Background
Johnson was born on January 6, 1864, in Norwalk, Ohio, one of three sons of Alexander Byron and Eunice C. (Fox) Johnson.
Johnson was born on January 6, 1864, in Norwalk, Ohio, one of three sons of Alexander Byron and Eunice C. (Fox) Johnson.
As a youngster Ban Johnson, as he was later called, attended Oberlin and Marietta colleges but did not graduate from either institution. In later life (1897) he was given the degree of A. B. by Marietta College honoris causa. He attended a law school in Cincinnati but did not complete the course nor pursue the profession of law.
When twenty-one years old Johnson gave up his legal studies to become political and general reporter on the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. A few years later he was made sports editor of that paper and thus came into contact with famous sporting figures, including ball players and owners of baseball clubs. One of these players, then manager of the Cincinnati team, was Charles A. Comiskey who, in 1893, persuaded the young reporter to accept the position of president of the Western League, a baseball organization that was just being revived after a financial collapse. For a year, while holding this office, he continued his newspaper work but in 1894 he abandoned it and cast his fortunes definitely with professional baseball. The Western League at that time had teams in Kansas City, Detroit, Toledo, Indianapolis, Sioux City, Grand Rapids, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee.
Young, ambitious, courageous, and with fine organizing ability, Johnson began to strengthen and improve the league, shifting the franchises and teams to larger cities with the idea of building up an organization to rival the National League, at that time the only major league of professional baseball. As the territory of the powerful National League was gradually invaded, a bitter baseball war developed in which "Big Ban" was victorious all along the line. After establishing itself in most of the big cities that formerly had been considered the exclusive baseball territory of the National League, the Western League changed its name to American League (1900) and three years later struck the National League a stunning blow by putting a club in New York, and thus rounding out a playing circuit on a par with that of its rival. With that blow the latter capitulated and accepted the American League as a major league organization on an equal footing. All this was due to the energy, skill, persistency, and financial shrewdness of Ban Johnson.
Starting with clubs in small cities in the West, the American League, under Johnson, rose to a point where, at his death, the franchises and club properties of the circuit were estimated to be worth approximately $25, 000, 000; and the $2, 500-a-year president of the Western League became the $40, 000-a-year president of the American League. Ban Johnson proposed and put through the scheme of holding a "World's Series" each autumn between the pennant-winning clubs of the two leagues. He drove rowdyism from the playing field and from the grandstand and bleachers, so that respectable people could witness baseball games with their families without being annoyed or insulted by the remarks or actions of any rough element.
In 1920 there came the revelation that some Chicago White Sox players had been bribed to lose the World's Series of 1919 to the Cincinnati Club of the National League. This scandal led the club owners to call in the federal judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, as commissioner of baseball with supreme authority. Though he had done much to help expose the scandal and to punish the wrongdoers, Johnson objected to the selection of any outsider to run baseball. He felt it a blow at his own dignity and authority. For this reason he bickered with Landis, and in the later years of his presidency precipitated one clash after another, gradually losing his authority and finally, in 1927, resigning his office.
He was in poor health at the time and died in St. Louis, Missouri, in March 1931. He is buried at Spencer, Indiana.
Johnson was included, in 1937, in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Huge in size, flamboyant, energetic, courageous, and ambitious, Johnson did much to build up professional baseball to a high plane and for years was the most picturesque and powerful figure in the game.
Quotes from others about the person
Will Harridge, who succeeded to the AL presidency in 1931, summed up Johnson's legacy: "He was the most brilliant man the game has ever known. He was more responsible for making baseball the national game than anyone in the history of the sport. "
In 1894 Johnson married Sarah Jane Laymon, who survived him. There were no children of this marriage.
