Judge and Jury: The Story of Judge Landis
by David Pietrusza

Reviewed by J. G. Floto

If nothing else, Judge and Jury teaches tolerance. In recent years, Judge Landis has been the symbol of much of what was wrong with an earlier era of this century, particularly segregation. This book is not a whitewash; Pietrusza does not absolve The Judge of his reactionary attitudes towards black baseball players. He instead reminds us that it is unfair for Landis to be the lightning rod for contemporary wrath regarding all the injustices of his era. It has often been reported that he blocked integration. But the owners, firmly opposed to the destruction of the rigid color barrier, never came to him with any proposals to integrate the game. Thus, there was nothing for him to obstruct. This is just one of the many lessons in store for the reader of Judge and Jury.

As the title implies, Pietrusza is well aware of the dictatorial nature of Landis' reign. Often referred to as the czar of baseball, he was just that. When the powerful owners came to him in 1920, hats in hand, and asked him to replace the tottering three man commission that adjudicated important baseball decisions, he made it clear that he would only take the job if his power were absolute, that he had to answer to no one. He had made himself popular with the owners a half decade earlier when he stalled on deciding the Federal Leagues' anti-trust suit. The Federal League soon collapsed and Landis had 16 new pals, the AL and NL owners.

He also convinced me, after a decade of intense study of 1920's baseball, that Landis did indeed complete his mandate. I have previously stated in these pages that credit for "saving" the game in the wake of the Black Sox scandal should not go to Landis, or at lest not to Landis alone. I've used attendance figures to show that baseball did not go into a tailspin immediately following the scandal, attendance was stable or actually increased for most clubs in 1921, the year after the scandal broke. A bloke named Babe Ruth had a mite to do with keeping the game before the public eye.

This is not Pietrusza's point. Baseball might have continued its popularity up to the present day. However, had the gambling which had crept into the game long before the throwing of the 1919 World Series continued to spread, especially in the mobster-ridden Twenties, baseball might well have gone down the same road as the other major spectator sport of that era, boxing. In this sense Landis, as tyrannical, priggish, self-serving, obnoxious and childish as he could be, did indeed save the game with his heavy-handed treatment of the gambling element.

Judge and Jury also reminds us that Landis was a celebrity judge long before the scandal. With intricately documented evidence, the author shows that Landis' $29 million fine of Standard Oil in 1907 was not the token hand slap that many contemporary baseball historians portray it as. This school claims that he fined the giant oil trust, knowing he would make points with press and public, all the while knowing the decision would be overturned in appellate court. In fact, Landis was not satisfied with the decision. Regarding Rockefeller, Pietrusza notes: "Landis would have preferred a stiffer penalty: imprisonment." True, he did receive national accolades for the verdict; there was even some talk of running him for president.

It turns out that when the case reached the Court of Appeals, the judge who got the case, one Peter Grosscup, had it in for Landis, Kenesaw Mountain Landis really did earn his position by "merit and indifference to corporations," whereas Grosscup was in their pockets. Grosscup overturned the Standard Oil decision and ripped Landis in public. There is absolutely no evidence that Landis wanted the case overturned nor that he had any way of knowing in advance which judge would get the case; an Appellate judge of his leaning could just as easily have upheld Landis' decision.

Another interesting facet about the stern old judge that comes out in the book is that he really did have a sense of justice, and was surprisingly lenient at times with "the little people." As a Progressive, he was dedicated to weakening the trusts' stranglehold on the nation, but he could appreciate the trials and tribulations of the average citizen.

In any case, by the time he became The Commish, Landis was a well known national figure, probably better known than any judge not on the Supreme Court. He was known as a straight-shooter, a man more concerned with doing what he considered to be the right thing than in what other legalists or the public or press thought about it, a judge whose justice was swift and severe. Since he was headquartered in Chicago, where the Black Sox were tried after their exposure in 1920, and because he had won the owners' favor over the Federal League he seemed the perfect man for the job.

At first, most of the magnates were pleased with their decision. "Most," because several owners, allies of A.L. President Ban Johnson, conducted a hard-fought battle against Landis. Even after the Grand Jury in Chicago found the Black Sox 9 (which included star pitcher Eddie Cicotte, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver, all of whom may well have ended up in Cooperstown if not for this dunce cap detour) guilty, Landis surprised many with his now famous edict that "Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game; no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ball game; no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball."

