Kenesaw Mountain Landis was an American jurist. He served as a federal judge from 1905 to 1922 and as the first Commissioner of Baseball from 1920 until his death.
Background
Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born in Millville, Ohio, the fourth of five sons and sixth of seven children of Mary (Kumler) and Abraham Hoch Landis. His paternal great-grandfather had come from Switzerland to Pennsylvania in 1749. His mother was of German descent, and the family belonged to the United Brethren Church. Landis's father, while serving as a Union Army surgeon in the Civil War, lost a leg at the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia, an experience that curtailed his medical career and prompted him to name his fourth son Kenesaw Mountain (dropping an "n" in the process). Ambitious for his children, he urged them to succeed: two of his sons, Charles and Frederick, later served in Congress, and John, a physician, became health commissioner of Cincinnati. Kenesaw, slight of build and hot-tempered, held his own with his brothers, gaining social confidence through a variety of jobs and athletic activities, including baseball and bicycling.
Education
He dropped out of high school in Logansport, Ind. , where his father was then farming, but experience as a court shorthand reporter stirred his interest in the law. He attended the Y. M. C. A. Law School in Cincinnati for one year and Union College of Law in Chicago for another.
Career
Landis was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1891. Two years later he was appointed private secretary to President Cleveland's Secretary of State, Walter Q. Gresham, his father's former commanding officer. Landis returned to Chicago following Gresham's death in 1895; there he practiced law and was befriended by Frank O. Lowden, whose unsuccessful 1904 gubernatorial campaign he managed.
Through Lowden's friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt, Landis was appointed in 1905 federal district judge for northern Illinois. A courtroom showman, Landis habitually wore his hair in a long mane and made telling use of "a piercing eye, a scowl and a rasping voice. " He ran a lively court, badgering witnesses, lawyers, and reporters. His decisions reflected a commitment to the general path of Rooseveltian liberalism. He gained national publicity in 1907 when he imposed a $29, 240, 000 fine on the Standard Oil Company of Indiana in an antitrust decision that was speedily overruled by the Supreme Court. His superpatriotic wartime decisions against William D. Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World and Socialist Congressman Victor Berger, both of whom were convicted of obstructing the country's war program, enhanced his public image, as did a theatrical attempt to summon Kaiser Wilhelm II to his court to answer for the Lusitania tragedy.
His fame catapulted him into his second and more memorable career as commissioner of baseball. Despite a boyhood fascination with the game and an adult reputation as a partisan of the Chicago Cubs, Landis had no contact with the baseball industry until 1915, when he presided over an antitrust suit brought against the American and National leagues by the Federal League, which sought recognition as a third major league. Landis won the friendship of the established major leagues by delaying judgment, giving them time to buy out the financially harassed Federal owners.
Landis moved to the center of the baseball stage in 1920 when the club owners, as a result of the "Black Sox" scandal, a sordid affair of bribery involving eight players of the Chicago White Sox charged with throwing the World Series of 1919, decided to place the game under the control of a single administrator of national reputation. After considering Gens. John Pershing and Leonard Wood, along with ex-President Taft, a delegation of owners, meeting in Chicago, offered the post to Landis, who accepted after demanding and winning full control over the conduct of the game for a seven-year term. The $50, 000-a-year post he shaped in his own image, down to his personally chosen title, "commissioner. " Entrusting the details to his chosen lieutenant, Leslie M. O'Connor, Landis controlled organized baseball from 1921 until his death. (He was reappointed in 1926, 1933, and 1940. )
As chief interpreter of "conduct detrimental to baseball, " he struck boldly at corruption, beginning with the "Black Sox" players, whom he summarily barred from baseball for life, and going on to others involved in receiving bribes. Fraternization with fans, racetrack betting, postseason barnstorming, and prizefighting also drew threats of banishment. To protect the World Series from any repetition of the 1919 scandal, Landis watched each game himself, ruling at times on player behavior, second-guessing umpire decisions, and supervising the collection and disbursal of revenues. If his decisions were draconic, even denying players their civil rights by holding them to a unique baseball code of law, Landis usually had the support of owners, press, and public. But sometimes he was obliged to be circumspect, as in 1927, when evidence came to light charging superstars Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker with selling games back in the late 1910's. Sensing public opposition to a banishment decree, Landis discreetly arranged to have both men transferred to different teams for 1928.
By the mid-1920's Landis was coming under frequent criticism from team owners and from the baseball journal Sporting News as "an erratic and irresponsible despot. " His stubborn opposition to the "farm system"--a recruiting technique, once discredited but then being revived, whereby a major-league club controlled a minor-league one and used it as a feeder of talent--increasingly alienated the club owners. So, too, did his denunciations of owners and writers and his feud with President Ban Johnson of the American League that led to Johnson's exile. By 1932 a cabal of club owners stood ready to deny Landis reelection as commissioner. Although failing in this, they managed to cut his salary and forced him to conduct himself more circumspectly.
Landis's handling of two later questions helped restore the confidence of club owners. Belatedly recognizing the importance of radio, Landis in 1934 decided to make the stations pay for the privilege of broadcasting World Series games. The annual contracts he negotiated, beginning that year, for exclusive World Series broadcast brought extra money to team owners. Of more importance was his handling of baseball during World War II. Recalling experiences in the first World War, Landis determined to prevent a repetition of charges of unpatriotic behavior. Shortly after the war's outset, with President Roosevelt's approval, he worked out railroad timetables with the Office of Defense Transportation that enabled the game to continue, although by 1944 it was necessary to alter game schedules drastically and to curtail spring training.
Already in declining health, Landis died that fall of a coronary thrombosis at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago. By his own wish his body was cremated.
Achievements
Landis was remembered for his handling of the Black Sox scandal, in which he expelled eight members of the Chicago White Sox from organized baseball for conspiring to lose the 1919 World Series and repeatedly refused their reinstatement requests. His firm actions and iron rule over baseball in the near quarter-century of his commissionership are generally credited with restoring public confidence in the game.
As the man who cleaned up baseball, Landis remained widely popular with the public and inspired imitators like the film industry's "czar, " Will Hays. Landis's Olympian reputation put him beyond the reach of the baseball club owners, however unhappy they were at times with his regime. Having learned their lesson, they buried commissioner autocracy with Landis. His legend, however, forced them to maintain the post of commissioner, even if its subsequent incumbents were to be relatively impotent.
Landis was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by a special vote shortly after his death.
Connections
Landis married Winifred Reed Landis of Ottawa, Ill. , on July 25, 1895. They had two children, Reed Gresham and Susanne.
