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It was a white man’s game except for an occasional Indian or a Cuban. ” And he would change the subject or walk away, or both. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (so named because his father, a Union surgeon, was crippled during the battle on that Georgia mountain in the Civil War) was in absolute authority over baseball from 1920 till his death on November 25, 1944. The first—and maybe most famous—action that Landis took was to give lifetime bans to eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox.

LR: We had a very low budget, which is why we were only an eight-page paper. If we were getting gold from Moscow, as was long whispered, we would have been larger, and more effective. I used to do the fund-drive, which depended on readers contributing $10 or $20, [which was] pretty significant in those days. The Daily Worker was published in New York, and it was a national paper until similar papers appeared in Chicago and Los Angeles. A. it was called People’s World. The later papers had their own columnists, but we exchanged, so my columns, for instance, were read in other cities.

Players who were born in Cincinnati, for example, were therefore able to negotiate with their hometown team, the Reds. Players stuck behind a superstar at the same position were allowed to play out their existing contract and then sign with a team that could find more at-bats for them. Miller time-released his free agents onto the market, setting up a demand for his growing supply. The owners stumbled and bumbled, signing free agents with the zeal of lastminute Christmas shoppers. They bought everyone in sight, signing starting pitchers with scant track records to ten-year contracts.