Editing Commissioner of Baseball (section)

==== An independent commissioner's office ====
The owners had initially assumed that Landis would deal with the Black Sox Scandal and then settle into a comfortable retirement as the titular head of baseball. Instead, Landis ruled baseball with an iron hand for the next 25 years. He established a fiercely independent commissioner's office that would go on to often make both players and owners miserable with decisions that he argued were in the best interests of the game. He worked to clean up the [[hooliganism]] that was tarnishing the reputation of players in the 1920s. Without a union to represent them, the players had no meaningful recourse to challenge Landis' virtually unchecked authority. On the other hand, Landis inserted his office into negotiations with players, where he deemed appropriate, to put an end to a few of the more egregious labor practices that had contributed to the players' discontent. He also personally approved broadcasters for the World Series.

Landis's only significant rival in the early years was longtime American League founder and president [[Ban Johnson]], who had been reckoned as the most powerful man in the game before Landis's arrival. Johnson was as strong-willed as Landis, and a clash between the two was inevitable. It happened in the [[1924 World Series]]. When several Giants were implicated in a plan to bribe players on the moribund Phillies late in the season, Johnson demanded that the Series be canceled, and loudly criticized Landis's handling of the affair, to which Landis responded by threatening to resign. The American League owners promised to throw Johnson out of office if he stepped out of line again. [[1926 in baseball|Two years later]], when Johnson criticized Landis's decision to give [[Ty Cobb]] and [[Tris Speaker]] an amnesty after it surfaced they had bet on a fixed game in 1919, Landis told the American League owners to choose between him and Johnson.  The owners promptly sent Johnson on a sabbatical from which he never really returned.