Landis guided baseball with unsurpassed power

November 14, 2005
"Baseball is something more than a game to an American boy. ... Destroy his faith in its squareness and honesty and you have destroyed something more; you have planted suspicion of all things in his heart." -- Kenesaw Mountain Landis

The group of baseball owners stood in the back of the Chicago courtroom while the judge crankily disposed of one case after another. Finally, with the docket cleared, the jurist adjourned court and motioned for them to join him in chambers. "We want you to be commissioner of baseball," the owners' spokesman said. The judge frowned. "I must have absolute power." "You will have it." The judge smiled and stuck out his hand. Thus it was that on Nov. 12, 1920, Kenesaw Mountain Landis became the ruler of America's national pastime -- a role he would fill with authority and arrogance until his death in November 1944. There have been eight baseball commissioners since, and their combined authority did not begin to equal that of Landis alone. After nearly a quarter-century of being tyrannized by a despot, baseball's owners would not yield such authority again. But in 1920, they were desperate for someone, anyone, to lead them from the gathering gloom caused by the Black Sox scandal a year earlier. Before 1920 the game was loosely run by something called the National Commission, an unwieldy triumvirate of American League president Ban Johnson, National League president John Heydler and Cincinnati Reds owner Garry Herrmann. But when the news broke in September 1920 that eight members of the Chicago White Sox had conspired with gamblers to throw the previous year's World Series, the commission was powerless to act. For nearly half a century, most fans had considered major league baseball basically honest, but now public faith in the game and its players was falling faster than the stock market would nine years later. As White Sox star Joe Jackson left a courtroom after being indicted by a Cook County, Ill., grand jury, a tearful urchin is supposed to have tugged at his sleeve and said, "Say it ain't so, Joe." The story probably isn't true -- Jackson always denied it -- but nevertheless it reflected the anger and anguish felt by millions. What to do? Others considered for the role of commissioner included former President William Howard Taft, Gen. George Pershing and Sen. Hiram Johnson. But Landis was known in baseball circles as a big fan and a tough judge who had famously slapped Standard Oil with a $29?million fine for antitrust violations in 1907. With his shock of white hair, thundering voice and authoritative manner, he also had the demeanor of an avenging angel. So obvious was the choice that the owners were willing to cede what power they had remaining and trust him to build on it.

Source: http://www.washtimes.com/