Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Landis in 1907

Kenesaw Mountain Landis (November 20, 1866 – November 25, 1944) was an American federal judge from 1905 to 1920, the year in which he was appointed the first commissioner of Major League Baseball. In that capacity, he was instrumental in restoring baseball's integrity in the wake of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal; he banned the eight culprits of the Scandal (including Shoeless Joe Jackson) from baseball for life. Landis would serve as commissioner until his death in 1944.

Sourced

• Why should God wish to take a thoroughbred like Matty so soon, and leave some others down here that could well be spared?
  • Lamenting on the death of the famously virtuous former N.Y. Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson in 1925. Quoted in Christopher Hodge Evans, William R. Herzog, The Faith of Fifty Million: Baseball, Religion, and American Culture (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002, ISBN 0664223052), p. 77. [1]

About Kenesaw Mountain Landis

• What about the Satchel Paiges of the future? Will they be playing in the big leagues? The question becomes more pressing yearly. It has been tossed into old Judge Landis' lap more than once. And the spectacularly adroit manner in which this articulate apostle of Lincoln tosses it out the window is a source of much marvel.
  • Joe Williams of the New York World Telegram, quoted in Robert Bailey Thomas, The Old Farmer's Almanac 1998: Calculated on a New and Improved Plan for the Year of Our Lord 1998 (Yankee Pub., 1995), p. 82. [2]