From humble beginnings as a high school drop-out, aspiring railroad brakeman, bicycle racer, roller skating rink operator and journalist, Kenesaw Mountain Landis rose to become an attorney, a United States District Court Judge (1905-22) and eventually the first commissioner of baseball (1921-44).

Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born on November 20, 1866 in Millville, Ohio. Landis was the son of Dr. Abraham Landis, who had lost the use of his leg in the Civil War battle of Kennesaw Mountain in northwest Georgia on the morning of June 27, 1864. At his son's birth, Dr. Landis suggested they call him "Kenesaw Mountain." The name and the misspelling stuck.

Landis's early career gave little indication of the heights he would later reach. A high school dropout, Landis's first ambition was to be a brakeman on the Vandalia and Southern Railroad, but the company's officials rejected his application. The diminutive Landis won some fame as a bicycle racer at various Indiana fairgrounds and operated a roller skating rink before moving over to journalism. While covering court cases for the Logansport (Indiana) Journal, he decided to become a lawyer and enrolled in the Y.M.C.A. Law School of Cincinnati. In 1891 Landis obtained his degree from Chicago's Union Law School, now a part of Northwestern University. Two of his brothers, Charles and Frederick Landis, became Indiana congressmen. While still in his 20s Kenesaw sat in on State Department cabinet meetings. Appointed to the federal judiciary by Theodore Roosevelt, Landis quickly earned a reputation for quirky but newsworthy justice.

Immediately following the Eastland disaster, three separate investigations began or were planned: The Coroner Hoffman's Inquiry, Commerce Secretary Redfield's Hearing and the Chicago City Council Inquiry. On July 31 with his typical iron-fist policies, Landis issued an injuction for those subpoenaed to appear and testify before the federal grand jury from testifying in any other hearing. This halted the other investigations and inquiries, giving Landis total control. The effect of this order was to limit the historical documentation of the disaster. The federal grand jury never published its hearings, and they appear not to have survived. These grand jury transcripts were also misplaced or not used during the criminal trial. The grand jury transcripts would have provided the only detailed testimony by witnesses within weeks of the disaster.

On September 29, 1915, Judge Landis issued a federal bench warrant for the arrest of Arnold, Hull, Reid, Eckliff, Pedersen and Erickson on the charge of conspiracy to operate an unsafe ship. Because the alleged conspiracy took place in Michigan, the case was assigned to Judge Clarence W. Sessions of the District Court at Grand Rapids, Michigan. Landis was also involved in the disposition of the hulk of the Eastland after it was finally raised on August 14th, 1915.

With his craggy face, dramatic shock of white hair, and flamboyant manner, not to mention an easily aroused sense of outrage, Landis had the public image of a fierce but twinkly-eyed man of rectitude. Also in 1915, he had delayed action on the Federal League's antitrust suit against Organized Baseball until a negotiated settlement could be reached and the need for a decision was past, thus avoiding a legal test of baseball's monopoly status.

Landis had saved Organized Baseball and the owners knew it. When the 1919 World Series fix became public knowledge in September of 1920, someone was needed to restore confidence in the badly shaken institution. Landis was an obvious choice. On November 12, 1920, every major league owner except the intransigent Phil Ball of the Browns paid a visit to Landis's Chicago court. They stood in the rear of the room while Landis continued hearing cases. When he finished, Landis called them into his chambers. There, they offered him chairmanship of a new three-member Board of Control over Major League Baseball. Landis demanded absolute power and got it.

Will Rogers once remarked, "The game needed a touch of class and distinction, and somebody said, 'Get that old guy who sits behind first base all the time. He's out here everyday anyway.' So they offered him a season pass and he grabbed it."

In the summer of 1921 the accused "Black Sox" were acquitted under highly questionable circumstances. Long used to having his decisions overturned by higher courts, Landis, now commissioner of baseball, returned the favor and reversed the jury's decision. "Regardless of the outcome of juries," he said, "no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball."

As commissioner of baseball, he ruled with an iron fist; strict, disciplined, and relegating final decisions to his totalitarian will alone. Landis was a headstrong, autocratic czar. Some termed him "the only successful dictator in United States history." Such was the hold of Landis on baseball that right up until his death, even as frail as he was, no one dared oppose him.

Despite his faults, Kenesaw Mountain Landis was passionately devoted to baseball and to preserving its integrity. "Baseball is something more than a game to an American boy," he declared. "It is his training field for life work. Destroy his faith in its squareness and honesty and you have destroyed something more; you have planted suspicion of all things in his heart."

He died in Chicago, IL on November 26, 1944 and was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame the same year. He final interrment is in Oakwoods Cemetery (Chicago, IL), where eight Eastland victims are also buried.

The Baseball Hall of Fame Book by Gerald Astor. (1989)
Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof. (1963)
Baseball: An Illustrated History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns. (1996)