Who was Major League Baseball's first commissioner, serving from 1920 to 1944?

Major League Baseball’s first commissioner, serving from 1920 to 1944, was Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Landis took office after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, when confidence in professional baseball had been badly damaged. Club owners wanted a powerful independent authority, and Landis was appointed in 1920 with unusually broad disciplinary powers. He used them forcefully, permanently banning the eight Chicago White Sox players accused of conspiring to fix the World Series.

Landis remained commissioner until his death on November 25, 1944. He was succeeded by Happy Chandler, who became baseball’s second commissioner in 1945. A common mix-up is confusing Landis with later commissioners such as Ford Frick, Bowie Kuhn, or Chandler. Landis’s legacy is also complicated: although he helped centralize baseball’s authority and restore public confidence, he did not challenge the owners’ policy of excluding Black players from the major leagues.