Kenesaw Mountain Landis
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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 Major League Baseball. Born in Millville, Ohio to Abraham Hoch Landis and Mary (Kumler) Landis, he died in Chicago. 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.
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[edit] Judicial career
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 US 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 held the trial of over 100 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (including Big Bill Haywood) for supposed violation (hindering the draft) of the Espionage Act of 1917. He also presided over the trial of several Socialist Party leaders, including Milwaukee editor and Congressman Victor Berger. While Landis oversaw the convictions of many in these trials, most of the verdicts were reversed on appeal, or nullified by presidential pardon. Was instrumental in getting African-American heavyweight champion Jack Johnson banned from the sport by charging him with transporting a white woman over state lines.[citation needed]
The end of Landis' judicial career overlapped his duties as baseball commissioner, a position he accepted in November, 1920. 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."[1] Throughout 1921 Landis came under intense criticism for his moonlighting, and congressional members called for his impeachment.
[edit] Baseball commissioner
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| Kenesaw Mountain Landis is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame |
While serving as a federal judge, Landis 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.
However, Landis would only accept an appointment as sole commissioner. He also demanded unlimited authority over all aspects of the organized game. The owners, still reeling from the perception that the sport was crooked, readily agreed.
Landis' first act was to deal with the Black Sox Scandal. He banned eight players suspected of involvement in the fix for life, including Buck Weaver and superstar Shoeless Joe Jackson. Although they had been acquitted in court, Landis argued that the need to clean up baseball's reputation took precedence over any legal judgements. He dealt harshly with others proven to have thrown individual games or consorted with gamblers. Among the others he banned were New York Giants players Phil Douglas, Benny Kauff 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 unoffcial banishments of Hal Chase and Heinie Zimmerman.
The owners had hoped he would then settle into a comfortable retirement as the titular head of baseball. Instead, Landis established a fiercely independent Commissioner's Office that would go on to often make both players and owners miserable with decisions that were, generally, 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.
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."[2] Club owner 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, Jackie Robinson, came less than a year after Landis's death, on the watch of the new, progressive Commissioner A. B. "Happy" Chandler 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.
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 Kinghts: All the clubowners and managers, and Commissioner Landis, were assembled to conduct the draft. One team 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.
He also showed his sense of humor at the start of the fifth game of the 1929 World Series, under the oddest of cirecumstances. The Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Athletics had been trading vile invective during the first four games, and Landis called managers Joe McCarthy and Connie Mack to his office and said the culprits would forfeit a full Series share. Mack told his team, but hot-headed Mickey Cochrane, the A's' catcher, hollered to the Cubs, "After the game we'll serve tea in the clubhouse." Mack warned Cochrane that he risked a fine or suspension for the remark. After the game, however, Landis visited the A's clubhouse. He approached Cochrane, shook his hand and asked, "Now, where's the tea?"
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.
Major League Baseball's Most Valuable Player Award is officially known as the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Award in his honor.
Landis's body is interred in the Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago.
[edit] Popular culture
Kenesaw Mountain Landis is featured in a song of the same title by folk/rock singer Jonathan Coulton.
Kenesaw Mountain Landis is portrayed in Philip Roth's 1973 book, The Great American Novel.
[edit] 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.
[edit] External links
- Baseball Hall of Fame
- A Brief Biography
- An Obituary
- Lyrics to 'Kenesaw Mountain Landis' by Jonathan Coulton
[edit] References
- ^ "Landis Quits Bench for Baseball Job; Boomed for Mayor"; New York Times, Feb. 18, 1922
- ^ Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers by Peter Golenbock
| Preceded by New Position |
Commissioner of Baseball 1920–1944 |
Succeeded by A. B. "Happy" Chandler I |
