Kenesaw Mountain Landis biography
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, (born Nov. 20, 1866, Millville, Ohio, U.S.—died Nov. 25, 1944, Chicago, Ill.), American federal choose who, as the primary commissioner of organized skilled baseball, was famous for his uncompromising measures in opposition to individuals responsible of dishonesty or different conduct he thought to be damaging to the game.
He was named for a mountain close to Atlanta, Ga., the place his father, a Union soldier, was wounded in the course of the Civil War. Landis attended the University of Cincinnati and in 1891 graduated from the Union College of Law, Chicago. He practiced regulation in Chicago till March 1905, when Pres. Theodore Roosevelt appointed him U.S. district choose for the northern district of Illinois. Two years later, Landis received nationwide fame by fining the Standard Oil Company greater than $29 million for granting illegal freight rebates. (The resolution was reversed on attraction.) During World War I he presided at sedition trials of Socialist and labour leaders.
In 1915 the Federal League, a “third major league” working outdoors the construction of organized skilled baseball, introduced swimsuit in opposition to the American and National leagues. The case got here earlier than Landis, who neither granted nor denied the injunction that was requested however withheld his resolution till the Federal League had disbanded on phrases passable to all three leagues. Following the Black Sox baseball scandal (during which eight Chicago White Sox gamers had been accused of accepting bribes to lose the 1919 World Series), Landis was proposed for the workplace of commissioner. Replacing the three-man National Baseball Commission, which had didn't deal adequately with the Black Sox downside, Landis took workplace in January 1920.
Although disliked and even feared for his autocratic strategies and patriarchal sternness, the commissioner held workplace till his demise, and none of his choices ever was reversed. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1944.