Baseball's First Commissioner: Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis

One hundred years ago today . . . At the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (about which see our November 30 post), team owners of baseball’s National League met and ratified proposals of league president John Heydler–meaning that professional baseball’s two major leagues were on their way to finalizing an agreement creating the position and powers of “Commissioner of Baseball" a role to which Kenesaw Mountain Landis had been named.

The move was prompted by the gambling scandal of the 1919 World Series that had been in the press and in the courts throughout the fall of 1920, even overshadowing the 1920 World Series. Landis had accepted the role on November 12, saying, "The only thing on anybody's mind now is to make and keep baseball what the millions of fans in the United States want it to be."

A December 15 editorial urged Landis to "enlist the fans." "If Judge Landis can lead the fans in an offensive against the crooked influences over which he has no immediate control, he will not need to punish offenders, for the indictment to crookedness will be removed" ("Enlist the Fans, " Evening World, 15 December 1920, p. 26).

A Federal Judge, Landis was chosen for the role for his reputation as a rigid supporter of hierarchical order. Among other career highlights, he had backed the US Department of Justice's crackdown on political dissent–and as a result been the target of a failed bombing campaign in 1919.

– Jonathan Goldman, December 14, 2020

TAGS: baseball, sports, politics, gambling, law, bombing