In one fell swoop, he had announced to the world that in his new position, he was bigger than any grand jury when it came to matters regarding baseball (in the early years, he also retained his federal judgeship, despite clamoring from certain sectors that there was a conflict of interest) and that there would be no mercy to anyone who sullied the game. In the next few years he ousted several other players involved in the Black Sox and other fixes. A new sheriff was in town.

He also wrestled with Babe Ruth and won. Ruth, like many other players, made big money in the off-season with barnstorming exhibition games. There was a rule that players from the two World Series teams must not participate in the barnstorming. After the Yanks won their first pennant in 1921, Landis stopped in the clubhouse to congratulate them. Ruth said, "Judge, what's all this talk about our being forbidden to barnstorm after the Series?" Landis told him the rule, which before his reign had been only feebly enforced. Ruth answered, "I'm notifying you that I am going to violate the rule and I don't care what you do about it. " He ended up caring. The Babe participated in the off-season matches. Landis, furious, said, "Who the hell does that big ape think he is?" And in a calmer mood, "He gets away with a lot in the American League, but in this office he's just another ballplayer. "

In the Black Sox case, there was not much risk to the Judge in his new position. He had been brought in to clean up the game, and most of the nation cheered his hard-nosed decision. But in this matter, he was truly testing the waters. The rule didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but it was the rule. Ruth was wildly popular. Would the fans support Ruth or Landis? They ended up backing the Judge, considering his stance part of his continuing crusade to clean up the game. Ruth was suspended for six weeks and fined his World Series shares.

As the years, then decades wore on, he in the mind of the public (the Caucasian public, at least) became the symbol of baseball and decency. He was always there for the World Series, as much a part of the fabric of the game as Ruth and Mack and McGraw. But the owners became increasingly disenchanted. Many club officials were extremely bitter over his decision to make free agents of players locked into the newly created farm systems. Talented players were forced to remain in the minors because their major league affiliates would not let them go, yet did not have room for them on the big club. By now there was impeachment talk, but had no intention of going anywhere. Despite this and a number of other battles (he was a vigorous opponent of night baseball), he served out his term until he died in 1944.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. Despite the fact that Pietrusza shows him in a more humane light, I still don't care for the man. He still was a bigot, as most Progressives were. They were for the working man--as long as he was white. He was still a hypocrite--after the early gambling scandals blew over, he dismissed accusations regarding aging superstars Cobb and Tris Speaker in a 1926 case in which disgruntled pitcher Dutch Leonard claimed they threw a game. Rather than making a decision, Landis allowed the two to quietly retire--even though they did come back for two more years. He was always arbitrary, sometimes unfair. He overstayed his effective period by at least a decade--he carried the values of Teddy Roosevelt into the age of FDR. It is no coincidence that Jackie Robinson was allowed into baseball only after Landis was gone. (It was amazing that the new Commissioner, former Kentucky Senator Happy Chandler allowed Robinson to play, but that's another story.) Branch Rickey knew there was no chance he could integrate the game while Landis was in office. Landis didn't block integration per se, but he did absolutely nothing to promote it.

He was a prissy, fussy little man with an enormous ego and a pasha's power. But he did have a certain integrity, and accomplished what he was mandated to do, clean up the game.

David Pietrusza's book is a winner. While at times he reaches back for the high hard one to champion Landis' efforts, overall he has written an objective biography, a tough task with such a controversial character who brings so much baggage to the discussion. This is not a stick figure portrait, but a detailed, caring portrait, provided within proper historical context.

Actually those details are the only real flaw I found in the book; at times the researcher Pietrusza challenges the biographer Pietrusza and wins. Particularly in the early chapters, he seems loath to separate the wheat from the chaff. But overall the writing is interesting, compelling, and, most important of all, challenging. If you are a Landis fan, you will discover some unsettling events. If you are a Landis foe, you will find many things to revise the current revisionist attitudes on the man. In the end, David Pietrusza, like Landis, has accomplished his task, in this case a full blooded, accurate and honest of baseball's first Commissioner and one of its most important figures.