If Tom Brady wins his pending court case about deflated footballs, he will have something in common with the eight players who were tried in the so-called Black Sox scandal involving the fixing of the 1919 World Series: it is a little-known fact that those players were acquitted in a Chicago court in 1920. That exoneration, however, did not prevent Major League Baseball’s first Commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, from banning those players from baseball for life the day after they were acquitted.
Landis did not mince words: “Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ballgame, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.”
The most famous player who was banned, Shoeless Joe Jackson, enjoyed renown similar to that of Tom Brady. Jackson has the third highest batting average of all time. Although he had some exculpatory evidence in his favor (he batted .375 in the World Series in question), that did not lift the ethical cloud that Landis perceived as against the best interests of baseball.
As a former federal judge, Landis was learned in the law, but he created a precedent that, in his role as the first sports commissioner, ethics trumped the law. He was well positioned to impose that view because, as a condition for becoming Commissioner after the Black Sox scandal, he insisted on a lifetime contract and on virtually unlimited authority to act in the “best interests of baseball.”
The powers of a sports commissioner have descended from Landis to the present day. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell does not have quite as much power as Landis, but his authority to act in the best interests of the game derives from the same source, which is to protect the integrity of the game from gambling. Congress also recognized the importance of such protection when it legislated U.S. Code Title 18, Section 224 in 1964, headed “Bribery in sporting contests”: “Whoever carries into effect, attempts to carry into effect, or conspires with any other person to carry into effect any scheme in commerce to influence, in any way, by bribery any sporting contest, with knowledge that the purpose of such scheme is to influence by bribery that contest, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”
Reading the plain legislative language above casts a new light on Deflategate, which otherwise seems trivial. The humorous potential of deflated balls and a rough-hewn cast of characters, including one nicknamed “the Deflator,” have made Deflategate a frequent target of comedians. This humor has overshadowed a serious underlying issue: the integrity of the sport.
If the NFL investigation is correct, however, and we track its findings of fact to the “Bribery in sporting contests” statute above, it appears that steps were taken to alter the outcome of at least one sporting contest by a locker room attendant who received things of value from Brady. Hanging on this sporting contest or contests were millions of dollars of sports wagers, including legalized sports betting in four states.
Extensive sports wagering is a compelling reason why professional sports have distanced themselves from gambling. For example, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, stating that a “casino is no place for a baseball hero and Hall of Famer,” banned from employment in baseball beloved players like Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for affiliating themselves with casinos after their playing careers. Although several years after the bans, Mays and Mantle were reinstated by Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in 1985, the fact that such significant players could be banned illustrates how toxic the gambling issue is.
Before the modern sports commissioner was created by Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the position was nothing like it is today. For example, the first person to be the chief executive of the precursor to the NFL called the American Professional Football Association was the world-famous athlete, Jim Thorpe. For the one year that Thorpe headed that league, he also was a star player for one of the teams in the league. Not surprisingly, there were numerous disputes that year, including the basic one of who won the championship.
The Thorpe case illustrates the need for a strong commissioner to undergird the legitimacy of the sport. Although Goodell cannot, as Landis did, trump law with ethics, the courts generally defer to the decisions of sporting bodies because courts are not set up to make sporting decisions.
For professional sports to succeed and prosper, the Commissioner has to possess the ultimate decision-making power, even for decisions that are made incorrectly. The courts have wisely decided that they are poor venues for instant replays. Courts do not act in an instant, and rapid decisions are needed in sports because of the speed at which sporting competitions proceed and the relative shortness of sports careers.
History has vindicated Landis’s view of the powers of a sports commissioner. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in a special election held one month after his death. None of the players he banned, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, have been reinstated. We need more commissioners with his backbone and integrity. More lyrically—with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel—“Where have you gone, Kenesaw Landis? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
