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Baseball's first commissioner cast such a long and powerful shadow over the game, it's often hard to untangle his contribution from his personality, and his life from his lasting myth. The truth that emerges from this exhaustive and engaging biography of Judge Landis has no problem matching the outsized legend stride for stride. Landis moved into the public spotlight to clean up the national pastime after the disgrace of the 1919 World Series, but there was much more to this complex man and his complex career. Judge and Jury chronicles the entirety.
A tough, colorful judge, his rulings could be as unpredictable as he was. Landis could be as severe and stubborn as he could be gentle and understanding, characteristics that both defined his decision-making and confused his critics. Noted as a trustbuster--he went head to head with John D. Rockefeller, fining Standard Oil $29 million--he upheld baseball's exemption from antitrust status from the bench. Known for his harsh sentences, he was almost impeached for his leniency to the destitute. As commissioner, he loved the post, the game, and his perceived responsibility as its primary upholder and restorer of virtue: "You have told the world that my powers would be absolute," he warned the owners who hired him. "I wouldn't take this job for all the gold in the world unless I knew my hands were free." In his regime, they pretty much were, and he used them to grab his share of whatever power and glory he could wrap them around. --Jeff Silverman
From Publishers Weekly
This exhaustive study of baseball's first commissioner by the author of Minor Miracles includes details about its subject's life before baseball. Named for the Civil War battle in which his father was wounded and nicknamed "Squire," Landis grew up in a large family, two of whose members later served in the House of Representatives, while others became prominent journalists. This scion of a rock-ribbed Midwestern Republican family served in Washington, D.C., in the administration of Democrat Grover Cleveland. But back in his adopted city of Chicago in 1905, Landis was appointed a federal district court judge by Teddy Roosevelt. Deeply involved in the progressive, trust-busting wing of the GOP, he came to national attention when he took on Standard Oil and its powerful head, John D. Rockefeller Sr. Though the multimillionaire tried to avoid a subpoena, Landis made him testify and assessed Standard Oil a $29-million fineAthe largest in U.S. history (though it was later reduced). During WWI he was an unabashed jingoist, convinced that all socialists and labor leaders who opposed the war were traitors; unfortunately for them, many were tried in Landis's court and drew inordinately long sentences. The so-called Black Sox scandal in the World Series of 1919, fixed by gamblers, led the owners to hire Landis as an almost omnipotent commissioner, a job he held until his death 24 years later. He did indeed restore the reputation for honesty of the national pastime, though he opposed night games and the farm system in vain. In this fascinating, diligently researched work, Pietrusza tackles a complex, important man and makes him his own. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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