Baseball, Heal Thyself.
The 20th century needed a tyrant to bring discipline to the sport of baseball. The 21st century will need a visionary.

Brian Ross
Sr. Editor
MLNSportsZone.com

[Opinion] - The road to baseball’s return as the national pastime doesn’t go through New York.  ESPN® won’t hear about it for years. To complicate things, the man who could lead baseball back as the next Commissioner would be the last person who wants the job, or whom the current crop of major league owners would even consider hiring.

The improbable, however, is often the pathway to success. 

When baseball was mired in corruption caused by cheap owners who treated players like slaves, peaking with the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal, the improbable happened: Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was brought in as the first Commissioner of Baseball.

The owners of that day wanted to show their 'get-tough' policy on players who would try and fix a World Series. To the public, the Commissioner was to be the official enforcer, arbiter of the rules, and the voice that represented the game without self-interest.  In the back-room, the owners wanted someone who would take his marching orders from them.

Landis, who’d been a judge favorable to Baseball in court, seemed like the perfect candidate for the job. He could retire with a nice title, make a few speeches, and allow the owners to conduct business as usual.  Boy, did they peg him wrong.

Seizing the owners' moment of weakness, and the moral high ground, Judge Landis established a fiercely independent Office of the Commissioner of Baseball that took control of the game.

Landis was a tyrant, to be sure. There were many things that he did wrong, including maintaining the color line that kept black players out of white baseball. He did, however, maintain order, if not peace, between the owners and the players. 

To save the game, Landis didn’t just put a cap on gambling. He spent his term as the first Commissioner cleaning up the image of baseball, building the machine that would produce the larger-than-life stars that became heroes to millions.

The judge defined the job of the independent commissioner: To steward the national pastime for the public, even when abject greed or self-interest from any corner of the sport could have easily pulled Baseball down.

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