November 12, 1920: The team owners in what would later be named Major League Baseball elect Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the 1st Commissioner of Baseball. They give him ultimate power: His word was law.
The other owners never challenged him, the way they sometimes tried to bully later Commissioners, reminding them that they appointed the Commissioner, and they could remove him if he didn't do their bidding. But they trusted Landis -- or, perhaps, feared him.
He was born on November 20, 1866 in Millville, Ohio, outside Cincinnati, and grows up in Logansport, Indiana. His father had been wounded in 1864, at the Civil War's Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia, and named his son for the site, dropping the extra N.
Being a Union family from Ohio, the Landis family, including "Kenny," was Republican. Two of his brothers, Charles and Frederick, were elected to adjoining Districts in Congress. Kenny worked on the family farm, went to law school, was admitted to the Illinois bar, and opened a practice in Chicago, with college friend Frank Lowden, who was later elected Governor of Illinois.
He then worked as personal secretary to Secretary of State Walter Gresham, which lasted 2 years before Gresham died. Landis returned to Chicago, married, and had 3 children. One, Reed, became a flying ace in World War I, and a lifelong U.S. Army officer.
In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt offered Lowden a federal judgeship. He turned it down, and recommended Landis for it. TR offered it, and Landis accepted it. For the rest of his life, he was widely known as "Judge Landis," which he seemed to relish, rather than by his full name, or "Commissioner Landis," or "K.M. Landis," or, God forbid, "Kenny Landis."
TR didn't make many bad choices. This was one. Landis had practiced corporate law, and was pro-business and anti-worker in his rulings. He had more of his decisions overturned on appeal than any other federal Judge in his time. He was much more conservative than TR, more in line with his predecessor as President, William McKinley; or his successor, William Howard Taft. With his white hair and long face, he was sometimes said to look like "an Old Testament prophet," even though he was only 54 years old at the time of his appointment. He looked like a man who could law down the law.
And, as Commissioner, he did. At the time of his appointment, thought necessary since the existing National Commission had proven too ineffective, the Black Sox Scandal was going on. On July 28, 1921, a Chicago jury acquitted the 8 indicted players -- "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Arnold "Chick" Gandil, Oscar "Happy" Felsch, Eddie Cicotte, Claude "Lefty" Williams, Charles "Swede" Risberg, Fred McMullin and George "Buck" Weaver, the last of these not involved in the conspiracy but suspended because he knew about it and didn't report it -- of conspiracy to defraud, because there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction. This was because there simply wasn't a law covering what those 8 players did in "throwing" the 1919 World Series.
Someone concerned with strict adherence to the law should have known that; and, surely, Landis did. But someone concerned with strict adherence to the law should also have respected that. Landis did not: On August 2, he banned them all from participation in the sport, at either the major league or the minor league level -- permanently. He refused to hear any appeal.
In 1922, he showed baseball's best player, Babe Ruth, that he was not bigger than the game, by fining him and suspending him the 1st one-quarter of the season, for taking part in a "barnstorming tour" after the previous postseason. There was a rule that a player who had played in the World Series could not then go on such a tour. Ruth argued that the rule was stupid. He was right, and the owners soon repealed it. But they did so quietly, so as to not undermine Landis much. Landis showed Ruth -- and, by extension, every other player in baseball, and everyone who was even interested in baseball -- just who was in charge.
He attended every World Series game from 1921 to 1943, and often threw out the ceremonial first ball. Whenever there was a controversy, he was on the scene to make a ruling on the spot. The most notable example came in Game 7 of the 1934 World Series. Joe Medwick of the St. Louis Cardinals had kicked 3rd baseman Marv Owen of the Detroit Tigers, and a fight broke out. (The result of the game was not in doubt: The Cardinals then led, 9-0, and would win, 11-0.)
When Medwick went back out to his position in left field, the Detroit fans began throwing things at him. Landis asked the umpires to call Medwick over, as well as the opposing managers, both player-managers wearing Number 3: Cardinal shortstop Frankie Frisch and Tiger catcher Mickey Cochrane. When Medwick confessed to kicking Owen, Landis removed him from the game, not for disciplinary reasons, he said, but "for his own safety." It was probably a good idea, if not, as the legal saying goes, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Landis still held the post when America entered World War II. He remembered how the 1918 season had been cut short, under similar conditions. He wondered if baseball should continue while America's young men were fighting and dying overseas.
Landis knew that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the President of the United States, and thus Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. armed forces, was a baseball fan, enough of one to have thrown out the ceremonial first ball at all 9 Washington Senators Opening Days since he took office. With the ratification of the 22nd Amendment limiting a President to 2 terms, that record is now, barring that Amendment's repeal, unbreakable.
But he also knew that one word from the President could put baseball on hold "for the duration." So, on January 14, 1942, Landis wrote to FDR, asking him what do do. He said, "If you believe we ought to close down for the duration of the war, we are ready to do so immediately. If you feel we ought to continue, we would be delighted to do so. We await your order." FDR wrote back, with what became known as "the Green Light Letter": Baseball would continue, with some improvisation, for 4 wartime seasons.
In 1943, Landis found out that William D. Cox, owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, had bet on games, and banned him permanently. The team was then bought by Robert Carpenter, whose family would own them until 1981. Legend has it that, in between, Bill Veeck had offered to buy the Phillies, but had let it slip that he would stock them with black players, and that Landis denied him the chance on that basis. Veeck himself told the story, but beyond his word, there's never been any evidence for it.
Landis always insisted that there was no rule prohibiting black players in major league baseball, or even minor league baseball. But, privately, he said he would never allow it. He died of heart trouble on November 25, 1944, 5 days after his 78th birthday. The next year, Branch Rickey, president and part-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, knew the path was now clear for him to sign a black player, and he chose Jackie Robinson. Had Landis lived longer, there is no way in that time that Robinson, or any other black man, would ever have played in the major leagues.
In 1945, Landis was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame; and the Leagues' Most Valuable Player awards were named for him. His name was removed from the MVP awards in 2020, in reflection of his racism.
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November 12, 1920 was a Friday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Professional basketball barely existed. And the NHL season started on December 22. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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