • d • e Executives & Pioneers in the National Baseball Hall of Fame Barrow • Bulkeley • Cartwright • Chadwick • Chandler • Comiskey • Dreyfuss • Frick • Giles • Griffith • Harridge • Hulbert • Johnson • Kuhn • Landis • La. MacPhail • Le. MacPhail • Manley • O'Malley • Pompez • Posey • Rickey • Spalding • Veeck • Weiss • White • Wilkinson • G. Wright • H. Wright • Yawkey

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