You Don't Need Two Balls: Notes for a Dynasty

Max Granillo: Baseball historian, author.

Dr. Tameka Hadjupp: Professor of History at Virginia Tech.

Dr. Erik Knupp: Professor of History at University of Texas El-Paso, author of "Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis: A Life in Two Worlds"


(* * *)

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: I guess you could say that the whole thing was Judge Landis's idea.

I have to set the scene for you. It's January 1942. Only one month after the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. America is going to war. It's three months till baseball season.

Judge Landis, the commissioner of baseball, is thinking about the 1918 season. He wasn't baseball commissioner then, he was still serving on the U. S. District bench. But he was a baseball fan, certainly. America had gone to war one year earlier in 1917, and in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson asked the owners to close the season early due to World War I, which caused baseball a great amount of inconvenience. Landis was thinking about 1942 and he didn't want a repeat of circumstances.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Landis hoped to appeal to President Roosevelt directly. The only question was how he would appeal to the president.

Landis wasn't a well man - he was having cardiac pain at the time which he ignored. Landis would be dead in a year. Even so, he was a very powerful man, and in many respects he had more power than Roosevelt, at least in the world of baseball. He didn't want to lower his status, and he wanted Roosevelt to respect his accomplishments. So his first decision was to write a letter to Roosevelt, asking about baseball.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: If baseball was going to shut down in 1942, Landis wanted to be able to act quickly. Landis knew he had to preserve the sport foremost.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: But then again, Landis felt that a letter would be begging. He didn't want to beg Roosevelt. So he decided that he'd travel to Washington and meet Roosevelt in person and ask him about the 1942 baseball season.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: This is how Landis felt. He was the most powerful man in baseball; Roosevelt was the most powerful man in the United States - it was going to be a summit meeting, like a meeting between two heads of state.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Once again, I have to paint a picture. This is January 1942, and there's probably no busier person in the United States that Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He has to build a war machine essentially out of scratch. If Roosevelt turned down Landis, this would be acceptable given the circumstances: "Sorry, I'd like to meet but I'm too busy." Roosevelt, however, made time for Landis because I think Roosevelt wanted to give the impression that he was interested in sports and vigorous activity.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: My understanding was that President Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were scheduled for a joint appearance for an appeal to the Washington Red Cross. Something had to be moved off the schedule for Roosevelt to speak with Landis, and the decision was made to send the First Lady alone.

This wouldn't prove any difficulty for the First Lady, who was an experienced speaker and could make light work of these social functions. I believe, however, that it must have inconvenienced her, or that she must have felt inconvenienced by it.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: So my understanding is that Landis and Roosevelt shoot the shit in Roosevelt's office for about three hours, and they're having a high old time of it. Roosevelt was calling Landis "Kennie" which only Landis's close friends called him that. And Landis and Roosevelt are sharing some really salty language.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: One always gets the impression that Landis was this upright figure, this old man with a white shock of hair waving a moralistic finger at bad behavior - that impression comes from the Black Sox scandal. However, Landis liked dirty jokes as much as the next man of his era, probably more so. He could be a peculiarly foul-mouthed man. Hard core baseball men would wilt under a stream of verbal abuse from Landis if he wanted to make a point.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: Mrs. Roosevelt returns to the White House, and Landis and Roosevelt are sitting out on the veranda. The First Lady is already put out with the President for canceling his part of the joint appearance, and she almost makes it to the veranda when she, as she wrote in a private letter later, hears "a cascade of calumnities degrading the fairer sex".

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: I don't know what they talked about. All we know comes from the Roosevelt letter. Judge Landis didn't mention it. He only mentioned the results.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Boys will be boys, even presidents and commissioners. That was 1942.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: I believe that the First Lady simply retired for the afternoon. Her daughter, Anna Roosevelt, was at the White House and she didn't see any point in spending much time with the President. Who knows what happened? However, she was definitely in Anna's room at the White House and found some unknown evidence that revealed to Eleanor that her daughter was facilitating an affair between Anna's father - her husband - and Lucy Mercer, a woman with whom Franklin had had an affair over twenty years earlier.

In 1918, both Eleanor, as Franklin's wife, and Sara Delano Roosevelt, Franklin's mother, each offered Franklin dire consequences because of this affair. Eleanor wanted to divorce Franklin, and Sara warned her son that if he [i]did[/i] divorce Eleanor, she'd have him disinherited. A compromise was reached. Franklin would stop seeing Lucy Mercer, and they'd stay married.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: My understanding is that that stopped neither Franklin nor Eleanor from having affairs of their own. However, Lucy Mercer was a sore spot. It was simply the culmination of a bad day for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Judge Landis is staying at a hotel in Washington. He's going to meet with the President the next day before returning home. He had no clue of what was in store for him.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: I think I'd give anything to have been there during that breakfast. I think both sides had enough ammunition by this point to plead a case to the public...but I always felt that Franklin underestimated Eleanor. It was as if a room was full of explosives, and someone had just lit a match.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: So Landis gets to the President. Just for a goodbye. He's got what he wants. He has assurance that baseball would continue. It would be good for the war effort.

So there's the President waiting for him. But he's not as friendly anymore. He's all business. He says, "Mr. Commissioner...baseball will help the men, but what are you going to do for the [i]women[/i]?"

Landis is blindsided. Landis says something banal and then Roosevelt hits him again. "The war effort is very important, Mr. Commissioner. Even baseball must take a back seat to the war effort, and I believe that it will take several years before this war is over."

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: Landis asks Roosevelt what he wants. "I want a league for women," says Roosevelt. "I want a real baseball league for women."

Landis does the usual shuffle - it would be hard to do, no one would attend the games, travel, et cetera. He's listing every practical barrier he can think of in an attempt to dissuade Roosevelt. He looks at Roosevelt, and Roosevelt clearly isn't having any of it.

[b]Max Granillo[/b]: Roosevelt cuts the meeting short. Just cuts Landis cold, leaving him hanging. "Good day, Mr. Commissioner," and they wheel Roosevelt out of the room.

Landis gets back to his car, and his chauffeur said that Landis was sweating - and this was winter. The car pulls away from the White House, and Landis just rolls the window down and throws his hat out the window.

[b]Erik Knupp[/b]: A hundred things had to be going through Landis's mind. Now he has to come up with a league for women. How is going to sell this to the owners? How could he create a league out of nothing in three months? What could Roosevelt do to him and to baseball if Roosevelt wanted to?

Players were already being booed. DiMaggio was booed by the fans because they wanted to know why he wasn't in the Army. Roosevelt could have waved his hands, said, "baseball is canceled for the duration" and Landis would have been known as the man who killed baseball. No one but the most hard core of baseball fans would have complained.

[b]Tameka Hadjupp[/b]: This was clearly Eleanor's idea. There have been a few books that claim that Eleanor Roosevelt was the "Mother of Women's Baseball". I don't think she had planned to have a women's baseball league before she confronted Roosevelt with the evidence. I simply think it was a way for her to get back at both Roosevelt and Landis. And then she thought, "Well, if I'm striking back, why should I only strike back on behalf of myself? Is there someone else I can help?"

Eleanor Roosevelt never attended a women's game. I don't think she even had an interest in baseball. Yet, inexplicably, she did more for women's sport than just about anyone.