Okay, the pitch clock has worked out well. The shift ban, too.
But try to name another outstanding decision made by Rob Manfred during his reign as commissioner (2015 to the present). It’s hard to come up with anything, isn’t it?
No matter. Manfred will eventually be rewarded with a plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Five of his predecessors served at least half a decade as commissioner. All five were subsequently inducted into the hall.
It’s a lock that Manfred’s career will be capped with the same honor. Think of it as a lifetime achievement award, baseball’s version of a gold watch.
There’s no compelling justification for the inclusion of commissioners in the hall’s gallery. Teenagers don’t scurry around to find Bowie Kuhn’s plaque. Old-timers don’t feel goosebumps at the sight of Happy Chandler or Ford Frick. If you ponder the stories of the five inductees, as we will below, you start to wonder how they ever got elected.
Yet there they are in Cooperstown. And Rob Manfred will be there, too. Someday.
Cooperstown at the Crossroads
Read about the Hall of Fame’s checkered history (and uncertain future)
Kenesaw Mountain Landis (inducted 1944)
Kenesaw Mountain Landis was admitted to the Hall of Fame in a snap election a couple of weeks after his death from a coronary thrombosis in November 1944.
Several aspects of his record were glossed over in the haste to enshrine him. Many owners — no matter what they said in public — privately disparaged his cold demeanor, erratic temper, and dictatorial behavior. They also conceded that Landis’s accomplishments were limited in scope. The former federal judge served as baseball’s commissioner for nearly a quarter of a century (1920-1944), yet he did little to advance the sport.
It’s true that he permanently banned the Black Sox for fixing the 1919 World Series, an act always depicted with Landis in the role of Superman, singlehandedly rescuing the national pastime. But baseball’s enhanced popularity in the 1920s owed more to the incandescence of its new stars (especially Babe Ruth) and the robust health of the economy than to any ruling issued by the commissioner.
Landis accomplished little of a constructive nature after handing down the Black Sox decision. The years passed, and he made no effort to improve baseball’s administration or expand its audience. Owners often asked for guidance on complicated issues. “Do it, and I’ll rule on it,” he invariably replied. He always thought of himself as a judge, not a leader.
America’s population soared by 30 percent during his tenure — adding 32 million residents — yet Landis did nothing to extend baseball’s footprint. The same 16 clubs played in the same 10 Northeastern and Midwestern cities when he took office and when he died.
He instinctively opposed most innovations, including night baseball and farm systems, though he was not always able to block them. Civil rights emerged as an important issue in his later years, yet Landis quietly worked to forestall integration of the major leagues.
Ford Frick (1970)
Baseball’s third commissioner was the second to be admitted to Cooperstown, winning the approval of the Veterans Committee in 1970.
Ford Frick was an amiable ex-sportswriter whose credo was as brief as it was stodgy: “Change the status quo only when there is a compelling reason for a change.”
Frick accomplished little during his 14 years as the game’s supreme boss (1951-1965), much to the displeasure of critics such as maverick owner Bill Veeck. “Ford Frick does not try to do the wrong thing,” Veeck once said. “Given the choice between doing something right or something wrong, Frick will usually begin by doing as little as possible.”
Subscribe — free — to Baseball’s Best (and Worst)
A new installment will arrive in your email each weekday morning
Happy Chandler (1982)
The Veterans Committee surprised most observers when it inducted Albert “Happy” Chandler in 1982. The verbose governor and senator from Kentucky, who served as commissioner between Landis and Frick (1945-1951), had annoyed a significant number of owners and sportswriters during his tenure.
“He was a completely uninhibited man and naturally developed enemies,” wrote Shirley Povich of the Washington Post. These foes prevented Chandler from securing a second term in office, earning his lasting enmity. “If I’d known the snakepit I was stepping into,” he once said of the commissionership, “I’d have passed.”
Chandler did little in office to justify his selection, as the Hall of Fame discovered when designing his plaque. There was virtually nothing concrete to cite, so Chandler’s description — just 38 words long — was padded with a recitation of his political career and a platitudinous salute to “his broad concern for all phases of the game.”
Bowie Kuhn (2008)
Bowie Kuhn served as commissioner from 1969 to 1984. His chief accomplishment — a word that perhaps should be encased in quotation marks — was to muddle his way through five work stoppages.
Marvin Miller, the executive director of the players’ union, frequently outwitted Kuhn, a fact that the Veterans Committee chose to ignore. It rejected Miller during the same meeting at which it elected Kuhn. “That’s like putting Wile E. Coyote in the Hall of Fame instead of the Road Runner,” laughed former pitcher Jim Bouton.
Miller, who died in 2012, was finally added to the hall in 2020. Hanging his plaque in the same gallery where Kuhn had resided for a dozen years was an act of “subversive greatness,” said Jeff Katz, a baseball author and former mayor of Cooperstown.
Bud Selig (2017)
Several members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America were angered by the Era Committee’s decision to induct Bud Selig, whose term as commissioner (1998-2015) included the so-called steroid era.
Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle accused Selig of turning a blind eye to baseball’s drug crisis. She called it “senseless to keep steroid guys out when the enablers are in the Hall of Fame. I now will hold my nose and vote for players I believe cheated.”
Peter Botte of the New York Daily News echoed Slusser’s willingness to support Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in the wake of Selig’s admission. “I always thought it would take a proven user getting in for me to reconsider my stance,” Botte wrote. “It turns out the impetus was much higher on baseball’s masthead.”
The Hall of Fame went to great lengths to justify Selig’s election, cramming 102 words onto his plaque, four times as many as Landis received. The text on his plaque is so tightly squeezed that it’s nearly illegible.
Not that many fans are looking.